18902	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 18902-h.htm or 18902-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/9/0/18902/18902-h/18902-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/9/0/18902/18902-h.zip) FLOOD TIDE by SARA WARE BASSETT Author of "The Harbor Road," "The Wall Between," "Taming of Zenas Henry," etc. With Frontispiece by M. L. Greer [Frontispiece: "Delight's kinder bowled over by surprise, Tiny," Willie explained gently.] A. L. Burt Company Publishers -------- New York Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company Copyright, 1921, By Sara Ware Bassett. All rights reserved Published March, 1921 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE WEAVER AND HIS FANCIES II. WILLIE HAS AN IDEE III. A NEW ARRIVAL IV. THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER ENTERS V. AN APPARITION VI. MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE VII. A SECOND SPIRIT APPEARS VIII. SHADOWS IX. A WIDENING OF THE BREACH X. A CONSPIRACY XI. THE GALBRAITH HOUSEHOLD XII. ROBERT MORTON MAKES A RESOLVE XIII. A NEWCOMER ENTERS XIV. THE SPENCES ENTER SOCIETY XV. A REVELATION XVI. ANOTHER BLOW DESCENDS XVII. A GRIM HAND INTERVENES XVIII. THE PROGRESS OF ANOTHER ROMANCE XIX. WILLIE AS PILOT XX. ONE MORE OF WILLIE'S SHIPS REACHES PORT XXI. SURPRISES XXII. DELIGHT MAKES HER DECISION XXIII. FAME COMES TO THE DREAMER OF DREAMS FLOOD TIDE CHAPTER I THE WEAVER AND HIS FANCIES Willie Spence was a trial. Not that his personality rasped society at large. On the contrary his neighbors cherished toward the little old man, with his short-sighted blue eyes and his appealing smile, an affection peculiarly tender; and if they sometimes were wont to observe that although Willie possessed some common sense he was blessed with uncommon little of it, the observation was facetiously uttered and was offered with no malicious intent. In fact had one scoured Wilton from end to end it would have been difficult to unearth a single individual who bore enmity toward the owner of the silver-gray cottage on the Harbor Road. It was impossible to talk ten seconds with Willie Spence and not be won by his kindliness, his optimism, his sympathy, and his honesty. Willie probably could not have dissembled had he tried, and fortunately his life was of so simple and transparent a trend that little lay hidden beneath its crystalline exterior. What he was he was. When baffled by phenomena he would scratch his thin locks and with a smile of endearing candor frankly admit, "I dunno." When, on the other hand, he knew himself to be master of a debated fact, no power under heaven could shake the tenacity with which he clung to his beliefs. There was never any compromise with truth on Willie's part. A thing was so or it was not. This reputation for veracity, linked as it was with an ingenuous good will toward all mankind, had earned for Willie Spence such universal esteem and tenderness that whenever the stooping figure with its ruddy cheeks, soft white hair, and gentle smile made its appearance on the sandy roads of the hamlet, it was hailed on all sides with the loving and indulgent greetings of the inhabitants of the village. Even Celestina Morton, who kept house for him and who might well have lost patience at his defiance of domestic routine, worshipped the very soil his foot touched. There was, of course, no denying that Willie's disregard for the meal hour had become what she termed "chronical" and severely taxed her forbearance; or that since she was a creature of human limitations she did at times protest when the chowder stood forgotten in the tureen until it was of Arctic temperature; nor had she ever acquired the grace of spirit to amiably view freshly baked popovers shrivel neglected into nothingness. Try as she would to curb her tongue, under such circumstances, she occasionally would burst out: "I do wish, Willie Spence, you'd quit your dreamin' an' come to dinner." For answer Willie would rise hastily and stand arrested, a bit of string in one hand and the hammer in the other, and peering reproachfully over the top of his steel-bowed spectacles would reply: "Law, Tiny! You wouldn't begretch me my dreams, would you? They're about all I've got. If it warn't fur the things I dream I wouldn't have nothin'." The wistfulness in the sensitive face would instantly transform Celestina's irritation into sympathy and cause her to respond: "Nonsense, Willie! What are you talkin' about? Ain't you got more friends than anybody in this town? Nobody's poor so long as he has good friends." "Oh, 'taint bein' poor I mind," laughed Willie, now quite himself again. "It's knowin' nothin' an' bein' nothin' that discourages me. If I'd only had the chance to learn somethin' when I was a youngster I wouldn't have to be goin' it blind now like I do. There's times, Celestina," added the man solemnly, "when I really believe I've got stuff inside me that's worth while if only I knew what to do with it." "Pshaw! Ain't you usin' what's inside you all the time to help the folks of this town out of their troubles? I'd like to know how they'd get along if it warn't fur you. Ain't you doctorin' an' fixin' up things for the whole of Cape Cod from one end to the other, day in and day out? I call that amountin' to somethin' in the world if you don't." Willie paused thoughtfully. "I do do quite a batch of tinkerin', that's true," admitted he, brightening, "an' I'm right down glad to do it, too. Don't think I ain't. Still, I can't help knowin' there's better ways to go at it than blunderin' along as I have to, an' sometimes I can't help wishin' I knew what the right way is. There must be folks that know how to do in half the time what I do by makeshift an' fussin'. Sometimes it seems a pity there never was anybody to steer me into findin' out the kind of things I've always wanted to know." Celestina began to rock nervously. Being of New England fiber, and classing as morbid all forms of introspection, she always so dreaded to have the conversation drift into a reflective channel that whenever she found Willie indulging in reveries she was wont to rout him out of them, tartly reproaching herself for having even indirectly been the cause of stirrin' him up. "Next time I'll set the chowder back on the stove an' say nothin'," she would vow inwardly. "I'd much better have waited 'til his dream was over an' done with. S'pose I am put out a bit--'twon't hurt me. If I don't care enough for Willie to do somethin' for him once in a while, good as he's always been to me, I'd oughter be ashamed of myself." Hence it is easily seen that neither to Wilton in general nor to Celestina in particular was Willie Spence a trial. No, it was to himself that Willie was the torment. "I plague myself 'most to death, Tiny," he would not infrequently confess when the two sat together at dusk in the little room that looked out on the reach of blue sea. "It's gettin' all these idees that drives me distracted. 'Tain't that I go huntin' 'em; they come to me, hittin' me broadside like as if they'd been shot out of a gun. There's times," ambled on the quiet voice, "when they'll wake me out of a sound sleep an' give me no peace 'til I've got up and 'tended to 'em. That notion of hitchin' a string to the slide in the stove door so'st you could open the draught without stirrin' out of your chair--that took me in the night. There warn't no waitin' 'til mornin'! Long ago I learned that. Once the idee has a-holt of me there's nothin' to do but haul myself out of bed, even if it's midnight an' colder'n the devil, an' try out that notion." "The plan was a good one; it's saved lots of steps," put in Celestina. "It had to be done, Tiny," Willie answered simply. "That's all there was to it. Good or bad, I had to carry it to a finish if I didn't sleep another wink that night." The assertion was true; Celestina could vouch for that. After ten years of residence in the gray cottage she had become too completely inured to hearing the muffled sound of saw and hammer during the wee small hours of the night to question the verity of the statement. Therefore she was quite ready to agree that there was no peace for Willie, or herself either, until the particular burst of genius that assailed him had been transformed from a mirage of the imagination to the more tangible form of tacks and strings. For strings played a very vital part in Willie Spence's inspirational world. Indeed, when Celestina had first come to the weathered cottage on the bluff to keep house for the lonely little bachelor and had discovered that cottage to be one gigantic spider's web, her initial impression was that strings played far too important a part in the household. What a labyrinthine entanglement the dwelling was! Had a mammoth silkworm woven his airy filaments within its interior, the effect could scarcely have been more grotesque. Strings stretched from the back door, across the kitchen and through the hallway, and disappeared up the stairs into Willie's bedroom, where one pull of a cord lifted the iron latch to admit Oliver Goldsmith, the Maltese cat, whenever he rattled for entrance. There was a string that hoisted and lowered the coal hod from the cellar through a square hole in the kitchen floor, thereby saving one the fatigue of tugging it up the stairs. "A coal hod is such an infernal tote to tote!" Willie would explain to his listeners. Then there was a string which in like manner swung the wood box into place. Other strings opened and closed the kitchen windows, unfastened the front gate, rang a bell in Celestina's room, and whisked Willie's slippers forth from their hiding place beneath the stairs; not to mention myriad red, blue, green, yellow, and purple strings that had their goals in the ice chest, the pump, the letter box, and the storm door, and in connection with which objects they silently performed mystic benefactions. Probably, however, the most significant string of all was that of stout twine that reached from Willie's shop to the home of Janoah Eldridge, two fields beyond, just at the junction of the Belleport and Harbor roads. This string not only linked the two cottages but sustained upon its taut line a small wooden box that could be pulled back and forth at will and convey from one abode to the other not only written communications but also such diminutive articles as pipes, tobacco, spectacles, balls of string, boxes of tacks, and even tools of moderate weight. By means of this primitive special delivery service Jan Eldridge could be summoned posthaste whenever an especially luminous inspiration flashed upon Willie's intellect and could assist in helping to make the dream a reality. For it was always through Willie's plastic imagination that these creative visions flitted. In all his seventy years Jan had been beset by only one outburst of genius and that had pertained to whisking an extra blanket over himself when he was cold at night. How much pleasanter to lie placidly between the sheets and have the blanket miraculously appear without the chill and discomfort of arising to fetch it, he argued! But alas! the magic spell had failed to work. Instead the strings had wrenched the corners from the age-worn covering, thereby arousing Mrs. Eldridge's ire. Moreover, although Jan had not confessed it at the time, the blanket while in process of locomotion had for some unfathomable reason dragged in its wake all the other bedclothes, freeing them from their moorings and submerging his head in a smothering weight of disorganized sheets and counterpanes only to leave his poor shivering body a prey to the unfriendly elements. An attack of lumbago that rendered him helpless from January until March followed and had decided Jan that inventors were born, not made. Thereafter he had been content to abandon the realm of research to his comrade and allow Willie to furnish the inspiration for further creative ventures. Nevertheless his retirement from the spheres of discovery did not prevent him from zealously assisting in the mechanical details that rendered Willie's schemes material. Jan not only possessed a far more practical type of mind than did his friend but he was also a more skilful workman and therefore in the carrying out of any plan his aid was indispensable. He was, moreover, content to be the lesser power, looking up to Willie's ability with admiration and asserting with unfeigned sincerity to every one he met that Willie Spence had not only been born with the _injun_ but he had the _newity_ to go with it. "Why," Jan would often declare with spirit, "in my opinion Willie has every whit as much call to write X, Y, Z, an' all them other letters after his name as any of those fellers that graduate from colleges! He's a wonder, Willie Spence is--a walkin' wonder! Some day he's goin' to make his mark, too, an' cause the folks in this town to set up an' take notice. See if he don't." Willie's neighbors had long since tired of waiting for the glorious moment of his fame to arrive; and although they had too genuine a regard for the little old inventor to state publicly what they really thought of the strings, the nails, the spools, the wires, and the pulleys, in private they did not hesitate to denounce derisively the scientist's contrivances and assert that some fine day the house on the bluff would come to dire disaster. "Somebody's goin' to get hung or strangled on one of them contraptions Willie's rigged up," Captain Phineas Taylor prophesied impressively to Zenas Henry as the two men sat smoking in the lee of the wood pile. "You watch out an' see if they don't." Indeed there was no denying that Celestina was continually catching hairpins, hooks, and buttons in the strings; or that some such dilemma as had been predicted had actually occurred, for one day while alone in the house a pin fastening the back of her print gown had become inextricably entangled in the maze amid which she moved, and fearing Willie's wrath if she should sunder her fetters she had been forced to stand captive and helplessly witness a newly made sponge cake burn to a crisp in the oven. She had hoped the ignominious episode would not reach the outside world; but as Wilton was possessed of a miraculous power for finding out things the story filtered through the community, affording the village a laugh and the opportunity to affirm with ominous shakings of the head that it was only because the Lord looked out for fools and little children that a worse evil had not long ago befallen the Spence household. Willie accepted the banter in good part. Born with a forgiving, noncombative disposition he seldom took offence and although Janoah Eldridge, who knew him better perhaps than anyone else on earth did, acclaimed that this tranquil exterior concealed, as did Tim Linkinwater's, unsuspected depths of ferocity, Wilton had yet to encounter its lionlike fury. Instead the mild little inventor, with his spools and his pulleys, his bits of wire and his measureless reaches of string, pursued his peaceful though tortuous way, and if his abode became transformed into a magnified cobweb only himself and Celestina were inconvenienced thereby. To Celestina inconvenience was second nature since from the moment of her birth it had been her lot in life. Arriving in the world prematurely she had found nothing prepared for her coming and had been forced to put up with such makeshifts for comfort as could be hurriedly scrambled together. From that day until the present instant the same fate had shadowed her path; perhaps it was in her stars. Her parents had been of dilatory habits and by the time a crib with the necessary pillows and bedding had been secured, and she had drawn a few peaceful breaths therein a new baby had arrived and she had been ousted from her resting place and compelled to surrender it to the more recent comer. Ever since she had been shunted from pillar to post, sleeping on cots, on couches, in folding beds and in hammocks, and keeping her meager possessions in paste-board boxes tucked away beneath tables and bureaus. Poised on the ragged edge of domesticity she continued throughout her girlhood to look forward with hope to an eventual state of permanence. When she was eighteen, however, her mother died and in the task of bringing up six brothers and sisters younger than herself all considerations for her personal ease were forgotten. Ten years passed and her father was no more; than gradually, one after another, the family she had so patiently reared took wing, leaving Celestina a lonely spinster of fifty, homeless and practically penniless. This cruel lack of responsibility on the part of her relatives resulted less from a want of affection than from a supreme misunderstanding of their older sister. So completely had Celestina learned to efface her personality and her inclinations that they reasoned she was utterly without preferences; that she lacked the homing instinct; and was quite as happy in one place as in another. Having thus washed their hands of her they proceeded to sell the Morton homestead and each one pocket his share of the proceeds. Very scanty this inheritance was, so scanty that it compelled Celestina to begin a rotation around the village, where in return for shelter she filled in domestic gaps of various kinds. She helped here, she helped there; she took care of babies, nursed the sick, comforted the aged. On she moved from house to house, no enduring foundation ever remaining beneath her feet. No sooner would she strike her roots down into a congenial soil than she would be forced to pluck them up again and find new earth to which to cling. She might have married a dozen times during her youth had not her conscience deterred her from deserting her father and the children left to her care. In fact one persistent swain who refused to take "No" for an answer had begged Celestina to wait and pray over the matter. "I never trouble the Lord with things I can settle myself," replied she firmly. "I can't go marryin' an' that's all there is to it." Other offers had been declined with the same characteristic firmness until now the golden season of mating-time was past, and although she was still a pretty little woman the stamp of spinsterhood was unalterably fixed upon her. Wilton, in the meantime, had long ago lost sight of the uncomplaining self-sacrifice it had previously lauded and explained Celestina Morton's unwedded state by declaring that she was too "easy goin'" to make anybody a good wife. This criticism came, perhaps, more loudly from the female faction of the town than from the male. However that may be, the stigma, merited or unmerited, had become so firmly branded upon Celestina that it could not be effaced. She may to some extent have brought it upon herself, for certain it was that she never kicked against the pricks or tried to shape her circumstances more in accordance with her liking. Undoubtedly had she accepted her lot less meekly she might have commanded a greater measure of attention and sympathy; still, if she had not been of a more or less plastic nature and surrendered herself patiently to her destiny it is a question whether she would have survived at all. It was this mutability, this power to detach herself from her environment and view it with the stoical indifference of a spectator that caused Wilton with its harsh New England standards, to characterize Celestina as "easy goin'." In fact, this popularly termed "flaw" in her make-up was what had acted as an open sesame to every door at which she knocked and had kept a roof above her head. She had been just sixty years of age when Willie Spence's sister had died and left him alone in the wee cottage on the Harbor Road, and all Wilton had begun to speculate as to what was to become of him. Willie was as dependent as an infant; the village gossips who knew everything knew that. From childhood he had been looked after,--first by his mother, then by his aunt, and lastly by his sister; and when death had removed in succession all three of these props, leaving the little old man at last face to face with life, his startled blue eyes had grown large with terror. What was to become of him now? Not only did Willie himself helplessly raise the interrogation but so did all Wilton. Of course he could go and board with the Eldridges but that would mean renting or selling the silver-gray cottage where he had dwelt since birth and would be a tragic severing of all ties with the past; moreover, and a fact more potent than all the rest, it would mean dismantling the house of the web that for years he had spun, the symbols of dreams that had been his chief delight. Should he go to the Eldridges there could be no more inventing, for Jan's wife was a hard, practical woman who had scant sympathy with Willie's "idees." Nevertheless one redeeming consideration must not be lost sight of--she was a famous cook, a very famous cook; and poor Willie, although he cared little what he ate, was incapable of concocting any food at all. But the strings, the strings! No, to go to live with Jan and Mrs. Eldridge was not to be thought of. It was just at this psychological juncture, when Willie was choosing 'twixt flesh and spirit, that he saw Celestina Morton standing like a vision in the sunshine that spangled his doorway. She said she knew how lonely he must be and therefore she had come to make a friendly call and tidy up the house or mend for him anything that needed mending. With this simple introduction she had taken off her hat and coat, donned an ample blue-and-white pinafore, and set to work. Fascinated Willie watched her deft movements. Now and then she smiled at him but she did not speak and neither did he; nor, he noticed, did she disturb his strings or comment on their inconvenience. When twilight came and the hour for her departure drew near Willie stationed himself before the peg from which dangled her shabby wraps and stubbornly refused to have her hat and cloak removed from the nail. There, figuratively speaking, they had hung ever since, the inventor reasoning that life without this paragon of capability was a wretched and profitless adventure. In justifying his sudden decision to Janoah Eldridge, Willie had merely explained that he had hired Celestina because she was so comfortable to have around, a recommendation at which Wilton would have jeered but which, perhaps, in the eyes of the Lord was quite as praiseworthy as that which her more hidebound but less accommodating sisters could have boasted. For disorder and confusion never kept Celestina awake nights or prevented her from partaking of three hearty meals a day as it would have Abbie Brewster or Deborah Howland. So long as things were clean, their being an inch or two, or even a foot, out of plumb did not worry the new inmate of the gray house an iota. And when Willie was balked in an "idee" that had "kitched him," and left half-a-dozen strings and wires swinging in mid-air for weeks together, Celestina would patiently duck her head as she passed beneath them and offer no protest more emphatic than to remark: "Them strings hangin' down over the sink snare me every time I wash a dish. Ain't you calculatin' ever to take 'em down, Willie?" The reply vouchsafed would be as mild as the suggestion: "I reckon they ain't there for eternity, Tiny," the inventor would respond. "Like as not both you an' me will live to see 'em out of the way." That was all the satisfaction Celestina would get from her feeble complaints; it was all she ever got. Yet in spite of the exasperating response she adored Willie who had been to her the soul of kindliness and courtesy ever since she had come to the bluff to live. He might forget to come to his meals,--forget, in fact, whether he had eaten them or not; he might venture forth into the village with one gray sock and one blue one; or when part way to the post-office become lost in reverie and return home again without ever reaching his destination. Such incidents had happened and were likely to happen again. Nevertheless, notwithstanding his absentmindedness, he was never too much absorbed to maintain toward Celestina an old-fashioned deference very appealing to one accustomed to being ignored and slighted. The impulse, it was quite obvious, was prompted less by conventionality than by a knightliness of heart, and Celestina, who had never before been the recipient of such courtesies, found herself inexpressibly touched by the trifling attentions. Often she speculated as to whether this mental attitude toward all womanhood was one Willie himself had evolved or whether it was the result of standards instilled into his sensitive consciousness by the women who had been his companions through life,--his mother, his aunt, his sister. Whichever the case there was no question that the old man's bearing toward her placed her on a pinnacle where gossip was silenced, and transformed her humble ministrations from those of a hireling into acts of graciousness and beauty. Moreover to live in the same house with such an optimist was no ordinary experience. Well Celestina remembered the day when at dinner the little old man had choked violently, turning purple in the face in his fight for breath. She had rushed to his side, terror-stricken, but between his spasms of coughing the inventor had gasped out: "Why make so much fuss over what's gone down the wrong way, Tiny? Think--of--the--things--I've--swallered--all--these--years--that have--gone down--right!" The observation was characteristic of Willie's creed of life. He never emphasized the exceptions but always the big, fine, elemental good in everything. Even the name by which he went had been bestowed on him by the community as a term of endearment. There were, to be sure, other men in the hamlet whose names had passed into diminutives. There was, for example, Seth Crocker, whose wife explained that she called him Sethie "for short." But Sethie's name was never pronounced with the same affectionate drawl that Willie's was. No, Willie had his peculiar niche in Wilton and a very sacred niche it was. What marvel, therefore, that Celestina reverenced the very earth which he trod and cheerfully put up with the strings, the wires, the spools, the tacks, and the pulleys; that she shifted the meals about to suit his convenience; and that when she was awakened at midnight by a rhythmic hammering which portended that the inventor had once again "got kitched with a new idee" she smiled indulgently in the darkness and instead of cursing the echoes that disturbed her slumber whispered to herself Jan Eldridge's oft-repeated prediction that the day would come when Willie Spence would astonish the scoffers of Wilton and would make his mark. CHAPTER II WILLIE HAS AN IDEE On a day in June so clear that a sea gull loomed mammoth against the sky; a day when a sail against the horizon was visible for miles; a day when the whole world seemed swept and garnished as for a festival, Zenas Henry Brewster drew rein before the Spence cottage, hitched the Admiral to the picket fence that bordered the highway, and ascending the bank which sloped abruptly to the road presented himself at the kitchen door from which issued the aroma of baking bread. "Mornin', Tiny," called the visitor, poking his head across the threshold. "Willie anywheres about?" Celestina, who was washing the breakfast dishes, glanced up at the lank figure with a start. "Law, Zenas Henry, what a turn you gave me!" she exclaimed. "I never heard a footfall. Yes, Willie's outside somewheres. He and Jan Eldridge have been tinkerin' with the pump since early mornin'. They've had it apart a hundred times, I guess, an' like as not they're round there now pullin' it to pieces for the hundred-an'-oneth." Zenas Henry grinned. "That's a queer to-do," he remarked. "What's got all the pumps? Bewitched, I reckon. Ours ain't workin' fur a cent either, an' I drove round thinkin' I'd fetch Willie home with me to have a look at it. He's got a knack with such things an' I calculate he'd know what's the matter with it. Darned if I do." The man began to move away across the grass. Celestina, however, who was in the mood for gossip, had no mind to let him escape so easily. "How's your folks?" questioned she, dropping her dishcloth into the pan and following him to the door. "Oh, we're all right," returned Zenas Henry with a backward glance. "Captain Benjamin's shoulder pesters him some about layin', but I tell him he can't expect rain an' fog not to bring rheumatism." "That's so," agreed Celestina. "What a spell of weather we've had! I guess it's about over now, though. I'm sorry Benjamin's shoulders should hector him so. We're gettin' old, Zenas Henry, that's the plain truth of it, an' must cheerfully take our share of aches an' pains, I s'pose. Are Captain Phineas an' Captain Jonas well?" "Oh, they're nimble as crabs." "An' Abbie?" "Fine as a clipper in a breeze!" responded the man with enthusiasm. "Best wife that ever was! The sun rises an' sets in that woman, Celestina. What she can't do ain't worth doin'! Turns off work like as if it was of no account an' grows better lookin' every day a-doin' it." Celestina laughed. "I reckon you didn't make no mistake gettin' married, Zenas Henry," mused she. "Mistake!" repeated Zenas Henry. "An' no mistake takin' in the child, either," went on Celestina, unheeding the interruption. She saw his face soften and a glow of tenderness overspread it. "Delight was sent us out of heaven," he declared with solemnity. "'Twas as much intended that ship should come ashore here an' the three captains an' myself bring that little girl to land as that the sun should rise in the mornin'. The child was meant fur us--fur us an' fur nobody else on earth. Was she our own daughter we couldn't be fonder of her than we are. It's ten years now since the wreck of the _Michleen_. Think of it! How time flies! Ten years--an' the girl's most twenty. I can't realize it. Why, it seems only yesterday she was clingin' to my neck an' I was bringin' her home." "She's grown to be a regular beauty," Celestina observed. "I s'pose she has; folks seem to think so," replied Zenas Henry. "But it wouldn't make an ounce of difference to me how she looked; I'd love her just the same. I reckon she'll never seem to me anyhow like she does to other people. Still I ain't so blind that I don't know she's pretty. Her hair is wonderful, an' she's got them big brown eyes an' pink cheeks. I'm proud as Tophet of her. If it warn't fur Abbie I figger the three captains an' I would have the child clean spoilt. But Abbie's always kept a firm hand on us an' prevented us from puttin' nonsensical notions into Delight's head. Much of the way she's turned out is due to Abbie's common sense. Well, the girl's a mighty nice one," concluded Zenas Henry. "There's none to match her." "You're right there!" Celestina assented cordially. "She's one in a hundred, in a thousand. She has the sweetest way in the world with her, too. A body couldn't see her an' not love her. I guess there's many a young feller along the Cape thinks so too, or I'm much mistaken," added she slyly. "She must have a score of beaux." "Beaux!" snapped Zenas Henry, wheeling abruptly about. "Indeed she hasn't. Why, she's nothin' but a child yet." "She's most twenty. You said so yourself just now." "Pooh! Twenty! What's twenty?" Zenas Henry cried derisively. "Why, I'm three times that already an' more too, an' I ain't old. So are you, Tiny. Twenty? Nonsense!" "But Delight is twenty, Zenas Henry," persisted Celestina. "What of it?" "Well, you mustn't forget it, that's all," continued the woman softly. "Many a girl her age is married an'----" "Married!" burst out the man with indignation. "What under heaven are you talkin' about, Celestina? Delight marry? Not she! She's too young. Besides, she's well enough content with Abbie an' the three captains an' me. Marry? Delight marry! Ridiculous!" "But you don't mean to say you expect a creature as pretty as she is not to marry," said Celestina aghast. "Oh, why, yes," ruminated Zenas Henry. "Of course she's goin' to get married sometime by an' by--mebbe in ten years or so. But not now." "Ten years or so! My goodness! Why, she'll be thirty or thirty-five, an' an old maid by that time." "No, she won't. I was forty-five before I married, an' it didn't do me no hurt or spoil my chances." "You might have been livin' with Abbie all them years, though." "I know it." He paused thoughtfully. "Yes," he reflected aloud, "I've often thought what a pity it was Abbie an' I didn't have our first youth together. It took me half a lifetime to find out how much I needed her." "You wouldn't want Delight should do that," ventured Celestina. "Delight? We ain't discussin' Delight," retorted Zenas Henry, promptly on the defensive. "Delight's another matter altogether. She's nothin' but a baby. There's no talk of her marryin' for a long spell yet." Peevishly he kicked the turf with the toe of his boot. Although he said no more, it was quite evident that he was much irritated. "Well," he presently observed in a calmer tone, "I reckon I'll go round an' waylay Willie." Celestina, leaning against the door frame, watched the gaunt, loose-jointed figure stride out into the sunshine and disappear behind the corner of the house. What a day it was! From beneath the lattice that arched the entrance to the cottage and supported a rambler rose bursting into bloom she could see the bay, blue as a sapphire and scintillating with ripples of gold. A weather-stained scow was making its way out of the channel, and above it circled a screaming cloud of tern that had been routed from their nesting place on the margin of white sand that bordered the path to the open sea. Mingling with their cries and the rhythmic pulsing of the surf, the clear voices of the men aboard the tug reached her ear. It was flood tide, and the water that surged over the bar stained its reach of pearl to jade green and feathered its edges with snowy foam. It was no weather to be cooped up indoors doing housework. Idly Celestina loitered, drinking in the beauty of the scene. The languor of summer breathed in the gentle, pine-scented air and rose from the warm earth of the garden. Voluptuously she stretched her arms and yawned; then straightening to her customary erectness she went into the house, being probably the only woman in Wilton who that morning had abandoned her domestic duties long enough to take into her soul the benediction of the world about her. It was such detours from the path of duty that had helped to win for Celestina her pseudonym of "easy goin'." Perhaps this very vagrant quality in her nature was what had aided her in so thoroughly sympathizing with Willie in his sporadic outbursts of industry. For Willie was not a methodical worker any more than was Celestina. There were intervals, it is true, when he toiled steadily, feverishly, all day long and far into the night, forgetting either to eat or sleep; then would follow days together when he simply pottered about, or did even worse and remained idle in the sunny shelter of the grape arbor. Here on a rude bench constructed from a discarded four-poster he would often sit for hours, smoking his corncob pipe and softly humming to himself; but when genius went awry and his courage was at a low ebb, strings, wires, and pulleys having failed to work, he would neither smoke nor sing, but with eyes on the distance would sit immovable as if carved from stone. To-day, however, was not one of his "settin' days." He had been up since dawn, had eaten no breakfast, and had even been too deeply preoccupied to fill and light the blackened pipe that dangled limply from his lips. Yet despite all his coaxings and cajolings, the iron pump opposite the shed door still refused to do anything but emit from its throat a few dry, profitless gurgles that seemed forced upward from the very caverns of the earth. Both Willie and Jan Eldredge looked tired and disheartened, and when Zenas Henry approached stood at bay, surrounded by a litter of wrenches, hammers, and scattered fragments of metal. "What's the matter with your pump?" called Zenas Henry as he strolled toward them. Willie turned on the intruder, a smile half humorous, half contemptuous, flitting across his face. "If I could answer that question, Zenas Henry, I wouldn't be standin' here gapin' at the darn thing," was his laconic response. "It's just took a spell, that's all there is to it. It was right enough last night." "There's no accountin' fur machinery," Zenas Henry remarked. The observation struck a note of pessimism that rasped Willie's patience. "There's got to be some accountin' fur this claptraption," retorted he, a suggestion of crispness in his tone. "I shan't stir foot from this spot 'til I find out what's set it to actin' up this way." Zenas Henry laughed at the declaration of war echoing in the words. "I've given up flyin' all to flinders over everything that gets out of gear," he drawled. "If I was to be goin' up higher'n a kite every time, fur instance, that the seaweed ketches round the propeller of my motor-boat, I'd be in mid-air most of the time." Willie raised his head with the alertness of a hunter on the scent. "Seaweed?" he repeated vaguely. Zenas Henry nodded. "Ain't there no scheme fur doin' away with a nuisance like that?" "I ain't discovered any," came dryly from Zenas Henry. "We've all had a whack at the thing--Captain Jonas, Captain Phineas, Captain Benjamin, an' me--an' we're back where we were at the beginnin'. Nothin' we've tried has worked." "U--m!" ruminated Willie, stroking his chin. "I've about come to the conclusion we ain't much good as mechanics, anyhow," went on Zenas Henry with a short laugh. "In fact, Abbie's of the mind that we get things out of order faster'n we put 'em in." Janoah Eldridge rubbed his grimy hands and chuckled, but Willie deigned no reply. "This propeller now," he presently began as if there had been no digression from the topic, "I s'pose the kelp gets tangled around the blades." "That's it," assented Zenas Henry. "An' that holds up your engine." "Uh-huh," Zenas Henry agreed with the same bored inflection. "An' that leaves you rockin' like a baby in a cradle 'til you can get the wheel free." "Uh-huh." There was a moment of silence. "It can't be much of a stunt tossin' round in a choppy sea like as if you was a chip on the waves," commented Jan Eldridge with a commiserating grin. "'Tain't." "What do you do when you find yourself in a fix like that?" he inquired with interest. "Do?" reiterated Zenas Henry. "What a question! What would any fool do? There ain't no choice left you but to hang head downwards over the stern of the boat an' claw the eel-grass off the wheel with a gaff." Janoah burst into a derisive shout. "Oh, my eye!" he exclaimed. "So that's the way you do it, eh? Don't talk to me of motor-boats! A good old-fashioned skiff with a leg-o'-mutton sail in her is good enough fur me. How 'bout you, Willie?" No reply was forthcoming. "I say, Willie," repeated Jan in a louder tone, "that these new fangled motor-boats, with their noise an' their smell, ain't no match fur a good clean dory." Willie came out of his trance just in time to catch the final clause of the sentence. "Who ever saw a clean dory in Wilton?" Jan faltered, abashed. "Well, anyhow," he persisted, "in my opinion, clean or not, a straight wholesome smell of cod ain't to be mentioned in the same breath with a mix-up of stale fish an' gasoline." Zenas Henry bridled. "You don't buy a motor-boat to smell of," he said tartly. "You seem to forget it's to sail in." "But if the eel-grass holds you hard an' fast in one spot most of the time I don't see's you do much sailin'," taunted Jan. "'Pears to me you're just adrift an' goin' nowheres a good part of the time." "No, I ain't" snapped Zenas Henry with rising ire. "It's only sometimes the thing gets spleeny. Most always--" "Then it warn't you I saw pitchin' in the channel fur a couple of hours yesterday afternoon," commented the tormentor. "No. That is--let me think a minute," meditated Zenas Henry. "Yes, I guess it was me, after all," he admitted with reluctant honesty. "The tide brought in quite a batch of weeds, an' they washed up round the boat before I could get out of their way; quicker'n a wink we were neatly snarled up in 'em. Captain Jonas an' Captain Phineas tried to get clear, but somehow they ain't got much knack fur freein' the wheel. So we did linger in the channel a spell." "Linger!" put in Willie. "I shouldn't call bobbin' up an' down in one spot fur two mortal hours lingerin'. I'd call it nearer bein' hypnotized." Zenas Henry was now plainly out of temper. He was well aware that Wilton had scant sympathy with his motor-boat, the first innovation of the sort that had been perpetrated in the town. "Hadn't you better turn your attention from motor-boats to pumps?" he asked testily. "I reckon I had, Zenas Henry," Willie answered, unruffled by the thrust. "As you say, if you chose to wind yourself up in the eel-grass it's none of my affair." Turning his back on his visitor, he bent once more over the pump and adjusted a leather washer between its rusty joints. "Now let's give her a try, Jan," he said, as he tightened the screws. "If that don't fetch her I'm beat." By this time Jan's faith had lessened, and although he obediently raised the iron handle and began to ply it up and down, it was obvious that he did not anticipate success. But contrary to his expectations there was a sudden subterranean groan, followed by a rumble of gradually rising pitch; then from out the stubbed green spout a stream of water gushed forth and trickled into the tub beneath. "Hurray!" shouted Jan. "There she blows, Willie! Ain't you the dabster, though!" The inventor did not immediately acknowledge the plaudits heaped upon him, but it was evident he was gratified by his success for, as he wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead he sighed deeply. "If I hadn't been such a blame fool I'd 'a' known what the matter was in the first place," he remarked. "Well, if we knew as much when we're born as we do when we get ready to die, what would be the use of livin' seventy odd years?" In spite of his irritation Zenas Henry smiled. "I don't s'pose you're feelin' like tacklin' another pump to-day," he ventured with hesitation. "Ours up at the white cottage has gone on a strike, too." Instantly Willie was interested. "What's got yours?" he asked. "Blest if I know. We've took it all to pieces an' ain't found nothin' out with it, an' now to save our souls we can't put it together again," Zenas Henry explained. "I drove round, thinkin' that mebbe you'd go back with me an' have a look at it." "Course I will, Zenas Henry," Willie said without hesitation. "I'd admire to. A pump that won't work is like a fishline without a hook--good for nothin'. Have you got room in your team for Jan, too?" "Sure." "Then let's start along," said the inventor, stooping to gather up his tools. But he had reckoned without his host, for as he swept them into a jagged piece of sailcloth and prepared to tie up the bundle, Celestina called to him from the window. "Where you goin', Willie?" she demanded. "Up to Zenas Henry's to mend the pump." "But you can't go now," objected she. "It's ten o'clock, an' you ain't had a mouthful of breakfast this mornin'." The little man regarded her blankly. "Ain't I et nothin'?" he inquired with surprise. "No. Don't you remember you got up early to go fishin', an' then you found the pump wasn't workin', an' you've been wrestlin' with it ever since." "So I have!" A sunny smile of recollection overspread the old man's face. "Ain't you hungry?" "I dunno," considered he without interest. "Mebbe I am. Yes, now you speak of it, I will own to feelin' a mite holler. Can't you hand me a snack to eat as I go along?" "You'd much better come in an' have your breakfast properly." "Oh, I don't want nothin' much," the altruist protested. "Just fetch me out a slice of bread or a doughnut. We've got to get at that pump of Zenas Henry's. I'm itchin' to know what's the matter with it." Celestina looked disappointed. "I've been savin' your coffee fur you since seven o'clock," murmured she reproachfully. "That was very kind of you, Tiny," Willie responded with an ingratiating glance into her eyes. "You just keep it hot a spell longer, an' I'll be back. Likely I won't be long." "You've been workin' five hours on your own pump!" "Five hours? Pshaw! You don't say so," mused the tranquil voice. "Think of that! An' it didn't seem no time. Well, it's a-pumpin' now, Celestina." The mild face beamed with satisfaction, and Celestina had not the heart to cloud its brightness by annoying him further. "That's capital!" she declared. "Here's your bread an' butter, Willie. An' here's some apple turnovers fur you, an' Jan, an' Zenas Henry. They'll be nice fur you goin' along in the wagon." Then turning to Jan she whispered in a pleading undertone: "Do watch, Jan, that Willie don't lay that bread down somewheres an' forget it. Mebbe if he sees the rest of you eatin' he'll remember to eat himself. If he don't, though, remind him, for he's just as liable to bring it back home again in his hand. Keep your eye on him!" Jan nodded understandingly, and climbing into the dusty wagon, the three men rattled off over the sandy road. Willie dropped his tools into the bottom of the carriage but the slice of bread remained untouched in his fingers. Now that triumph had brought a respite in his labors he seemed silent and thoughtful. It was not until the Admiral turned in at the Brewster gate that he roused himself sufficiently to observe with irrelevance: "Speakin' about that propeller of yours, Zenas Henry--it must be no end of a temper-rasper." Zenas Henry slapped the reins over the horse's flank and waited breathlessly, hoping some further comment would come from the little inventor, but as Willie remained silent, he at length could restrain his impatience no longer and ventured with diffidence: "S'pose you ain't got any notion what we could do about it, have you, Willie?" The old man shrugged his shoulders. "No, not the ghost," was his terse reply. That night, however, Celestina was awakened from her dreams by the ring of a hammer. She rose, and lighting her candle, tip-toed into the hall. It was one o'clock, and she could see that Willie's bedroom door was ajar and the bed untouched. With a little sigh she blew out the flame in her hand and crept back beneath the shelter of her calico comforter. She knew the symptoms only too well. Willie was once again "kitched by an idee!" CHAPTER III A NEW ARRIVAL The new idea, whatever it was, was evidently not one to be hastily perfected, for the next morning when Celestina went down stairs, she found the jaded inventor seated moodily in a rocking-chair before the kitchen stove, his head in his hands. "Law, Willie, are you up already?" she asked, as if unconscious of his nocturnal activities. The reply was a wan smile. "An' you've got the fire built, too," went on Celestina cheerily. "How nice!" "Eh?" repeated he, giving her a vague stare. "The fire?" "Yes. I was sayin' how good it was of you to start it up." The man gazed at her blankly. "I ain't touched the fire," he answered. "I might have, though, as well as not, Tiny, if I'd thought of it." "That's all right," Celestina declared, making haste to repair her blunder. "I've plenty of time to lay it myself. 'Twas only that when I saw you settin' up before it I thought mebbe you'd built it 'cause you were cold." "I was cold," acquiesced Willie, his eyes misty with thought. "But I warn't noticin' there was no heat in the stove when I drew up here." Celestina bit her lip. How characteristic the confession was! "Well, there'll be a fire now very soon," said she, bustling out and returning with paper and kindlings. "The kitchen will be warm as toast in no time. An' I'll make you some hot coffee straight away. That will heat you up. This northerly wind blows the cobwebs out of the sky, but it does make it chilly." Although Willie's eyes automatically followed her brisk motions and watched while she deftly started the blaze, it was easy to see that he was too deep in his own meditations to sense what she was doing. Perhaps had his mood not been such an abstract one he would have realized that he was directly in the main thoroughfare and obstructing the path between the pantry and the oven. As it was he failed to grasp the circumstance, and not wishing to disturb him, Celestina patiently circled before, behind and around him in her successive pilgrimages to the stove. Such situations were exigencies to which she was quite accustomed, her easy-going disposition quickly adapting itself to emergencies of the sort. So skilful was she in effacing her presence that Willie had no knowledge he was an obstacle until suddenly the iron door swung back of its own volition and in passing brushed his knuckles with its hot metal edge. "Ouch!" cried he, starting up from his chair. "What's the matter?" called Celestina from the pantry. "Nothin'. The oven door sprung open, that's all." "It didn't burn you?" "N--o, but it made me jump," laughed Willie. "Why didn't you tell me, Tiny, that I was in your way?" "You warn't in my way." "But I must 'a' been," the man persisted. "You should 'a' shoved me aside in the beginnin'." Stretching his arms upward with a comfortable yawn, he rose and sauntered toward the door. "Now you're not to pull out of here, Willie Spence," Celestina objected in a peremptory tone, "until you've had your breakfast. You had none yesterday, remember, thanks to that pump; an' you had no dinner either, thanks to Zenas Henry's pump. You're goin' to start this day right. You're to have three square meals if I have to tag you all over Wilton with 'em. I don't know what it is you've got on your mind this time, but the world's worried along without it up to now, an' I guess it can manage a little longer." Willie regarded his mentor good-humoredly. "I figger it can, Celestina," he returned. "In fact, I reckon it will have to content itself fur quite a spell without the notion I've run a-foul of now." Celestina offered no interrogation; instead she said, "Well, don't let it harrow you up; that's all I ask. If it's goin' to be a long-drawn-out piece of tinkerin', why there's all the more reason you should eat your three good meals like other Christians. Next you know you'll be gettin' run down, an' I'll be havin' to brew some dandelion bitters for you." She came to an abrupt stop half-way between the oven and the kitchen table, a bowl and spoon poised in her hand. "I ain't sure but it's time to brew you somethin' anyway," she announced. "You ain't had a tonic fur quite a spell an' mebbe 'twould do you good." A helpless protest trembled on Willie's lips. "I--I--don't think I need any bitters, Celestina," he at last observed mildly. "You don't know whether you do or not," Celestina replied with as near an approach to sharpness as she was capable of. "However, there's no call to discuss that now. The chief thing this minute is for you to sit up to the table an' eat your victuals." Docilely the man obeyed. He was hungry it proved, very hungry indeed. With satisfaction Celestina watched every spoonful of food he put to his lips, inwardly gloating as one muffin after another disappeared; and when at last he could eat no more and took his blackened cob pipe from his pocket, she drew a sigh of satisfaction. "There now, if you want to go back to your inventin' you can," she remarked, as she began to clear away the dishes. "You've took aboard enough rations to do you quite a while." Notwithstanding the permission Willie did not immediately avail himself of it but instead lingered uneasily as if something troubled his conscience. "Say, Tiny," he blurted out at length, "if you happen around by the front door and miss the screen don't be scared an' think it's stole. I had to use it fur somethin' last night." "The screen door?" gasped Celestina. "Yes." "But--but--Willie! The door was new this Spring; there wasn't a brack in it." "I know it," was the calm answer. "That's why I took it." "But you could have got nettin' over at the store to-day." "I couldn't wait." Celestina did not reply at once; but when she did she had herself well in hand, and every trace of irritation had vanished from her tone. "Well, we don't often open that door, anyway," she reflected aloud, "so I guess no harm's done. It's a full year since anybody's come to the front door, an' like as not 'twill be another before--" A jangling sound cut short the sentence. "What's that?" exclaimed she aghast. "It's a bell." "I never heard a bell like that in this house." "It's a bell I rigged up one day when you were gone to the Junction," exclaimed Willie hurriedly. "I thought I told you about it." "You didn't." "Well, no matter now," he went on soothingly. "I meant to." "Where is it?" demanded Celestina. "It's in the hall. It's a new front-door bell, that's what it is," proclaimed the inventor, his voice lost in a second deafening peal. "My soul! It's enough to wake the dead!" gasped Celestina, with hands on her ears. "I should think it could be heard from here to Nantucket. What set you gettin' a bell that size, Willie? 'Twould scare any caller who dared to come this way out of a year's growth. I'll have to go an' see who's there, if he ain't been struck dumb on the doorsill. Who ever can it be--comin' to the front door?" With perturbed expectancy she hurried through the passageway, Willie tagging at her heels. The infrequently patronized portal of the Spence mansion, it proved, was so securely barred and bolted that to unfasten it necessitated no little time and patience; even after locks and fastenings had been withdrawn and the door was at liberty to move, not knowing what to do with its unaccustomed freedom it refused to stir, stubbornly resisting every attempt to wrench its hinges asunder. It was not until the man and woman inside had combined their efforts and struggled with it for quite an interval that it contrived to creak apart far enough to reveal through a four-inch crack the figure of a young man who was standing patiently outside. One could not have asked for a franker, merrier face than that which peered at Celestina through the narrow chink of sunshine. To judge at random the visitor had come into his manhood recently, for the brown eyes were alight with youthful humor and the shoulders unbowed by the burdens of the world. He had a mass of wavy, dark hair; a thoughtful brow; ruddy color; a pleasant mouth and fine teeth; and a tall, erect figure which he bore with easy grace. "Is Miss Morton at home?" he asked, smiling at Celestina through the shaft of golden light. Celestina hesitated. So seldom was she addressed by this formal pseudonym that for the instant she was compelled to stop and consider whether the individual designated was on the premises or not. "Y--e--s," she at last admitted feebly. "I wonder if I might speak with her," the stranger asked. "Why don't you tell him you're Miss Morton," coached Willie, in a loud whisper. But the man on the steps had heard. "You're not Miss Morton, are you?" he essayed, "Miss Celestina Morton?" "I expect I am," owned Celestina nervously. "I'm your brother Elnathan's boy, Bob." Celestina crumpled weakly against the door frame. "Nate's boy!" she repeated. "Bless my soul! Bless my soul an' body!" The man outside laughed a delighted laugh so infectious that before Celestina or Willie were conscious of it they had joined in its mellow ripple. After that everything was easy. "We can't open the door to let you in," explained Willie, peering out through the rift, "'cause this blasted door ain't moved fur so long that its hinges have growed together; but if you'll come round to the back of the house you'll find a warmer welcome." The guest nodded and disappeared. "Land alive, Willie!" ejaculated Celestina while they struggled to replace the dislocated bars and bolts. "To think of Nate's boy appearin' here! I can't get over it! Nate's boy! Nate was my favorite brother, you know--the littlest one, that I brought up from babyhood. This lad is so completely the livin' image of him that when I clapped eyes on him it took the gimp clear out of me. It was like havin' Nate himself come back again." With fluttering eagerness she sped through the hall. Robert Morton was standing in the kitchen when she arrived, his head towering into the tangle of strings that crossed and recrossed the small interior. Whatever his impression of the extraordinary spectacle he evinced no curiosity but remained as imperturbable amid the network that ensnared him as if such astounding phenomena were everyday happenings. Nevertheless, a close observer might have detected in his hazel eyes a dancing gleam that defied control. Apparently it did not occur either to Willie or to Celestina to explain the mystery which had long since become to them so familiar a sight; therefore amid the barrage of red, green, purple, pink, yellow and white strings they greeted their guest, throwing into their welcome all the homely cordiality they could command. From the first moment of their meeting it was noticeable that Willie was strongly attracted by Robert Morton's sensitive and intelligent face; and had he not been, for Celestina's sake he would have made an effort to like the newcomer. Fortunately, however, effort was unnecessary, for Bob won his way quite as uncontestedly with the little inventor as with Celestina. There was no question that his aunt was delighted with him. One could read it in her affectionate touch on his arm; in her soft, nervous laughter; in the tremulous inflection of her many questions. "Your father couldn't have done a kinder thing than to have sent you to Wilton, Robert," she declared at last when quite out of breath with her rejoicings. "My, if you're not the mortal image of him as he used to be at your age! I can scarcely believe it isn't Nate. His forehead was high like yours, an' the hair waved back from it the same way; he had your eyes too--full of fun, an' yet earnest an' thoughtful. I ain't sure but you're a mite taller than he was, though." "I top Dad by six inches, Aunt Tiny," smiled the young man. "I guessed likely you did," murmured Celestina, with her eyes still on his face. "Now you must sit right down an' tell me all about yourself an' your folks. I want to know everything--where you come from; when you got here; how long you can stay, an' all." "The last question is the only really important one," interrupted Willie, approaching the guest and laying a friendly hand on his shoulder. "The doin's of your family will keep; an' where you come from ain't no great matter neither. What counts is how long you can spare to visitin' Wilton an' your aunt. We ain't much on talk here on the Cape, but I just want you should know that there's an empty room upstairs with a good bed in it, that's yours long's you can make out to use it. Your aunt is a prime cook, too, an' though there's no danger of your mixin' up this place with Broadway or Palm Beach, I believe you might manage to keep contented here." "I'm sure I could," Bob Morton answered, "and you're certainly kind to give me such a cordial invitation. I wasn't expecting to remain for any length of time, however. I came down from Boston, where I happened to be staying yesterday afternoon, and had planned to go back tonight. I've been doing some post-graduate work in naval engineering at Tech and have just finished my course there. So, you see, I'm really on my way home to Indiana. But Dad wrote that before I returned he wanted me to take a run down here and see Aunt Tiny and the old town where he was born, so here I am." Willie scanned the stranger's face meditatively. "Then you're clear of work, an' startin' off on your summer vacation." "That's about it," confessed Bob. "Anything to take you West right away?" "N--o--nothing, except that the family have not seen me for some time. I've accepted a business position with a New York firm, but I don't start in there until October." "You're your own master for four months, eh?" "Yes, sir." "Well, I ain't a-goin' to urge you to put in your time here; but I will say again, in case you've forgotten it, that so long as you're content to remain with us we'd admire to have you. 'Twould give your aunt no end of pleasure, I'll be bound, an' I'd enjoy it as well as she would." "You're certainly not considerin' goin' back to Boston today!" chimed in Celestina. "I was," laughed Bob. "You may as well put that notion right out of your head," said Willie, "for we shan't let you carry out no such crazy scheme." "But to come launching down on you this way--" began the younger man. "You ain't come launchin' down," objected his aunt with spirit. "We ain't got nothin' to do but inventin', an' I reckon that can wait." Glancing playfully at Willie she saw a sudden light of eagerness flash into his countenance. But Bob, not understanding the allusion, looked from one of them to the other in puzzled silence. "All right, Aunt Tiny," he at last announced, "if you an' Mr. Spence really want me to, I should be delighted to stay with you a few days. The fact is," he added with boyish frankness, "my suit case is down behind the rose bushes this minute. Having sent most of my luggage home, and not knowing what I should do, I brought it along with me." "You go straight out, young man, an' fetch it in," commanded Willie, giving him a jocose slap on the back. Nevertheless, in spite of the mandate, Robert Morton lingered. "Do you know, Aunt Tiny, I'm almost ashamed to accept your hospitality," he observed with winning sincerity. "We've all been so rotten to you--never coming to see you or anything. Dad's terribly cut up that he hasn't made a single trip East since leaving Wilton." The honest confession instantly quenched the last smouldering embers of Celestina's resentment toward her kin. "Don't think no more of it!" she returned hurriedly. "Your father's been busy likely, an' so have you; an' anyhow, men ain't much on follerin' up their relations, or writin' to 'em. So don't say another word about it. I'm sure I've hardly given it a thought." That the final assertion was false Robert Morton read in the woman's brave attempt to control the pitiful little quiver of her lips; nevertheless he blessed her for her deception. "You're a dear, Aunt Tiny," he exclaimed heartily, stooping to kiss her cheek. "Had I dreamed half how nice you were, wild horses couldn't have kept me away from Wilton." Celestina blushed with pleasure. Very pretty she looked standing there in the window, her shoulders encircled by the arm of the big fellow who, towering above her, looked down into her eyes so affectionately. Willie couldn't but think as he saw her what a mother she would have made for some boy. Possibly something of the same regret crossed Celestina's own mind, for a shadow momentarily clouded her brow, and to banish it she repeated with resolute gaiety: "Do go straight out an' bring in that suit case, Bob, or some straggler may steal it. An' put out of your mind any notion of goin' to Boston for the present. I'll show you which room you're to have so'st you can unpack your things, an' while you're washin' up I'll get you some breakfast. You ain't had none, have you?" "No; but really, Aunt Tiny, I'm not--" "Yes, you are. Don't think it's any trouble for it ain't--not a mite." Willie beamed with good will. "You've landed just in time to set down with us," he remarked. "We ain't had our breakfast, either." Celestina wheeled about with astonishment. Willie's hospitality must have burst all bounds if it had lured him, who never deviated from the truth, into uttering a falsehood monstrous as this. One glance, however, at his placid face, his unflinching eye, convinced her that swept away by the interest of the moment the little old man had lost all memory of whether he had breakfasted or not. She did not enlighten him. "Mebbe it ain't honest to let him go on thinkin' he's had nothin' to eat," she whispered to herself, "but if all them muffins, an' oatmeal, an' coffee don't do nothin' toward remindin' him he's et once, I ain't goin' to do it. This second meal will make up fur the breakfast he missed yesterday. I ain't deceivin' him; I'm simply squarin' things up." CHAPTER IV THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER ENTERS Before the morning had passed Bob Morton was as much at home in the little cottage that faced the sea as if he had lived there all his days. His property was spread out in the old mahogany bureau upstairs; his hat dangled from a peg in the hall; and he had exchanged his "city clothes" for the less conventional outing shirt and suit of blue serge, both of which transformed him into a figure amazingly slender and boyish. For two hours he and Celestina had rehearsed the family history from beginning to end; and now he had left her to get dinner, and he and Willie had betaken themselves to the workshop where they were deep in confidential conversation. "You see," the inventor was explaining to his guest, "it's like this: it ain't so much that I want to bother with these notions as that I have to. They get me by the throat, an' there's no shakin' 'em off. Only yesterday, fur example, I got kitched with an idee about a boat--" he broke off, regarding his listener with sudden suspicion. Bob waited. Evidently Willie's scrutiny of the frank countenance opposite satisfied him, for dropping his voice he continued in an impressive whisper: "About a motor-boat, this idee was." Glancing around as if to assure himself that no one was within hearing, he hitched the barrel on which he was seated nearer his visitor. "There's a sight of plague with motor-boats among these shoals," he went on eagerly. "What with the eel-grass that grows along the inlets an' the kelp that's washed in by the tide after a storm, the propeller of a motor-boat is snarled up a good bit of the time. Now my scheme," he announced, his last trace of reserve vanishing, "is to box that propeller somehow--if so be as it can be done--an'--," the voice trailed off into meditation. Robert Morton, too, was silent. "You would have to see that the wheel was kept free," he mused aloud after an interval. "I know it." "And not check the speed of the boat." "Right you are, mate!" exclaimed Willie with delight. "And not hamper the swing of the rudder." "You have it! You have it!" Willie shouted, rubbing his hands together and smiling broadly. "It's all them things I'm up against." "I believe the trick might be turned, though," replied young Morton, rising from the nail keg on which he was sitting and striding about the narrow room. "It's a pretty problem and one it would be rather good fun to work out." "I'd need to rig up a model to experiment with, I s'pose," reflected Willie. "Oh, we could fix that easily enough," Bob cried with rising enthusiasm. "_We_?" "Sure! I'll help you." The announcement did not altogether reassure the inventor, and Bob laughed at the dubious expression of his face. "Of course I'm only a dry-land sailor," he went on to explain good-humoredly, "and I do not begin to have had the experience with boats that you have. I did, however, study about them some at Tech and perhaps--" "Study about 'em!" repeated Willie, unable wholly to conceal his scepticism and scorn. Again the younger man laughed. "I realize that is not like getting knowledge first-hand," he continued with modesty, "but it seemed the best I could do. As to this plan of yours, two heads are sometimes better than one, and between us I believe we can evolve an answer to the puzzle." "That'll be prime!" Willie ejaculated, now quite comfortable in his mind. "An' when we get the answer to the riddle, Jan Eldridge will help us. You ain't met Jan yet, have you? He's the salt of the earth, Janoah Eldridge is. Him an' me are the greatest chums you ever saw. He mebbe has his peculiarities, like the rest of us. Who ain't? You'll likely find him kinder sharp-tongued at first, but he don't mean nothin' by it; and' he's quick, too--goes up like a rocket at a minute's notice. Folks down in town insist in addition that he's jealous as a girl, but I've yet to see signs of it. Fur all his little crochets you'll like Jan Eldridge. You can't help it. We're none of us angels--when it comes to that. Hush!" broke off Willie warningly. "I believe that's him now. Didn't you see a head go past the winder?" "I thought I did." "Then that's Jan. Nobody else would be comin' across the dingle. Now not a word of this motor-boat business to him," cautioned Willie, dropping his voice. "I never tell Jan 'bout my idees 'till I get 'em well worked out, for he's no great shakes at inventin'." There was an instant of guilty silence, and then the two conspirators beheld a freckled face, crowned by a mass of rampant sandy hair, protrude itself through the doorway. "Hi, Willie!" called the newcomer, unmindful of the presence of a stranger. "Well, how do you find yourself to-day? Ready to tackle another pump?" With simulated indignation Willie bristled. "Pump!" he repeated. "Don't you dare so much as to mention pumps in my hearin' fur six months, Janoah Eldridge. I've had my fill of pumps fur one spell." The freckled face in the door expanded its smile into a grin that displayed the few scattered teeth adorning its owner's jaws. "No," went on the inventor, "I ain't attackin' no pumps to-day. I'm sorter takin' a vacation. You see we've got company. Tiny's nephew, Bob Morton from Indiana, has come to stay with us. This is him on the nail keg." Shuffling further into the room Jan peered inquisitively at the guest. "So you're Tiny's nephew, eh?" he commented, examining the visitor's countenance with curiosity. "Well, well! To think of some of Tiny's relations turnin' up at last! Not that it ain't high time, I'll say that. Now which of the Mortons do you belong to, young man?" "Elnathan." "I might 'a' known first glance, for you're like him as his tintype." Bob laughed. "Aunt Tiny thinks I am, too." "She'd oughter know," was the dry comment. "She had the plague of bringin' him up from the time he could toddle. I'm glad some of you have finally got round to comin' to see her. You've been long enough doin' it. I ain't so sure, though, but if I was in her place I'd--" "There, there, Jan," interrupted Willie nervously, "why go diggin' up the past? The lad is here now an'--" "But they have been the devil of a while takin' notice of Tiny," Janoah persisted, not to be coaxed away from his subject. "Why, 'twas only the other day when we was workin' out here that you yourself said the way her folks had neglected her was outrageous." "And it was, too, Mr. Eldridge," confessed Bob, flushing. "Our whole family have treated Aunt Tiny shamefully. There is no excuse for it." Before the honest admission of blame, Jan's mounting wrath grudgingly calmed itself. "Well," he grumbled in a more conciliatory tone, "as Willie says, mebbe it's just as well not to go bringin' to life what's buried already. Like as not there may have been some good reason for your folks never comin' back to Wilton after once they'd left the place. Indiana's the devil of a distance away--'most at the other end of the world, ain't it? You might as well live in China as Indiana. I never could see anyway what took people out of Wilton. There ain't a better spot on earth to live than right here. Yet for all that, every one of the Mortons 'cept Tiny (who showed her good sense, in my opinion) went flockin' out of this town quick as they was growed, like as if they was a lot of swarmin' bees. I doubt myself, too, if they're a whit better off for it. Your father now--what does he make out to do in Indiana?" "Father is in the grain business," replied Bob with a smile. "The grain business, is he? An' likely he sets in an office all day long, in out of the fresh air," continued Jan with contempt. "Plumb foolish I call it, when he could be livin' in Wilton an' fishin', an' clammin', an' enjoying himself. That's the way with so many folks. They go kitin' off to the city to make money enough to buy one of them automobiles. You won't ketch me with an automobile--no, nor a motor-boat, neither; nor any other of them durn things that's goin' to set me livin' like as if I was shot out of the cannon's mouth. What's the good of bein' whizzed through life as if the old Nick himself was at your heels--workin' faster, eatin' faster, dyin' faster? I see nothin' to it--nothin' at all." At the risk of rousing the philosopher's resentment, Bob burst into a peal of laughter. "But ain't it so now, I ask you? Ain't it just as I say?" insisted Janoah Eldridge. "Argue as you will, what's the gain in it?" To the speaker's apparent disappointment, the citizen from Indiana did not accept the challenge for argument but instead observed pleasantly: "I'll wager you will outlive all us city people, Mr. Eldridge." "Course I will," was the old man's confident retort. "I'll be a-sailin' in my dory when the whole lot of you motor-boat folks are under the sod. You see if I ain't! An' speakin' of motor-boats, Willie--I s'pose you ain't done nothin toward tacklin' Zenas Henry's tribulations with that propeller, have you?" The question was unexpected, and Willie colored uncomfortably. He was not good at dissembling. "'Twould mean quite a bit of thinkin' to get Zenas Henry out of his troubles," returned he evasively. "'Tain't so simple as it looks." Moving abruptly to the work-bench he began to overturn at random the tools lying upon it. Something in this unusual proceeding arrested Jan's attention, causing him to glance with suspicion from Robert Morton to the inventor, and from the inventor back to Robert Morton again. The elder man was whistling "Tenting To-night," an air that had never been a favorite of his; and the younger, with self-conscious zeal, was shredding into bits a long curl of shavings. Jan eyed both of them with distrust "I figger we're goin' to have a spell of fine weather now," remarked Willie with jaunty artificiality. The offhand assertion was too casual to be real. Cloud and fog were not dealt with in this cursory fashion in Wilton. It clinched Jan's doubts into certainty. Something was being kept from him, something of which this stranger, who had only been in the town a few hours, was cognizant. For the first time in fifty years another had usurped his place as Willie's confidant. It was monstrous! A tremor of jealous rage thrilled through his frame, and he stiffened visibly. "I reckon I'll be joggin' along home," said he, moving with dignity toward the door. "But you've only just come, Jan," protested Willie. "I didn't come fur nothin' but to leave this hammer," Jan answered, placing the implement on the long bench before which his friend was standing. "Maybe there was something you wanted to see Mr. Spence about," ventured Bob. "If there was I will--" "No, there warn't," snapped Janoah. "Mister Spence ain't got nothin' confidential to say to me--whatever he may have to say to other folks," and with this parting thrust he shot out of the door. Bob gave a low whistle. "What's the matter with the man?" he asked in amazement. Willie flushed apologetically. "Nothin'--nothin' in the world!" he answered. "Jan gets like that sometimes. Don't you remember I told you he was kinder quick. It's just possible it may have bothered him to see me talkin' to you. Don't mind him." "Do you think he suspected anything?" "Mercy, no! Not he!" responded Willie comfortably. "He's liable to fly off the handle like that a score of times a day. Don't you worry 'bout him. He'll be back before the mornin's over." Nevertheless, sanguine as this prediction was, the hours wore on, and Janoah Eldridge failed to make his appearance. In the meantime Bob and Willie became so deeply engrossed in their new undertaking that they were oblivious to his absence. They worked feverishly until noon, devoured a hurried meal, and returned to the shop again, there to resume their labors. By supper time they had made quite an encouraging start on the model they required, their combined efforts having accomplished in a single day what it would have taken Willie many an hour to perfect. The inventor was jubilant. "Little I dreamed when you came to the front door, Bob, what I was nettin'!" he exclaimed, clapping his hand vigorously on the young man's shoulder. "You're a regular boat-builder, you are. The moon might 'a' pogeed an' perigeed before I'd 'a' got as fur along as we have to-day. How you've learned all you have about boats without ever goin' near the water beats me. Now you ain't a-goin' to think of quittin' Wilton an' leavin' me high an' dry with this propeller idee, are you? 'Twould be a downright shabby trick." Bob smiled into the old man's anxious face. "I can't promise to see you to the finish for I must be back home before many days, or I'll have my whole family down on me. Besides, I have some business in New York to attend to," he said kindly. "But I will arrange to stick around until the job is so well under way that you won't need me. I am quite as interested in making the scheme a success as you are. All is you mustn't let me wear out my welcome and be a burden to Aunt Tiny." "Law, Tiny'll admire to have you stay long as you can, if only because you drag me into the house at meal time," chuckled Willie. "At least I can do that," Bob returned. "You can do that an' a durn sight more, youngster," the inventor declared with earnestness. "I ain't had the pleasure I've had to-day in all my life put together. To work with somebody as has learned the right way to go ahead--it's wonderful. When me an' Jan tackle a job, we generally begin at the wrong end of it an' blunder along, wastin' time an' string without limit. If we hit it right it's more luck than anything else." Robert Morton, watching the mobile face, saw a pitiful sadness steal into the blue eyes. A sudden shame surged over him. "I ought to be able to do far more with my training than I have done," he answered humbly. "Dad has given me every chance." "Think of it!" murmured Willie, scrutinizing him with hungering gaze. "Think of havin' every chance to learn!" For an interval he smoked in silence. "Well," he asserted at length, "you've sure proved to-day that brains with trainin' are better'n brains without. Now if Jan an' me--" he broke off abruptly. "There! I wonder what in tunket's become of Jan," he speculated. "We've been so busy that he went clean out of my mind. It's queer he didn't show up again. He ain't stayed away for a whole day in all history. Mebbe he's took sick. I believe I'll trudge over there an' find out what's got him. I mustn't go to neglectin' Jan, inventin' or no inventin'." He rose from his chair wearily. "I reckon a note would do as well, though, as goin' over," he presently remarked as an afterthought. "I could send one in the box an' ask him to drop round an' set a spell before bedtime." He caught up a piece of brown paper from the workbench, tore a ragged corner from it, and hastily scrawled a message. Bob watched the process with amusement. "There!" announced the scribe when the epistle was finished. "I reckon that'll fetch him. We'll put it in the box an' shoot it across to him." Notwithstanding the dash implied in the term, it took no small length of time for the diminutive receptacle to hitch its way through the fields. The two men watched it jiggle along above the bushes of wild roses, through verdant clumps of fragrant bayberry, and disappear into the woods. Then they sat down to await Jan's appearance. The twilight was rarely beautiful. In a sky of palest turquoise a crescent moon hung low, its arc of silver poised above the tips of the stunted pines, whose feathery outlines loomed black in the dusk. From out the dimness the note of a vesper sparrow sounded and mingled its sweetness with the faintly breathing ocean. The men on the doorstep smoked silently, each absorbed in his own reveries. How peaceful it was there in the stillness, with the hush of evening descending like a benediction on the darkening earth! Bob sighed with contentment. His year of hard study was over, and now that his well-earned rest had come he was surprised to discover how tired he was. Already the peace of Wilton was stealing over him, its dreamy atmosphere almost too beautiful to be real. From where he sat he could see the trembling lights of the village jewelling the rim of the bay like a circlet of stars. A man might do worse, he reflected, than remain a few days in this sleepy little town. He liked Willie and Celestina, too; indeed, he would have been without a heart not to have appreciated their simple kindliness. Why should he hurry home? Would not his father rejoice should he be content to stay and make his aunt a short visit? There was no need to bind himself for any definite length of time; he would merely drift and when he found himself becoming bored flee. To be sure, about the last thing he had intended when setting forth to the Cape was to linger there. He had come hither with unwilling feet solely to please his parents, and having paid his respects to his unknown relative he meant to depart West as speedily as decency would permit, reasoning that it would be a mutual relief when the visit was over. But a single day in the cozy little house at the water's edge had served to convince him how erroneous had been his premises. Instead of being tiresome, his Aunt Celestina was proving a delightful acquisition, toward whom he already found himself cherishing a warm regard. And what a cook she was! After months of city food her bread, pies, and cookies were ambrosial. As for Willie--Bob had never before beheld so gentle, ingenuous and lovable a personality. Undoubtedly the little inventor had genius. What a pity he had been cheated of the opportunity for cultivating it! There was something pathetic in the way he reached out for the knowledge life had denied him; it reminded one of a patient child who asks for water to slake his thirst. If, for some inscrutable reason, fortune had granted him, Robert Morton, the chance denied this groping soul, was it not almost an obligation that, in so far as he was able, he should place at the other's disposal the fruits of the education that had been his? Presumably this motor-boat idea would not amount to much, for if such an invention were plausible and of value, doubtless a score of nautical authorities would have seized upon it long before now. But to work at the plan would give the gentle dreamer in the silver-gray cottage happiness, and after all happiness was not to be despised. If together he and Willie could make tangible the notion that existed in the latter's brain, the deed was certainly worth the doing. Moreover the process would be an entertaining one, and after its completion he might go away with a sense of having brightened at least one horizon by his coming. Thus reasoned Robert Morton as in the peace of that June evening he casually shuffled the cards of fate, little suspecting that already a factor in his destiny stronger than any of his arguments was soon to make its influence felt and transform Wilton into a magnet so powerful that against its spell he would be helpless as a child. He was aroused from his meditations by the voice of Willie. "Didn't you hear a little bell?" demanded the inventor. "A sort of tinklin' noise?" "I thought I did." "It's the box comin' from Jan's," explained he. "Can you kitch a sight of it?" "I see it now." Rising, the old man tugged at the string, urging the reluctant messenger through the tangle of roses. "By his writin' a note, I figger he ain't comin' over," he remarked, as the object drew nearer. "I wonder what's stuck in his crop! Mebbe Mis' Eldridge won't let him out. She's something of a Tartar--Arabella is. Jan has to walk the plank, I can tell you." By this time the cigar box swaying on the taut twine was within easy reach. Willie raised its cover and took from its interior a crumpled fragment of paper. "Humph! He's mighty savin'!" he commented as he turned the missive over. "He's writ on the other side of my letter. Let's see what he has to say: "'Can't come. Busy.' "Well, did you ever!" gasped he, blankly. "_Busy_! Good Lord! Jan's never been known to be busy in all his life. He don't even know the feelin'. If Janoah Eldridge is busy, all I've got to say is, the world's goin' to be swallered up by another deluge." "Maybe, as you suggested, Mrs. Eldridge--" "Oh, if it had been Mis' Eldridge, he wouldn't 'a' took the trouble to send no such message as that," broke in Willie. "He'd simply 'a' writ _Arabella_; there wouldn't 'a' been need fur more. No, sir! Somethin's stepped on Jan's shadder, an' to-morrow I'll have to go straight over there an' find out what it is." CHAPTER V AN APPARITION The next morning, after loitering uneasily about the workshop a sufficiently long time for Janoah Eldridge to make his appearance and finding that his crony did not make his appearance, Willie reluctantly took his worn visor cap down from the peg and drew it over his brows, with the remark: "Looks like Jan ain't headed this way to-day, either." He cast a troubled glance through the dusty, multi-paned window of the shed. "Much as I'm longin' to go ahead with this model, Bob, before I go farther I've simply got to step over to the Eldridges an' straighten him out. There's no help fur it." "All right. Go ahead, Sir," reassuringly returned Bob. "I'll work while you're gone. Things won't be at a complete standstill." "I know that," Willie replied with a pleasant smile. "'Tain't that that's frettin' me. It's just that I don't relish the notion of shovin' my job onto your shoulders. 'Tain't as if you'd come to Wilton to spend your time workin'. Celestina hinted last evenin' she was afraid you bid fair to get but mighty little rest out of your vacation. 'Twas unlucky, she thought, that you hove into port just when I happened to be kitched with a bigger idee than common." "Nonsense!" Bob protested heartily. "Don't you and Aunt Tiny give yourselves any uneasiness about me. I'm happy. I enjoy fussing round the shop with you, Mr. Spence. I'd far rather you took me into what you're doing than left me out. Besides, I don't intend to work every minute while I'm here. Some fine day I mean to steal off by myself and explore Wilton. I may even take a day's fishing." "That's right, youngster, that's right!" ejaculated Willie. "That's the proper spirit. If you'll just feel free to pull out when you please it will take a load off my mind, an' I shall turn to tinkerin' with a clear conscience." "I will, I promise you." "Then that's settled," sighed the inventor with relief. "I must say you're about the best feller ever was to come a-visitin', Bob. You ain't a mite of trouble to anybody." With eyes still fastened on the bench with its chaos of tools, the old man moved unwillingly toward the door; but on the threshold he paused. "I'll be back quick's I can," he called. "Likely I'll bring Jan in tow. I'd full as lief not tell him what we're doin' 'til next week if I had my choice; still, things bein' as they are, mebbe it's as well not to shut him out any longer. He gets miffed easy an' I wouldn't have his feelin's hurt fur a pot of lobsters." With a gentle smile he waved his hand and was gone. Left alone in the long, low-studded room, Bob rolled up his sleeves and to a brisk whistle began to plane down some pieces of thin board. The bench at which he worked stood opposite a broad window from which, framed in a wreath of grapevine, he could see the bay and the shelving dunes beyond it. A catboat, with sails close-hauled, was making her way out of the channel, a wake of snowy foam churning behind her in the blue water. Through the door of the shed swept a breeze that rustled the shavings on the floor and blended the fragrance of newly cut wood with the warm perfume of sweet fern from the adjoining meadow. For all its untidiness and confusion, its litter of boards, tools and battered paint pots, the shop was unquestionably one of the most homey corners of the Spence cottage. Its rough, unsheathed walls, mellowed to a dull buff tone, were here and there adorned with prints culled by Willie from magazines and newspapers. Likenesses of Lincoln and Roosevelt flanked the windows with an American flag above them, and a series of battleships and army scenes beneath. The inventor's taste, however, had not run entirely to patriotic subjects, for scattered along the walls, where shelves sagged with their burden of oilcans, putty, nails and fishing tackle, were a variety of nautical reproductions in color--a prize yacht heeling in the wind; a reach of rough sea whose giant combers swirled about a wreck; glimpses of marsh and dune typical of the land of the Cape dweller. An air-tight stove, the solitary defence against cold and storm, stood in the corner, and before its rusty hearth a rickety chair and an overturned soap box were suggestively placed. But perhaps what told an observer more about Willie Spence than did anything else was a bunch of rarely beautiful sabbatia blooming in a pickle bottle and a wee black kitten who disported herself unmolested among the tools cluttering the deeply scarred workbench. She was a mischievous kitten, a spoiled kitten; one who vented her caprice on everything that had motion. Did a curl of shavings drop to the ground, instantly Jezebel was at hand to catch it up in her diminutive paws; toss it from her; steal up and fall upon it again; and dragging it between her feet, roll over and over with it in a mad orgy of delight. A shadow, a string, a flicker of metal was the signal for a frolic. Let one's mood be austere as a monk's, with a single twist of her absurdly tiny body this small creature shattered its gravity to atoms. There was no such thing as dignity in Jezebel's presence. Already three times Bob Morton had lifted the mite off the table and three times back she had come, leaping in the path of his gleaming plane as if its metallic whir and glimmering reflections were designed solely for her amusement. In spite of his annoyance the man had laughed and now, stooping, he caught up the tormentor and held her aloft. "You minx!" he cried, shaking the sprite gently. "What do you think I am here for--to play with you?" The kitten blinked at him out of her round blue eyes. "You'll be getting your fur mittens cut off the next thing you know," went on Bob severely. "Scamper out of here!" He set the little creature on the floor, aimed her toward the doorway and gave her a stimulating push. With a coquettish leap headlong into the sunshine darted Jezebel, only to come suddenly into collision with a stranger who had crossed the grass and was at that instant about to enter the workshop. The newcomer was a girl, tall and slender, with lustrous masses of dark hair that swept her cheek in wind-tossed ringlets. She had a complexion vivid with health, an undignified little nose and a mouth whose short upper lip lent to her face a half childish, half pouting expression. But it was in her eyes that one forgot all else,--eyes large, brown, and softly deep, with a quality that held the glance compellingly. Her gown of thin pink material dampened by the sea air clung to her figure in folds that accentuated her lithe youthfulness, and as she stumbled over the kitten in full flight she broke into a delicious laugh that showed two rows of pretty, white teeth and lured from hiding an alluring dimple. "You ridiculous little thing!" she exclaimed, snatching up the fleeing culprit before she could make her escape and placing her in the warm curve of her neck. "Do you know you almost tripped me up? Where are your manners?" Jezebel merely stared. So did Robert Morton. The girl and the kitten were too disconcerting a spectacle. By herself Jezebel was tantalizing enough; but in combination with the creature who stood laughing on the threshold, the sight was so bewildering that it not only overwhelmed but intoxicated. It was evident the visitor was unconscious of his presence, for instead of addressing him, she continued to toy with the wisp of animation snuggled against her cheek. "I do believe, Willie," she observed, without glancing up, "that Jezebel grows more fascinating every time I see her." Bob did not answer. He was in no mood to discuss Jezebel. If he thought of her at all it was to contrast her inky fur with the white throat against which she nestled and speculate as to whether she sensed what a thrice-blessed kitten she was. It did flash through his mind as he stood there that the two possessed a bewitching, irresistible something in common, a something he was at a loss to characterize. It did not matter, however, for he could not have defined even the simplest thing at the moment, and this attribute of the kitten's and the girl's was very complex. Perhaps it was the silence that at last caused the visitor to raise her eyes and look at him inquiringly. Then he saw a tremor of surprise sweep over her, and a wave of crimson surge into her face. "I beg your pardon," she gasped. "I thought Willie was here." "Mr. Spence has stepped over to the Eldredges'. I'm expecting him back every instant," Bob returned. The girl's lashes fell. They were long and very beautiful as they lay in a fringe against her cheek, yet exquisite as they were he longed to see her eyes again. "I'm Miss Morton's nephew from Indiana," the young man managed to stammer, feeling some explanation might bridge the gulf of embarrassment. "I am visiting here." "Oh!" Persistently she studied the toe of her shoe. If Bob had thought her appealing before, now, demure against the background of budding apple trees, with a shaft of sunlight on her hair, and the kitten cuddled against her breast, she put to rout the few intelligent ideas remaining to the young man. Wonderingly, helplessly, he watched while she continued to caress the minute creature in her arms. "Are you staying here long?" she asked at length, gaining courage to look up. "I--eh--yes; that is--I hope so," Bob answered with sudden fervor. "You like Wilton then." "Tremendously!" "Most strangers think the place has great beauty," observed his guest innocently. "There's more beauty here in Wilton than I ever saw before in all my life," burst out Bob, then stopped suddenly and blushed. His listener dimpled. "Really?" she remarked, raising her delicately arched brows. "You are enthusiastic about the Cape, aren't you!" "Some parts of it." "Where else have you been?" The question came with disturbing directness. "Oh--why--Middleboro, Tremont, Buzzard's Bay and Harwich," answered the man hurriedly. As he named the list he was conscious that it smacked rather too suggestively of a brakeman's, and he saw she thought so too, for she turned aside to hide a smile. "You might sit down; won't you?" he suggested, eager that she should not depart. Flecking the dust from the soap box with his handkerchief, he dragged it forward and placed it near the workbench. As she bent her head to accept the crude throne with a queen's graciousness, Jezebel, roused into playful humor, thrust forth her claws and, encountering Bob as he rose from his stooping posture, fixed them with random firmness in his necktie. Now it chanced that the tie was a four-in-hand of raw silk, very choice in color but of a fatally loose oriental weave; and once entangled in its meshes the task of extricating its delicate threads from the clutch that gripped them seemed hopeless. It apparently failed to dawn on either of the young persons brought into such embarrassingly close contact by the dilemma that the kitten could be handed over to Bob; or that the tie might be removed. Instead they drew together, trying vainly to liberate the struggling Jezebel from her imprisonment. It was not a simple undertaking and to add to its difficulties the ungrateful beast, irritated by their endeavors, began to protest violently. "She'll tear your tie all to pieces," cried the stranger. "No matter. I don't mind, if she doesn't scratch you." "Oh, I am not afraid of her. If you can hold her a second longer, I think I can free the last claw." As the girl toiled at her precarious mission, Bob could feel her warm breath fan his cheek and could catch the fragrant perfume of her hair. So far as he was concerned, Jezebel might retain her hold on his necktie forever. But, alas, the slim, white fingers were too deft and he heard at last a triumphant: "There!" At the same instant the offending kitten was placed on the floor. "You little monkey!" cried the man, smiling down at the furry object at his feet. "Isn't she!" echoed the visitor sympathetically. "There she goes, the imp! What is left of your tie? Let me look at it." "It's all right, thank you." "There is just one thread ruffed up. I could fix it if I had a pin." From her gown she produced one, but as she did so a spray of wild roses slipped to the ground. "You've dropped your flowers," said Bob, picking them up. "Have I? Thank you. They are withered, anyway, I'm afraid." Tossing the rosebuds on the bench, she began to draw into smoothness the silken loop that defaced the tie. "There!" she exclaimed, glancing up into his eyes and tilting her head critically to one side. "That is ever so much better. You would hardly notice it. Now I really must go. I have bothered you quite enough." "You have not bothered me at all," contradicted Bob emphatically. "But I know I must have," she protested. "I've certainly delayed you. Besides, it doesn't look as if Willie was coming back." "Isn't there something I can do for you?" "No, thank you. It was nothing important. In fact, it doesn't matter at all. I just came to see if he could fix the clasp of my belt buckle. It is broken, and he is so clever at mending things that I thought perhaps he could mend this." "Let me see it." "Oh, I couldn't think of troubling you." "But I should be glad to fix it if I could. If not, I could at least hand it over to Willie's superior skill." She laughed. "I'm not certain whether Willie's skill is superior," was her arch retort. "Why not make a test case and find out?" Still she hesitated. "You're afraid to trust your property to me," Bob said, piqued by her indecision. "No, I'm not," was the quick response. "See? Here is the belt." She drew from her pocket a narrow strip of white leather to which a handsome silver buckle was attached and placed it in his hand. He took it, inspected its fastening and looked with beating pulse at the girdle's slender span. "Do you think it can be mended?" she inquired anxiously. "Of course it can." "Oh, I'm so glad!" "Give me a few days and you shall have it back as good as new." "That will be splendid!" Her eyes shone with starry brightness. "You see," she went on, "it was given me on my birthday by my--my--by some one I care a great deal for--by my--" she stopped, embarrassed. Robert Morton was too well mannered to put into words the interrogation that trembled on his lips, but he might as well have done so, so transparent was the questioning glance that traveled to her left hand in search of the telltale solitaire. Even though his search was not rewarded, he felt certain that the hand concealed in the folds of her dress wore the fatal ring. Of course, mused he, with a shrug, he might have guessed it. No such beauty as this was wandering unclaimed about the world. Well, her fiancé, whoever he might be, was a lucky devil! Without doubt, confound his impudence, his arm had traveled the pathway of that band of leather scores of times. One couldn't blame the dog! For want of a better vent for his irritation, Bob took up the belt and again examined it. He had been quite safe in boasting that the bauble should be returned to its owner as good as new, for although he did not confess it, on its silver clasp he had discovered the manufacturer's name. If the buckle could not be repaired, another of similar pattern should replace it. Unquestionably he was a fool to go to this trouble and expense for nothing. Yet was it quite for nothing? Was it not worth while to win even a smile from this creature whose approval gave one the sense of being knighted? True, titles meant but little in these days of democracy but when bestowed by such royalty-- She broke in on his reverie by extending her hand. "Good-by," she said. "You have been very kind, Mr.--" "My name is Morton--Bob Morton." "Why! Then you must be the son of Aunt Tiny's brother?" "_Aunt Tiny_!" As she laughed he saw again the ravishing dimple and her even, white teeth. "Oh, she isn't my real aunt," she explained. "I just call her that because I am so fond of her. I adore both her and Willie." "Who is takin' my name in vain?" called a cheery voice, as the little inventor rounded the corner of the shed and entered the room. "Delight--as I live! I might 'a' known it was you. Well, well, dear child, if I'm not glad to see you." He placed his hands on her shoulders and beamed into her blushing face while she bent and spread the loops of his soft tie out beneath his chin. "How nice of you, Willie dear, to come back before I had gone!" she said, arranging the bow with exaggerated care. "Bless your heart, I'd 'a' come back sooner had I known you were here," declared he affectionately. "What brings you, little lady?" She pointed to the trinket dangling from Robert Morton's grasp. "I snapped the clasp of my belt buckle, Willie--that lovely silver buckle Zenas Henry gave me," she confessed with contrition. "How do you suppose I could have been so careless? I have been heart-broken ever since." "Nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the old man, patting her hand. "Don't go grievin' over a little thing like that. 'Tain't worth it. Break all the buckles ever was made, but not your precious heart, my dear. Like as not the thing can be mended." "Mr. Morton says it can." "If Bob says so, it's as good as done already," replied Willie reassuringly. "He's a great one with tools. Why, if he was to stay in Wilton, he'd be cuttin' me all out. So you an' he have been gettin' acquainted, eh, while I was gone? That's right. I want he should know what nice folks we've got in Wilton 'cause it's his first visit to the Cape, an' if he don't like us mebbe he'll never come again." "I thought Mr. Morton had visited other places on Cape Cod," observed Delight, darting a mischievous glance at the abashed young man opposite. "No, indeed!" blundered Willie. "He ain't been nowheres. Somebody's got to show him all the sights. Mebbe if you get time you'll take a hand in helpin' educate him." "I should be glad to!" Notwithstanding the prim response and her unsmiling lips, the young man had a discomfited presentiment that she was laughing at him, and even the farewell she flashed to him over her shoulder had a hectoring quality in it that did not altogether restore his self-esteem. "Who is she?" he gasped, when he had watched her out of sight. "That girl? Do you mean to say you don't know--an' you a-talkin' to her half the mornin'?" demanded the old man with amazement. "Why, it never dawned on me to introduce you to her. I thought of course you knew already who she was. Everybody in town knows Delight Hathaway, an' loves her, too," he added softly. "She's Zenas Henry's daughter, the one he brought ashore from the _Michleen_ an' adopted." "Oh!" A light began to break in on Bob's understanding. "It's Zenas Henry's motor-boat we're tinkerin' with now," went on Willie. "I see!" He waited eagerly for further information, but evidently his host considered he had furnished all the data necessary, for instead of enlarging on the subject he approached the bench and began to inspect the model. "I s'pose, with her bein' here, you didn't get ahead much while I was gone," he ventured, an inflection of disappointment in his tone. "No, I didn't." "I didn't accomplish nothin', either," the little old man went on. "Jan warn't to home; he'd gone fishin'." His companion did not reply at once. "I don't quite get my soundin's on Jan," he at length ruminated aloud. "Somethin's wrong with him. I feel it in my bones." "Perhaps not." "There is, I tell you. I know Janoah Eldridge from crown to heel, an' it ain't like him to go off fishin' by himself." "I shouldn't fret about it if I were you," Bob said in an attempt to comfort the disquieted inventor. "I'm sure he'll turn up all right." Had the conversation been of a three-master in a gale; of buried treasure; or of the ultimate salvation of the damned, the speaker would at that moment have been equally optimistic. The universe had suddenly become too radiant a place to harbor calamity. Wilton was a paradise like the first Eden--a garden of smiles, of dimples, of blushing cheeks--and of silver buckles. He began to whistle softly to himself; then, sensing that Willie was still unconvinced by his sanguine prediction, he added: "And even if Mr. Eldridge shouldn't come back, I guess you and I could manage without him." "That's all very well up to a certain point, youngster," was the retort. "But who's goin' to see me through this job after you've taken wing?" He pointed tragically to the beginnings of the model. "Maybe I shan't take wing," announced Bob, looking absently at the cluster of withered roses in his hand. "You--you see," he went on, endeavoring to speak in off-hand fashion, "I've been thinking things over and--and--I've about come to the conclusion--" "Yes," interrupted Willie eagerly. "That it is perhaps better for me to stay here until we get the invention completed." "You don't mean until the thing's done!" "If it doesn't take too long, yes." "Hurray!" shouted his host. "That's prime!" he rubbed his hands together. "Under those conditions we'll pitch right in an' scurry the work along fast as ever we can." Robert Morton looked chagrined. "I don't know that we need break our necks to rush the thing through at a pace like that," he said, fumbling awkwardly with the flowers. "A few weeks more or less wouldn't make any great difference." "But I thought you said it was absolutely necessary for you to go home--that you had important business in New York--that--" the old man broke off dumbfounded. Bob shook his head. "Oh, no, I think my affairs can be arranged," was the sanguine response. "A piece of work like this would give me lots of valuable experience, and I'm not sure but it is my duty to--" The little old inventor scanned the speaker's flushed cheeks, his averted eye and the drooping blossoms in his hand; then his brow cleared and he smiled broadly: "Duty ain't to be shunned," announced he with solemnity. "An' as for experience, take it by an' large, I ain't sure but what you'll get a heap of it by lingerin' on here--more, mebbe, than you realize." CHAPTER VI MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE That afternoon, after making this elaborate but by no means misleading explanation to Willie, Bob sent off to a Boston jeweler a registered package and while impatiently awaiting its return set to work with redoubled zest at the new invention. What an amazingly different aspect the motor-boat enterprise had assumed since yesterday! Then his one idea had been to humor Willie's whim and in return for the old man's hospitality lend such aid to the undertaking as he was able. But now Zenas Henry's launch had suddenly become a glorified object, sacred to the relatives of the divinity of the workshop, and how and where the flotsam of the tides ensnared it was of colossal importance. Into solving the nautical enigma Robert Morton now threw every ounce of his energy and while at work artfully drew from his companion every detail he could obtain of Delight Hathaway's strange story. He learned how the _Michleen_ had been wrecked on the Wilton Shoals in the memorable gale of 1910; how the child's father had perished with the ship, leaving his little daughter friendless in the world; how Zenas Henry and the three aged captains had risked their lives to bring the little one ashore; and how the Brewsters had taken her into their home and brought her up. It was a simple tale and simply told, but the heroism of the romance touched it with an epic quality that gripped the listener's imagination and sympathies tenaciously. And now the waif snatched from the grasp of the covetous sea had blossomed into this exquisite being; this creature beloved, petted, and well-nigh spoiled by a proudly exultant community. For although legally a member of the Brewster family, Willie explained, the girl had come to belong in a sense to the entire village. Had she not been cast an orphan upon its shores, and were not its treacherous shoals responsible for her misfortune? Wilton, to be sure, was not actually answerable for the crimes those hidden sand bars perpetrated, but nevertheless the fisherfolk could not quite shake themselves free of the shadow cast upon them by the tragedies ever occurring at their gateway. Too many of their people had gone down to the sea in ships never to return for them to become callous to the disasters they were continually forced to witness. The wreck of the _Michleen_ had been one of the most pathetic of these horrors, and the welfare of the child who in consequence of it had come into the hamlet's midst had become a matter of universal concern. "'Tain't to be wondered at the girl is loved," continued Willie. "At first people took an interest in her, or tried to, from a sense of duty, for you couldn't help bein' sorry for the little thing. But 'twarn't long before folks found out 'twarn't no hardship to be fond of Delight Hathaway. She was livin' sunshine, that's what she was! Wherever she went, be it one end of town or t'other, she brought happiness. In time it got so that if you was to drop in where there was sickness or trouble an' spied a nosegay of flowers, you could be pretty sure Delight had been there. Why, Lyman Bearse's father, old Lyman, that's so crabbed with rhumatism that it's a cross to live under the same roof with him, will calm down gentle as a dove when Delight goes to read to him. As for Mis' Furber, I reckon she'd never get to the Junction to do a mite of shoppin' or marketin' but for Delight stayin' with the babies whilst she was gone. I couldn't tell you half what that girl does. She's here, there, an' everywhere. Now she's gettin' up a party for the school children; now makin' a birthday cake for somebody; now trimmin' a bunnit for Tiny or helpin' her plan out a dress." Willie stopped to rummage on a distant shelf for a level. "Once," he went on, "Sarah Libbie Lewis asked me what Delight was goin' to be. I told her there warn't no goin' to be about it; Delight was bein' it right now. She didn't need to go soundin' for a mission in life." "I take it you are not in favor of careers for women, Mr. Spence," observed Robert Morton, who had been eagerly drinking in every word the old man uttered. "Yes, I am," contradicted the inventor. "There's times when a girl needs a career, but there's other times when to desert one's plain duty an' go huntin' a callin' is criminal. Queer how people will look right over the top of what they don't want to see, ain't it? I s'pose its human nature though," he mused. A soft breeze stirred the shavings on the floor. "Tiny thinks," resumed the quiet voice, "that I mix myself up too much with other folks's concerns anyhow. Leastways, she says I let their troubles weigh on me more'n I'd ought. But to save my life I can't seem to help it. Don't you believe those on the outside of a tangle sometimes see it straighter than them that is snarled up in the mess?" Robert Morton nodded. "That's the way I figger it," rambled on the old man. "Mebbe that's the reason I can't keep my fingers out of the pie. You'd be surprised enough if you was to know the things I've been dragged into in my lifetime; family quarrels, will-makin's, business matters that I didn't know no more about than the man in the moon. Why, I've even taken a hand in love affairs!" He broke into a peal of hearty laughter. "That's the beatereee!" he declared, slapping his thigh. "'Magine me up to my ears in a love affair! But I have been--scores of 'em, enough I reckon, put 'em all together, to marry off the whole of Cape Cod." "You must be quite an authority on the heart by this time," Robert Morton ventured. "I ain't," the other declared soberly. "You see, none of the snarls was ever the same, so you kinder had to feel your way along every time like as if you was navigatin' a new channel. Women may be all alike, take 'em in the main, but they're almighty different when you get 'em to the fine point, an' that's what raises the devil with makin' any general rule for managin' 'em." The philosopher held the piece of wood he had been planing to the light and examined it critically. "Once," he resumed, taking up his work again, "when Dave Furber was courtin' Katie Bearse, I drove over to Sawyer's Falls with him to get Katie a birthday present an' among other things we thought we'd buy some candy. We went into a store, I recollect, where there was all kinds spread out in trays, an' Dave an' me started to pick out what we'd have. As I stood there attemptin' to decide, I couldn't help thinkin' that selectin' that candy was a good deal like choosin' a wife. You couldn't have all the different kinds, an' makin' up your mind which you preferred was a seven-days' conundrum." The little inventor took off his spectacles, wiped them, and replaced them upon his nose. "Luckily, as we was fixed, there was a chance in the box for quite a few sorts, so that saved the day. But s'pose, I got to thinkin', you could only have one variety out of the lot--which would you take? That's the sticker you face when choosin' a wife. S'pose, for instance, I was pinned down to nothin' but caramels. The caramel is a good, square, sensible, dependable candy. You can see through the paper exactly what you're gettin'. There's nothin' concealed or lurkin' in a caramel. Moreover, it lasts a long time an' you don't get tired of it. It's just like some women--not much to look at, but wholesome an' with good wearin' qualities. Should you choose the caramel, you'd feel sure you was doin' the wise thing, wouldn't you?" Robert Morton smiled into the half-closed blue eyes that met his so whimsically. "But along in the next tray to the caramel," Willie went on, "was bonbons--every color of the rainbow they were, an' pretty as could be; an' they held all sorts of surprises inside 'em, too. They was temptin'! But the minute you put your mind on it you knew they'd turn out sweet and sickish, an' that after gettin' 'em you'd wish you hadn't. There's plenty of women like that in the world. Mebbe you ain't seen 'em, but I have." "Yes." "Besides these, there was dishes of sparklin' jelly things on the counter, that the girl said warn't much use--gone in no time; they were just meant to dress up the box. I called 'em brainless candies--just silly an' expensive, an' if you look around you'll find women can match 'em. An' along with 'em you can put the candied violets an' sugared rose leaves that only make a man out of pocket an' ain't a mite of use to him." Willie scanned his companion's face earnestly. "Finally, after runnin' the collection over, it kinder come down to a choice between caramels or chocolates. Even then I still stood firm for the caramel, there bein' no way of makin' sure what I'd get inside the chocolate. I warn't willin' to go it blind, I told Dave. A chocolate's a sort of unknowable thing, ain't it? There's no fathomin' it at sight. After you've got it you may be pleased to death with what's inside it an' then again you may not. So we settled mostly on caramels for Katie. I said to Dave comin' home it was lucky men warn't held down to one sort of candy like they are to one sort of wife, an' he most laughed his head off. Then he asked me what kind of sweet I thought Katie was, an' I told him I reckoned she was the caramel variety, an' he said he thought so, too. We warn't fur wrong neither, for she's turned out 'bout as we figgered. Mebbe she ain't got the looks or the sparkle of the bonbons or jelly things, but she's worn almighty well, an' made Dave a splendid wife." "With all your excellent theories about women, I wonder you never picked out a wife for yourself, Mr. Spence," Robert Morton remarked mischievously. "Me get married?" questioned Willie, staring at the speaker open-eyed over the top of his spectacles. "Why not?" "Why, bless your heart, I never thought of it!" answered the little man naïvely. "It's taken 'bout all my time to get other folks spliced together. Besides," he added, "I've had my inventin'." He glanced out of the window at a moving figure, then shot abruptly to the door and called to some one who was passing: "Hi, Jack!" A man in coast-guard uniform waved his hand. "How are you, Willie?" he shouted. "All right," was the reply. "How are you an' Sarah Libbie makin' out?" "Same as ever." "You ain't said nothin' to her yet?" Robert Morton saw the burly fellow in the road sheepishly dig his heel into the sand. "N--o, not yet." "An' never will!" ejaculated the inventor returning wrathfully to the shop. "That feller," he explained as he resumed his seat, "has been upwards, of twenty years tryin' to tell Sarah Libbie Lewis he's in love with her. He knows it an' so does she, but somehow he just can't put the fact into words. I'm clean out of patience with him. Why, one day he actually had the face to come in here an' ask me to tell her--_me_! What do you think of that?" Robert Morton chuckled at his companion's rage. "Did you?" "Did I?" repeated Willie with scorn. "Can you see me doin' it? No, siree! I just up an' told Jack Nickerson if he warn't man enough to do his own courtin' he warn't man enough for any self-respectin' woman to marry. An' furthermore, I said he needn't step foot over the sill of this shop 'till he'd took some action in the matter. That hit him pretty hard, I can tell you, 'cause he used to admire to come in here an' set round whenever he warn't on duty. But he saw I meant it, an' he ain't been since." The old man paused. "I kinder bit off my own nose when I took that stand," he admitted, an intonation of regret in his tone, "'cause Jack's mighty good company. Still, there was nothin' for it but firm handlin'." "How long ago did you cast him out?" Bob asked with a chuckle. "Oh, somethin' over a week or ten days ago," was the reply. "I thought he might have made some progress by now. But I ain't given up hope of him yet. He's been sorter quiet the last two times I've seen him, an' I figger he's mullin' things over, an' mebbe screwin' up his courage." The room was still save for the purr of the plane. "I suppose you will be marrying Miss Hathaway off some day," observed Bob a trifle self-consciously, without raising his eyes from his work. "You bet I won't," came emphatically from the old inventor. "I've got some courage but not enough for that. You see, the man that marries her has got to have the nerve to face the whole village--brave Zenas Henry, the three captains, an' Abbie Brewster, besides winnin' the girl herself. 'Twill be some contract. No, you can be mortal sure I shan't go meddlin' in no such love affair as that. Anyhow, I won't be needed, for any man that Delight Hathaway would look at twice will be perfectly capable of meetin' all comers; don't you worry." With this dubious comfort Willie stamped with spirit out of the shop. CHAPTER VII A SECOND SPIRIT APPEARS Days came and went, days golden and blue, until a week had passed, and although Robert Morton haunted the post-office, nothing was heard from the jeweler to whom he had sent the silver buckle. Neither did the eager young man catch even a fleeting glimpse of its owner. It was, he told himself, unlikely that she would come to the Spence house again. When her property was repaired she probably would expect some one either to let her know, or bring it to her. It was to the latter alternative that Bob was pinning his hopes. The errand would provide a perfectly natural excuse for him to go to the Brewster home, and once there he would meet the girl's family and perhaps be asked to come again. Until the trinket came back from Boston, therefore, he must bide his time with patience. Nevertheless the logic of these arguments did not prevent him from turning sharply toward the door of the workshop whenever there was a footfall on the grass. Any day, any hour, any moment the lady of his dreams might appear once more. Had not Willie said that she sometimes trimmed bonnets for Tiny? And was it not possible, yea, even likely that his aunt might be needing a bonnet right away. Women were always needing bonnets, argued the young man vaguely; at least, both his mother and sister were, and he had not yet lived long enough in his aunt's household to realize that with Tiny Morton the purchase of a bonnet was not an equally casual enterprise. He even had the temerity to ask Celestina when he saw her arrayed for the grange one afternoon why she did not have a hat with pink in it and was chagrined to receive the reply that she did not like pink; and that anyway her hat was well enough as it was, and she shouldn't have another for a good couple of years. "I don't go throwin' money away on new hats like you city folks do," she said somewhat tartly. "A hat has to do me three seasons for best an' a fourth for common. I've too much to do to go chasin' after the fashions. I leave that to Bart Coffin's wife." "Who is Bart Coffin?" inquired Bob, amused by her show of spirit. "You ain't met Bart?" "Not yet." "Well, you will. He's the one who always used to stow all his catch of fish in the bow of the boat 'cause he said it was easier to row downhill. He ain't no heavyweight for brains as you can see, an' years ago he married a wife feather-headed as himself. He did it out of whole cloth, too, so he's got no one to blame if he don't like his bargain. At the time of the weddin' he was terrible stuck up about his bride, an' he gave her a black satin dress that outdid anything the town had ever laid eyes on. It was loaded down with ruffles, an' jet, an' lace, an' fitted her like as if she was poured into it. Folks said it was made in Brockton, but whether it was or not there's no way of knowin'. Anyhow, back she pranced to Wilton in that gown an' for a year or more, whenever there was a church fair, or a meetin' of the Eastern Star, or a funeral, you'd be certain of seein' Minnie Coffin there in her black satin. There wasn't a lay-out in town could touch it, an' by an' by it got so that it set the mark on every gatherin' that was held, those where Minnie's satin didn't appear bein' rated as of no account." Celestina paused, and her mouth took an upward curve, as if some pleasant reverie engrossed her. "But after a while," she presently went on, "there came an upheaval in the styles; sleeves got smaller, an' skirts began to be nipped in. Minnie's dress warn't wore a particle but it looked as out-of-date as Joseph's coat would look on Willie. The women sorter nudged one another an' said that now Mis' Bartley Coffin would have to step down a peg an' stop bein' leader of the fashions." Celestina ceased rocking and leaned forward impressively. "But did she?" declaimed she with oratorical eloquence. "Did she? Not a bit of it. Minnie got pictures an' patterns from Boston; scanted the skirt; took in the sleeves; made a wide girdle with the breadths she took out of the front--an' there she was again, high-steppin' as ever!" Robert Morton laughed with appreciation. "Since then," continued Celestina, "for at least fifteen years she's been makin' that dress over an' over. Now she'll get a new breadth of goods or a couple of breadths, turn the others upside down or cut 'em over, an' by keepin' everlastingly at it she contrives to look like the pictures in the papers most of the time. It's maddenin' to the rest of us. Abbie Brewster knows Minnie well an' somewhere in a book she's got set down the gyrations of that dress. I wouldn't be bothered recordin' it but Abbie always was a methodical soul. She could give you the date of every inch of satin in the whole thing. Just now there's 1914 sleeves; the front breadths are 1918; the back ones 1911. Most of the waist is January, 1912, with a June, 1913, vest. Half the girdle is made out of 1910 satin, an' half out of 1919. Of course there's lights when the blacks don't all look the same; still, unless you got close up you wouldn't notice it, an' Minnie Coffin keeps on settin' the styles for the town like she always has." The narrator paused for breath. "She's makin' it over again right now," she announced, rising from her chair and moving toward the pantry. "You can always tell when she is 'cause she pulls down all her front curtains an' won't come to the door when folks knock. The shades was down when Abbie an' me drove by there last week an' to make sure Abbie got out an' tapped to' see if anybody'd come to let us in, but nobody did. We said then: '_Minnie's resurrectin' the black satin_.' You mark my words she'll be in church in it Sunday. It generally takes her about ten days to get it done. I was expectin' she'd give it another overhauling, for she ain't done nothin' to it for three months at least an' the styles have changed quite a little in that time. Sometimes I tell Willie I believe we'll live to see her laid out in that dress yet." "You can bet Bart would draw a sigh of relief if we did," chimed in the inventor. "Why, the money that woman's spent pullin' that durn thing to pieces an' puttin' it together again is a caution. Bart said you'd be dumbfounded if you could know what he's paid out. If the coffin lid was once clamped down on the pest he'd raise a hallelujah, poor feller." "Willie!" gasped the horrified Celestina. "Oh, I ain't sayin' he'd be glad to see Minnie goin'," the little old man protested. "But that black satin has been a bone of contention ever since the day it was bought. To begin with, it cost about ten times what Bart calculated 'twould; he told me that himself. An' it's been runnin' up in money ever since. When he got it he kinder figgered 'twould be an investment somethin' like one of them twenty-year endowments, an' that for nigh onto a quarter of a century Minnie wouldn't need much of anything else. But his reckonin' was agog. It's been nothin' but that black satin all his married life. Let alone the price of continually reenforcin' it, the wear an' tear on Minnie's nerves when she's tinkerin' with it is somethin' awful. Bart says that dress ain't never out of her mind. She's rasped an' peevish all the time plannin' how she can fit the pieces in to look like the pictures. It's worse than fussin' over the cut-up puzzles folks do. Sometimes at night she'll wake him out of a sound sleep to tell him she's just thought how she can eke new sleeves out of the side panels, or make a pleated front for the waist out of the girdle. I guess Bart don't get much rest durin' makin'-over spells. I saw him yesterday at the post-office an' he was glum as an oyster; an' when I asked him was he sick all he said was he hoped there'd be no black satins in heaven." "I told you she was fixin' it over!" cried Celestina triumphantly. "So you was at the store, was you, Willie? You didn't say nothin' about it." "I forgot I went," confessed the little man. "Lemme see! I believe 'twas more nails took me down." "Did you get any mail?" "No--yes--I dunno. 'Pears like I did get somethin'. If I did, it's in the pocket of my other coat." Going into the hall he returned with a small white package which he gave to Celestina. "It ain't for me," said she, after she had examined the address. "It's Bob's." "Bob's, eh?" queried the inventor. "I didn't notice, not havin' on my readin' glasses. So it's Bob's, is it?" "Yes," answered Celestina, eyeing the neat parcel curiously. "Whoever's sendin' you a bundle all tied up with white paper an' pink string, Bob? It looks like it was jewelry." Quickly Willie sprang to the rescue. "Oh, Bob's been gettin' some repairin' done for the Brewsters," explained he. "Delight's buckle was broke an' knowin' the best place to send it, he mailed it up to town." "Oh," responded Celestina, glancing from one to the other with a half satisfied air. "Let's have the thing out an' see how it looks, Bob," Willie went on. Blushingly Robert Morton undid the box. Yes, there amid wrappings of tissue paper, on a bed of blue cotton wool, rested the buckle of silver, its burnished surface sparkling in the light. He took it out and inspected it carefully. "It is all O. K.," observed he, with an attempt at indifference. "See what a fine piece of work they made of it." The old man took from the table drawer a long leather case, drew out another pair of spectacles which he exchanged for the ones he was already wearing, and after scrutinizing the buckle and scowling at it for an interval he carried it to the window. "What's the matter?" Bob demanded, instantly alert. "Isn't the repairing properly done?" "'Tain't the repairin' I'm lookin' at," Willie returned slowly. "I've no quarrel with that." Still he continued to twist and turn the disc of silver, now holding it at arm's length, now bringing it close to his eye with a puzzled intentness. Robert Morton could stand the suspense no longer. "What's wrong with it?" he at last burst out. Willie did not look up but evidently he caught the note of impatience in the younger man's tone, for he drawled quizzically: "Don't it strike you as a mite peculiar that a buckle should go to Boston with D. L. H. on it an' come home marked C. L. G.?" "_What_!" "That's what's on it--C. L. G. See for yourself." "It can't be." "Come an' have a look." The inventor placed the trinket in Robert Morton's hand. "C. L. G.," repeated he, as he deciphered the intertwined letters of the monogram. "You are right, sure as fate! Jove!" "They've sent you the wrong girl," remarked Willie. "It's clear as a bell on a still night. There must have been two girls an' two buckles, an' the jeweler's mixed 'em up; you've got the other lady's." "That's a nice mess!" Bob ejaculated irritably. "Why, I'd rather have given a hundred dollars than have this happen. I'll wring that man's neck!" "Easy, youngster! Easy!" cautioned Willie. "Don't go heavin' all your cargo overboard 'till you find you're really sinkin'. 'Tain't likely Miss C. L. G. will care a row of pins for Miss D. L. H.'s buckle. She'll be sendin' out an S. O. S. for her own an' will be ready to join you in flayin' the jeweler. Give the poor varmint time, an' he'll shift things round all right." "But Miss Hathaway--" "Delight's lived the best part of two weeks without that buckle, an' she don't look none the worse for not havin' it. I saw her in the post-office only yesterday an'--" "Did you?" cried Bob eagerly, then stopped short, flushed, and bit his lip. "Yes, she was there," Willie returned serenely, without appearing to have noticed his guest's agitation. "Young Farwell from Cambridge--the one that has all the money--was talkin' to her, an' she had that Harvard professor who boards at the Brewsters' along too; Carlton his name is, Jasper Carlton. He's a mighty good-lookin' chap." He stole a glance at the face that glowered out of the window. "Had you chose to stroll down to the store with me like I asked you to, you might 'a' seen her yourself." "Oh, I--I--didn't need to see her," stammered Bob. "Mebbe not," was the tranquil answer. "An' she didn't need to see you, neither, judgin' from the way she was talkin' an' laughin' with them other fellers. Still a young man is never the worse for chattin' with a nice girl. Now, son, if I was you, I wouldn't get stirred up over this jewelry business. We'll get a rise out of Miss C. L. G. pretty soon an' when she comes to the surface--" "Who's that at the gate, Willie?" called Celestina from the kitchen. "What?" "There's somebody at the gate in a big red automobile. She's comin' in. You go an' see what she wants, 'cause my apron ain't fresh. Likely she's lost her way or else is huntin' board." Although Willie shuffled obediently into the hall he was not in time to prevent the sonorous peal of the bell. "Yes, he's here," they heard him say. "Of course you can speak to him. He's just inside. Won't you step in?" Then without further ado, and with utter disregard of Celestina's rumpled apron, the door opened and the little inventor ushered into the string-entangled sitting room a dainty, city-bred girl in a sport suit of white serge. She was not only pretty but she was perfectly groomed and was possessed of a fascinating vivacity and charm. Everything about her was vivid: the gloss of her brown hair, the sparkle of her eyes, her color, her smile, her immaculate clothes--all were dazzling. She carried her splendor with an air of complete sureness as if she was accustomed to the supremacy it won for her and expected it. Yet the audacity of her pose had in it a certain fitness and was piquant rather than offensive. The instant she crossed the threshold, Robert Morton leaped to meet her with outstretched hands. "Cynthia Galbraith!" he cried. "How ever came you here?" A ripple of teasing laughter came from the girl. "You are surprised then; I thought you would be." "Surprised? I can't believe it." "If you'd written as you should have done, you wouldn't have been at all amazed to see me," answered the newcomer severely. "I meant to write," the culprit asserted uneasily. "Maybe you will inform me what you are doing on Cape Cod," went on the lady in an accusing tone. "How did you know I was here?" "You can't guess?" "No, I haven't a glimmer." From the pocket of her shell-pink sweater she drew forth a small white box of startlingly familiar appearance. "Does this belong to you?" demanded she. Beneath the mockery of her eyes Robert Morton could feel the color mount to his temples. "Well, well!" he said, with a ghastly attempt at gaiety, "So you were C. L. G." "Naturally. Didn't the initials suggest the possibility?" "No--eh--yes; that is, I hadn't thought about it," he floundered. "It's funny how things come about sometimes, isn't it? I want you to meet my aunt, Miss Morton, and my friend Mr. Spence. I am visiting here." Immediately the dainty Miss Cynthia was all smiles. "So it is relatives that bring you to the Cape!" said she. Robert Morton nodded. She seemed mollified. "Didn't Roger write you that we had taken a house at Belleport for the season?" she asked. "No," replied Bob. "I haven't heard from him for weeks." "He's a brute. Yes, we came down in May just after I got back from California. We are crazy over the place. The family will be wild when I tell them you are here. My brother," she went on, turning with a pretty graciousness toward Celestina, "was Bob's roommate at Harvard. In that way we came to know him very well and have always kept up the acquaintance." "Do you come from the West, same as my nephew does?" questioned Celestina when there was a pause. The little lady raised her eyebrows deprecatingly. "No, indeed! The East is quite good enough for us. We are from New York. The boys, however, were always visiting back and forth," she added with haste, "so we have quite an affection for Indiana even if we don't live there." She shot a conciliatory smile in Robert Morton's direction. "Couldn't you go back with me in the car, Bob," she asked turning toward him, "and spring a surprise on the household? Dad's down, Mother's here, and also Grandmother Lee; and the mighty and illustrious Roger, fresh from his law office on Fifth Avenue, is expected Friday. Do come." "I am afraid I can't to-day," Bob answered. "Why, Bob, there ain't the least reason in the world you shouldn't go," put in Celestina. The young man fingered the package in his hand nervously. "I really couldn't, Cynthia," he repeated, ignoring the interruption. "I'd like immensely to come another day, though. But to-day Mr. Spence and I have a piece of work on hand--" He paused, discomfited at meeting the astonished gaze of Willie's mild blue eyes. "Of course you know best," Cynthia replied, drawing in her chin with some hauteur. "I shouldn't think of urging you." "I'd be bully glad to come another day," reiterated Robert Morton, fully conscious he had offended his fair guest, yet determined to stand his ground. "Tell the affluent Roger to slide over in his racer sometime when he has nothing better to do and get me." "He will probably only be here for the week-end," retorted Cynthia coldly. "Sunday, then; why not Sunday? Mr. Spence and I do not work Sundays." "All right, if you positively won't come to-day. But I don't see why you can't come now and Sunday, too." "I couldn't do it, dear lady." "Well, Sunday then, if that is the earliest you can make it." She smiled an adieu to Willie and Celestina, and with her little head proudly set preceded Bob to her car. But although the great engine throbbed and purred, it was some time before it left the gate and flashed its way down the high road toward Belleport. After it had gone and Bob was once more in the house, Celestina had a score of questions with which to greet him. How remarkable it was that the owner of the missing jewelry should be some one he knew! The Galbraiths must be well-to-do. What was the brother like? Did he favor his sister? These and numberless other inquiries like them furnished Celestina with conversation for the rest of the day. Willie, on the contrary, was peculiarly silent, and although his furtive glance traveled at frequent intervals over his young friend's face, he made no comment concerning Miss Cynthia L. Galbraith and her silver buckle. CHAPTER VIII SHADOWS In the meantime the two men resumed their labors in the shop, touching shoulders before the bench where their tools lay. They planed and chiselled and sawed together as before, but as they worked each was conscious that a barrier of sudden reserve had sprung up between them, obstructing the perfect confidence that had previously existed. At first the old inventor tried to bridge this gulf with trivial jests, but as these passed unnoticed he at length lapsed into silence. Now and then, as he stole a look at his companion, he thought he detected in the youthful face a suppressed nervousness and irritation that found welcome vent in the hammer's vigorous blow. Nevertheless, as the younger man vouchsafed no information regarding the morning's adventure, Willie asked no questions. He would have given a great deal to have satisfied himself about Cynthia Galbraith. It was easily seen that her family were persons of wealth and position with whom Robert Morton was on terms of the greatest intimacy. It even demanded no very skilled psychologist to perceive the girl's sentiment toward his guest, for Miss Galbraith was a petulent, self-willed creature who did not trouble to conceal her preferences. Her attitude was transparent as the day. But with what feeling did Robert Morton regard her? That was the burning question the little man longed to have answered. Wearily he sighed. Alas, human nature was a frail, incalculable phenomenon. How was it likely a young man with his fortune to make would regard a girl as rich and attractive as Cynthia Galbraith, especially if her brother chanced to be his best friend and all her family reached forth welcoming arms to him. Willie was not a matchmaker. Had he been impugned with the accusation he would have denied it indignantly: Nevertheless, he had been mixed up in too many romances not to find the relation between the sexes a problem of engrossing interest. Furthermore, of late he had been doing a little private castle-building, the foundations of which now abruptly collapsed into ruins at his feet. The cornerstone of this dream-structure had been laid the day he had first seen Robert Morton and Delight Hathaway together. What a well-mated pair they were! For years it had been his unwhispered ambition to see his favorite happily married to a man who was worthy of the priceless treasure. The Brewster household was aging fast. Captain Jonas, Captain Benjamin, and Captain Phineas were now old men; even Zenas Henry's hair had thinned and whitened above his temples, and Abbie, once so tireless, was becoming content to drop her cares on younger shoulders. Yes, Wilton was growing old, thought the inventor sadly, and he and Celestina were unquestionably keeping pace with the rest. In the natural course of events, before many years Delight would be deprived of her protectors and be left alone in the great world to fend for herself. She was well able to do so, for she was resourceful and capable and would never be forced to marry for a home as was many a lonely woman. Nor would she ever come to want; the village would see to that. Notwithstanding this certainty, however, he could not bear to think of a time when there would be no one to stand between her and the harsher side of life; no man who would count the championship a privilege, an honor, his dearest duty. Wilton had never offered a husband of the type pictured in Willie's mind. The hamlet could boast of but few young men, and the greater part of those who lingered within its borders had done so because they lacked the ambition and initiative to hew out for themselves elsewhere broader fields of activity. Those of ability had gravitated to the colleges, the business schools, or gone to test their strength in the city's marts of commerce. Who could blame them for not resting content with baiting lobster pots and dredging for scallops? Were he a young man with his path untrodden before him he would have been one of the first to do the same, Willie confessed. Did he not constantly covet their youth and opportunity? Nevertheless, praiseworthy as their motive had been, the fact remained that nowhere in the village was there a man the peer of Delight Hathaway. Rare in her girlish beauty, rarer yet in her promise of womanhood, what a prize she would be for him who had the fineness of fiber to appreciate the guerdon! Willie was wont to attest that he himself was not a marrying man; yet notwithstanding the assertion, deep down within the fastness of his soul he had had his visions,--visions pure, exalted and characteristic of his sensitively attuned nature. They were the exquisite secrets of his life; the unfulfilled dreams that had kept him holy; a part of the divine in him; echoes of hungers and longings that reached unsatisfied into a world other than this. Earth had failed to consummate the loves and ambitions of the dreamer. His had been a flattened, warped, starved existence whose perfecting was not of this sphere. And as without bitterness he reviewed the glories that had passed him by, he prayed that these bounties might not also be denied her who, rounding into the full splendor of her womanhood, was worthy of the best heaven had to bestow. From her childhood he had watched her virtues unfold and none of their potentialities had gone unobserved by the quiet little old man. Through the beauty of his own soul he had been enabled to translate the beauties of another, until gradually Delight Hathaway had come to symbolize for him universal woman, the prototype of all that was purest, most selfless, most tender; most to be revered, watched over, beloved. Yet for all his worship the girl remained for him very human, a creature with bewitching and appealing ways. In the same spirit in which he rejoiced in the tint of a rose's petal or the shell-like flush of a cloud at dawn did he find pleasure in the crimson that colored her cheek, in the perfection of her features, in the shadowy, fathomless depths of her eyes. Father, brother, lover, artist, at her shrine he offered up a composite devotion which sought only her happiness. With such an attitude of mind to satisfy was it a marvel that in the matter of selecting a husband for his divinity Willie was difficult to please; or that he studied with a criticism quite as jealous as Zenas Henry's own every male who crossed the girl's path? Yet with all his idealism Willie was a keen observer of life, and from the first moment of their meeting he had detected in Robert Morton qualities more nearly akin to his standards than he had discovered in any of the other outsiders who had come into the hamlet. There was, for example, the son of the Farwells who owned the great colonial mansion on the point,--Billy Farwell, with his racing car and his dogs and his general air of elegance and idleness. Delight had known him since she was a child. And there was Jasper Carlton, the scholarly scientist, years the girl's senior, who annually came to board with the Brewsters during the vacation months. Both of these men paid court to the village beauty, Billy with a half patronizing, half audacious assurance born of years of intimacy; and the professor with that old-fashioned reserve and deference characteristic of the older generation. There were days when the two caused Willie such perturbation of spirit that he would willingly have knocked their heads together or cheerfully have wrung their necks. Delight unhesitatingly acknowledged that she liked both of them and harmlessly coquetted first with the one, then with the other, until the old inventor was at his wit's end to fathom which she actually favored or whether she seriously favored either of them. Yet irreproachable as were these suitors, to place a man of Bob Morton's attributes in the same category with them seemed absurd. Why, he was head and shoulders above them mentally, morally, physically,--from whichever angle one viewed him. Moreover, blood will tell, and was he not of the fine old Morton stock? Whatever the Carlton forbears might be, young Farwell's ancestry was not an enviable one. Yes, Willie had settled Delight's future to his entire satisfaction and for nights had been sleeping peacefully, confident that with such a husband as Robert Morton her happiness and good fortune would be assured. And then, like a thunderbolt out of the heavens, had come this Cynthia Galbraith with her fetching clothes, her affluence and her air of proprietorship! By what right had she acquired her monopoly of Bob Morton, and was its exclusiveness gratifying or irksome to its recipient? Might not this strange young man, concerning whom Willie was forced to own he actually knew nothing, be playing a double game, and the frankness of his face belie his real nature? And was it not possible that his annoyance and irritation were caused by having been trapped in it? Well, avowed Willie, he would see that Delight encountered this Don Giovanni but seldom, at least until he gave a more trustworthy account of himself than he had vouchsafed up to the present moment. Contrary to the common law, the guest must be rated as guilty until he had proved himself innocent. Yet as he darted a glance at the earnest young face bending over the workbench Willie's conscience smote him and he questioned whether he might not be doing his comrade a dire injustice. The thought caused him to flush uncomfortably, and he flushed still redder when Bob suddenly straightened up and met his eye. Both men stood alert, held tensely by the same sound. It was the low music of a girlish voice humming a snatch of song, and it was accompanied by the soft crackling of the needles that carpeted the grove of pine between the Spence and Brewster houses. In another instant Delight Hathaway strolled slowly out of the wood and entered the workshop. With her coming a radiance of sunshine seemed to flood the shabby room. She nodded a greeting to Bob, then went straight to Willie and, placing her hands affectionately on his shoulders, looked down into his face. They made a pretty picture, the bent old man with his russet cheeks and thin white hair, and the girl erect as an arrow and beautiful as a young Diana. The little inventor lifted his mild blue eyes to meet the haunting eyes of hazel. "Well, well, my dear," he said, as he covered one of her hands with his own worn brown one, "so you have come for your buckle, have you? It is all done, honey, an' good as the day when 'twas made. Bob has it in his pocket for you this minute." By a strange magic the truth and sunlight of the girl's presence had for the time being dispelled all baser suspicions and Willie smiled kindly at the man beside him. Holding out the crisp white package, Robert Morton came forward. Delight looked questioningly from the box with its immaculate paper and neat pink string to its giver. "He found he couldn't fix it himself," explained Willie, immediately interpreting the interrogation. "Neither him or I were guns enough for the job. So Bob got somebody he knew of to tinker it up." "That was certainly very kind," returned Delight with gravity. "If you will tell me what it cost I--" Again the old man stepped into the breach. "Oh, I figger 'twarn't much," said he with easy unconcern. "The feller who did it was used to mendin' jewelry an' knew just how to set about it, so it didn't put him out of his way none." "Yes," echoed Bob, with a grateful smile toward Willie. "It made him no trouble at all." The two men watched the delicate fingers unfasten the package. "See how nice 'tis," Willie went on. "You'd never know there was a thing the matter with it." "It's wonderful!" she cried. Her pleasure put to flight the old inventor's last compunction at his compromise with truth. "I am so pleased, Mr. Morton!" she went on. "You are quite sure there was no expense." "Nothing to speak of. I'm glad you like it," murmured the young man. "Indeed I do!" She stretched the band of white leather round her waist and Bob noticed how easily its clasp met. "There!" exclaimed she, raising her hand in mocking imitation of a military salute, "isn't that fine?" Willie laughed with involuntary admiration at the gesture, and as for Robert Morton he could have gone down on his knees before her and kissed her diminutive white shoe. The girl did not prolong the tableau. All too soon she relaxed from rigidity into gaiety and came flitting to the work bench. "What are you doing, Willie dear?" she asked. "You know you never have secrets from me. What is this marvellous thing you are busy with?" Before answering, Willie glanced mysteriously about. "It's because I know you can keep secrets that I ain't afraid to trust you with 'em," said he. "Bob an' I are workin' on the quiet at an idee I was kitched with a day or two ago. It's a bigger scheme than most of the ones I've tackled, an' it may not turn out to be anything at all; still, Bob has studied boats an' knows a heap about 'em, an' he believes somethin' can be made of it. But 'til our fish is hooked we ain't shoutin' that we've caught one. If the contrivance works," went on the little old man eagerly, "it will be a bonanza for Zenas Henry. It's--" he lowered his voice almost to a whisper, "it's an idee to keep motor-boats from gettin' snagged." The words were scarcely out of his mouth before his listeners saw him start and look apprehensively toward the door. They were no longer alone. On the threshold of the workshop stood Janoah Eldridge. CHAPTER IX A WIDENING OF THE BREACH "So," piped Janoah, "that's what you're doin', is it, Willie Spence? Well, you needn't 'a' been so all-fired still about it. I guessed as much all the time." There was an acid flavor in the words. "Yes, I knowed it from the beginnin' well as if I'd been here, even if you did shut me out an' take this city feller in to help you in place of me. Mebbe he has studied 'bout boats; but how do you know what he's up to? How do you know, anyhow, who he is or where he came from? He says, of course, that he's Tiny's nephew, an' he may be, fur all I can tell; but what proof have you he ain't somebody else who's come here to steal your ideas an' get money for 'em?" There was a moment of stunned silence, as the barbs from his tongue pierced the stillness. Then Delight stepped in front of the interloper. "How dare you, Janoah Eldridge!" she cried. "How dare you insult Willie's friend and--and--mine! You've no right to speak so about Mr. Morton." Before her indignation Janoah quailed. In all his life he had never before seen Delight Hathaway angry, and something in her flashing eyes and flaming cheeks startled him. "I--I--warn't meanin' to say 'twas actually so," mumbled he apologetically. "Like as not the young man's 'xactly what he claims to be. Still, Willie's awful gullible, an' there's times when a word of warnin' ain't such a bad thing. I'm sorry if you didn't like it." "I didn't like it, not at all," the girl returned, only slightly mollified by his conciliatory tone. "If you are anything of a gentleman you will apologize to Mr. Morton immediately." "Ain't I just said I was sorry?" hedged the sheepish Janoah. "Indeed, there is no need for anything further," Robert Morton protested. "Perhaps, knowing me so little, it was only natural that he should distrust me." "It was neither natural nor courteous," came hotly from Delight, "and I for one am mortified that any visitor to the village should receive such treatment." Then as if clearing her skirts of the offending Mr. Eldridge, she drew herself to her full height and swept magnificently out the door. An awkward silence followed her departure. Robert Morton hesitated, glancing uneasily from Willie to Janoah, scented a storm and, slipping softly from the shop, went in pursuit of the retreating figure. "For goodness sake, Janoah, whatever set you makin' a speech like that?" Willie demanded, when the two were alone. "Have you gone plumb crazy? The very notion of your lightin' into that innocent young feller! What are you thinkin' of?" "Mebbe he ain't so innocent as he seems," the accuser sneered. The little old man faced him sharply. "Come," he persisted, "let's have this thing out. What do you know about him?" "What do you?" retorted Janoah, evading the question. The inventor paused, chagrined. "You don't know nothin' an' I don't know nothin'," continued Janoah, seizing the advantage he had gained. "Each of us is welcome to his opinion, ain't he? It's a free country. You're all fur believin' the chap's an angel out of heaven. You've swallered down every word he's uttered like as if it was gospel truth, an' took him into your own house same's if he was a relation. There's fish that gobble down bait just that way. I ain't that kind. Young men don't bury themselves up in a quiet spot like Wilton without they've got somethin' up their sleeve." Staring intently at his friend, he noted with satisfaction that Willie's brow had clouded into a frown. "Is it to be expected, I ask you now, is it to be expected that a spirited young sprig of a college feller such as him relishes spendin' his time workin' away in this shop day in an' day out? What's he doin' it fur, tell me that? This world ain't a benevolent institution, an' the folks in it don't go throwin' their elbow-grease away unless they look to get somethin' out of it. This Morton boy has boned down here like a slave. What's in it fur him?" "Why, it's his vacation an'--" "Vacation!" interrupted Janoah scornfully. "You call it a vacation, do you, for him to be workin' away here with you? You honestly think he hankers after doin' it?" "He said he did." "An' you believed it, I s'pose, same's you credited the rest of his talk," jeered Mr. Eldridge. "Look out the winder, Willie Spence, an' tell me, if you was twenty instead of 'most seventy, if you'd be stayin' indoors a-carpenterin' these summer days when you could be outside?" He swept a hand dramatically toward the casement and in spite of himself the old man obeyed his injunction and looked. A dome blue as larkspur arched the sky and to its farthest bound the sea, reflecting its azure tints, flashed and sparkled as if set with stars of gold. Along the shore where glittered reaches of hard white sand and a gentle breeze tossed into billows the salt grass edging the margin of the little creeks, fishermen launching their dories called to one another, their voices floating upward on the still air with musical clearness. "Would you be puttin' in your vacation a-workin' all summer, Willie, if you was the age of that young man?" repeated Janoah. "He ain't here for all summer," protested the unhappy inventor, catching at a straw. "He's only goin' to stay a little while." "He was here fur over night at first, warn't he?" inquired the tormentor. "Then it lengthened into a week; an' the Lord only knows now how much longer he's plannin' to hang round the place. Besides, if he's only makin' a short visit, it's less likely than ever he'd want to put in the whole of it tinkerin' with you. He'd be goin' about seein' Wilton, sailin', fishin', swimmin' or clammin', like other folks do that come here fur the summer, if he was a normal human bein'. But has he been anywheres yet? No, sir! I've had my weather eye out, an' I can answer for it that the feller ain't once poked his head out of this shop. What's made him so keen fur stayin' in Wilton an' workin'?" Willie did not answer, but he took a great bandanna with a flaming border of scarlet from his pocket and mopped his forehead nervously. "That young chap," resumed Janoah, holding up a grimy finger which he shook impressively at the wretched figure opposite, "is here for one of two reasons. You can like 'em or not, but they're true. He's either here to steal your ideas from you, or he's got his eye on Delight Hathaway." He saw his victim start violently. "Mebbe it's the one, mebbe it's the other; I ain't sayin'," announced Janoah with malicious pleasure. "It may even be both reasons put together. He's aimin' fur some landin' place, you can be certain of that, an' I'm warnin yer as a friend to look out fur him, that's all." "I--I--don't believe it," burst out the little inventor, his benumbed faculties beginning slowly to assemble themselves. "Why, there ain't a finer, better-spoken young man to be found than Bob Morton." Janoah caught up the final phrase with derision. "The better spoken he is the more watchin' he'll bear," remarked he. "There's many a villain with an oily gift of gab." "I'll not believe it!" Willie reiterated. Mr. Eldridge shrugged his shoulders. "Take it or leave it," he said. "You're welcome to your own way. Only don't say I didn't warn yer." Flinging this parting shot backward into the room, Janoah Eldridge passed out into the rose-scented sunshine. With a sad look in his eyes Willie let him go, watching the tall form as it strode waist-high through the brakes and sweet fern that patched the meadow. It was his first real quarrel with Janoah. Since boyhood they had been friends, the gentleness of the little inventor bridging the many disagreements that had arisen between them. Now had come this mammoth difference, a divergence of standard too vital to be smoothed over by a gloss of cajolery. Willie was angry through every fiber of his being. Slowly it seeped into his consciousness that Janoah's fundamental philosophy and his own were at odds; their attitude of mind as antagonistic as the poles. Against trust loomed suspicion, against generosity narrowness, against optimism pessimism. Janoah believed the worst of the individual while he, Willie, reason as he might, inherently believed the best. One creed was the fruit of a jealous and envious personality that rejoiced rather than grieved over the limitations of our human clay; the other was a result of that charity _that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things_, because of a divine faith in the God in man. For a long time Willie stood there thinking, his gaze fixed upon the gently swaying plumage of the pines. The shock of his discovery left him suddenly feeling very sad and very much alone. It was as if he had buried the friend of half a century. Yet even to bring Janoah back he could not retract the words he had uttered or exchange the light he followed for Janoah's sinister beckonings. In spite of a certain reasonableness in the pessimist's logic; in spite of circumstances he was incapable of explaining; in spite, even, of Cynthia Galbraith, a latent belief in Robert Morton's integrity crystallized into certainty, and he rose to his feet freed of the doubts that had previously assailed him. At the instant of this emancipation the young man himself entered. What had passed during the interval since he had gone out of the workshop Willie could only surmise, but it had evidently been of sufficiently inspiring a character to bring into his countenance a radiance almost supernatural in its splendor. Nevertheless he did not speak but stood immovable before the little old inventor as if awaiting a judge's decree, the glory fading from his eyes and a half-veiled anxiety stealing into them. Willie smiled and, reaching up, placed his hands on the broad shoulders that towered opposite. "I'm sorry, Bob," he affirmed with a sweetness as winning as a woman's. "You mustn't mind what Jan said. He's gettin' old an' a mite crabbed, an' he's kinder foolish about me, mebbe. I wouldn't 'a' had him hurt your feelin's--" Robert Morton caught the expression of pain in the troubled face and cut the apology short. "It's all right, Mr. Spence," he cried. "Don't give it another thought. So long as you remain my friend I don't care what Mr. Eldridge thinks. We'll pass it off as jealousy and let it go at that." The old man tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth drooped and he sighed instead. To have Janoah's weaknesses thus nakedly set forth by another was a very different thing from recognizing them himself, and instinctively his loyalty rose in protest. "Mebbe 'twas jealousy," he replied. "Folks have always stood out that Janoah was jealous. But somehow I'd rather think 'twas tryin' to look after me an' my affairs that misled him. S'pose we call it a sort of slab-sided friendliness." "We'll call it anything you like," assented Bob, with a happy laugh. This time Willie laughed also. "So she stood by you, did she?" queried he with quick understanding. "Yes." "'Twas like her." "It was like both of you." The old man raised a hand in protest against the gratitude the remark implied. "Delight ain't often wrong; she's a fair dealer." Then he added significantly, "Them as ain't fair with her deserve no salvation." "Hanging would be too good for the man who was not square with a girl like that," came from Robert Morton with an emphasis unmistakable in its sincerity. CHAPTER X A CONSPIRACY On Sunday morning, when a menacing east wind whipped the billows into foam and a breath of storm brooded in the air, the Galbraiths' great touring car rolled up to Willie's cottage, and from it stepped not only Robert Morton's old college chum, Roger Galbraith, but also his father, a finely built, middle-aged man whose decisive manner and quick speech characterized the leader and dictator. He was smooth-shaven after the English fashion and from beneath shaggy iron-gray brows a pair of dark eyes, piercing in their intensity, looked out. The face was lined as if the stress of living had drawn its muscles into habitual tensity, and except when a smile relieved the setness of the mouth his countenance was stern to severity. His son, on the other hand, possessed none of his father's force of personality. Although his features were almost a replica of those of the older man, they lacked strength; it was as if the second impression taken from the type had been less clear-cut and positive. The eyes were clear rather than penetrating, the mouth and chin handsome but mobile; even the well-rounded physique lacked the rugged qualities that proclaimed its development to have been the result of a Spartan combat with the world and instead bore the more artificial sturdiness acquired from sports and athletics. Nevertheless Roger Galbraith, if not the warrior his progenitor had been, presented no unmanly appearance. Neither self-indulgence nor effeminacy branded him. In fact, there was in his manner a certain magnetism and warmth of sympathy that the elder man could not boast, and it was because of this asset he had never wanted for friends and probably never would want for them. Through the talisman of charm he would exact from others the service which the more autocratic nature commanded. Yet in spite of the opposition of their personalities, Robert Morton cherished toward both father and son a sincere affection which differed only in the quality of the response the two men called forth. Mr. Galbraith he admired and revered; Roger he loved. Had he but known it, each of the Galbraiths in their turn esteemed Robert Morton for widely contrasting reasons. The New York financier found in him a youth after his own heart,--a fine student and hard worker, who had fought his way to an education because necessity confronted him with the choice of going armed or unarmed into life's fray. Although comfortably off, Mr. Morton senior was a man of limited income whose children had been forced to battle for what they had wrested from fortune. Success had not come easily to any of them, and the winning of it had left in its wake a self-reliance and independence surprisingly mature. Ironically enough, this power to fend for himself which Mr. Galbraith so heartily endorsed and respected in Bob was the very characteristic of which he had deprived his own boy, the vast fortune the capitalist had rolled up eliminating all struggle from Roger's career. Every barrier had been removed, every thwarting force had been brought into abeyance, and afterward, with an inconsistency typical of human nature, the leveler of the road fretted at his son's lack of aggressiveness, his eyes, ordinarily so hawklike in their vision, blinded to the fact that what his son was he had to a great extent made him, and if the product caused secret disappointment he had no one to thank for it but himself. Instead his reasoning took the bias that the younger man, having been given every opportunity, should logically have increased the Galbraith force of character rather than have diminished it, and very impatient was he that such had not proved to be the case. Robert Morton was much more akin to the Galbraith stock, the financier argued. He had all the dog-like persistency, the fighter's love of the game, the courage that will not admit defeat. Although he would not have confessed it, Mr. Galbraith would have given half his fortune to have interchanged the personalities of the two young men. Could Roger have been blessed with Bob's attributes, the dream of his life would have been fulfilled. Money was a potent slave. In the great man's hands it had wrought a magician's marvels. But this miracle, alas, it was powerless to accomplish. Roger was his son, his only son, whom he adored with instinctive passion; for whom he coveted every good gift; and in whose future the hopes of his life were bound up. Long since he had abandoned expecting the impossible; he must take the boy as he was, rejoicing that Heaven had sent him as good a one. Yet notwithstanding this philosophy, Mr. Galbraith never saw the two young men together that the envy he stifled did not awaken, and the question rise to his lips: "Why could I not have had such a son?" The interrogation clamored now as he came up the walk to the doorway where Robert Morton was standing. "Well, my boy, I'm glad to see you," exclaimed he with heartiness. "You are looking fit as a racer." "And feeling so, Mr. Galbraith," smiled Bob. "You are looking well yourself." "Never was better in my life." As he stood still, sweeping his keen gaze over his surroundings, a telegraphic glance of greeting passed between the two classmates. "How are you, old man?" said Roger. "Bully, kipper. It's great to see you again," was the reply. That was all, but they did not need more to assure each other of their friendship. "You have a wonderful location here, Bob," observed Mr. Galbraith who had been studying the view. "I never saw anything finer. What a site for a hotel!" Robert Morton could not but smile at the characteristic comment of the man of finance. "You would have trouble rooting Mr. Spence out of this spot, I'm afraid," said he. "Mr. Spence?" "He is my host. My aunt, Miss Morton, is his housekeeper." Robert Morton had learned never to waste words when talking with Mr. Galbraith. "I see. I should be glad to meet your aunt and Mr. Spence." "I know they would like to meet you too, sir. They are just inside. Won't you come in?" Leading the way, Bob threw open the door into the little sitting room. In anticipation of the visit Celestina had arrayed herself in a fresh print dress and ruffled apron and had compelled Willie to replace his jumper with a suit of homespun and flatten his locks into water-soaked rigidity. By the exchange both persons had lost a certain picturesqueness which Bob could not but deplore. Nevertheless the fact did not greatly matter, for it was not toward them that the capitalist turned his glance. Instead his swiftly moving eyes traveled with one sweep over the cobweb of strings that enmeshed the interior and without regard for etiquette he blurted out: "Heavens! What's all this?" The remark, so genuine in its amazement, might under other conditions have provoked resentment but now it merely raised a laugh. "I don't wonder you ask, sir," replied Willie, stepping forward good-humoredly. "'Tain't a common sight, I'll admit. We get used to it here an' think nothin' about it; but I reckon it must strike outsiders as 'tarnal queer." "What are you trying to do?" queried the capitalist, still too much interested to heed conventionalities. Simply and with artless naïvete Willie explained the significance of the strings while the New Yorker listened, and as the old man told his story it was apparent that Mr. Galbraith was not only amused but was vastly interested. "I say, Mr. Spence, you should have been an inventor," he exclaimed, when the tale was finished. He saw a wistful light come into the aged face. "I mean," he corrected hastily, "you should have a workshop with all the trappings to help you carry out your schemes." "Oh, Mr. Spence has a workshop," Robert Morton interrupted. "The nicest kind of a one." "Would you like to see it?" inquired Willie. "I should, very much." "I'm afraid it's no place to take you, sir," objected Celestina, horrified at the suggestion. "It ain't been swept out since the deluge. Willie won't have it cleaned. He says he'd never be able to find anything again if it was." Mr. Galbraith laughed. "Workshops do not need cleaning, do they, Mr. Spence?" said he. "I remember the chaos my father's tool-house always was in; it never was in order and we all liked it the better because it wasn't." Celestina sighed and turned away. "Ain't it just the irony of fate," murmured she to Bob, "that after slickin' up every room in the house so'st it would be presentable, Willie should tow them folks from New York out into the woodshed? I might 'a' saved myself the trouble." Robert Morton slipped a comforting arm round her ample waist. "Never you mind, Aunt Tiny," he whispered. "The Galbraiths have rooms enough of their own to look at; but they haven't a workshop like Willie's." He patted her arm sympathetically and then, giving her a reassuring little squeeze to console her, followed his guests. It had not crossed his mind until he went in pursuit of them that if they visited the shop they must perforce be brought face to face with Willie's latest invention still in its embryo state; and it was evident that in the pride of entertaining such distinguished strangers the little old man had also forgotten it, for as Bob entered he caught sight of him fumbling awkwardly with a piece of sailcloth snatched up in a hurried attempt to conceal from view this last child of his genius. He had not been quick enough, however, to elude the capitalist's sharp scrutiny, and before he could prevent discovery the eager eyes had lighted on the unfinished model on the bench. "What are you up to here?" demanded Richard Galbraith. There was no help for it. Willie never juggled with the truth, and even if he had been accustomed to do so it would have taken a quicker witted charlatan than he to evade such an alert questioner. Therefore in another moment he had launched forth on a full exposition of the latest notion that had laid hold upon his fancy. Mr. Galbraith listened until the gentle drawling voice had ceased. "By Jove!" he ejaculated. "You've got an idea here. Did you know it?" The inventor smiled. "Bob an' I kinder thought we had," returned he modestly. "Bob is helping you?" "Oh, I'm only putting in an oar," the young man hastened to say. "The plan was entirely Mr. Spence's. I am simply working out some of the details." "Bob knows a good deal more about boats than perhaps he'll own," Mr. Galbraith asserted to Willie. "I fancy you've found that out already. You are fortunate to have his aid." "Almighty fortunate," Willie agreed; then, glancing narrowly at his visitor, he added: "Then you think there's some likelihood that a scheme such as this might work. 'Tain't a plumb crazy notion?" "Not a bit of it. It isn't crazy at all. On the contrary, it should be perfectly workable, and if it proved so, there would be a mine of money in it." "You don't say!" It was plain that the comment contained less enthusiasm for the prospective fortune than for the indorsement of the idea. The New Yorker, however, said nothing more about the invention. He browsed about the shop with unfeigned pleasure, poking in among the cans of paint, oil, and varnish, rattling the nails in the dingy cigar-boxes, and examining the tools and myriad primitive devices Willie had contrived to aid him in his work. "I was brought up in a shop like this," he at length exclaimed, "and I haven't been inside such a place since. It carries me back to my boyhood." A strangely softened mood possessed him, and when at last he stepped out on the grass he lingered a moment beneath the arch of grapevine and looked back into the low, sun-flecked interior of the shop as if loath to leave it. "I am glad to have seen you, Mr. Spence," he said, "and Miss Morton, too. Bob couldn't be in a pleasanter spot than this. I hope sometime you will let me come over again and visit you while we are in Belleport." "Sartain, sartain, sir!" cried Willie with delight. "Tiny an' me would admire to have you come whenever the cravin' strikes you. We're almighty fond of Bob, an' any friends of his will always be welcome." The little old man went with them to the car and loitered to watch them roll away. "You'll see me back to-night," called Bob from the front seat. "Not to-night, to-morrow," Roger corrected laughingly. "Well, to-morrow then," smiled the young man. The engine pulsed, there was a quick throb of energy, and off they sped. Almost without a sound the motor shot along the sand of the Harbor Road and whirled into the pine-shaded thoroughfare that led toward Belleport. "A fine old fellow that!" mused Mr. Galbraith aloud. "What a pity he could not have had his chance in life." Bob nodded. "I suppose he hasn't a cent to carry out any of these schemes of his." "No, I am afraid he hasn't." The financier lit a cigar and puffed at it in thoughtful silence. "That motor-boat idea of his now--why, if it could be perfected and boomed properly, it would make his fortune." "Do you think so?" "I know it." Again the humming of the engine was the only sound. "Do you know, Bob, I've half a mind to get Snelling down here and set him to work at that job. What should you say?" "Snelling? You mean the expert from your ship-building plant?" "Yes. Wouldn't it be a good plan?" Robert Morton hesitated. "There is no question that a man of Mr. Snelling's ability would be a tremendous asset in handling such a proposition," he agreed cautiously. "Snelling could drop in as if to see you," went on the capitalist. "You could fix up all that so there would not be any need of the old fellow suspecting who he was. Once there he could pitch in and help the scheme along. It is going to be quite an undertaking before you get through with it, and the more hands there are to carry it out, the better, in my opinion." "Yes, it is going to be much more of a job than I realized at first," Bob admitted. "It certainly would be a great help to have Mr. Snelling's aid. But could you spare him? And would he want to come and duff in on this sort of an enterprise?" "If I telegraphed Snelling to come he would come; and when here he would do whatever he was told," replied Mr. Galbraith, bringing his lips sharply together. "It's very kind of you!" "Pooh! the idea amuses me. I'll provide any materials you may need, too. Snelling shall have an order to that effect so that he can call on the Long Island plant for anything he wants." "That will be splendid, Mr. Galbraith; but where do you come in?" "I'll have my fun, never you fear," returned the capitalist. "In the first place I'd like nothing better than to do that little old fellow a good turn. There is something pathetic about him. Sometimes it is hard to believe that life gives everybody a square deal, isn't it? That man, for instance. He has the brain and the creative impulse, but he has been cheated of his opportunity. I should enjoy giving him a boost. Occasionally I fling away a small sum on a whim that catches my fancy; now its German marks, now an abandoned farm. This time it shall be Mr. Willie Spence and his motor-boat idee." He laughed. "I appreciate it tremendously," Bob said. "There, there, we won't speak of it any more," the elder man protested, cutting him short. "I will telegraph Snelling and you may arrange the rest. The old inventor isn't to suspect a thing--remember." "No, sir." "That is all, then." With a finality Robert Morton dared not transgress, the older man lapsed into silence and Bob had no choice but to suppress his gratitude and resign himself to listening to the rhythmic beat of the automobile's great engine. CHAPTER XI THE GALBRAITH HOUSEHOLD The estate the Galbraiths had leased stood baldly upon a rise overlooking the sea in the midst of the fashionable colony adjacent to Wilton, and was one of those blots which the city luxury-lover affixes to a community whose keynote is simplicity. Its expanse of veranda, its fluttering green and white awnings, its giant tubs of blossoming hydrangeas, to say nothing of its Italian garden with rose-laden pergolas, were as out of place as if Saint Peter's itself had been dropped down into a tiny New England fishing hamlet. The house, it is true, did not lack beauty, for it was well proportioned and gracefully planned, and there was no denying that one found, perhaps, more comfort on its screened and shaded piazzas than was to be enjoyed on Willie Spence's unprotected doorstep. Nevertheless, there was too much of everything about it: too many rambler roses, too many rustic baskets and mighty palms; too many urns, and stone benches, and sundials and fountains. Still, as the car stopped at the door, the great wicker chairs with their scarlet cushions presented a gay picture and so, too, did Mrs. Galbraith and Cynthia who immediately rose from a breezy corner and came forward. The older woman was tall and handsome and in her youth must have possessed great beauty; even now she carried with a spoiled air almost girlish the costly gowns and jewels that her husband, proud of her looks, lavished upon her. She had a languid grace very fascinating in its indifference and spoke with a pretty little accent that echoed of the South. For all her attractiveness, Cynthia could not compare in charm with her mother whose femininity lured all men toward her as does a magnet steel. Bob leaped from the car almost before it had come to a stop and went to her side, bending low over her heavily ringed hand. "We're so glad to see you, Bobbie!" she smiled. "The very nicest thing that could have happened was to find you here." "It is indeed a delightful surprise for me," Robert Morton answered. "How are you, Cynthia?" Cynthia, who was standing in the background, frowned. "You've been long enough getting here," declared she petulantly. "Where on earth have you been? We decided you must have got stalled on the road." "Oh, no," interrupted her father, coming up the steps. "We made the run over and back without a particle of trouble. What delayed us was that we stopped to visit with Bob's aunt and the old gentleman with whom he is staying. Such a quaint character, Maida! You really should see him. I had all I could do to tear myself away from the place." His wife raised her delicately penciled brows. "We do not often see you so enthusiastic, Richard." "They are charming people, I assure you. I don't wonder Bob prefers staying over there to coming here," chuckled the financier. "Oh, I say, Mr. Galbraith--" began Bob; but his host interrupted him. "That is a rather rough accusation, isn't it?" declared he, "and it's not quite fair, either. To tell the truth, Bob's deep in some important work." There was a light, scornful laugh from Cynthia. "He is, my lady. You needn't be so incredulous," her brother put in. "Bob is busy with a boat-building project. Dad's got interested in it, too." Cynthia pursed her lips with a little grimace. "Ask him if you don't believe it," persisted Roger. "Yes," went on Mr. Galbraith, "that old chap over at Wilton has an idea that may make all our fortunes, Bob's included." There was a general laugh. "Well," pouted Cynthia, glancing down at the toe of her immaculate buckskin shoe, "I call it very tiresome for Bob to have to work all his vacation." "I don't have to," Robert Morton objected. "I am simply doing it for fun. Can't you understand the sport of--" "No, she can't," her brother asserted. "Cynthia never sees any fun in working." "Roger!" Mrs. Galbraith drawled gently. "Well, I don't like to work," owned the girl with delicious audacity. "I detest it. Why should I pretend to like it when I don't?" "Cynthia is one of the lilies of the field; she's just made for ornament," called Roger over his shoulder as he passed into the house. "There is something in being ornamental, isn't there, daughter?" said Mr. Galbraith, dropping into a chair and lighting a fresh cigar. She was decorative, there was no mistake about that. The skirt of heavy white satin clung to her slight figure in faultless lines, and her sweater of a rose shade was no more lovely in tint than was the faint flush in her cheeks. Every hair of the elaborate coiffure had been coaxed skilfully into place by a hand that understood the cunning, and wherever nature had been guilty of an oversight art had supplied the defect. Yes, Cynthia Galbraith was quite a perfect product, thought Bob, as he surveyed her there beneath the awning. "I thought Madam Lee was here," the young man presently remarked, as he glanced about. Mrs. Galbraith's face clouded. "Mother is not well to-day," she answered. "Careful as we are of her she has in some way taken cold. She is not really ill, but we thought it wise for her to keep her room. She is heartbroken not to be downstairs and I promised that after she had had her luncheon and nap you would go up and see her." "Surely!" Robert Morton cried emphatically. "Mother is so devoted to you, Bobbie," went on Mrs. Galbraith. "Sometimes I think she cares much more for you than she does for her own grandchildren." "Nonsense! Of course she doesn't." "I'm not so certain," laughed the elder woman lightly. "You know she is tremendously strong in her likes and dislikes. All the Lees are. We're a headstrong family where our affections are concerned. You, Bob, are the apple of her eye." "She has always been mighty kind to me," the young man affirmed soberly. "I never saw my own grandmothers; both of them died before I came into the world. So, you see, if it were not for borrowing Roger's and Cynthia's, I should be quite bereft." The party rose and moved through the cool hall into the dining room. A delicious luncheon, perfectly served by a velvet-footed maid and the old colored butler, followed, and there was a great deal of conversation, a great deal of reminiscing and a great deal of laughter. Cynthia complained that the claret cup was too sweet and that the ices were not frozen enough and had much to say of the ice cream at Maillard's. "But you are far from Maillard's now, my dear," her mother remarked, "and you must make the best of things." "Being on Cape Cod you are almighty lucky to get any ice cream at all," announced Roger with brotherly zest. "Roger, why will you tease your sister so? You hector Cynthia every moment you are in the house." "Oh, she knows I don't mean it," grinned Roger. "I just have to take the starch out of her now and then, don't I, Cynthia Ann?" "Roger!" fretted his sister. "I wish you wouldn't call me Cynthia _Ann_! I can't imagine why you've taken to doing so lately." "Chiefly because you do not like it, my dear," was the retort. "If I were not so sure of getting a rise out of you every time, perhaps I might be tempted to stop." "You children quarrel like a pair of apes," Mr. Galbraith said. "If I did not know that underneath you were perfectly devoted to each other, I should be worried to death about you." "You needn't waste any worry on Cynthia Ann and me, Dad," Roger declared. "Bad as she is, she's the best sister I've got, and I rather like her in spite of her faults." A smile passed between the two. "You've some faults of your own, remember," observed the girl, with a grimace. "Not a one, mademoiselle, not a one! I swear it," was the instant retort. "Coming into the family first, I picked the cream of the Lee and Galbraith qualities and gave you what was left." "I command you two to stop your bickering," Mr. Galbraith said at last. "You are wasting the whole luncheon, squabbling. You'd much better be deciding what you are going to do with Bob for the rest of the day." "I thought I'd take him out in the knockabout," Roger suggested. "That is, if he would like to go. The tide will be just right and there is a fine breeze." "You may take him if you will get him home at tea time," Mrs. Galbraith said. "Your grandmother has set her heart on seeing him this afternoon and you know she retires soon after dinner." "You wouldn't have any time to sail at all, Roger," put in Cynthia. "Especially if you should get stuck on a bar as you did the other day." "We should have two hours." "Why don't you take the launch, Roger?" his mother inquired. "And get snagged in the eel grass--not on your life!" "Bob and Mr. Spence are going to do away with all that eel grass, you know," called his father, sauntering out of doors. "I'll wait until they do, then," was the grim retort. "I should think Bob would a great deal rather go for a motor-ride," Cynthia ventured, her eyes fixed impersonally on the landscape. "I suppose you'd like to cart him off in your car." "It doesn't make any difference whose car he goes in, does it?" "Well, ra--_ther_! If he goes in yours there's no room for me; if he goes in mine there is no room for you. That's the difference." "Children, do stop tearing Bob to fragments," lisped Mrs. Galbraith with some amusement. "If you keep on pulling him to pieces he won't go anywhere. Now Roger, you take Bob sailing and have a good visit with him, and bring him back so he can have tea with your grandmother at five; this evening the rest of us will have our chance to see him." She did not look at Cynthia, but with a woman's forethought she remembered that the verandas were roomy and that the moon was full soon after dinner. Cynthia remembered it too and smiled. "Yes, go ahead, Roger," she called. "Take Bob round the bay. It is a lovely sail and as he hasn't been here before he will enjoy it." * * * * * * It was only a little past five when the two young men returned, a glow of health and pleasure on their faces. "Now, Bobbie, do make haste," Mrs. Galbraith said, coming to meet him. "Mother's tea has already gone up, and you know how she detests waiting. Her maid is there in the hall to show you the way. Hurry along, dear boy." Robert Morton needed no second bidding and at once followed the middle-aged English woman up the staircase and into a small, chintz-hung sitting room that looked out on the sea. At the farther end of it, seated before a low tea table, was a stately, white-haired lady, very erect, very handsome and very elegantly dressed in a gown of soft black material. At the neck, which was turned away, she wore a fichu of filmy lace tinted by time to a creamy tone and held in place by an old-fashioned medallion of seed pearls. White ruffles at the wrists drooped over her delicately veined hands and showed only the occasional flash of a ring and her perfectly manicured finger tips. Summer or winter, fair weather or foul, Madam Lee never varied this costume, and it seemed to possess some measure of its owner's eternal youth, for it was always fresh and its lustrous folds always swept the ground in the same dignified fashion. Indeed for those who knew Madam Lee to think of her in any other guise would have been impossible. Her silvered hair was parted and rippled over her forehead to her ears where it was slightly puffed and caught back with combs of shell, and from beneath it two little black eyes peered out with a bird's alertness of gaze. Although age had claimed her strength, it was evident from the woman's vivacious expression that she had lost none of her interest in life and as she now sat before the silver-laden tea table there was a girlish anticipation in her eager pose. "Ah, you scamp!" cried she, when she heard her visitor's footstep in the upper hall, "I have been waiting for you a full five minutes. I don't wait for every one, I would have you know. Come here and give an account of yourself." The young man bent and softly touched her cheek with his lips. She put out her hand and let it linger affectionately in his as he dropped into the chair beside her. "I can't begin to tell you how glad I am to see you, Bob," she went on, in a voice soft and exquisitely modulated. "We had no idea you were on the Cape. But for that jeweler's stupidity we should have thought you had gone west long ago. Considering what good friends you and Roger are, you are the worst of correspondents; and you never write to me." "I know it," owned Robert Morton with disarming honesty. "It's beastly of me." "No, dear. On the contrary it is very like a man," contradicted Madam Lee with a pretty little laugh. "However, I am not going to scold you about it now. I have seen too many men in my day. First let me pour your tea. Then you shall tell me all that you have been doing. I hear you are visiting a new aunt whom you have just unearthed." "Yes." "How do you like her?" Bob chuckled at the characteristic directness of the question. "Very much indeed." "That's nice. Since relatives are not of our choosing, it is pleasant to find they are not bores." Again the young man smiled. "And this old gentleman for whom she keeps house--what of him?" It was plain Madam Lee had all the facts well in mind. As best he could Bob sketched Willie in a few swift strokes. "Humph! An interesting old fellow. I should like to see him," declared Madam Lee when the narrative was done. "And so you are working on this motor-boat with him?" "Yes." "How long have you been here?" "Ten days." "And when do you go back to your family?" "I don't quite know," hesitated the big fellow. "There is still a great deal to do on this invention we are working at." His companion eyed him shrewdly. "And the girl--where does she live?" she asked, reaching for Bob's cup. He colored with surprise. "The girl?" he repeated, disconcerted. "Of course there is a girl," went on the woman. "What makes you think so?" "Oh, Bob, Bob! Isn't there always a girl on every young man's horizon?" "I suppose so--generally speaking," he confessed with a laugh. "Suppose we abandon the abstract term and come down to this girl in particular," his interrogator said. "Why are you so sure there is one?" he hedged teasingly. "My dear boy, how absurd of you!" returned the sharp-eyed old lady with a twinkle of merriment. "In the first place, all the motor-boats in the world couldn't keep a young man like you chained up indefinitely in a sleepy little Cape Cod village. Besides, Cynthia told me." "Cynthia? She doesn't know anything about it." "That is precisely how I knew," piped Madam Lee triumphantly. "What did she tell you?" "She did not tell me anything," was the reply. "She simply came back from Wilton in a wretched humor and when I inquired of her whether she had her buckle back again, she answered with such spirit that there was no mistaking its cause. Of course she had the wit to know you were not wearing a belt of that pattern; nor your aunt nor Mr. Spence, either." "The belt and buckle belong to a girl--" "A girl! You surprise me," she murmured derisively. Robert Morton waited a moment, then, without heeding her mischievous comment, added gravely: "A friend of Mr. Spence's." "I see." The old lady smoothed the satin folds of her gown thoughtfully before she spoke, then continued with extreme gentleness: "Tell me all about her." "I couldn't do that," declared Robert Morton. "There aren't words enough to give you any idea how lovely she is or how good." Nevertheless, because he had so eager and sympathetic a listener, he at length began shyly to unfold the story of Delight Hathaway's strange life. He told it reverently and with a lover's tenderness, touching on the girl's tragic advent into the hamlet of Wilton, on her beauty, and on her poverty. "What a romance!" exclaimed Madam Lee meditatively, when the tale was done. "And they know nothing of the child's previous history?" "Next to nothing. The girl's mother died when she was born and the little tot lived all her life aboard ship with her father." "Had neither the father nor mother any relatives?" "Apparently not. The mate of the ship said he had never heard the Captain mention any." "Poor little waif! And these people who took her in have been kind to her? She is fond of them?" "She adores them!" The old lady stirred her tea absently. "But, Bob dear, has the girl any education?" she inquired presently. "That is the miracle of it!" ejaculated he. "When she was small, one of the summer residents, a Mrs. Farwell, who had a tutor for her son, suggested the two children have their lessons together. As a consequence the girl is a fine French scholar; has read broadly both foreign and English literature; is familiar with ancient and modern history and mathematics; and recently a professor from Harvard, who has boarded summers with the family, has instructed her in the natural sciences. She is much better educated than most of the society girls I've met." "Than my granddaughter Cynthia, I dare say," was the quick comment. "Oh--eh--" "You need not try to be polite, Bob. I am not proud of Cynthia's education," asserted Madam Lee. "For all her wealth and all her opportunity to make herself accomplished she has never mastered one thing. If she could even sew well or keep house I should rejoice. But she can't. As for languages, music, art--bah! She is as ignorant as if she had been brought up in a home in the slums. A thin society veneer such as the typical fashionable boarding-school washes over the outside and a little helter-skelter reading and travel is all Cynthia has acquired. A real education entailed too much effort. So she is what we see her,--a thoughtless, extravagant, pleasure-seeking creature. She is a great disappointment to me, a great disappointment!" Robert Morton did not reply. "Come now, Bob. Why don't you agree with me?" "I am fond of Cynthia," said the young man in a low tone. "I know you are. Sometimes I have worried lest you were too fond of her." There was no response. "Cynthia is not the wife for you, my dear boy, and never was. I am older than you and I know life. Moreover, I love you very dearly. Were you of my own blood I believe I could not care more deeply for you than I do. It would break my heart to see you make a foolish marriage--to see you married to a girl like Cynthia. You never would be happy with her in the world. Why, it takes a small fortune even to keep her contented. It is money, money, money, all the time. She cares for little else, and unless a man kept her supplied with that there would be no peace in the house." "Aren't you a little hard on her?" "Not too hard," came firmly from Madam Lee. "You think precisely as I do, too, only you are too loyal and too chivalrous to own it." There was a pause broken only by the tinkle of the teacups. "No, Bob, you let Cynthia alone. She will get over it. And if you have found the jewel that you think you have, be brave enough to assert your freedom and marry her. You are not pledged to Cynthia," went on the musical voice. "Just because you two chanced to grow up together there is no reason any one should assume that the affair is settled. I suppose you are afraid of disappointing the family. Then there is your friendship for Roger--that worries you too. And of course there is Cynthia herself! Being a gentleman you shrink from tossing a girl's heart back into her lap. Isn't it so?" "To some extent, yes." "Would it help matters, do you think, for you to marry Cynthia if you did not love her?" "But I care a lot for her." "Not as you do for this other girl," said the shrewd old lady, with eyes fixed intently on his face. "Oh, no!" was the instant reply. "Then, as I said before, you much better let Cynthia alone," declared Madam Lee emphatically. "At her age disappointments are not fatal, and she will probably live to thank you for it. In any case it is better to blight one life than three." Robert stared moodily down at the floor. "This other girl is attractive, you say." "She is very beautiful." "You don't say so!" was the incredulous rejoinder. "But she really is--she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." "And she has all these other virtues as well?" She took the teacup from his passive hand and set it on the table. "I want to see her and judge for myself," affirmed she. "I know something of beauty--and of girls, too. Why don't you bring her over here?" "_Here_?" "Why not?" "But--but--it would look so strange, so pointed," gasped the young man. "You see she doesn't even guess yet that I--" He heard a low, infectious laugh. "She knew it, you goose, from the first moment you looked at her," cried the old lady, "or she isn't the girl I think her. What do you imagine we women are--blind?" "No, of course not," Robert Morton said, joining in the laugh. "What I meant was that I never had said anything that would--" "You wouldn't need to, dear boy." His hostess put a hand caressingly on his arm. "All you would have to do would be to look as foolish as you do now, and she would understand just as I did." Then, resuming a more serious manner, she continued: "It is a perfectly simple matter for you to bring one friend to meet another, isn't it? Tell the girl I have heard her story and have become interested in her. She will overlook an old lady's whims and be quite willing enough to come, I'm sure, if you wish it." "I should like to have her meet you," admitted Bob, with a blush. "You mean you would like me to meet her," answered Madam Lee, with a confiding pat on his arm. "It is sweet of you, Bob, whichever way you put it. And after I have met the charmer you shall know exactly what I think of her, too. Then if you marry her against my judgment, you will have only yourself to thank for the consequences. Now leave it all to me. I will arrange everything. In a day or two I will send the car over to Wilton to fetch you, your aunt, Mr. Spence and this Miss--what did you say her name was?" "Hathaway." "Hathaway! _Hathaway_!" echoed Madam Lee in an unsteady voice. "Yes. Why?" "Oh, nothing," quavered the old lady, making a tremulous attempt to regain her poise. "Only it is not a common name. I--I--knew a Hathaway once--very long ago--in the South." CHAPTER XII ROBERT MORTON MAKES A RESOLVE Robert Morton returned from Belleport in a mood bordering on ecstasy, his path now clear before him. He would woo Delight Hathaway and win her, and with a strong mutual love and hope they would set forth in life together. He had, to be sure, no capital but his youth, his strength, and his education, but he did not shrink from hard work and felt certain that he would be able not only to keep want in abeyance but place happiness within the reach of the woman he loved. Until Madam Lee, with her keen-visioned knowledge of human nature, had ranged in perspective all the tangled circumstances that had so insidiously woven themselves about him, he had been unable to see his way. The fetters that held him were so delicate and intangible that with an exaggerated sense of honor he had magnified them into bonds of steel, never daring to believe that they might be snapped and leave no scar. But now the facts stood lucidly forth. There was no actual engagement between himself and Cynthia, nor had there ever been any talk of one. He simply had been thrown constantly into her society and had drifted, at first thoughtlessly and afterward indifferently, until there had been created not only in the mind of the girl but also in the minds of all her family a tacit expectation that ultimately their permanent union would be consummated. From the Galbraiths' point of view such a marriage would have been a very gratifying one, for although Robert Morton was without money, in his sterling character and his potentalities for success they had every faith. A span of years of intimacy had tested his worth, and had this not been the case his friendship with Roger had proved the tough fiber of his manliness. Of all their son's college acquaintances there was none who had been welcomed into the Galbraith home with the cordiality that had greeted Robert Morton. At first they had received him graciously for their boy's sake, but later this initial sufferance had been supplanted by an affectionate regard existing purely because of his own merits. They had loaded him with favors, pressed their hospitality upon him, and but for a certain pride and independence that restrained them would have smoothed his financial difficulties with the same lavishness they had those of their son. Many a time Mr. Galbraith, unable to endure the sight of Bob's rigid self-denial, had delicately hinted at assistance, only to have the offer as delicately declined. It hurt and piqued the financier to be so firmly kept at a distance and be obliged to witness privations which a small gift of money might have alleviated; moreover he liked his own way and did not enjoy being balked in it by a schoolboy. Yet beneath his irritation he paid tribute to the self-respecting determination that had prompted the rebuff. The world in which he moved held few men of such ideals. Rather he had repeatedly been courted by the grafter, the promoter, the social climber, each beneath a thinly disguised friendship working for his own selfish ends. But here at last was the novel phenomena of one who scorned pelf, who would not even allow his gratitude to be bought. The sight was refreshing. It rejuvenated the New Yorker's jaded belief in human nature. Forced to withdraw his bounty, he had sat back and watched while the academic career of the two young men wore on and at its close had seen the roads of the classmates divide, his own boy entering the law school, while Robert Morton, whose mind had always been of scientific trend, enrolled at Technology, there to take up post-graduate work in naval architecture. The choice of this subject reflected largely the capitalist's influence, for his own great fortune had been amassed in an extensive shipbuilding enterprise in which he saw the opportunity of placing advantageously a young man of Robert Morton's exceptional ability. The promised position was a variety of favor that Bob, proud though he was, saw no reason for declining. The opening, to be sure, would be his as a consequence of Mr. Galbraith's kindness, but the retention of the position would rest on his personal worth and hard work, a very satisfactory condition to one who demanded that he remain captain of his soul. Hence he had deliberately trained for the post and it was understood that the following October he would assume it. It was a flattering beginning for a novice, the salary guaranteed being generous and the chances for advancement alluring. Nor did the great man who had founded the business conceal from the ambitious neophyte that later he might be called upon to fill the niche left vacant by Roger's flight into professional life. Such was the nicety with which Robert Morton had been dovetailed into the Galbraith plans, his welcome in every direction assured him. And now here he stood confronted by the probable overthrow of the whole delicately balanced structure. If he did not marry Cynthia and selected instead another bride, he risked forfeiting the regard of those who had become dear to him, imperilling his friendship with Roger, and sacrificing the brilliant and gratifying future for which he had so patiently labored. Never again, he knew beyond a question, would such an opportunity come within his grasp. He would be obliged to start out unheralded and painfully fight his way to recognition. That recognition would be his he did not doubt, for he never yet had failed in that to which he had set his hand. But, alas, the weary years before he would be able to make a hurrying universe sense that he was alive! He knew what struggle meant when stripped of its illusions, for had he not toiled for his education in the sweat of his brow? The triumph of the achievement had been sweet, but for the moment the courage to resume the weary, up-hill plodding deserted him. Why, it would be years before he could marry a girl who was accustomed to even as few luxuries as was Delight Hathaway! And suppose a miracle happened and Mr. Galbraith was large-minded enough still to hold out to him the former offer? Should he wish to accept it? Would it not be almost charity? No, if he refused Cynthia's hand--and that was what, in bald terms, it would amount to--he must decline the other favor as well and be independent of the Galbraiths for good and all. Otherwise his position would be unendurable. It was an odious situation, the one in which he found himself. Only a cad cast a woman's heart back at her feet. The unchivalrousness of the act grated upon every fiber of his sensitively attuned, high-minded nature. Yet, as Madam Lee had reminded him, would he not be doing Cynthia a greater injustice if he married her without love. Friendship and brotherly affection were all he could honestly bestow, and although these he gave with all sincerity, as he now examined his heart in the light of the revelations real love had brought, he realized that beyond their confines existed a realm into which Cynthia Galbraith, fair though she was, had never set foot. No woman had crossed that magic threshold until now, when her presence stirred all the blended emotions of his manhood. Humility, tenderness, reverence possessed him; self descended from its throne of egoism and yielded its scepter to another; the hot blood of the primitive, untamed Viking raced in his veins. Soul, mind, heart, body were all awakened. He was a dolt who confused genuine passion with the milder preferences of callow youth. Delight Hathaway was his mate, created for him before the hills in order stood. It was as inevitable that they should come together as that the river should sweep out to meet the sea, or the lily open to the kiss of the sunlight. All that this woman was in purity, in graciousness of heart, in brilliancy of intellect he loved, adored, approved; all that she was in physical beauty he reverenced and coveted. Her lot had been strangely cast and the scope of it limited to a very narrow vista. Oh, for success to place at her feet the riches of the earth! With such a goal to lure one on what was toil! Faugh! He laughed aloud at the word. Madam Lee, with her unerring intuition, had probed his heart and read his destiny aright. His future lay not with this pampered daughter of a great house whose selfishness he had repeatedly excused and refused to recognize; nor would he purchase worldly prosperity at the price of his soul. Casting aside the easier way, he would follow the rough path that mounted upward to the star of his desire. Before the waning of another moon both of these women who had come into his world should know his intentions and have the opportunity to accept or reject that which he had to offer them. He hoped Cynthia would understand and forgive; he was fond of Cynthia. And he hoped, prayed, implored Heaven that Delight Hathaway would not turn a deaf ear to his entreaties, for without the prize on which his hopes were set life's race would not be worth the running. Well, he would not allow the thought of failure any place in his mind. Victory should be his--it would be, _must_ be! See how all the world smiled on the vow he registered. The sky had never stretched more cloudlessly above his head; the air had never been sweeter, the dancing ripples of the bay gladder in their golden scintillations. The whole universe throbbed with youth and its dauntless supremacy. Something told him he would conquer and with a high heart he alighted at the door of the dear, familiar gray cottage. Willie came to meet him. "Well, son," said he, reaching forth his hands, "If I ain't glad to see you flitting home again! I've missed you like as if the two days was two weeks. I reckon your aunt has, too. Anyhow, she took to her bed quick as you was out of sight an' ain't been seen since." "Aunt Tiny ill!" "No, not sick exactly," explained Willie, as arm in arm they proceeded up the walk. "She's just struck of a heap with a lame shoulder such as she has sometimes. She can't move a peg, poor soul!" "Great Scott! That's hard luck! Then since you're short-handed, I shall be more bother than I'm worth round here. I'd better have stayed where I was. You won't want any extra people to look out for and feed now, I fancy." "Oh, law, I ain't doin' the cookin'!" grinned the little inventor, as if the bare notion of such a thing amused him vastly. "Why, I could no more cook a dish that was fit to eat than a mariner could run a pink tea. I'd die of starvation if the victuals was left to me. Let alone the cookin', we'd 'a' had to have help anyhow, 'cause Tiny's too miserable to do much for herself. So we've got in one of the neighbors." "It's a shame!" "Oh, we'll pull through alive," smiled Willie, cheerfully. "We've piloted our way through many a worse channel. This spell of Tiny's ain't nothin' she's goin' to die of, thank the Lord! She takes cold sudden sometimes, an' it always makes straight for that shoulder of hers, stiffenin' up every muscle in it. She'll admire to see you home again, I know. The sight of you will probably make her better right away. You can run up to her room now if you choose to. I'll be round in the shop when you want me." With a beaming countenance the old man turned away. Robert Morton opened the screen door diffidently, speculating as to whom he would confront in the kitchen; then he stopped, arrested on the doorsill. At the wooden table near the pantry window stood Delight Hathaway, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, and her slender figure enveloped in a voluminous gingham pinafore that covered her from chin to ankle and was tied in place at the back by a pert bow. She was sifting flour into a mammoth yellow bowl, and as she stirred the mixture the sweep of her round white arm brought a flood of color into her cheeks and wreathed her brow with tiny, damp ringlets. Bob held his breath, hungrily devouring her with his eyes, but a quick breeze brought the door to with a bang and the girl glanced over her shoulder. "All hail!" she cried, the dimple darting out of hiding with her smile. "You have a new cook, monsieur." "My word!" was all the young man could stammer. "Is it as bad as all that?" she laughed. "No--but--Great Hat--this is--is awful, you know." "What is awful?" returned she, turning to face him. "Why, having you come here and cook for us two men." "Oh, I'm always cooking for somebody," was the matter-of-fact retort. "Why not you?" "Well, it makes me feel like a--it doesn't seem right, somehow." "It's as right as possible. I rather like it," said she, darting him a roguish look, then bending over the bowl before her. "Well, you must let me help you, anyway. Can't I--I butter something?" "Butter something!" "Yes, things are always having to be buttered, aren't they--pans, and dishes, and cups--" he paused vaguely. Her laugh echoed like a chime of miniature bells. "I am sorry to say the pan is already buttered," replied she. "What other accomplishments have you?" "Oh, I can do anything I am told," came eagerly from Bob. "That's something, anyway. Then fetch me some flour, please." "Flour?" "It's in the barrel. No, that's the sugar bowl. The barrel under the shelf." "The barrel! To be sure. Barrel ahoy! How could I have mistaken its sylph-like form? How much flour do you want?" "Just a little." She passed the sieve to him and went to inspect the oven. Bob caught up the sifter, filled it to the brim, and came toward her, turning the handle as he approached. "I say, this is great, isn't it?" he observed, so intent on the mechanism of the device that he did not notice the track of whiteness which he was leaving behind him. "It is like winding up a victrola." Whistling a random strain from _Faust_ he turned the handle faster. "Oh, Bob!" burst out Delight. "Look what you're doing." Obediently he looked but did not comprehend. Her slip of the tongue had banished every other idea from his mind. "Say it again, please." "What?" "Say _Bob_ again as you did just now." "I--didn't know I did," faltered the girl. "I--I--forgot." "Forgot." He dropped the sifter into the bowl and his hand closed firmly over the one that now rested on its yellow rim. "Oh, see what you've done!" cried she. "You have spilled all that flour into the cake." "No matter." His eyes were on hers. "But it does matter. Willie's cake will be spoiled." She tried vainly to draw away from the grip that imprisoned her. "Please let me go." He bent across the table until he could almost feel the blood beating in her cheeks. "Say it once more," he pleaded. Again her hand fluttered in his strong grasp. "Please!" "Please what?" persisted Robert Morton. "Please--please--Bob," she murmured. He was at the other side of the table now, but she was no longer there. Instead she stood at the screen door, shaking the flour from her apron. "Don't move!" she cried severely. "You've walked all through that flour and are tracking it about every step you take. Look at the pantry! I shall have to sweep it all up." "I'll do it," he answered with instant penitence. "No. You sit right down there in that chair and don't you stir. I will go and get the dustpan and brush." "I'm awfully sorry," called Bob, plunged into the depths of despair. "I didn't realize that when you turned the handle of the darn thing the stuff went through." "What did you think a flour-sifter was for?" asked she, dimpling. "I wasn't thinking of flour-sifters," declared he significantly. He saw her blush. "Mayn't I please get up?" "No. Not until your shoes are brushed off," she replied provokingly. "Let me take the brush then." "Don't you see I am using it?" "You could let me take it a second." "I have been taught to complete one task before I began another," was the tantalizing reply, as she went on with her sweeping. "The deuce!" "You must not swear in my presence," she commanded, attempting to conceal a smile. "Then stop dimpling that dimple." "Don't you like dimples?" inquired she demurely. "Now Billy Farwell thinks that my dimples--" "Hang Billy Farwell!" "How rude of you! Billy never consigns you to such a fate." She waited, then added, "All he ever says is '_Confound Morton_.'" "I thought he had more spirit," was the ungrateful rejoinder. "Oh, he has spirit enough," she explained. "He would say much more if he were allowed." She saw Robert start forward. "Of course," she went on in an even tone, "I shouldn't permit him to abuse a friend of Willie's." "Oh, that's the reason you put the check on him, is it?" "Aren't you Willie's friend?" she questioned evasively. "Yes, but--" "You don't seem to appreciate your luck. Now I adore Willie and believe that any one who has his friendship is the most fortunate person in the world." He saw a grave and tender light creep into her wonderful eyes. "I'm not arguing about Willie," said he. "You know how much I care for him. But I can't think of him now. It's you I'm thinking of--you--you." She did not answer but bent her head lower over her sweeping. "I don't believe there is any flour on my shoes, any way," grumbled the culprit presently, stooping to examine his feet with the air of a guilty child. He thought he heard her laugh. "How much longer are you going to keep me in this infernal chair?" he fumed. "Bob!" called a voice from upstairs. "It's your aunt; she must have heard you come in." He sprang up only to come into collision with the dustpan full of flour which lay near his chair. A second more and the fruits of the sweeping drifted broadcast in a powdery cloud. "Delight! Dearest!" he cried, bending over the kneeling figure. "You must go upstairs and see your aunt--please!" she begged. "She will think it so strange." "All right, sweetheart. I'm coming, Aunt Tiny." When Willie entered a few moments later in search of his co-laborer, Delight was alone. He glanced questioningly about the room,--at the girl's flushed cheeks, the half-made cake, the snowy floor. "Bob--Mr. Morton spilled some flour," the young woman explained, evading his eye. The little old man made no response. He studied the burning face, the drooping lashes; he also looked meditatively at some footprints on the floor. They may not have been as startling in their significance as were the famous marks Crusoe discovered in the sand, but they were quite as illuminating. A trail of small ones led about the room and beside them, as if echoing to their light tread, was a series of larger ones. The inventor's gaze pursued them curiously to a spot before the stove where they became very much confused and afterward branched apart, the larger set trailing off toward the stairs, and the smaller moving back into the pantry. The detective stroked his chin for an interval. "U--m!" observed he thoughtfully. CHAPTER XIII A NEWCOMER ENTERS The next day Mr. Howard Snelling made his appearance at the Spence workshop. Bob was fitting wire netting to some metal uprights and struggling to focus his mind on what he was doing enough to forget that Delight Hathaway was on the other side of the partition when from the window above the bench he saw Cynthia Galbraith come rolling up to the gate in her runabout, accompanied by a strikingly handsome stranger. He hurried out to meet them. Her father and Roger, the girl said, had gone to a yacht race at Hyannis, so she had brought Mr. Snelling over. She introduced the two men but refused somewhat curtly to come in, explaining that she would be back, or some one else would, to fetch the guest home to Belleport for luncheon. Then, without a backward glance, she started the engine and disappeared around the curve of the Harbor Road. Perhaps it was just as well, Robert Morton reflected, that she had not accepted his invitation to come in, for to bring her and Delight together at this delicate juncture might result in awkwardness; nevertheless, it certainly was something unprecedented for Cynthia to be so brusque and be in such a hurry. The enigma puzzled him, and he found it recurring to his mind persistently. However, he resolutely shook it off and turned his attention instead to his new acquaintance. He was, he could not but admit, quite unprepared to find Mr. Howard Snelling, his future chief, possessed of so attractive a personality. Mr. Galbraith, when alluding to the expert craftsman, had never mentioned his age, and Bob had gleaned the impression that the man before whose ability the entire Galbraith shipbuilding plant bowed down was middle-aged, possibly even elderly. Therefore to be confronted by some one in the early forties was a distinct shock. Snelling's hair was, to be sure, sprinkled lightly with gray, but this hint of maturity was given the lie by his ruddy, unlined countenance and the youthfulness with which he wore his clothes. A good tailor had evidently found a model worthy of his skill and had tried to live up to the task set him, for everything in the stranger's attitude and appearance proclaimed smartness and the _savoir faire_ of the man about town. Yet Howard Snelling was something far better than either a fashion plate or a society darling. He was energy personified. It spoke in every motion of his strong, fine hands, in the quick turn of his head, in the alert attention with which he listened. Nothing escaped his well-trained eye. One's very thoughts seemed to be at his mercy. Mingling, however, with these more astute qualities and counterbalancing them was a winning tact and courtesy which instantly put another at his ease. Without these characteristics Mr. Snelling would have been unbearable; but with them he was thoroughly charming. "Well, Morton, I am glad to have a chance to meet you in the flesh," he said, as they still loitered at the gate. "The Galbraiths have sung your praises until I began to think you a sort of myth. You certainly have something to live up to if you are to reach the reputation they have painted of your virtues. Mr. Galbraith, in particular, thinks there is no obstacle that you cannot conquer." He swept his eye curiously over the young man before him. "You mustn't believe a word of what they've told you, Mr. Snelling," laughed Robert Morton. "Our friends are always over-indulgent to our faults. When I begin work under you, a thing I am greatly anticipating, you will find out what a duffer I really am." The elder man smiled. "I'm ready to take the chance," said he. "Besides," Bob went on, "Mr. Galbraith has given you something of a character too. He has frightened me clean out of my life with his tales of your--" "Pooh! Nonsense!" broke in Mr. Snelling deprecatingly. "I like my job, that's all; and Mr. Galbraith and I happen to hit it off." Nevertheless Bob could see that he was pleased by the flattery. It was on his tongue's end to voice his thought and add that the man who could not get on with a person of Mr. Snelling's adroitness and diplomacy would be hard to please; but although he did not utter the words he felt them to be true. "Now," began the New Yorker with a swift change of subject, "let us get down to business. How are we going to work this thing? You must coach me. I gather I am being employed on quite a delicate mission. My instructions are to come in here as a friend of yours and the Galbraiths, and without raising the suspicion that I have much of any knowledge about boats, I am to help get this invention into workable shape. Any parts we lack, any drawings we wish made, any materials we need I have authority to procure from our Long Island plant. There is to be no stint as to expense. The enterprise is to be carried through to the finish properly." Robert Morton gasped. "I had no idea Mr. Galbraith meant to go into it to such lengths," he murmured. "Oh, Mr. Galbraith never does things by halves when once he is interested," was the reply. "Besides, he has a hunter's scent for the commercial. He says there is a live idea here that has money in it, and that's enough for him. Anyway, whether there is or not," Snelling added hurriedly, "we are to humor the old gentleman's whims and get his idea so he can handle it." "It is tremendously generous of Mr. Galbraith." Howard Snelling regarded his companion quizzically for a moment, then remarked with gravity: "Oh, there is a kind heart in Mr. Galbraith, in spite of all his business instincts." "Had you ever met the rest of the family before now?" questioned Bob more with a desire to turn the channel of conversation than because he had any interest in the matter. The inquiry, idly made, produced an unexpected result, visibly throwing the expert out of his imperturbable composure; he flushed, stammered, and bit his lip before he successfully conquered his confusion: "I--eh--oh, yes," was his reply. "I've been a dinner guest at the New York house several times; been sent for on a pinch to help out. Then Mr. Galbraith summons me there occasionally for consultation on business matters. The Belleport place is attractive, isn't it?" "It's corking!" "I suppose you spend a lot of time over there," ventured Snelling, lighting a gold-tipped Egyptian cigarette and offering Bob one. Something in the question, he could not have told what, caused Robert Morton to dart a quick, furtive glance at the speaker. Mr. Snelling was smoking and blowing indifferently into the air filmy rings of smoke, but through it the disconcerted young man encountered his penetrating gaze. "I don't get over there very often," said Bob. "This invention keeps me rather busy." "Of course, of course!" was the cordial response. "And now as to our policy on this deal. I shall follow your lead, understand. Any assertion you see fit to make you can trust me to swear to. You may introduce me to the old chap as your college pal, even your long-lost brother, if you choose." "I hardly think that will be necessary," Robert Morton answered, a hint of coldness in his voice. "I shall simply introduce you for what you are, Mr. Galbraith's friend--" "And yours," smiled Mr. Snelling, graciously placing a hand on the young man's shoulder. It was unaccountable, absurd, that Bob should have shrunk at the touch; nevertheless he did so. "Don't you think," he replied abruptly, "that the sooner we go in and get to work the better? How long do you expect to be able to stay here?" Again the color crept into Snelling's cheek, but this time he was quite master of himself. "I cannot tell yet. It will depend to some extent on how we get on." "I suppose you really can't be spared from the Long Island plant a great while." "As to that, Mr. Galbraith is all-powerful," was his smiling answer. "What he wills must be arranged. Fortunately just now business is running slack, at least my part of it is. Most of our contracts are well on the way to completion and others can carry them out, so I can stay down here as long as is necessary. It can go as my vacation, if worst comes to worst. Hence you see," concluded he, pulling a spray of honeysuckle to pieces, "we don't need to rush things." They entered the gate, passed the low, silvered house now almost buried in blossoming roses, and following the clam-shell path that led to the workshop found Willie, his spectacles pushed back from his forehead, dragging a pile of new boards down from the shelf. "We have a visitor, Mr. Spence," Bob said. "Mr. Snelling, a friend of Mr. Galbraith's and--" he paused the fraction of a second, "and of mine. He has come over to spend the morning and wants to see what we're doing." The little old inventor reached out a horny palm. "I'm glad to see you, sir," affirmed he simply. "Any friend of Bob's won't want for a welcome here. Set right down an' make yourself to home, or stand up an' poke found, if it suits you better. That's what Mr. Galbraith did. I reckon there warn't a corner of this whole place he didn't fish into. 'Twas amusin' to see him. He said it took him back to the days when he was a boy. I couldn't but smile to watch him fussin' with the plane an' saw an' hammer like as if they was old friends he hadn't clapped eyes on for years." "It does feel good to handle tools when you haven't done so for a long time," assented Mr. Snelling. "Likely you yourself, sir, ain't had a hammer nor nothin' in your hands for quite a spell," went on Willie, with a benign smile. "They don't look as if you ever had had." Howard Snelling glanced down at his slender, well-modelled hands with their carefully manicured nails. "I haven't done much carpentry of late years," he confessed. "It would be quite a novelty were I to be turned loose in a place like this. I should like nothing better." "You don't say so!" responded Willie, with pleased surprise. "Well, well! Ain't that queer now? I'd much sooner 'a' put you down as a gentleman who wouldn't want to get into no dirt or clutter." "You don't know me." "Evidently not," the old man rejoined. "Well, you can have your wish fur's carpenterin' goes. You can putter round here much as you like." Mr. Snelling moved toward the long workbench. "This is a neat thing," remarked he, regarding the unfinished invention quite as if he had never heard of it before. "What are you doing here?" A glow of satisfaction spread over the little fellow's kindly face. "Why, me an' Bob," he explained, "are tinkerin' with a notion I got into my head a while ago. The idee kitched me in the night, an' I come downstairs an' commenced tacklin' it right away. But I didn't see my course ahead, an' 'twarn't 'til Bob hove in sight an' lent a helpin' hand that the contraption begun to take shape. But for him 'twould never have amounted to a darn thing, I reckon. I ain't much on the puttin' together, anyhow, an' this was such a whale of a scheme it had me floored. But it didn't seem to strike Bob abeam. He went at it like a dogfish for bait, an' he's beginnin' to tow the thing out of the fog now into clear water." "It's quite a scheme," observed Snelling, with an assumed nonchalance. "How did you happen on it?" "Them idees just come to me," was the ingenuous reply. "Some brains, like some gardens, grow one thing, some another. Mine seems to turn out stuff like this." "It's pretty good stuff." "It's a lot of bother to me sometimes," said the old man simply. "Still, I enjoy it. I'd be badly off if it warn't for the thinkin' I do. What a marvel thinkin' is, ain't it? You can think all sorts of things; can travel in your mind to 'most every corner of the globe. You can think yourself rich, think yourself poor, think yourself young, think yourself happy. There's nothin' you want you can't think you have, an' dreamin' about it is 'most as good as gettin' it." Mr. Snelling nodded. "Sometimes I think myself an artist, sometimes a musician," went on the wistful voice. "Then again I think myself a great man an' doin' somethin' worth while in the world. Then there's times I've thought myself with a family of children an' planned how they should learn mor'n ever I did." He mused, then banishing the seriousness of his tone by an embarrassed laugh added, "I've waked up afterward to think how much less it cost just to imagine 'em." The heart that would not have been won by the naïvete of the speaker would have been stony indeed! Howard Snelling flashed a tribute of honest admiration into the gentle old face. "Dreams are cheap things," rambled on the little inventor. "Sometimes I figger the Lord gave 'em to those who didn't have much else, so'st to make 'em think they are kings. If you can dream there ain't a thing in all the world ain't yours." The conversation had furnished Snelling with the opportunity to study more minutely the object on the table, and he now said with a motion of his hand toward it: "Wouldn't it be rather nice if you had some netting of coarser mesh and which wouldn't corrode?" "Oh, this screenin' ain't what I'd choose," returned Willie, "but 'twas all I had. I ripped it off the front door. Tiny didn't fancy my doin' it very well. 'Tain't often she's ruffled, an' even this time she didn't say much; still, I could see it didn't altogether please her." "Tiny?" interpolated Mr. Snelling. "My aunt, Miss Morton, who keeps house for Mr. Spence," explained Bob with proud directness. "I wasn't aware you had relatives down here," the boat-builder observed, turning toward Robert Morton with interest. "I imagined you came to the Cape because of the Galbraiths." "Oh, no. I didn't know the Galbraith's were here until the other day." "Really!" The single word was weighted with incredulousness. "'Twas the funniest thing you ever knew how it happened," put in Willie. Robert Morton tried to cut him short. "A package for the Galbraiths was sent to me by mistake; that was how I secured their address," he said. Snelling looked puzzled. "That warn't it at all, Bob," persisted Willie. "You ain't tellin' it half as queer as 'twas." It was useless to attempt to check the little old man now. Artlessly he babbled the story, and Howard Snelling, listening, constructed a good part of the romance interwoven with it from the young man's color and irritation. "So there were two beauties in the case!" commented he, when the tale was finished. "There were two silver buckles," came sharply from Bob. "Which amounts to the same thing," smiled the New Yorker. Robert Morton vouchsafed no reply. "Have your friends the Galbraiths met this--other lady?" asked Snelling insinuatingly. "No, not yet." "I see." There was something offensive in the observation; something, too, that compelled Robert Morton even against his will to add with dignity: "I am expecting to take Miss Hathaway over to see them some day soon." He told himself, as he uttered the words, that he owed Howard Snelling no explanation and that it was ridiculous of him to make one; nevertheless he felt impelled to do so. Mr. Snelling smiled superciliously. "That will be very pleasant, won't it?" he remarked. One could not have quarreled with the sentiment, but its blandness conveyed an exasperating disbelief. The young man bit his lip angrily. At the same instant there was a sound at the door. "Aunt Tiny wants to know--" The three men glanced up simultaneously, and Mr. Snelling's jaw dropped with amazement. "I beg your pardon," murmured Delight. "I did not know there was any one here." "It's only Mr. Snelling, a friend of Bob's," Willie hastened to say. "Mr. Snelling is also a friend of Mr. Galbraith's," interrupted Robert Morton, enraged that it fell to him to perform the introduction. "This is Miss Hathaway, Mr. Snelling." "I am charmed to meet you, Miss Hathaway," Howard Snelling declared, bending low over the girl's outstretched hand. "I did not realize you were an inmate of the house." Then with a sidelong glance at Bob he added: "Wilton certainly abounds in beautiful surprises." As with unveiled wonder he scanned the exquisite face, Robert Morton, looking on, could have strangled him with a relish. CHAPTER XIV THE SPENCES ENTER SOCIETY For a week Howard Snelling came and went from the small, vine-covered cottage on the bay, making himself so useful and so delightful that the charm of his personality gradually obliterated the first unpleasant impression Bob had gained of him. He worked hard but worked with such unobtrusiveness that unless one scrutinized him closely the subtle power that lay behind his hand and brain might have passed unsuspected. Ever mindful that his role was that of the casual visitor, he listened with appreciation to Willie's harmless gossip and whenever the little old man advanced a theory as to the enterprise in which they were engaged he greeted it not only with respect but with cordiality. Now and then as the undertaking progressed, he ventured a tactful, almost diffident suggestion, the value of which the inventor was quick to detect. Also, in the same nonchalant fashion, he produced from time to time the necessary materials, weaving a fairy web of prevarication when questioned too closely as to their source. "Oh, I have a friend in the boat-building business," said he, "who lets me have any small things I want. I have done some favors for him in the past and he is only too glad to square up the balance by sending me whatever I ask him for." The explanation, given with off-hand candor, quite satisfied the artless Willie, who imagined all the world as truthful as himself and inquired no further, accepting with unfeigned joy the gifts the gods provided. His face glowed with almost beatific light as he saw his dream slowly take form. Nothing he had ever done equalled this masterpiece. The project was his first thought at waking, the last before closing his eyes at night. Sometimes, even, when all but the sea slept, he would tiptoe downstairs, candle in hand, just to steal a glance at the child of his fancy. So absorbed was he in its growth and progress that it never crossed his mind to marvel that two men of Howard Snelling's and Robert Morton's ability should sacrifice to the invention the golden hours of the rare June days. Their interest was nothing miraculous. Who wouldn't have been interested in such a wonderful undertaking? Indeed, Mr. Snelling's concern for the venture was almost as keen as his own. From morning until late noon he toiled. Occasionally the Galbraiths' chauffeur brought him over from Belleport, but more often it was Cynthia who made the trip with him. Mr. Galbraith, it appeared, had been called back to New York on urgent business; Roger had gone with friends on a yachting cruise; and Mrs. Galbraith was devoting her time to her mother who was still indisposed. Hence Cynthia was forced to fill the gaps and serve both as host and hostess. It was a natural situation, and Bob thought nothing about it except selfishly to exult that under the conditions Cynthia was kept too busy to invade the Spence home or bother him with invitations. And that was not the only boon that came with Snelling's presence, for with three workers in the shop Robert Morton found not infrequent chances to steal into the kitchen, where Delight was busy with household tasks, and enjoy the rapture of a word or two with her. Never were there such days of enchantment as these! He might, he often said to himself, have remained in Wilton an entire summer and his acquaintance with the lady of his heart never have reached the degree of intimacy that it attained during Celestina's illness. To behold the girl, fair as the new-blown rose, presiding at the wee breakfast table was to forget all else. How dainty she looked in her trim cotton gown, with its demure cuffs and collar of white, and how deftly her hands moved among the simple fittings of the table! The worn agate coffee-pot seemed transformed to classic outline, and the nectar it contained to ambrosia. And what a famous little cook she was! Surely such flaky biscuit could never have been made by other hands. Bob suddenly became surprisingly interested in kitchens and all that they contained. The glint of tin pans, the dull ebony of the stove, iridescent suds foaming fresh and hot,--all these took on a strange and homely beauty quite novel in its charm. He had never dreamed before what an incomparable Eden a kitchen was! To slip in and fill the wood-box; to creep into the pantry and watch the beloved head as it bent over the baking table; to be permitted to wipe the dishes while _She_ washed them made of the simple duties tasks for gods and goddesses. He loved the pretty way her fringed lashes lifted, the wave of color that swept her cheek when she was startled by his step; and there was something ravishingly confidential in her caution: "Be careful, Bob, not to drop Aunt Tiny's china teacups." It was all foolish and inconsequential--the sighs, the smiles, the silences--but they made a paradise of the grim old universe. Many a time he longed to press his lips to the white arm, to kiss the warm curve of her neck where soft curls clustered. But he did none of these things. By a gentle reserve the girl kept him at his distance, and although there was only Jezebel to see, he did not transgress the bounds Delight's sweet womanliness reared between them. Of course she knew he loved her. She could not but know. Even Jezebel from her round blue eyes proclaimed a complete understanding of the romance and drawing herself into a fluffy ball in Willie's great chair feigned sleep that she might not embarrass the lovers. The canary knew, and so did the impertinent crimson rambler that clambered up the window frame and spied in through the pane. It was no secret. The whole dazzling world shared in the exquisite mystery. Were the tale to have been put into words half its delicate beauty would have been shattered. It was now a thing of clouds, of perfume, of sunshine. The waves whispered together of it; the birds trilled the story. A glance, a half-uttered sentence, the meeting of hands carried with them great throbbing reaches of emotion that went to make up the reality of the ephemeral drama. And then there was the tormenting, bewitching, wretched, alluring uncertainty of it all. One could never be sure, and in the spell of this disquietude lay half the magic. Robert Morton speculated as to whether Willie, along with Jezebel and the canary, had fathomed the idyl. He wondered, too, how much Snelling suspected. The New Yorker had an irritating habit of waylaying Delight and making pretty speeches to her, as if for the wanton pleasure of watching the blush rise in her cheek. When it came to women there was no denying Howard Snelling was as great an authority as at building ships. He understood the sex and knew what pleased them, and with the subtle art of a courtier he breathed into their ears a flattery too delicate to be resented. Beside such an expert Bob, floundering in his first real love affair, felt but a blunderer. Perhaps Mr. Snelling realized this and rather enjoyed the amateur's chagrin. However that may have been, he certainly let no opportunity slip for the display of his proficiency. The discomfited lover fumed with jealous rage; yet on analyzing the causes of his wrath he discovered he actually had but scant ground for complaint. He was not engaged to Delight, and until he was he had no claim upon her and not the smallest right in the world to grumble if another man chose to pay her a compliment. And what were compliments anyway? Only empty words. Yet reason as he would, he wished Snelling twenty fathoms deep in the sea before ever he had come to Wilton, there to haunt Willie's shop and make of himself a menace to all tranquillity. So the days passed in a delirious alternation of ecstasy and despair until one morning when Mr. Snelling came bringing from Madam Lee the long-delayed note which she had promised Bob she would send. She was now quite strong again, she wrote, and she wished him to arrange for his aunt, Mr. Spence and Miss Hathaway to come and have tea with the Belleport family on the following afternoon, when both Roger and Mr. Galbraith would be at home. With beating heart Robert Morton took the letter into the house and showed it to Delight. "How nice of them!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I do wish we could go! Willie would love it. He liked Mr. Galbraith and his son so much! And Aunt Tiny would be in the seventh heaven if only she were able to accept. She so seldom has an invitation out, poor dear!" "And you?" "Oh, I couldn't go anyway." "Why not?" "Well, in the first place, I have nothing to wear to a place like that." "Delight!" "And besides," she hurried on, "they are only asking me because I happen to be here in the house." "Indeed they're not!" "But I know they are," persisted the girl. "Everybody doesn't want to see me just because you--" "Because I what?" demanded Bob, with an ominous stride in her direction. "Because you--and Mr. Snelling like me," concluded she tranquilly. "Confound Snelling!" "Indeed, no. He is a charming gentleman, and I won't have him confounded." "Hang him then." "Nor hanged either," she protested. "Of course if you prefer Mr. Snelling--" began Robert Morton stiffly. She broke into a teasing laugh. "I may not prefer him, but nevertheless I will own he is the most wonderful specimen of masculinity that my eyes have ever beheld. Remember Wilton is a small place, pitifully limited in its outlook, and that I have not traveled the wide world to view the wonders it contains. Hence Mr. Snelling is to me like the Eiffel Tower, the Matterhorn, the tomb of Napoleon, or Fifth Avenue at Easter--something illustrious and novel." "He is nothing so fine as any of those," snapped Bob. "Oh, I don't know," was the provoking answer. Robert Morton bit his lip and moved toward the door, but he had not got further than the sill before she whispered: "Bob!" Resolutely he held his peace. "Please be nice, Bob," she cooed. Ah, he was back again, but she had retreated behind the tall rocker. "I suppose," she observed, hurtling the words over Jezebel's sleeping form, "that your aunt will be heartbroken to miss this party. Why don't you run upstairs and let her read the note? Then we can send our regrets when Mr. Snelling goes back to Belleport this noon." Obediently the young man sped to do her bidding, and soon Delight heard his voice calling from the upper hall. "She won't send her regrets. She says she's going. I tell her they will ask her another time, but she insists she feels lots better and was thinking of getting up, anyway. She wants to start putting fresh cuffs on her black cashmere this minute, and do I don't know what. You'd better come up and stop her." But Celestina was not to be stopped. Go she would! "My shoulder's 'most well anyhow," she affirmed, "an' I had planned to go down to supper. Do you think for one minute I'd miss a junket like this? Why, I'd go if it killed me! The Galbraiths are nice folks an' have been good to Bob and Willie. Besides," she added with ingratiating candor, "I want to see where they live. An' they're goin' to send the automobile for us, that great red one--imagine it! I ain't been in an automobile more'n six times in my whole life. Do you think I'd send my regrets? I'd go if I had to be carried on a stretcher!" Delight and Robert Morton laughed at her enthusiasm. "Now you trot straight down stairs, Bob," went on Celestina energetically, "an' write Mis' Lee we'll admire to come, all of us." "But Aunt Tiny," put in Delight, "I'm not going. Somebody must stay here and look after the house." "What for?" Celestina demanded. "The house won't run away, an' if thieves was to ransack it from attic to cellar they'd find nothin' worth carryin' away. Ridiculous!" "She says she hasn't anything to wear," interrupted Bob. "Delight Hathaway! For shame!" said the elder woman, raising a reproving finger. "You always look pretty as a picture in anything. Some folks need fine clothes to set 'em off but you don't. Don't be silly! Why, half the pleasure of Willie an' me would be wiped out if you didn't go, an' likely Bob would be disappointed, too." "You bet I would!" "W--e--ll," the girl yielded. "There, that's right, my dear." Celestina reached out and patted the slender hand. "Now, Bob, you go along an' write your letter," commanded she. "An' Delight, you bring me up some hot water an' fetch my clean print dress from the hall closet. I kinder think, come to mull it over, that there's fresh cuffs on my cashmere already, but you might look an' see. An' hadn't we better furbish up my bonnet this afternoon? It ain't been touched this season." CHAPTER XV A REVELATION The morning of the pilgrimage to Belleport was a hectic one in the gray cottage on the bluff. Before breakfast Celestina began preparations, appearing in the kitchen without trace of invalidism and helping Delight hurry the housework out of the way, that the precious hours might be spent in retrimming the hat of black straw which already had done duty four seasons. "Ain't it too vexatious," complained the irritated convalescent, "that I don't wear out nothin'? This hat, now--it's as good as the day it was bought, despite my havin' had it so long. I can't in conscience throw it away an' get another, much as I'd like to. The trimmin' was on the front the first summer, don't you remember? Then we tried it on behind a year; an' there was two seasons I wore it trimmed on the side. What are we goin' to do with it now, Delight? I've blacked it up an' can see no way for it this time but to turn it round hindside-before. What do you think?" The amateur milliner shook her head. "I've a plan," she smiled mysteriously. "Don't you worry, Aunt Tiny." "Oh, I shan't worry, child, if you take it in hand. I know that when you get through with it it's goin' to look as if it had come straight out of Mis' Gates's store over at the Junction. It does beat all what a knack you have for such things. You could make your fortune bein' a milliner. I s'pose you wouldn't want to face it in with red, would you? Willie likes red, an' there's a scrap of silk in the trunk under the eaves that could be stretched into a facin' with some piecin'." "I'm afraid you wouldn't like red, Aunt Tiny," the girl replied gently. "Mebbe I wouldn't," was the prompt answer. "Well, do it as you think best. You never put me into anything yet that warn't becomin', an' I reckon I can risk leavin' it to you." "Wouldn't you rather I helped you clear up the kitchen before I began hat trimming?" "Mercy, no! Don't waste precious time sweepin' up an' washin' dishes; I can do that. Like as not 'twill take some of the stiffness out of me. Besides, the work an' the millinery ain't the worst ahead of us. There's Willie to get ready. To coax him out of that shop an' into his Sunday suit is goin' to take some maneuverin'. I know, 'cause I have it to do once in a while when there's a funeral or somethin'. It's like pullin' teeth. There's times when I wish all his jumpers was burned to ashes. An' as for his hair, he rumples it up on end 'till there's no makin' it stay down smooth an' spread round like other folks's." "Oh, we mustn't try to dress Willie up too much," protested Delight. "I like him best just as he is." "Mebbe you do," the elder woman grumbled, "but the Galbraiths ain't goin' to feel that way. Why, what do you s'pose they'd think if Willie was to come prancin' over there for a dish of tea lookin' as he does at home? They'd be scandalized! Besides, ain't you an' me goin' to be dressed up? Ain't I got my new hat?" "Not yet," was the mischievous retort. "But I am goin' to have. No, sir! If I begin indulgin' Willie by lettin' him go all wild to this party in his old clothes, the next time there's a funeral there'll be no reinin' him in. He'll hold it up forevermore that he went to the Galbraiths in his jumper. I know him better'n you do." "I suppose so." "An' I'm firmer with him, too," went on Celestina. "You'd have him clean spoiled. I ain't sure but you've spoilt him already past all help durin' these last ten days. Did you hear him at breakfast askin' me to open his egg? He knows perfectly well I never take off the shell. All I ever do for him is to put in the butter, pepper, an' salt; an' I only do that 'cause he's squizzlin' so to get out in that shop that he ain't a notion whether there's fixin's on his egg or not. Let him get one of these ideas on his mind an' it's a wonder he don't eat the egg, shells an' all." "Poor dear!" The girl's face softened. "You pet him too much," said Celestina accusingly. "Don't you pet Willie a little yourself, Aunt Tiny?" teased Delight. "You know you do. Everybody does. We can't help it. People just love him and like to see him happy." "I know it," the woman admitted. "Why, there's folks in Wilton (I could name 'em right now) who would run their legs off for Willie. Look at Bob an' this Mr. Snellin' sweatin' in that shop like beavers over somethin' that ain't never goin' to do 'em an ounce of good--mebbe ain't never goin' to do anybody no good. There's somethin' in him that sorter compels people to stand on their heads for him like that. I often try to figger out just what it is," she mused. Then in a brisker tone she asked: "How's the hat comin'?" "Beautifully." "That's good. Hurry it right along, for I'm plannin' to have dinner at twelve an' get it out of the way." "But the car isn't coming for us until three o'clock." "'Twill take that time to wash up the dishes an' rig Willie up." "Not three hours!" "You don't know him. We'll have our hands full to head him away from that thing he's makin'. All I pray is no new scheme ketches him while he's dressin', for 'twill be all day with the party if it does." Fortunately no such misadventure befell. Willie was corralled, his protests smothered, and he was led placidly away by Bob, to emerge after an interval resigned as a lamb for the slaughter. Even the homespun suit could not wholly banish his native charm, for after it was once on he forgot its existence and wore it with an ease almost too oblivious to suit Celestina. Not so she! On the contrary she issued from her chamber conscious of every article of finery adorning her plump person. She settled, unsettled, resettled her hat a dozen times, and tried no less than a score of locations for her large cameo pin. Her freshly washed lisle gloves had unfortunately shrunk in the drying and refused to go on at the finger tips, and from each digit projected a sharply defined glove end which kept her busy pushing and pulling most of the afternoon. So occupied was Delight with tying Willie's cravat and rearranging the spray of flowers on Celestina's bonnet that she had not a moment to consider her own toilet which was hastily made after everything else was done. Yet as Robert Morton looked at her, he thought that nothing could have graced her more completely than did her simple gown of muslin. There was in the frock a demureness almost Quaker-like which as a foil for her beauty breathed the very essence of coquetry. What lover could have failed to feel proud of such a treasure? Nevertheless, Bob had his qualms about the prospective visit. He was not concerned for Willie or Celestina. They were what they were and any one of discrimination would recognize their worth. Nor did he entertain fears for Delight or the Galbraiths. All of them could be relied upon to meet the situation with ease and dignity. But Cynthia--what would be her attitude? Of late, when she had come over in the car with Mr. Snelling, she had maintained a distant politeness which would have been amusing had it not been ominous. He wondered how she would conduct herself today, not alone toward him but toward the girl whom she could not but regard as her rival. How much did she guess, he speculated, of the romance that was taking place in the rose-covered cottage on the bluff. And if she had guessed nothing, might not Snelling, leaping at conclusions, have gone back to Belleport there to spread idle gossip of the love-story? What would Howard Snelling know of the delicate situation 'twixt himself and Mr. Galbraith's daughter? And even though no rumors of the affair reached Cynthia at all, Robert Morton was old enough to sense the hazard of introducing one woman to another. Well, the risk must be taken; there was no escape from it now. Even as these disquieting imaginings chased themselves through his mind, the car stopped before the door and Roger Galbraith, who had come to meet the guests, entered at the gate. No courtesy that would add to their comfort had been omitted. There were rugs and extra wraps, and a drive along the shore road had been planned as an added pleasure. Willie, his back actually turned on his beloved workshop, was in the seventh heaven. "What you settin' on the peaked edge of the seat for, Celestina?" he asked when once they were in the automobile. "The thing ain't goin' to blow up or break down. Let your whole heft sink into the cushions an' enjoy yourself. 'Tain't often you get the chance to go a-ridin'." His joy in the novel experience was as unalloyed and as transparent as a child's. "My soul!" he ejaculated as the vehicle turned at last into the broad avenue leading to the Galbraith estate. "Ain't this a big place! Big's a hotel an' some to spare." Even after the introductions had been performed and he had sunk into a wicker chair beside his host, with a great pillow behind him to keep him from being swallowed up and lost entirely, he abated not a whit of his gladness, admiring the flowers, the smoothly cut lawns, and the ocean view until he radiated good humor on all sides. But it was when the tea wagon was rolled out and placed before Madam Lee that his interest was not to be curbed. "Ain't that cute now?" he commented, his eyes following the unaccustomed sight with alertness. "The feller that got a-holt of that idee found a good one. Trundles along like a little baby carriage, don't it?" Nothing would satisfy him until he had examined every part of the invention, and Celestina trembled lest then and there his brain be stimulated to action and he make a bolt for home to complete without delay some sudden scheme the novelty had engendered. However, no such calamity occurred. He drank his tea with satisfaction and was presently borne off by Mr. Galbraith to inspect a recently purchased barometer. After he had gone the company broke up into little groups. Mrs. Galbraith and Celestina betook themselves to a shaded corner, there to exchange felicitations on Miss Morton's nephew; Roger, Cynthia, and Bob perched on the broad piazza rail and discussed the recent boat race; and Madam Lee was left alone with Delight. Robert Morton looked in vain for Mr. Snelling but he was nowhere to be seen, and presently he learned that that gentleman had taken one of the cars and gone for an afternoon's spin to Sawyer's Falls. Whether his absence was a contributory cause or not, certain it was that for the time being at least Cynthia lapsed into her customary friendly manner and quite outdid herself in graciousness. Bob relaxed his tension. The afternoon was moving on with more serenity than he had dared hope, and inwardly he began to congratulate himself on the success of it. To judge from appearance every one was in the serenest frame of mind. Willie was beaming into his host's face, and both men were laughing immoderately; Celestina, from the snatches of conversation that reached him, was relating for Mrs. Galbraith's benefit the symptoms of her late illness; and Madam Lee was chatting with Delight as with an old-time friend. Bob longed to join them, but prudence forbade his leaving Cynthia's side. Moreover he suspected the tête-à-tête was of the old lady's arranging and he dared not break in on it. If Madam Lee desired his presence, she was quite capable of commanding it by one of those characteristically imperious waves of her hand. But she did not summon him. Instead she sat with her keen little eyes fixed on the girl opposite as if fascinated by her beauty. Once Bob heard her ask Delight of the Brewsters and caught fragments that indicated they were talking of the child's early life in the village. It was Celestina who at length broke in on the conversation. "I guess we must be thinkin' of goin', Delight, don't you? We have a long ride back, you know." "Delight!" echoed Madam Lee, repeating the word with surprise. "A queer name, ain't it?" Celestina put in. "So old-fashioned an' uncommon! When the child first come here folks couldn't believe but 'twas a pet name her dad had given her; but the little thing insisted 'twas what she was christened." "Father said I was named for my mother and my grandmother, Delight Lee." There was a gasp from the stately old lady in the chair. With convulsive grasp she caught and held the girl's wrist. "Your father was Ralph Hathaway?" "Yes," was the wondering reply. "How did you know?" No answer came. "Mother!" cried Mrs. Galbraith, coming swiftly to her side and bending over the form crumpled against the pillows. Her face, too, was pale, and even Mr. Galbraith looked startled. "Don't take on so, mother," her daughter whispered. "Control yourself if you can. There may be some mistake. It is unlikely that--" "There is no mistake," came in a hollow voice from the woman huddled in the chair, who regarded Delight with frightened eyes. "She is my daughter's child, sent by the mercy of heaven that I might make amends before I went down into the grave." Tense silence followed the assertion. "Did your father never tell you anything, my dear, of his marriage?" went on Madam Lee in a tone that although firmer still trembled. "No." "Then I can tell you--I, who drove your mother from my house when she refused to wed a man she did not love." Delight's great eyes widened with wonder. "Yes," went on the elder woman with impetuous haste, "look at me. I have grown older and wiser since those days. But I was proud when I was young, and self-willed, and determined to have my way. I had three daughters: Maida, whom you see here, Delight and Muriel. We lived in Virginia and my children's beauty was the talk of the county. Maida married Richard Galbraith, a descendant of one of our oldest families, and I rejoiced in the alliance. For Delight, my second daughter, I chose as husband the son of one of my oldest friends, a rich young landholder who although older than she I knew would bring her name and fortune. But the girl, high-spirited like myself but lacking my ambition, would have none of him. All unbeknown to any of us, she had fallen in love with Ralph Hathaway, a handsome, penniless adventurer from the West. There was nothing against the man save that he was young, headstrong, and had his way to make, but he balked me in my plans and I hated him for it. In vain did I try to break off the match. It was useless. The pair loved one another devotedly and refused to be separated." Madam Lee ceased speaking for an instant; then went on resolutely. "When I say my daughter had all the Lee determination, you will guess the rest. She fled from home and although I spared no money to trace her, I never saw or heard of her again. The next year, as if in judgment upon me, Muriel, my youngest child, died and I had but one daughter remaining. It was then that, saddened and chastened by sorrow, I regretted my narrowness and injustice and prayed to God for the chance to wipe out my cruelty. But my prayers went unanswered, and all these years forgiveness has been denied me. Now I am old but God is merciful. He has not let me die with this weight upon my soul." She bowed her head on Delight's shoulder and wept. "Your mother?" she whispered, when she was able to enunciate the words. "My mother died in California when I was born. Then my father took to the sea and carried me with him. We sailed until I was ten years old, when his ship--" "I know," interrupted Madam Lee gently. She gave a long sigh. "We--we must speak more of this later," murmured she. "I am tired now." As she dropped back against the cushions, Celestina rose softly and motioned the others to follow her; but when Delight attempted to slip away the hand resting on hers tightened. "You are not leaving me!" pleaded the old lady faintly. "I will come back again," answered the girl in a soothing tone. "When? To-morrow?" "If you wish it, Madam L--" "Call me grandmother, my child," said the woman, a smile rare in its peace and beauty breaking over her drawn countenance. CHAPTER XVI ANOTHER BLOW DESCENDS The ride home from Belleport was a subdued one, bringing to an afternoon that had been rich in sunshine a climax of shadow. The Galbraiths were far too stunned by the startling revelations of the day to wish to prolong a meeting that had lapsed into awkwardness, and until they had had opportunity to readjust themselves they were eager to be alone; nor did their delicacy of perception fail to detect a similar craving in the minds of their guests. Therefore they did not press their visitors to remain and tactfully arranged that one of the servants instead of Roger should drive the Spences back over the Harbor Road. As the motor purred its way along, there was little conversation. Even had not the chauffeur's presence acted as a restraint, none of the party would have had the heart to make perfunctory conversation; the tragedy of the moment had touched them too deeply. What a strange, wonderful unraveling of life's tangled skeins had come with the few fleeting hours. Each turned the drama over in his mind, trying to make a reality of it and spin into the warp and woof of the tapestry time had already woven this thread of new color. But so startling was it in hue that it refused to blend, standing out against the duller tones of the past with appalling distinctness; and never was it more irreconcilable than when the familiar confines of the little fishing hamlet by the sea were reached and those who struggled to harmonize it saw it in contrast with this background of simplicity. Each silently reconstructed Delight's life, now linking it with its ancestry and its romantic beginnings. She had, then, sprung from aristocratic stock; riches had been her right, and culture her heritage. She had been the single flower of a passionate love, and the hot-headed young father to whom she had been bequeathed when bereft of the woman he had adored had taken her with him when he had sought the sea's balm to assuage his sorrow. She was all that remained of that tender, throbbing memory of his youth. Where he went she followed, all unconscious of peril and with youth's God-given faith; and when the great moment came and the supreme sacrifice was demanded, the man voluntarily severed the bonds that bound them, leaving her to life while he himself went forth into the Beyond. What must not that heroic soul have suffered when he cast his child into the ocean's arms and upon the mercies of an unknown future! What blind trust led him; what unselfishness and courage lay in the choice he made! A smaller mind would have followed the easier path and kept them united to the end, happy in the thought that in their death they were not divided, and that no years stretched ahead when she would be without his protection. Might he not be performing a kinder act to let her go down into the sea than to entrust her to the charity of strangers? He must have wrestled with all these problems and temptations as he stood lashed to the mast out there in the fateful storm. Ah, his confidence in a fatherhood more omniscient than his own had not been misplaced. Loving hands had borne his darling safely through the waves to a home where, in an atmosphere of devotion, the beauty that had been in her from the beginning had perfected in its maturity. Even the homely surroundings of the environment into which she drifted could not stifle her native fineness of soul. Bred up a fisherman's daughter she had lived and moved among plain, kindly people, whom she had learned to cherish and revere as if they were of her blood, and to whom she had endeared herself to a corresponding degree. And now what was her future to be? Was she suddenly to be snatched back into her rightful sphere, the ties that linked her with the present snapped asunder, and a new world with the myriad opportunities she had until now been denied placed within her reach? That was the query that agitated the minds of the silent thinkers who sped along the Harbor Road. Sunset was gilding the water, kissing the sands into rosy warmth and casting glints of vermilion over the low buildings at the mouth of the bay, where windows flashed forth a flaming reflection of fire. The peace of approaching twilight brooded over the village. Little boats, like homing doves, came flying across the vast expanse of waves, their sails a splendor of copper in the fading light. With the hush of night the breeze died into stillness until scarce a leaf of the weather-beaten poplars stirred. From the tangle of roses, sweet fern and bayberry that overgrew the fields the note of a thrush rose clear on the quiet air. A whirling bevy of gulls circled the bar, left naked and opalescent by the receding tide. Peace was everywhere, divine peace, save in the breasts of those who gazed only to find a mockery in the surrounding tranquillity. Robert Morton's face was stern in meditation. How was this mighty transformation in Delight's fortunes to affect the hopes he fostered? To wed the daughter of a humble fisherman was a different matter from offering a penniless future to the grand-daughter of the stately Madam Lee. Even when the possibility of marriage with Cynthia had loomed in his path, his pride had rebelled at the financial inequality of the match. He did not wish to be patronized, to come empty-handed to a princess whose hands were full. The thought had been a galling one. And now once again he was in a similar position. Of course, Madam Lee and the Galbraiths would desire to make good the past; he knew them well enough for that. Delight would be elevated to the same plane with Cynthia, and he would be faced with the old irritating inferiority of fortune. Moreover, in her recently acquired station, the lady of his dreams might scorn such a humble suitor. Who could tell? Wealth worked great changes in individuals sometimes, and at best human nature was a frail, assailable, and incalculable factor. Furthermore the girl had never pledged him her love. There had been no spoken word between them. The vision that had made a Utopia of his world had been, he reflected, of his own creating. He glanced at Delight, but she did not meet his eye. Her gaze was vacantly following the rapidly shifting landscape. Although the glory from the sky shone on her face the radiance that glowed there came only from without and was the result of no inward exultation. Even the gray cottage had assumed a false splendor in the rosy twilight and was lighted with a beauty not its own. When the car stopped, Willie clambered stiffly out and he and Bob helped the women to alight. Then the motor rolled away and they were alone. "Well!" burst out Celestina, her pent-up feeling taking vent, "did you ever know of such a to-do? I've been stiflin' to talk all the way home! Why, you're goin' to be rich, Delight! You'll be aunts, an' uncles, an' cousins with them Galbraiths--picture it! Likely they'll take you to New York with 'em an' to goodness knows where!" The girl did not answer but moved to Willie's side and slipped her hand into his, as if certain of his understanding and sympathy. "You don't seem much set up by your good luck," went on the breathless Celestina. "Delight's kinder bowled over by surprise, Tiny," Willie explained gently. "It's took all our breaths away, I guess." Tenderly he pressed the trembling fingers that clung to his. "You ain't got to worry about it, dearie," whispered he in a caressing tone. "No power can make you do anything you don't choose to; an' what's more, nobody'll want to force you into what won't be for your happiness." "I shall never leave Zenas Henry," Delight said with determination. "An' nobody'll urge you to, dear heart. Don't fret, child, don't fret. To-morrow we'll straighten this snarl all out an' 'til then you've got nothin' to fear. Them as love you shall stay by, I give you my word on it." "Hadn't I better go home to-night and tell them?" The old inventor considered a moment. "I don't believe I would," he answered at last. "They ain't expectin' you, an' if you was to go lookin' so white an' frightened as you do now, 'twould anger Zenas Henry an' upset 'em all. Wait an' see what happens to-morrow. 'Twill be time enough then. You're tired, sweetheart. Stay here an' rest to-night. What do you say, Bob?" "I think it would be much wiser." "Course 'twould," nodded Willie. "You stay right here, like as if nothin' had happened, an' think calmly about it a little while, child. You ain't got to decide a thing at present; furthermore, there may not be anything for you to decide. We've no way of figgerin' what your--your--relations mean to do. Just trust 'em a bit. They're Bob's friends an' I guess we can count on 'em to act as is fair an' right." "They _are_ Bob's friends, aren't they?" repeated the girl, her face brightening as if the fact, hitherto forgotten, gave her confidence. "And splendidly loyal friends too," the young man put in eagerly. "Then I will trust them," she said. "It isn't as if they were strangers." How Robert Morton longed to go to her, to tell her in her sweet dependence how eager he was for the day when no friend of his should be a stranger to her; when their lives would be so closely intertwined that every interest, every hope, every thought of his should be hers also. Perhaps the unuttered wish that trembled on his lips was reflected in his eyes, for after looking up at him she suddenly dropped her lashes and, turning away, followed Tiny into the house. "I've cautioned Celestina not to go talkin' to her any more just now," announced the little old man when she had gone. "Your aunt's an awful good woman; no better lives. But there's times like today when things don't strike her as they do me an' Delight. She's so fond of the girl that her first thought would be for the money an' all that; but that would be the last consideration in the world in Delight's mind. She's awful loyal an' affectionate. Things go deep with her, an' she sets a heap of store by the folks she cares for. Why, Zenas Henry is like her own father. Since she was a wee tot she ain't known no other. While this old lady, her grandmother--what is she? Why, she don't mean nothin'--not a thing!" They walked on toward the shop door, each occupied with his own reveries; then suddenly Willie roused himself. "Why, if here ain't Janoah!" he exclaimed. "What you doin', Jan? Was you after somethin'? I reckon you found the place pretty well deserted an' were wonderin' what had become of us all." "I warn't doin' no wonderin', Willie Spence," the man replied. "I knowed where you'd gone 'cause I saw you ridin' away like a sheep bein' led to the sacrifice." "Like a what?" repeated the inventor with a grin. "An innocent lamb, or a rat in a trap," Janoah said with solemn emphasis. "What are you drivin' at, anyhow?" questioned Willie. "You didn't suspect nothin'?" "Suspect anything? No, of course not. Why?" "You hadn't a suspicion the whole thing was a decoy?" "What whole thing?" "The trip an' all." Willie studied his friend's face in puzzled silence. "Whatever are you tryin' to say?" demanded he at last. Janoah swept his hand dramatically round the shop. "You've been betrayed, Willie!" he announced with tragic intensity. "Betrayed by them as you thought was your friends, an' who you've trusted. I warned you, but you wouldn't listen, an' now the thing I told you would happen has happened." Triumphant pleasure gleamed in the sinister smile. "They tricked you into leavin'," went on the malicious voice, "an' then they came here an' stole what was yours--your invention. I caught 'em doin' it. I hid outside an' overheard 'em tell how they'd been waitin' days for the chance when everybody should be gone. 'Twas that Snelling an' another like him, a draughtsman. They laughed an' said that now the old man was out of the way they could do as they pleased. Then they took all the measurements of your invention, made some sketches, an' took its picter." Willie listened, open-mouthed. "You must be crazy, Janoah," he slowly observed. "I ain't crazy," Janoah replied, with stinging sharpness. "The whole thing was just as I say. It was part of a plot that Snellin' an' Galbraith have been plannin' all along; an' either they've used this young feller here [he motioned toward Robert Morton] as a tool, or else he's in it with 'em." Bob started forward, but Willie's hand was on his arm. "Gently, son," he murmured. Then addressing Janoah he asked: "An' what earthly use could Mr. Galbraith have for--" "'Cause he sees money in it," was the prompt response. A thrill of uneasiness passed through Robert Morton's frame. Had not those very words been spoken both by the capitalist and Howard Snelling? They had uttered them as a laughing prediction, but might they not have rated them as true? With sudden chagrin he looked from Willie to Janoah and from Janoah back to Willie again. "I've been inquirin' up this Galbraith," went on Janoah. "It 'pears he's a big New York shipbuilder--that's what he is--an' Snellin' is one of his head men." If the mischief-maker derived pleasure from dealing out the fruit of his investigations he certainly reaped it now, for he was rewarded by seeing an electrical shock stiffen Willie's figure. "It ain't true!" cried the little inventor. "It ain't true! Is it, Bob?" Robert Morton's eyes fell before his piercing scrutiny. "Yes," was his reluctant answer. "You knew it all along?" "Yes." "An' Snellin'?" "He is in Mr. Galbraith's employ, yes." "An'--an'--you let 'em come here--" began the old man bewildered. "You let 'em come here to steal Willie's idee," interrupted Janoah, wheeling on Bob. "You helped 'em to come, after his takin' you into his home an' all!" "I didn't know what they meant to do," Robert Morton stammered. "I just thought they were going to lend us a hand at working up the thing." "A likely story!" sniffed Janoah with scorn. "No siree! You came here as a tool--you were paid for it, I'll bet a hat!" "You lie." "Prove it," was the taunting response. "I--I--can't prove it," confessed the young man wretchedly, "but Willie knows that what you accuse me of isn't so." With face alight with hope he turned toward the old man at his elbow; but no denial came from the expected source. Willie had sunk down on a pile of boards and buried his face in his hands. "An' I thought they were my friends," they heard him moan. Robert Morton hesitated, then bent over the bowed figure, and as he did so Janoah, casting one last look of gloating delight at the ruin he had wrought, slipped softly from the room. As he went out he heard a broken murmur from the inventor: "I'll--I'll--not--believe it," asserted he feebly. But despite the brave words, the seed of suspicion had taken root, and Robert Morton knew that Willie's confidence in him had been shaken. Still the little old man clung with dogged persistence to his sanguine declaration: "_I'll not believe it_!" CHAPTER XVII A GRIM HAND INTERVENES The next morning saw a grave change in the household on the bluff. Delight, with violet-circled eyes and cheeks whose rose tints had faded to pallor, listened with dread for the sound of the Galbraith's motor. What the day would bring forth she feared to speculate. Willie and Bob also showed traces of a sleepless night. Although they had guarded from the others the happenings of the previous evening, between them loomed a barrier of mutual amazement and reproach. Beneath his attempted optimism Willie was wounded and indignant that he should have been deceived by those in whose kindness he had believed so whole-heartedly. He fought the facts with loyalty, obstinately trusting that some satisfactory explanation would be forthcoming, but he did not understand, and the dumb question that spoke in his eyes hurt Robert Morton more than any formulated reproach could have done. It was human, the young man owned, that the inventor should resent having been tricked. He himself, throughout the weary watches of the night, had twisted and turned Janoah's damning testimony, struggling to explain it away by some simple and harmless interpretation; yet he was compelled to admit that the facts pointed in but one direction. And if he was baffled in his search for a way out, how much more so must Willie be? Why, he would be almost superman if he did not surrender his faith before such convincing evidence. To the grief he experienced at forfeiting the little old man's trust, Robert Morton was also compelled to add the bitterness of discovering that those whose friendship was dearest to him had betrayed it and used him as a stool pigeon in a contemptible plot that he would have scorned to further had he been cognizant of it. He wondered, as he turned restlessly on his pillow, whether it was Mr. Galbraith with whom the duplicity originated or whether the conspiracy of yesterday was one of Snelling's hatching. Was it not possible the employee desired the invention for his own profit? That, to be sure, would be calamity enough, but it would at least clear Mr. Galbraith of theft and reinstate him in the young man's confidence. If only that could be the answer to the riddle, how thankful he would be! Well, until he could be brought face to face with the capitalist, it was futile to attempt to unravel the enigma. How he longed in his bewilderment for the sympathy and counsel of a fresh perspective! But on Tiny's discretion he could place no reliance and even had he been able to do so, everything within him shrank from the disloyalty of voicing evil against his friends until he had proof. Delight was also an impossible confidant because of her recently discovered relationship to the Galbraith family. To breathe a word which might at this delicate juncture prejudice her against her new relatives would be contemptible. No, there was nothing to be done but be patient and maintain in the meantime as close a semblance to a normal attitude as was possible. Fortunately the silence that settled down upon the silvered cottage caused no surprise to any of its occupants. Having been warned not to chatter, Celestina observed a welcome quietness perfectly understood. Nor was it strange that in view of the shock Delight had received she should be more thoughtful than usual. Nobody commented either on Willie's abandonment of his inventing, or gave heed that he and Robert Morton spoke little together. How could the Galbraiths, Bob's best friends, be discussed in his presence? There was abundant explanation, therefore, why a strained atmosphere should prevail and pass unnoticed without either Celestina or Delight suspecting that its cause was other than the disclosures made by Madam Lee on the previous afternoon. Nevertheless, eager as was each of the household to have speculation satisfied and the future with whatever it might contain unfold, there was a simultaneous start of apprehension when the Galbraiths' familiar red car stopped at the gate of the cottage. From it alighted neither Mr. Snelling nor any member of the family, but instead the chauffeur gravely delivered to Robert Morton a hastily scrawled note written in Mr. Galbraith's spreading hand. Marveling a little that it was he to whom the communication should be addressed, the young man broke the seal of the letter. Madam Lee, he read, weary with excitement, had retired almost immediately after their departure, the maid attending her having left her sleeping like a tired child; but when they had gone to arouse her in the morning, it had been only to find that she had passed quietly away in her sleep without struggle or suffering. Snelling had gone over to New York to make the necessary funeral arrangements, and the family were to follow the next day. There was nothing Bob could do, but if he and Delight wished to accompany them, Mrs. Galbraith would be glad to have them. Madam Lee had been devoted to Bob, and it was Delight's unchallenged right to share in the final obsequies to her grandmother. Awed, and in a low voice, Robert Morton read the communication aloud. "I shall go, of course," he said, with a catch in his voice. "Madam Lee--was very dear to me. Had she been of my own people I could not have cared for her more deeply." "And I--what shall I do?" questioned Delight. The appeal was to Bob, and the sense of dependence vibrating in it thrilled him with tender gladness. "I suppose," he answered gently, "it would make your grandmother happy to know you were there. Wouldn't it be a token of forgiveness?" "What do you think, Willie?" the girl asked. "I agree with Bob that you should go, my dear," the old man replied. "Somehow it seems as if your grandmother would rest the sweeter for feelin' you were near by. An' anyhow, it's a mark of respect to the dead. You're bound to show that, no matter how you feel. I'm pretty sure that if you an' your grandmother had had the chance to get better acquainted, you would have loved one another dearly. It was only that it all came too late for you to feel toward her the same as Bob does." "Perhaps!" Delight returned with half-dazed seriousness. So it was decided the two young persons would go with the Galbraiths to New York, and the next day they joined the Belleport family and followed the body of the fine, stately old Southern woman to its last resting place. There were no outside friends among the small group of mourners, and the two days of constant and intimate companionship drew them together with a closeness very vital in its results. Delight was received into the circle with a tact and affection that not only put her at her ease but won her heart; and Robert Morton, as Madam Lee's favorite, was as much a part of the family as if he had been born into it. For the time being, the common grief banished from his mind every other thought, and once again he and his old-time friends met without a shadow of distrust between them. Even Cynthia was in her most appealing mood, casting all caprice and artificiality aside and centering most of her attention on her newly acquired cousin. The silent benediction of peace the presence of the dead brought brooded over them all, and it was with no perfunctory tenderness that Delight bent and gently kissed her grandmother's cold forehead. Then came the journey back to Belleport, and as Mr. Galbraith, Roger, and Howard Snelling were all detained in New York, it was Bob who brought the party home. In the meantime no opportunity had presented itself for broaching to the financier the subject of Willie's invention. The interval during the funeral rites was too inopportune, and Robert Morton had lacked both the inclination and the courage to break in upon such an occasion with an affair so sordid and unpleasant. He had hoped that during the return to the Cape some chance for a talk with the capitalist would be afforded him. But now there was no help for it but to go back to Willie Spence's with the weight still heavy on his heart. Mr. Galbraith, he learned, would have to remain in the city two weeks or more; and an important business deal would keep Mr. Snelling at the Long Island plant indefinitely. Hence for the present there was not a possibility of clearing up the mystery. It was, however, significant that Snelling evidently considered his part of the work done; and if Janoah's accusations were founded on fact, as they appeared to be, it was not surprising that he seized upon the confusion of the present as a fortunate cover for his exit from Wilton. The more Robert Morton pondered on the train of events, the less willing he became to connect Mr. Galbraith with the purloining of Willie's idea. The financier had intended to do precisely what he had specified, lend a friendly hand to the old man's scheme. It was Snelling who had seen in the circumstance something too promising to let pass and who, without his employer's knowledge, had made bold to secure the device for his personal profit. In the meanwhile, ignorant that Robert Morton was cognizant of his cupidity, he was as debonair as if he had nothing on his conscience. He made himself useful in every possible direction, and on parting from Bob at the train declared he should look forward with the greatest anticipation to their future business association together. How the young man longed to confront the knave with his crime! It seemed almost imperative that before the mischief proceeded farther steps should be taken to stop it. But what proofs had he to present? No, a middle course was the only thing possible, Bob decided. He must return to Willie's roof with the atmosphere uncleared and finish the little that still remained to be done on the invention as if no shadow clouded his sky. He could not leave Willie in the lurch. Furthermore, it was out of the question for him to depart from Wilton until he had come to an understanding with Delight Hathaway. The intimacy of the past week, with its lights and shadows, had only served to render stronger the bonds that bound him to her. In every issue the network of strange events had developed her character, and displayed facets of such unsuspected force and splendor that where beauty had at first fascinated it was now the soul behind it that called to him. Truly Madam Lee had in this grandchild a worthy descendant, and it brought an added joy to his heart to thus link together the two beings he loved most deeply. Therefore he made the journey back to Wilton, bravely resolved to bear Janoah's taunts and Willie's silent reproaches until the moment came when he could acquaint Mr. Galbraith with Snelling's perfidy and see the injustice righted. It was not an enviable position, the one in which he stood. He felt it to be only human that in the face of this acid test the old inventor's affection and allegiance toward him should waver, and that Janoah would detect and rejoice in its unsteadiness. But as Bob relied upon ultimately solving the conundrum, he felt he could endure a short interval of unmerited distrust. It was in Delight and Tiny, who were unconscious of any false note in his relation to the household, that he placed his hopes for aid. Hence it was with no small degree of consternation that on reaching Wilton he learned that the girl had resolved now to return to her own home. "I have been here over two weeks already," she said to Bob, "and I really am needed by my own family. They miss me dreadfully when I am gone. Zenas Henry goes down like a plummet, Abbie says. And then I have so much to tell them! Besides, now that Aunt Tiny is well again, there is no use in my remaining." "There is a great deal of use in it for me!" asserted the young man moodily. "Nonsense! You and Willie have your work, and in a day or two you will be so buried in it you won't know whether I am here or not." "Delight!" A warning echo in the word and a quick forward movement caused her to add hurriedly: "And--and--anyway, you can come up to our house and see me there. You will like the three captains and Abbie, you simply can't help it; they are dears! And you will worship Zenas Henry--at least you will if he is--I mean sometimes he doesn't--well, you know how older men feel when younger ones appear. He is very devoted to me and he is always afraid-- But I am sure he will understand, and that you and he will get on beautifully together," she concluded with scarlet cheeks. The clumsy explanation had a dubious ring and Bob frowned. "You see, your being Aunt Tiny's nephew will help some; he likes her very much. And of course any friend of Willie's and--and--of mine--" With every word the formidable Zenas Henry increased in formidableness. She saw the scowl deepen. "You will come and see me, won't you?" she pleaded timidly. "I should be sorry if--" Robert Morton caught the slender hand and held it firmly. "I'll come were there a thousand Zenas Henrys!" "That's nice!" she answered with a nervous laugh. "There won't be a thousand, though. There never can be but one as good and as dear as he is! Only remember, you mustn't come right away. I shall have a great deal to tell them at home, and it won't be easy for Zenas Henry to face the fact that the Galbraiths have any claims on me. It has always been his pride that I had no relatives and belonged entirely to him. And I do, you know," she went on quickly. "Nothing on earth shall take me from Zenas Henry! I worried a good deal lest Madam L--lest my grandmother should insist that I spend part of my time with her. But that is all settled now. I can keep up my friendship with the Galbraith family by calls and short visits, and everything will go on as before. I don't want anything changed." The young man saw her draw in her chin proudly. "Of course I have forgiven my grandmother," she went on, "but I never can forget that she made my mother's life unhappy and that she was unkind to my father. So I never wish to accept any favors from any of them." "But the Galbraiths are not to blame for the past," ventured Bob, his loyalty instantly in arms. "No. But they are Lees." "Your grandmother was sorry--bitterly sorry," urged the young man in a persuasive tone. "It was probably her regret that caused her death." The girl nodded sadly. "I know," she said. "I realize she lived to regret what she had done. I am not blaming her. But for all that, she never can mean to me what she might have meant. Rather I shall always think of her as a handsome, stately old lady who was your friend and loved you." She turned to leave him, but he refused to let her go. "Delight," he cried, drawing her closer, "will your grandmother be dearer to you because she loved me? Tell me, sweetheart! Do I mean anything in your life? You are the only thing that matters in mine." He saw a radiance flash into her wonderful eyes, and in another instant her head was against his breast. "It is only because of you, Bob," she whispered, clinging to him, "that I can forgive the Lees at all." CHAPTER XVIII THE PROGRESS OF ANOTHER ROMANCE The ecstasy that came to Robert Morton with his new-found happiness swept before it the clouds that had overcast his sky, until his horizon was almost as radiant as it had been on the day of his arrival at Wilton. Janoah Eldridge came no more to the Spence cottage; Snelling had vanished; the Galbraiths were occupied with their own affairs; and the barrier between Bob and Willie began slowly to wear away. The little old man was of far too believing and charitable a nature to hold out long against his own optimism; moreover, he detested strife and was much more willing to endure a wrong than to harbor ill feeling; hence he was only too ready to reconstruct Janoah's venomous story into terms of his native blind faith. He did not, to be sure, understand, and for days and nights he puzzled ceaselessly over the problem events presented; but as no light was forthcoming, his zest in the enigma cooled until the mystery took on the unfathomable quality of various other mysteries he had wrestled with and finally shelved as unanswerable. There was the invention to finish, and so eager was he to see it completed that to this interest every other thought was subordinated. Therefore, although misgivings assailed him, they gradually receded into his subconsciousness, leaving behind them much of the good will he had formerly cherished toward Robert Morton. The olive branch Willie tacitly extended Bob seized with avidity. Had not the world suddenly become too perfect to be marred by discord? Why, in the exuberance of his joy he would have forgiven anybody anything! He did own to bruised feelings, but time is a great healer of both mental and of physical pain, and the hurts he had received soon dimmed into scars that carried with them no acute sensation. His mind was too much occupied with Delight Hathaway and the wonder of their love for him to think to any great extent of himself. The romance still remained a secret between them, for so vehement had been the turmoil into which Zenas Henry had been thrown by the tidings of the girl's past history that it seemed unwise to follow blow with blow and acquaint him just at present with the news of the lovers' engagement. Moreover, there was Cynthia Galbraith to consider. Robert Morton was too chivalrous to be brutal to any woman, much less an old friend like Cynthia. Hence he and Delight moved in a dream, the full beauty of which they alone sensed. Their secret was all the more delicious for being a secret, and with all life before them they agreed they could afford to wait. Nevertheless concealment was at variance with the character of either, and although they derived a certain exhilaration from their clandestine happiness they longed for the time when their path should lie entirely in the open, when Zenas Henry's consent should be obtained, and their betrothal acknowledged before all the world. Until such a moment came an irksome deception colored their love and left them in constant danger of discovery. Indeed, had the observer been keen enough to interpret psychic phenomena, there was betrayal in the soft light of Delight's eyes and in the grave tenderness of her face; and as for Bob, he felt his great good-fortune must be emblazoned on every feature of his countenance. In point of fact, no such condition prevailed. The girl returned to her home and took her place there, bringing with her her customary buoyancy of spirit; and if her light-heartedness was more exaggerated than was her wont, those who loved her attributed it to her joy at being once more beneath her own roof-tree. Zenas Henry and the three captains fluttered about her as if her absence had been one of years rather than of days; and even Abbie, less demonstrative than the others, showed by a quiet satisfaction her deep contentment at having the girl back again. Of course Robert Morton let no great length of time elapse before he climbed the hill and invaded the Brewster home. As Celestina's nephew and Willie's guest he had credentials enough to assure him of a welcome, and for an interval these sufficed to give him an enviable entrée; but after a few calls, his winning personality secured for him a place of his own. He inspected Captain Phineas Taylor's broken compass and set it right; he discussed rheumatism and its woes with Captain Benjamin Todd; he lent an attentive ear to the nautical adventures of Captain Jonas Baker. Abbie, who was a systematic housekeeper, approved of his habit of wiping his feet before he entered the door and the careful fashion he had of replacing any chair he moved; most men, she averred, were so thoughtless and untidy. But it was with Zenas Henry that the young man won his greatest triumph, the two immediately coming into harmony on the common ground of motor-boating. Most of the male visitors who dropped in at the white cottage came only to see Delight, but here was one who came to call on the entire family. How charming it was! They liked him one and all; how could they help it? And soon, so eagerly did they anticipate his coming, any lapse in his visits caused keen disappointment. "I kinder thought that Morton feller might be round this evenin'," Captain Phineas would yawn in a dispirited tone, when twilight had deepened and the familiar figure failed to make its appearance above the crest of the hill. "Ain't it Tuesday? He most always comes Tuesdays." "Tuesdays, Thursdays, an' Saturdays you can pretty mortal sure bank on him," Captain Benjamin would reply. "If he's comin' to-night, he better be heavin' into sight, for it's damp an' I'll have to be turnin' in soon." "Mebbe he was delayed by somethin'," suggested Captain Jonas. "We'll not give him up fur a spell longer. He told me he'd fetch me some tobacco, an' he always does as he promises." Zenas Henry smoked in silence. "I sorter wish he would appear," he presently put in, between puffs at his pipe. "There was somethin' I wanted to ask him about that durn motor-boat." "You don't mean to say that boat's out of order again, do you, Zenas Henry?" questioned Abbie. "No, oh, no! 'Tain't out of order exactly. But the pesky propeller is kickin' up worse'n ordinary. It's awful taxin' on the patience. I'd give a man everything I possess if he'd think up some plan to rid me of that eel grass." "Why don't you set Willie on the job?" asked Captain Benjamin. "Ain't I told Willie over an' over again about it?" Zenas Henry replied, turning with exasperation on the speaker. "Ain't I hinted to him plain as day--thrown the bait to him times without number? An' ain't he just swum round the hook an' gone off without so much as nibblin' it? The thing don't interest him, it's easy enough to see that. He don't like motor-boats an' ain't got no sympathy with 'em, an' he don't give a hang if they do come to grief. In fact, I think he rather relishes hearin' they're snagged. I gave up expectin' any help from him long ago." With a frown he resumed his smoking. "Where's Delight?" Captain Phineas asked, scenting his friend's mood and veering tactfully to a less irritating topic. "That's so! Where is the child?" rejoined Captain Jonas. "She was round here fussin' with them roses a minute ago." "That ain't her over toward the pine grove, is it?" queried Captain Benjamin. "I thought I saw somethin' pink a-movin' among the trees." "Yes, that's her an' Bob Morton with her, sure's you're alive!" Captain Phineas ejaculated with pleasure. "You'll get your tobacco now, Jonas, an' Zenas Henry can ask him about the boat." "Can you see has he got a bundle?" piped the short-sighted Captain Jonas anxiously. "Yep!" "Then he ain't forgot the tobacco," was the contented comment. "He don't generally forget. He's a mighty likely youngster, that boy!" "An' friendly too, ain't he?" put in Captain Benjamin. "There's nothin' he wouldn't do for you." "He's the nicest chap ever I see!" Captain Phineas echoed. "Don't you think so, Zenas Henry?" The answer was some time in coming, and when it did it was deliberate and was weighted with telling impressiveness: "There's few young fry can boast Bob Morton's common sense," he said. "His headpiece is on frontside-to, an' the brains inside it are tickin' strong an' steady." Abbie failed to join in the laugh that followed this announcement. Either she did not catch the remark, or she was too deeply engrossed with her own thoughts to heed it. Her eyes were fixed wistfully on the two figures that were approaching,--the girl exquisite with youth and happiness and the man who leaned protectingly over her. Yet whatever the reveries that clouded her pensive face, she kept them to herself, and if a shadow of dread mingled with her scrutiny no one noticed it. Perhaps it was only Willie Spence who actually guessed the great secret,--Willie, who having been starved for romance of his own, was all the quicker to hear the heart-throbs of others. It chanced that just now he was deeply involved in several amorous affairs and because of them was experiencing no small degree of worry. The tangle between Bob, Delight, and Cynthia Galbraith kept him in a state of constant speculation and disquietude; then Bart Coffin and Minnie were perilously near a rupture because of another rejuvenation of the time-honored black satin; and although weeks had passed, Jack Nickerson had not yet mustered up nerve enough to offer his heart and hand to Sarah Libbie Lewis. "Next you know, both you an' Sarah Libbie will be under the sod," Willie had tauntingly called after the lagging swain, as he passed the house one afternoon on his way from the village. "What on earth you're waitin' for is mor'n I can see." The discomfited coast guard hung his head sheepishly. "It's all right for you to talk, Willie Spence," he replied over his shoulder. "You ain't got the speakin' to do. It's I that's got to ask her." Then as he sped out of sight, he added as an afterthought: "By the way, Bart an' Minnie Coffin have come to a split at last over that 'ere dress. After gettin' it fixed, an' promisin' him 'twas fur the last time, she's ripped it all up again 'cause she's seen some picter in a book she liked better. Bart's that mad he's took his sea chest in the wheelbarrow an' set out for his mother's. I met him goin' just now." "Bless my soul!" gasped Willie in consternation. "How far had he got?" "He was about quarter way to the Junction," was the response. "He sung out he was headed where he'd be sure of gettin' three meals a day, an' where somebody'd pay some attention to him." "H--m!" Willie reflected, scratching his thin locks. "Sorter looks as if it was time I took a hand, don't it?" "I figger if anybody's goin' to interfere, now's the minute. Bart's got his sails set an' is clearin' port fur good an' all this time, no mistake. 'Twas sure to come sooner or later." Their roads parted and Willie turned toward the town, while Jack Nickerson, with rolling gait, pursued his way to the beach where at the tip of a slender bar of sand jutting out into the ocean the low roofs of the life-saving station lay outlined against a somber sky. Great banks of leaden clouds sagging over the horizon had dulled the water to blackness, and a stiff gale was whistling inshore. Already the billows were mounting angrily into caps of snarling foam and dashing themselves on the sands with threatening echo. It promised to be a nasty night, and Jack remembered as he looked that he was on patrol duty. Yet although the muscles of his jaw tightened into grimness, it was not the prospective tramp along a lonely beach in the darkness and wind that caused the stern tensity of his countenance. Storms and their perils were all in the day's work, and he faced their possible catastrophes without a tremor. It would have been hard to find anywhere along the Massachusetts coast a braver man than Jack Nickerson. Not only was he ready to lead a crew of rescuers to succor the perishing, fearlessly directing the surfboat in its plunge through a seething tide, but many a time he had dashed bodily into the breakers, despite the hazard of a powerful undertow, and dragged some drowning creature to a place of safety. The fame of his many deeds of heroism had spread from one end of the Cape to the other, and as he was native-born the community never tired of relating his feats to any sojourner who strayed into the locality. Yet courageous as was Jack Nickerson, there was one thing he was afraid of and that was a woman. Not that he trembled in the presence of all women--no, indeed! He had brought far too many of them to land for that. Women as a class did not appall him in the least. He had seen them in the agony of terror, in the throes of despair, and undismayed had offered them sympathy and cheer. It was one woman only who disconcerted him, the woman who for years had routed him out of his habitual poise and left him as discomfited as a guilty schoolboy caught in raiding the jam-pot. Yes, he who inspired his associates with both respect and admiration was forced to acknowledge to himself that when face to face with Sarah Libbie Lewis he was nothing better than a faltering ten-year-old whose collar is too tight for him, and whose hands and feet are sizes too large. The paradox was too humiliating to be endured! Nevertheless, he had endured the ignominy of it for five-and-twenty years, and there seemed to be every prospect that he would continue to endure it. Periodically, it is true, he would rise in his wrath, resolving that another sun should not go down on his vacillation and timidity; nay, more, he would even stride forth to Sarah Libbie's home, vowing as he went that before he slept he would speak the decisive words that had for so long trembled on his tongue. Confronted by the lady of his choice, however, his courage, like that of the immortal Bob Acres, would ooze away, and after basking for a wretched interval in the glory of her smile, he would retrace his steps with the declaration still unuttered. As far back as Jack could remember, this woman had tyrannized over him and humbled his self-esteem. In childhood she had leveled with a blow the sand castles he built on the beach for her delight, and ever since she had contrived to raze to the ground his less tangible castles,--dream-castles where he saw her the mistress of his lonely fireside. Yet despite her exasperating capriciousness, Jack had never wavered in his allegiance, not a whit. Long ago he had made up his mind that Sarah Libbie was the one woman in the world for him, and he had never seen cause to alter that verdict. Nor did he entertain any doubt that Sarah Libbie's sentiments coincided with his own, even though she did cloak her preference beneath so many intricate and misleading devices of femininity. It was not fear of the thundering _No_ that hindered Jack from proclaiming his affection; it was merely the physical impossibility of putting his heart into intelligible and coherent phraseology when Sarah Libbie's bewitching gaze was upon him. He could meet all comers in a political argument, could hold his own against the banter of the village gossips; he could even defy Willie and his counsel; but to address Sarah Libbie on a matter so tender and of such vital import was an ordeal so overwhelming that it caused his tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth, and his pulse almost to cease to beat. Unlucky Jack! Many were the evenings he tramped the dunes, rehearsing in the darkness the momentous declaration that was to work a miracle in his solitary life. Like an actor committing his lines, he would repeat the words, hurling them upon the blackness of the night where, to the accompaniment of the booming surf, they echoed with a majesty and dignity astonishingly impressive. But in the light of day and Sarah Libbie's presence, his sonorous philippic would dwindle away into a jargon of garbled phrases too disjointed and meaningless to carry weight with any woman, let alone the peerless Sarah Libbie Lewis. Thus for more than a quarter of a century Jack Nickerson had silently worshiped at the shrine of his divinity, and in the meantime the roses in Sarah Libbie's cheeks had grown fainter, and tendrils of silver had found their way into the soft curls that shadowed her brow. Still Jack could not speak the words that were on his lips. Of course the little woman could not do it for him, although she did venture by many a subtle device to aid him in his dilemma. She baked for him pies, cookies, and doughnuts of a delicious russet tint and sent them to the station, that their aroma might gently prod into action her lover's faintness of heart; these visible tokens of her devotion would disappear, however, leaving behind them only a tranquil sense of enjoyment; and as this lessened the fervor of her admirer's determination would evaporate. Then Sarah Libbie would resort to less ephemeral offerings,--scarves, wristers, mittens, patiently knitted from blue wool and representing such an endless number of stitches that Jack never viewed them without elation. And as if these proofs of her regard were not sufficient, every evening just at sundown she would light a lantern and flash a good-night to him across the waters that estranged them. It was a pretty custom that had had its beginning when the boy and girl had lived as neighbors on the deserted highway that followed the horseshoe curve of the Belleport shore. They had evolved a code whereby, with much labor it must be admitted, they were able to spell out messages that flickered their way through the night with the beauty of a firefly's revel; but when Jack had taken up work with the coast guard, this old-time substitute for speech had been abandoned, giving place to the briefer method of three nightly flashes. Neither toil nor illness, rain, snow or tempest had in all the years prevented Sarah Libbie from being at her post at twilight, there to watch for the gleam of Jack's lantern, whose rays she answered with the light from her own. Even when fogs obscured the Bar so that the distant headland was cut off from view, Sarah Libbie would go through the little ceremony and after it was over return to her knitting with a quiet gladness, although the presence of the other factor in the drama was a mere matter of conjecture. Thus the romance had drifted on, and Jack Nickerson now faced his fiftieth year and was no nearer bringing the love story to a culmination than he had been when as a boy in his teens he had gazed into Sarah Libbie's blue eyes and registered the vows he had never yet dared utter. Nevertheless lonely and disappointed as was Sarah Libbie, Jack was a thousand times more miserable. To-night, especially, as he tramped the coast in the teeth of the gale, he thought of Willie Spence's ridicule and one of his periodic moods of self-abasement came upon him. What a wretched cur he was! How lacking in nerve! Any woman, he muttered to himself, was better off without such a feeble-willed, spineless husband! The fierce winds and whirling sands that stung his cheeks and buffeted him seemed a merited castigation, a castigation that amounted to a penance. He welcomed their punishment. As he stumbled on through the pitch black of the night, he asked himself what he was going to do. Was he always to go on loving Sarah Libbie and letting her love him and never in manly fashion bring the affair to a climax? If he did not mean to make her his wife, had he the right to stand in the way and prevent her from marrying some one else? The baldness of the question brought him up with a turn, and as he paused breathlessly awaiting his own verdict, his eye was caught by the lantern dangling from his hand. He regarded it with slow wonder as if he had never seen it before. Why had he never thought until now of this method of communication? Not only was it simple and direct, but it also obviated the difficulty that had always been the stumbling-block in his path,--the necessity of confronting Sarah Libbie in the flesh. He grasped the inspiration with zeal. Fate was with him. His watch was up, and he was free to make his way back to the station, if he so willed, and put his remarkable scheme into execution. Away he sped through the howling tempest. As he flew up the steps of the lookout tower, he could detect the twinkling lights from his lady's home gemmed against the background of velvet darkness. Perhaps her fluttering little heart was uneasy about her lover, and she was peering out into the gale. However that may be, he had no difficulty in summoning her to the window when he raised his lantern. Then, with the talisman held high, he paused. What should he say? Of course he could send no lengthy message. Even a few words meant a laborious amount of spelling. Perhaps _Will You Marry Me?_ was as simple and direct a way as he could put it. Firmly he gripped the lantern. Then, instead of the customary three flashes, he began the involved liftings, dippings, and circlings which in luminous waves were to spell out his destiny. _Will You Marry_-- Ah, there was no need for him to go on! Sarah Libbie had waited too long for those magic words to doubt their purport. Nor did she hesitate for an answer. In an instant she caught up the unique avowal, and across the turbulent waters signalled to her beloved the three mystic letters that should make her his forever. With the faint, blinking flashes, the weight of years fell away from Jack Nickerson. No longer was he a trembling, tongue-tied captive, scorning himself for his want of will. He was a free man, the affianced husband of the most wonderful creature in the world. In his exultation he raised his lantern aloft and swung it round and round with the abandon of a boy who tosses his cap in the air. Then he bounded down the iron staircase like a child let out of school, dashing round their spiral windings with reckless velocity. The deed was done! Sarah Libbie was his! It might have been half an hour later, as he sat smoking in blissful meditation in the living room of the station, that the door was wrenched open and Willie Spence burst into the room. Every hair on the old inventor's head was upright with anxiety, and he puffed breathlessly: "What's ashore? I saw your signal an' knew straight off somethin' terrible was up, for you've never called for help from the town before. I've raised all the folks I could get a-holt of an' Bob Morton's gone to get more. They'll be here on the double quick!" The boast was no idle one. Even as he spoke there was a tramping, a rush of feet, and a babel of confused, frightened voices, and into the room flocked the dwellers of the hamlet,--men, women, and children, all with wind-tossed hair and strained, terrified faces. "What is it?" "What's the matter?" "Where's the wreck?" As they stood there tragic in the dim light, there was a stir near the door and Sarah Libbie Lewis pushed her way through the crowd. She had stopped only to toss a black shawl over her head and in contrast to its sable folds her cheeks and lips were ashen. "They told me there was a wreck," she cried, rushing to Jack's side and seizing his arm wildly. "Oh, you won't go--you won't go and leave me now, Jack--not so soon--not after to-night!" Already sobs were choking the words and her hands were clinging to his. With the supreme defiance of a man prepared to defend his dearest possession against the universe, Jack Nickerson circled her in his embrace and faced the throng. No longer was he the shrinking, timorous supplicant. Victorious love had set her crown upon his brows, bestowing dignity upon his years and glory upon his manhood. His explanation came fearlessly to his lips. "There ain't no wreck," he said quietly. "All the same I'm glad you saw my lantern an' came, 'cause I've got somethin' to tell you all. Me an' Sarah Libbie are goin' to get married." For a moment there was an incredulous hush. Then Willie Spence came to the rescue. "Well, I will say, Jack," he drawled, "you had a pretty good nerve to get us out on a night like this to tell us that! You might at least have waited 'til mornin'. Still, I reckon if I'd been nigh on to a quarter of a century gettin' my spunk together to ask a woman to marry me an' had finally done it, I'd a-wanted somebody to know it." The words were not unkindly spoken and Jack joined in the general laugh. Nothing mattered to him now. Oblivious to the spectators, he was bending down over the woman he loved and murmuring: "I love you, Sarah Libbie. I've always loved you." The little old inventor watched the radiant pair a moment then motioned to the villagers to slip away. But Bartley Coffin could not be restrained from lagging behind and whispering confidentially in Jack's ear: "If you want to be truly happy, mate, an' live clear of a life of pesterin', don't you never buy Sarah Libbie a satin dress! Minnie an' I have made it up, thanks to Willie Spence, but 'twas a tussle. I'd come to the jumpin'-off place." The statement was but too true. Willie had indeed intervened and averted a tragedy, but the feat had demanded ruthless measures, and he had trudged home from the Coffins with the bone of contention clutched rigidly beneath his arm. That night Celestina heard muffled sounds in the workshop. "Oh, my land!" she murmured. "If Willie ain't hitched again! I did hope nothin' new would come to him 'til he got rested up from this other idee." But Willie's inspiration was not of the inventive type. Instead the little old man was standing before the stove, kindling a fire, and into its crackling blaze he was bundling the last remnants of Minnie Coffin's far-famed black satin. The light played on his face which was set in grim earnestness. "It seems a wicked shame," he observed in a whisper, as he viewed the funeral pyre, "but it's the only way. Long's that dress remained on earth there'd be no peace for Bart nor his wife either. It had to go." The flames danced higher, flashing in and out of the trimmings of jet and charring the beads to dullness. In the morning only a heap of gray ashes marked the flight of Minnie Coffin's social ambitions. "_Requiescat in pace_!" murmured Willie as with lips firm with Puritan stoicism he passed by the stove. There he added gently: "Poor Minnie! Poor foolish Minnie!" CHAPTER XIX WILLIE AS PILOT The invention was finished! The last rivet was in place, the last screw secure, and before the fulfilment of his dream the little old man stood with glowing face. It was a gentle, happy face with misty blue eyes that carried at the moment a serene contentment. "I couldn't 'a' done it but for you, Bob," he was saying. "The idea was all well enough, but 'twould 'a' been of no use without other brains to carry it out. So you must remember a big slice of the credit is yours." Robert Morton shook his head. "Oh, the thing is yours, Willie--every bit yours," protested he. "I only did some of the mechanical part, and that any fool could do." "The mechanical part, as you call it, is full as important as the notion," Willie persisted. "I shall tell Zenas Henry it's our invention when I turn it over to him." The pronoun thrilled Bob with pleasure. It meant the sweeping aside of the last film of distrust and the restoration of the old man's former confidence and friendship. For days Willie had slowly been reaching the conviction that if fraud had been practised Tiny's nephew had been only an innocent party to it--the tool of more designing hands. How was the lad to know he was being so artfully made use of? And anyway, perhaps there may have been no conspiracy at all. Might not Janoah have been mistaken about Snelling raiding the workshop? Why, a score of reasons might have brought him there! He might have left behind him something he needed; or there might have been something he wanted to do. It was absurd to accuse him of a secret and deliberately planned visit. Willie was a simple, single-minded soul and now that Janoah and his malicious influence had been removed, he dropped comfortably back into a tranquillity from which, when viewed in perspective, his former suspicions seemed both unjust and ridiculous. Suppose Mr. Galbraith did happen to be a boat-builder? Was he not Bob's friend and Delight's uncle, a gentleman of honor who had money enough without stooping to secure more by treachery? And did it not follow that since Mr. Snelling was in his employ he must be a person of reputable character? A fig for Janoah Spence's accusations! Willie blew a contemptuous whiff of smoke into the air. How had he ever dropped to being so base as to credit them for an instant? He was ashamed for having done so. Therefore whole-heartedly he gave his hand to Robert Morton, and if the act were a mute petition for forgiveness it was none the less sincere in its intent and was met with an equal spirit of good will. "I suppose now that everything is complete, there is no reason why we can't present the thing to Zenas Henry right away, is there?" questioned Bob, who with hands thrust deep in his trousers' pockets contemplated with satisfaction the product of their joint toil. "Not the least in the world," Willie answered. "If we was to keep it here a week there ain't nothin' more we could do to it, an' since you've tried it out over at Galbraith's we know it works." "Oh, it works all right!" laughed Bob. The eyes of the little inventor softened and into them crept a glint of pensiveness. "Yes," he repeated, "we can deliver it up to Zenas Henry 'most anytime now." He paused. "Queer, ain't it, how kinder attached you get to anything you've fussed over so long? It gets to be 'most a part of you. You'll think it funny, I guess, but do you know I'll be sorter sorry to see this thing goin'." It was the regret of the parent compelled to part from his child and with an effort at comfort Robert Morton said cheerfully: "Oh, you'll be having a new scheme before long." "Mebbe I will," Willie answered, brightening. "I never can tell when the sun rises in the mornin' what idee will kitch me before night. Still, I somehow feel there'll be no idee like this one. You know they say every artist creates one masterpiece," he smiled shyly. "This, I reckon, is my masterpiece." "It is a bully one, anyhow!" ejaculated Bob. "Aren't you curious to hear what Zenas Henry will say when he sees it?" "I am sorter itchin' to," admitted Willie in less meditative tone. "Only last night I was thinkin' after I got to bed how would be the best way of givin' it to him. I've sorter set my heart on springin' it on him as a surprise. What's your notion?" "I think that would be a fine plan," replied Bob, eager to humor the gentle dreamer. "If we could get him and the captains out of the way, it would be good sport simply to fasten the attachment to the boat and wait and see what happened." "Wouldn't that be the beateree!" chimed in Willie excitedly. His face glowed and he rubbed his hands with honest pleasure. "Wouldn't it, though? We could manage it, too, for Delight could arrange to get Zenas Henry an' the three captains out of the way. She's an almighty good one at keepin' a secret, as I reckon you've found out already." He stole a sly glance at the young man at his elbow who flushed uncomfortably. "Yes," he rambled on, "Delight can shut her mouth on occasions like as if it was a scallop shell. The only trouble is she'd oughter close her eyes too, for they talk 'most as well as her tongue does. Likely you've noticed that," he added innocently. "I--eh--" "Fur's that goes, your own eyes do somethin' in the speakin' line," affirmed Willie, bending to fleck a bit of dust from the appliance before them. "What!" Robert Morton exclaimed with alarm. The old inventor nodded gravely. "Yes," continued he, "now I come to think of it, you've got among the most speakin' eyes I ever see. They kinder bawl things right out." "What--what--have they--" stammered Bob, crumpling weakly down upon the rickety chair before the stove. "Bawled? Oh, a lot of things," was the provokingly ambiguous retort. His companion eyed him narrowly. "I'm--I'm--in a horrible mess, Willie," he suddenly blurted out quite irrelevently. "I know it." Robert Morton gasped, then lapsed into stunned silence. "Without goin' into any details or discussin' any ladies we know, my advice would be to make a clean breast of the whole thing," the little old man announced, avoiding Robert Morton's eyes and blowing a ring of smoke from his pipe impersonally toward the low ceiling. "Have it out with Zenas Henry an' set yourself right with the Belleport folks. You don't want to do nothin' under cover." "No, I don't," rejoined the younger man quickly. "The reason I didn't do so in the first place was because Zenas Henry was so upset when he heard about Madam Lee that we--I thought--" "He's calmed down now, ain't he?" "Yes, he seems to have accepted the facts, especially as the Galbraiths have not been near him and have let the whole matter drop. Of course that is only a temporary condition, however. Mr. Galbraith has been in New York attending to important matters ever since Madam Lee's death. What will be done when he returns I do not know; but he will do something--you may be sure of that." "That ain't no special business of yours or mine, is it?" Willie remarked. "All that concerns you is to let both those men know where you stand--Zenas Henry first, 'cause he's been like a father to Delight; an' Mr. Galbraith afterwards, 'cause--" he hesitated for the fraction of a second, "'cause the Galbraiths are the girl's nearest of kin an' legally, I s'pose, have a right--" "Yes," interrupted Robert Morton hastily. "When you get things all squared up, we'll talk more about it," continued Willie. "But 'til you do the affair ain't open an' above board, an' I don't want nothin' to do with it. The top of the ocean is good enough for me; I never was much on swimmin' under water." He broke off abruptly to refill his pipe. "Now about this motor-boat," he went on crisply, veering to a less delicate subject. "S'pose you fix it up with Delight to keep Zenas Henry an' the three captains away from the beach for a couple of days so'st to give us time to get our invention securely rigged to the _Sea Gull_. She could find somethin' for 'em to do up at the house for that long, couldn't she?" "I guess so." "If she can't, Abbie can," chuckled Willie, with a grin. "Abbie Brewster's the most famous woman in the world for settin' folks to work. She's made Zenas Henry clean over since his marriage. Why, I remember the time when you could no more have got him to do a day's work than you could have lined up the fish of the sea in a Sunday-school. But with trainin', Zenas Henry now does his plowin', plantin' an' harvestin' in somethin' approachin' alarm-clock fashion. Of course, he backslides if he ain't constantly held to it; but knowin' his past it's a miracle what Abbie's made of him. She ain't never wholly reformed his temper, though. There's plenty of cayenne in that still. I reckon if you was to amputate Zenas Henry's temper you'd find you had took away the most interestin' part of him." His listener smiled. "Now you go ahead an' arrange things with Delight, Bob," continued Willie. "An interview with her won't be no great hardship for you, will it? I thought not. An' any fillin' in I can do, I'll do--any fillin' in," he repeated significantly. "You can count on me to plug any gaps that come anywheres--remember that." "It's bully of you, Willie!" cried Bob, seizing his hand. "Not a mite," protested the little man, with a deprecating gesture. "Now that I've got Bart Coffin an' Minnie livin' like turtle doves, an' Jack Nickerson as good as married to Sarah Libbie Lewis, two of my ships seem to have dropped anchor safe an' sound. I reckon I shan't need to do no more pilotin' there." The little old inventor stopped a moment, then added: "Sometimes I figger what I was put in the world for was to do pilot duty. You know there's folks that never own a ship of their own but just spend their days towin' other people's ships into port. They ain't so bad off neither," he went on in a merrier tone, "'cause there's a heap of joy in helpin' some other vessel to make a landin'." More moved by the words than he would have confessed, Robert Morton watched the bent figure move through the door and out into the sunshine; and afterward, banishing the seriousness of his mood, he climbed the hill to the white cottage, there to evolve with Delight a plot that should hold the men of the Brewster household captive long enough for Willie and himself to attach to Zenas Henry's motor-boat the new invention. CHAPTER XX ONE MORE OF WILLIE'S SHIPS REACHES PORT Three feverish days passed, days of constant hard work and myriad trivial annoyances. A train of misadventures had attended the transference of Willie's "idee" to Zenas Henry's boat. Parts had failed to fit, and much wearisome toil had been demanded before the device was actually in place. At last, however, all was ready, and Abbie Brewster, a party to the conspiracy, had on a sunny morning urged her reluctant spouse and the three captains to make a trip out to the Bar for clams. They were none too keen about the proposed expedition, for the weather was warm and their course lay through shallow waters which after the recent storm were turbid with seaweed. Nevertheless, ignoring their unwillingness, Abbie declared she must have the clams, and was not her word law? Therefore, without enthusiasm, the four fishermen had set forth with their buckets and their clam forks, and it was now a full three hours since the motor-boat that carried them had disappeared around the point of sand jutting into the sparkling waters of the bay. Bob and Willie, secreted in the workshop, had breathlessly watched the _Sea Gull_ thread her way through the channel and make the curving shelter of the dunes, and ever since the old inventor had sat alert on an overturned nail keg, his binoculars in one hand and his great silver watch in the other, counting the moments until the little craft should return from its momentous cruise. The vigil had been long and tedious, with only the ticking of the mammoth timepiece and the far-off rumble of the surf to break the stillness. Presently Celestina came from the kitchen into the shop. "I'm bringin' you a dish of hot doughnuts," she said, a kindly sympathy in her face. "Oughtn't them men to be comin' pretty soon now?" For the hundredth time Willie raised the glasses and scanned the shimmering golden waters. "We should sight 'em before long," he nodded. "You don't see nothin' of 'em?" "Not yet." There was an anxious frown on his forehead. "Why don't you eat somethin'?" suggested she. "It might take your mind off worryin'." "I ain't worryin', Tiny," was the confident reply. "The boat's all right." "S'pose it should be snagged or somethin' outside the bay?" she ventured. "I wish to goodness they'd come back. Look, here's Delight an' Abbie comin' through the grove. Likely they've been gettin' uneasy, too." Sure enough, moving among the low pines that shaded the slope between the Spence and Brewster houses they saw the two women. Abbie was stouter now than when she had come as a bride to Zenas Henry's white cottage, but there was a serenity in her mien that softened her expression into charming womanliness. As she neared the shed she glanced at Willie with an uneasiness she could not wholly conceal. "Don't it seem to you, Willie, that it's gettin' most time for 'em to be gettin' home?" "You ain't nervous, Abbie," smiled the little old man. "N--o, not really. Of course, I know they're all right. Still, they ain't never stayed clammin' so long before." "I wouldn't worry, Auntie," Delight put in, taking her hand reassuringly. "A thousand things may have delayed them. I am sure--" "They're comin'!" broke in Willie with sudden excitement. "The boat's comin'. Ain't that her makin' the point, Bob? She's clippin' along like a race horse, too. Lord! Watch her go." "That's the _Sea Gull_!" cried Abbie. "I don't need no glasses to make her out. That's her! How foolish I was to go fussin'. Still, I always have a kind of dread--" "I know, I know," interrupted the inventor gently. "But there warn't no call for worry this time. I felt mortal certain they'd be heavin' into sight pretty soon." "I guess likely now we know they're on the way, we'd better slip home again," Abbie smiled. "I'd feel silly enough to have 'em find us here." "Nonsense, Abbie!" said Celestina. "They needn't know you was worried. Ain't it possible you might have come down here on an errand? Wait 'til they pass and walk back with 'em. What difference does it make if your dinner is late?" Abbie hesitated. Her dinner never was late; yet, for that matter, she never was out visiting her neighbors in the middle of the day, either. Perhaps, as she had followed one demoralizing impulse and transgressed all her domestic traditions, the breaking of another did not matter. "I--s'pose I might wait," she answered. "I'd love dearly to hear what they'll have to say." "Oh, do wait, Auntie!" Delight begged. "It won't be long now before they get here." "Better stay, Abbie," put in Willie. "Bob an' I won't be inventin' every day." "Well," was the half unwilling answer. "Don't you wonder how it worked?" cried Delight, addressing Bob, her cheeks scarlet with excitement. "See, here they come! Did you ever hear such a chatter! Zenas Henry is swinging that clam bucket as if there wasn't a thing in it. He will spill them all out if he isn't careful." On strode the four men. With a bound they cleared the bank before the Spence cottage and crowded in at the narrow gate. "Whar is he? Whar's Willie?" demanded Zenas Henry. Then, catching sight of the old inventor half concealed behind his workbench, he shouted: "Here, Willie, you rascal, out with you! Don't go hidin' there behind that table. Man alive, why didn't you tell us what you was up to?" "Did it work, Zenas Henry?" queried the little fellow eagerly. "Did it work!" mimicked Zenas Henry with a guffaw. "Say, Phineas, did it?" The fishermen gave an exuberant roar of laughter. "Did it work?" repeated Zenas Henry so out of breath that he could scarcely articulate the words. "Good Lord, don't it just! Why, we clipped along through that seaweed as if it warn't there." "You didn't get snagged then?" "Snagged? Not much! Ain't we been ridin' in an' out every little eel grass cove along the shore just for the sheer deviltry of seein' if we could get snagged?" piped Captain Benjamin. "There'll be no more rockin' in the channel for us. My eye! Think of that!" "How ever did you manage it, Willie?" Zenas Henry questioned. "What makes you so sure it was me?" "Oh, Lord! Who else would it be?" "Well, it warn't all me," protested the little inventor modestly. "Most of it was Bob. I got the idee an' he did the rest--him an' Mr. Galbraith's friend, Mr. Snellin'." "Well, I'm clean beat--that's all I can say," observed Zenas Henry, mopping his brow. "I tell you what, it's made a new thing of that motor-boat. There's no thankin' you. All is, Willie, if you want anything of mine it's yours for the askin'. Just speak up an' you can have it." A radiant smile spread over the face of the spinner of cobwebs. "You ain't got nothin' I covet, Zenas Henry," he answered slowly, "but you've got somethin' Bob Morton wants powerful bad." He saw a mystified expression steal into Zenas Henry's face. "Happiness didn't come to you early in life, Zenas Henry," went on Willie, his voice taking on a note of gentle persuasion, "an' often I've heard you lament you was cheated out of spendin' your youth with Abbie. Of course, marryin' late is better than not marryin' at all, though. Some of the rest of us--" he motioned toward the three captains and Celestina, "have got passed by altogether. But Delight an' Bob have found love early, while the bloom is still on it. You wouldn't wish to keep 'em from their birthright, would you, Zenas Henry?" In the hush that followed the plea, Abbie crept up to her husband and slipped her hand into his. "The child loves him, dear," she said, looking up into the man's stern face. "I read it in her eyes long ago. You want her to be happy, don't you?" Her voice trembled. Only the mother instinct, supreme in its selflessness, gave her the strength to continue: "We must not think of ourselves. Real love is heaven-sent. It is ours neither to give nor to deny." How still the room was. Suddenly it had been transformed into a battle ground on which a soul waged mortal combat. There was no question in the minds of those who viewed the struggle that the issue presented had come as a shock, and that to meet it taxed every ounce of forbearance and control that the man possessed. He looked as one stricken, his face a turmoil of jealousy, grief, despair, and disappointment. But gradually a gentler light shone in his eyes,--a light radiant, and triumphant; love was conqueror and raising his head he murmured: "Where is the child?" She sped to his side. "So you love him, do you, little girl?" he asked, smiling faintly down at her as he encircled her with his great arm. "Yes, Zenas Henry," she whispered. For a moment he held her close as if he could never let her go. "Well, Tiny," he said, "I don't know as we have anything to say against it. He's your nephew an' she's my daughter--yes, my daughter," he added fiercely, "in spite of the Lees and the Galbraiths." With a swift gesture he turned toward Robert Morton. "Young man, I am payin' you a heavy fee for that motor-boat. I'm handin' over to you the most precious thing I have in the world. See you value it as you should or, by God, your life won't be worth a straw to Willie, the three captains, or me." They saw him wheel abruptly and stride alone into the shadow of the low pines. Silently the others drifted from the room and Delight was left alone with her lover. As Bob caught the girl in his arms, a great wave of passion surged through his body, causing its every fiber to vibrate in tune with the mad beating of his heart. He kissed her hair, her cheeks, the white curve of her exquisite throat; he buried his face in her hair and let his hands wander over its silky ripples. "I love you," he panted,--"I love you with all my heart. Tell me you love me, Delight." "You know I do," was the shy answer. Again he kissed her soft lips. "I mustn't stay, Bob," she said at last, trying to draw herself from his embrace. "Zenas Henry is alone somewhere, almost broken-hearted; I must find and comfort him." But the arms that held her did not loosen their hold. "Please let me go, Bob dear," she coaxed. "We mustn't be selfish." Her request struck the right note and instantly she was free. Robert Morton followed her to the door and stood watching as she hurried along the copper-matted path of the woods sunflecked and mottled with shadow. What a sweet miracle it was, he mused! She was his now before all the world, thanks to Willie's skilful pilotage. Where was the little old man--that dreamer of dreams, who with Midas-like touch left upon everything with which he came in contact the golden impress of his heart? He must seek him out and thank him for his aid. Perhaps the thought carried with it a potent charm of magic, for no sooner had Robert Morton framed it than the inventor himself appeared on the threshold. "Well, another of my ships has made port!" cried he triumphantly. His delicate face was illumined with a joy so transcendent that one might easily have believed that it was to him love's touchstone had been given. "I never can thank you, Willie!" burst out the young man. "Be good to Delight, my boy, an' make her happy; that's all the thanks I want," was the grave response. A pause fell between them. Perhaps Willie was thinking of the days that must inevitably come when the girl he had loved since childhood would be far away. How dull the gray house would be when she no longer flitted in and out its doors! Try as he would to banish the selfish reflection, it returned persistently. Then suddenly something quite outside himself put the reverie to rout. It was the querulous voice of Janoah Eldridge. "I was right about them Galbraiths," he cried exultantly, standing in the doorway and hurling the words into the room where the two men lingered. "'Twas exactly as I said. Lyman Bearse's boy went up on the Boston train one afternoon in front of Snelling an' that other feller who was here, an' he heard every word they uttered. He said they talked the whole way about gettin' a patent out on your invention. Now, Willie Spence, was I right or warn't I? Mebbe you'll believe me the next time I warn you against folks." CHAPTER XXI SURPRISES The next morning Robert Morton awoke with the fixed determination that another sun should not go down until he had acquainted Mr. Galbraith with Janoah's accusations. The misgivings, the suspicions, the fears he entertained must be cleared up at any cost or further residence beneath Willie's roof would be impossible. If necessary he would go to New York to see the financier. But he must know where the blame for Snelling's treachery lay, whether with the capitalist or with his employee. Accordingly he arose early, and having breakfasted went down to the store where the nearest telephone was and called up the Belleport residence. He was fortunate in getting Parker, the old butler, on the wire. "Mr. Galbraith, Mr. Bob?" came the voice of the servant. "Yes, sir, he arrived home last night. I think he is going over to Wilton to-day to see you. I heard him saying something about it. Wait a minute. I hear him on the stairs now." There was a pause; then after a delay another voice that Bob instantly recognized to be that of the master of the house called: "Bob? Well, hello, boy! I guess you thought we had all left you and your affairs high and dry, didn't you? I've been in New York, you know--am just back. I want to see you as soon as I can about several important matters. Suppose I run over in the car this morning? Will you be there? Good! I'll see you later, then." Robert Morton hung up the receiver and walked meditatively along the sandy road to the gray cottage. The die was cast. Whatever happened, it could not be worse than had been the days of suspense and anxiety that he had endured. The morning was close and humid, a land breeze wafting across the fields perfumes of sun-scorched pine and blossoming roses. Scarce a ripple marred the glittering surface of the bay that stretched like a sheet of burnished brass as far as one could see. Now and then a faint zephyr, rising from the wooded slopes, swept down the hill, swirling into billows of vivid emerald the coarse salt grass that swayed on the marshes. So still it was that every whisper of the surf lapping the edge of the bar could be heard; over and over the waters stole up on the shore, fretted into foam and receded, each wave creeping rhythmically back into the deep to a song of shifting sand and pebbles. How silvery the tiny houses of the hamlet looked against the azure of the sky! The few scattered trees that had braved the onslaughts of repeated gales listed landward, but the pines sheltered in the hollows of the dunes stood erect and darkly mysterious, their plumes bending idly in the soft wind. It was all a part of the idyl, the daydream, Robert Morton thought,--too flawless a thing to last. Willie, so childlike and simple, his kindly aunt, Delight with her rare beauty, and even the romance of his love seemed a part of its unreality. Was it not to be expected that sooner or later man with his blundering touch would destroy the loveliness, making prose of the poem? The Galbraiths, Snelling, the greed for money, Janoah's jealousy and evil suspicions--ah, it did not take long for such influences to mar the peace of a heaven and smear the grime of earth upon its fairness! Only glimpses of perfection were granted the dwellers of this planet,--quick, transient flashes that mirrored a future free from finite limitations. He who expected to remain on the heights in this world was doomed to disappointment. Slowly he skirted the curving beach and reached the weathered cottage where the sun beat hotly down, kissing into flower every bud of the clinging roses that festooned its gray doorway. Willie welcomed him but a glory had passed from the old man's face since the conversation of the night before. How could it be otherwise? Sleepless hours had left behind them weary, careworn lines; and in the troubled depths of the blue eyes the old interrogation had once more awakened. Bob knew not how to meet its silent combat between hope and disappointment, and he hailed as a glad relief the beating echo of the Galbraiths' motor-car as it swept the horseshoe outline of the harbor and came to a stop before the gate. Mr. Galbraith, who was alone, beckoned to him, and as the younger man climbed to the seat beside him said: "I thought perhaps you might like to go for a spin along the shore. It is warm to-day and we shall get more breeze; besides, we can talk more freely in the automobile than here or at the Belleport house. Roger has just arrived and also Howard Snelling." In spite of himself, Robert Morton betrayed his surprise. "Mr. Snelling back again!" he exclaimed. "Yes, he is down," was the laconic answer. For all his boasted eagerness to talk, however, Richard Galbraith did not immediately avail himself of the privilege of conversation. On the contrary, as Bob shot a questioning glance toward him, he thought he detected for the first time in his life a strange uneasiness in the capitalist's habitually self-contained manner. He seemed to be framing an introduction for what he wished to say. "I have several matters to talk over with you, Bob," he began at last in a resolute tone. "Some of them are pleasant and some of them may not, I fear, prove to be so. But we must take them as they come, and pleasant or unpleasant, I want you to believe that I have no choice but to place them before you. I have always felt for you a warm friendship, my boy, and that friendship has in no way lessened. Therefore if any word I speak causes you unhappiness, I want you to remember that I only say it because I must. We are not always permitted to readjust life according to our inclinations. Duty maps out many of our paths and we must close our lips and travel them." He stopped as if considering how to proceed. "While in New York," he presently resumed, "I probated Madam Lee's will. She was possessed of a large estate and knew very definitely what she wanted done with it. The will was made several years ago, and no document that I have ever seen was more specifically and conscientiously drawn up. Although she left jewels and heirlooms to my family, she left none of her other property to the Galbraiths, explaining that her daughter had all she needed and that both Cynthia and Roger had more already than was good for them." He smiled humorously. "I guessed pretty accurately what she intended to do, as some time ago we talked the matter over, and I heartily approved of her proposed bequest." He cleared his throat and in wondering silence Robert Morton waited. "The property was left in bulk to an old friend whom Madam Lee had known for years--some one entirely outside the family." Bob did not speak. "I would gladly see the Lee money administered as its owner desired to have it," Mr. Galbraith went on. "Her ideas were wise, kind, and just, and the fulfilment of her wishes would have brought to me--to us all--the greatest happiness. But since that will was made a new condition has arisen. Delight Hathaway, the child of her favorite daughter, has appeared. Had the old lady lived, I feel certain that in view of this fact she would have altered the document that this girl might inherit at least a portion of the fortune in which her mother never had any share. You knew Madam Lee very intimately, Bob--probably better than any of the rest of us. What do you think?" The reply came without hesitation. "I am certain Madam Lee would have seen to it that her granddaughter was provided for." "So it seems to me," rejoined Mr. Galbraith with evident relief. "I am glad that our code of ethics agrees thus far. Now the question is, Bob, how strong are you for the right? If honorable action meant sacrifice, would you be ready to meet it?" "I hope so," was the modest response. "I know so," Mr. Galbraith declared earnestly, "and it is because I am so sure of it that I came to you to-day. Bob, it was to you that Madam Lee left her fortune. It was to be used for the furthering of your dearest wish because--to quote her own words--_because I love the boy as if he were of my own blood_." As he listened, Robert Morton's eyes grew cloudy, and emotion choked his utterance until he could not speak. Apparently Mr. Galbraith either expected no reply or tactfully interpreted his silence, for without waiting he continued: "You can understand now, Bob, feeling toward you as we all do, that this recent family development has not been easy for us to confront. Delight Hathaway is a beautiful girl who possesses, no doubt, admirable qualities. We expect to become warmly attached to her in time. But for all her kinship she is a stranger to us while you are of our own--a brother, friend." For the first time the kind voice faltered. "I have even cherished a hope," it went on in a lower tone, "that perhaps in the future a closer bond might bind you to us. Nothing in the world would have given me greater satisfaction." Bob suddenly felt the blood leap to his face in a crimson flood. He gasped out an incoherent word or two, hoping to check Mr. Galbraith's speech, but no intelligible phrases came to his tongue. "Life is a strangely perverse game, isn't it?"' mused the capitalist. "We build our castles, build them not alone for ourselves but for others, and those we love shatter the structure we have so painstakingly reared and on its ruined site make for themselves castles of their own." His eyes were fixed on the narrowing ribbon of sand over which the car sped. "I--I--have another surprise for you, Bob," he said in a lower tone, without lifting his gaze from the reach of highway ahead. "Cynthia is to be married." "Cynthia!" A chaos of emotions mingled in the word. "Her engagement has been an overwhelming shock to her mother and me," the elder man continued steadily, still without shifting his eyes from the road over which he guided the car, "I don't know why the possibility never occurred to us; but it never did. She is to marry Howard Snelling." A quick wave of revulsion swept over Robert Morton. This, then, was the reason Snelling had filched from Willie his invention,--that he might have greater riches to lay at the feet of his fiancée, and perhaps reach more nearly a financial equality with her family. He saw it all now. And probably it was Snelling's jealousy of himself that had led him to retaliate by heaping his unwelcome attentions on Delight. At last it was clear as day,--Cynthia's growing coldness and her continual trips to and from Belleport in the boatbuilder's company. Robert Morton could have laughed aloud at his own stupidity. The engagement explained, too, Mr. Snelling's confusion and embarrassment at every mention of the Galbraith family. Why, a child might have fathomed the romance! Again Mr. Galbraith was speaking. "And now, Bob, for the last surprise of all. At first, I thought I would delay telling you until the papers were all in shape and ready for signature; but on second thought it seemed a pity to shut you out of the fun. We have all the data prepared to take out a patent on Mr. Spence's motor-boat." Bob felt a sudden sinking of his heart, a stifling of his breath. "The afternoon you all came over to Belleport," explained the financier, "I got Snelling and a draughtsman from our company to go to the shop and in the old gentleman's absence secure measurements and the necessary information. These we took to New York and put into proper hands, and when the affidavits are sworn to and everything is in legal form I see no reason why the government should not grant the patent. If it does, there should be a little fortune in the appliance." Robert Morton did not move. He felt as if he had been turned to stone. "I thought you would be interested," observed Mr. Galbraith, a suggestion of disappointment in his voice. "I did not consult you at first because I felt so sure that the idea would please you. I'm sorry if it doesn't. It seemed to me that if we could help Mr. Spence to patent his device, he might do quite a little with it. I thought he might not know how to go at the matter himself. So we are preparing all the papers for him to file an application in his own name. Afterward I propose either to purchase from him the rights to use it, or to buy the thing outright at a reasonable figure. In either case, the deal will net him quite an income and place him beyond the possibility of financial worry so long as he lives." Oh, the relief that surged over Robert Morton! Joy rioted with shame, happiness with self-reproach. How feeble his faith had been. He hoped Mr. Galbraith did not read in his eyes the suspicions he had cherished. Apparently he did not, for in the same kindly manner he asked: "Do you think it would be better to keep the secret from the little old chap a bit longer or tell him now?" "Oh, tell him now! Tell him now!" cried Bob. "Tell him right away when we get back!" His companion laughed at his eagerness and for the first time their eyes met. "And now, sir," began Robert Morton, a ring of buoyancy and light-heartedness in his voice such as had not sounded in it for weeks, "I have a surprise for you. I, too, am going to be married." The car swerved suddenly as if a tremor had passed through the hands on the wheel. "I am engaged to your niece, Mr. Galbraith." "To my--my niece!" repeated the great man blankly. "I don't think I quite--" "To Delight Hathaway." Bob saw a dull brick-red flush color the neck of the capitalist and steal up into his face. For a moment he seemed at a loss for words. Then presently, as if he had succeeded in readjusting his ideas, he ejaculated: "My word, Bob! Well, you young people have mixed yourselves up nicely! However, if you all are happy, that is the main thing; you are the ones to be suited. We shall still have you in the family, anyway." He laughed. "And about the property," he went on thoughtfully,--"this simplifies matters greatly, for it won't make much difference now which of you has it--you or the girl." But Bob stopped him with a quick protest. "I don't want Delight to know Madam Lee's money has previously been willed to me," he said. "If she suspected that, she would never take it. You are not to tell her--promise me you will see to that." "Of course I will arrange the affair any way you wish," Mr. Galbraith agreed, with a dubious frown. "But if you are to marry her, I really can't see what difference it would make." "It will make a great deal of difference," declared the younger man. "In the one case the fortune will be hers to use as she pleases. She will have the independent right to hand it over to the Brewsters if she so desires. Our entire relation will be placed on another basis; for if I marry her under those conditions I marry an heiress, not the ward of a poor fisherman." "I hadn't thought of that." "On the other hand, if she refuses the money, it will be mine to lay at her feet. Can't you see what a vast contrast there will be in my position?" Mr. Galbraith nodded thoughtfully as if considering the matter from a new angle. "That's the only reason the fortune would mean anything to me--that I might have something to offer her," continued Robert Morton. "Of course, as you said, she would have the benefit of the money in either case; but it makes a difference whether it comes to her by the mere right of inheritance, or whether she takes it from her--husband." "There is a distinction," admitted the elder man. "Now that you call my attention to it, I can see that readily. It is a delicate one, but its consequences are far-reaching. Well, you shall have your way! A proportion of the legacy shall be offered to Delight, and the secret regarding it shall be yours to keep or divulge as you see fit. You are a noble fellow, Bob. I only wish--" He checked the impulsive phrase that rose to his lips but not before the listener had caught its import. "Mr. Snelling is a fine man, Mr. Galbraith," broke in Bob instantly, dreading the words that might follow. "Oh, I know it--there is no question about that," the capitalist assented with haste. "Success is written all over his future, and I know he will be a son-in-law to be proud of. He and Cynthia are royally happy too, and no doubt know better than I what they want. After all, none of us can live other people's lives; each must work out his own." "You've said it, Mr. Galbraith." The financier smiled and his eyes twinkled beneath the shaggy brows that arched them. "You will have to be getting used to calling me by another name, young man," he said. "Remember I am to be your uncle." CHAPTER XXII DELIGHT MAKES HER DECISION Zenas Henry Brewster sat on the edge of his veranda, his long legs crossed before him with a certain angular grace and his corncob pipe held rigidly between his teeth. Beside him, ranged like sparrows on a telegraph wire, were Captain Phineas Taylor, Captain Jonas Baker, and Captain Benjamin Todd. From the row of pipes a miniature cloud of smoke ascended, but save for the distant pulsing of the sea and the murmur of the wind in the linden near the door not a sound was to be heard through the afternoon stillness. Yet in spite of the tranquillity of the day and the apparent peace of the four figures that gazed so immovably out upon the reach of blue, an electrical current of suspense was evident in the four tense forms. They were not looking at the bay, exquisite as it was in its cerulean beauty. Instead, the head of each man was turned toward the road that skirted the harbor and wound its way between the pines at the foot of the hill where the white cottage stood. "He'd oughter be comin' pretty soon, hadn't he?" Captain Phineas ventured at last, unable longer to restrain his impatience. "He said four o'clock in his letter. It must be 'most that, don't you think?" "Mighty nigh unto it," replied Captain Benjamin. "As I reckon it, havin' made the necessary allowances for my watch losin' three-an'-a-quarter minutes an hour, it should be about four now." "It ain't but a quarter of four," sniffed Captain Jonas with an air of superiority. "That timepiece of yours, Benjamin, ain't worth the silver that was put into it. What's the use of havin' a watch that keeps you figgerin' backwards an' forards, an' doin' sums all day? I wouldn't be bothered with it." Captain Benjamin bridled with indignation. "I don't see but my watch is good as yours," retorted he. "The only difference is I'm addin' from mornin' 'til night while you're substractin'." The discomfited Captain Baker frowned. "Mine comes out even minutes, anyhow," announced he. "If it does shoot ahead some, it don't keep me reckonin' in fractions like yours does. I'd see myself in Davie Jones's locker 'fore I'd go addin' three-quarter minutes together from sunrise to sunset." "Oh, addin' fractions is mighty good trainin' for Benjamin," put in the peace-loving Captain Phineas, with a chuckle. "It keeps his arithmetic brushed up. I'll bet you he could beat you at a sum, Jonas." The triumphant Captain Benjamin observed a complacent silence. "Let Benjamin an' his watch alone, Jonas," drawled Zenas Henry, speaking for the first time. "Somebody in the house has got to be up on mathematics, an' it may as well be Benjamin as another. I'm only sorry his ticker holds him just to addin'; if it would only make him multiply an' divide some, an' take him into square root 'twould give him a liberal all-round education. Still, there's always hopes it may take a new turn. The last time it went overboard there was indications that 'twouldn't be long before 'twould be leadin' him into algebra an' the fourth dimension." Captain Benjamin grinned at the sally. "It won't be goin' overboard no more now, Zenas Henry," responded he serenely, "'cause since the _Sea Gull's_ got that eel-grass-proof contrivance hitched to her, there won't be no call for me to be lyin' head down'ards astern. I'll be settin' up like a Christian in future--all of us will. My soul, but Bob Morton an' Willie Spence did a good job on that boat! It's somethin' to have a young chap with brains like that marryin' into the family! I'll bet there's 'most nothin' on earth he couldn't tackle." "You're right!" Captain Phineas chimed in. "If Delight's got to get married--an' we'd be a lot of selfish brutes not to want her to--she certainly has picked a promisin' husband. You can lose money--fling it away or have it stolen from you--but you can't lose brains." "That's so, Phineas! That's so!" Zenas Henry said. "Besides, 'tain't as if he was takin' her to Indiana. New York ain't fur. Why, I'll stake a catch of mackerel we could fetch up at that Long Island place in the _Sea Gull_." "Of course we could, Zenas Henry," agreed Captain Jonas, flashing a glance of affection into his friend's face. "There's no question about it. Take a good clear day an' the sea runnin' right, we could make it without a mite of trouble. Long Island wouldn't be anything of a cruise. No place that we can sail to in our own boat is fur away." A listener of discrimination might have detected in the dialogue a note of assumed optimism and suspected that the four old men seated like images on the piazza rail were trying to buoy up one another's courage, and in the assumption he would not, perhaps, have been far wrong. "What do you s'pose this Galbraith has up his sleeve, Zenas Henry, that he should be comin' over here?" Captain Benjamin Todd speculated, during a lapse in the conversation. "He has some scheme in mind, you can be sure of that." "Why do you always go rootin' up evil like as if you was diggin' fur clams, Benjamin?" inquired Captain Phineas impatiently, "All Mr. Galbraith said was he wanted to see Zenas Henry. There surely is no harm in that. Delight bein' his niece, it's only to be expected he'd want to get sight of the folks she is livin' with. Most natural thing in the world, it seems to me. 'Twould be queerer if he didn't show no interest in the people who have brought her up." "That's so, Phineas," Captain Jonas echoed. "Nothin's likelier than that he's comin' to sorter thank Zenas Henry." "Thank us!" Zenas Henry burst out. "Thank us for bringin' up our own child! What business is it of his? Do we go traipsin' to Belleport to thank him for bein' good to his children?" "No, no, Zenas Henry," Captain Phineas replied soothingly. "Of course he ain't comin' here to thank us. That would be plumb ridiculous. More probable he's comin' as I said, to make a friendly call since he's a relative." But in spite of this reassurance, the ripple of misgiving had not entirely died away before the well-known touring-car with the New York financier in its tonneau made its appearance at the foot of the hill. "He's comin', Zenas Henry!" "There he is!" "That's him!" was the excited comment. But Zenas Henry maintained a grim silence. He had risen to his full height and now stood braced to meet an ordeal which he dreaded far more than he would have been willing to admit. His gaunt figure was stiff with resolution, his jaw set, his lips compressed. It was the same expression his countenance had worn the night he had gone forth into the storm to rescue the sinking crew of the _Michleen_ from probable death; it was the expression his companions dreaded and feared,--the fighter ready for combat. Yet his antagonist, as he alighted from the motor-car and crossed the grass in leisurely fashion, appeared to be anything but a formidable adversary. He came toward Delight, who had hurried out to meet him, with easy friendliness, his hands extended and a smile of genuine affection on his face. "I am glad to see you, my dear," he said, "--and in your own home, too. I fancy you must have thought me a great while in coming. I was detained in New York much longer than I expected; otherwise you would have seen me days ago." She smiled up into the kindly gray eyes. "And my, my, my! What a lot of mischief you and Bob have been getting into in my absence! You sly little puss! You may well blush. The bare idea of your springing a surprise like that on your new uncle! Bob has told me all about it," he suddenly became grave, "and I am very glad for you both. You could not have chosen a finer husband, little girl. Robert Morton is one man in a thousand. We'll talk more of him by and by. Just now I wish to meet all your family. You must present each one, so that I shall not get all these many captains confused." How simply and naturally he bridged the awkwardness of the moment! Before they realized it, Abbie and the three veteran seafarers were chatting gaily with the visitor, and even Zenas Henry was venturing out of his reserve and unbending into geniality when the words "_and now to business_" chilled the warmth of his mood and sent him back into his shell, thrilling with vague forebodings. With every eye fixed expectantly upon him, Mr. Galbraith took off his Panama and fanned himself. "Now that we have put together a few of the links that bind our two families," he began, "and laid the foundation for a friendship which I hope the future will foster, there are a few intimate matters of which I wish to speak. First there is Bob Morton, and if you want any reassuring as to his character, I can give it to you. Your own wise and shrewd discrimination has led you to accept him at his face value and your estimate of him has not been a mistaken one. I do not think there is a young man in the world of greater sterling worth than the one your daughter has chosen for a husband." At the firm emphasis on the word _daughter_, Zenas Henry's jaw relaxed. "Of course, you feel the same anxiety for your child that I feel for mine, and realize how much a woman's happiness depends on the man into whose hands she puts her life. In giving up Cynthia I know what it means to you to give up Delight. We parents cannot expect to have all the joy and none of the suffering that comes with having children, however." He looked at Zenas Henry and a quiet sympathy passed from one man to the other. "But we should be selfish indeed were we to deny to those we love the best gift heaven has to bestow. It is making others happy in their way, not in ours, that tests our real affection for them. And so I know that underneath all your personal regrets you rejoice in the prospect of Delight's marriage as I rejoice in Cynthia's. We shall not always be in this world to safeguard our daughters. How much better to see their future in the protection of younger and stronger men than ourselves!" "Yes, yes!" murmured Zenas Henry. "And now I want to speak to Delight, although I am sure she will wish you to hear what I have to say to her. It is a matter of business about which she alone can decide. When Madam Lee, her grandmother, died, she left a large property in real estate and securities which she willed outright to an old friend of whom she was devotedly fond. She felt the Galbraiths were amply provided for and therefore, with the exception of certain jewels and heirlooms that were to be retained in the family, she bequeathed them nothing. We understood the motives that governed her in thus disposing of her property and were in full accord with them. The document, however, was drawn up before she knew of the existence of this other granddaughter, and in view of this fact, the person to whom the property is willed feels that it is only just that the whole or a part of it should be relinquished in Delight's favor." There was an instant's pause. "This the beneficiary does of his own accord, not alone as a matter of duty or as a matter of honor, but because his affection was so deep for Madam Lee that it is a pleasure to him to act as he thinks she would have desired. Had not her end come so suddenly, she would without doubt have made a new will and done this herself." "You mean that without courts or lawyers askin' him to, this man just wants to hand over the money?" gasped Captain Jonas. "Yes." "Well, I dunno who he is, but I'll say this much for him--he's an honest cuss!" ejaculated the fisherman. In spite of his earnestness Mr. Galbraith smiled. Delight, however, had risen during the interval of silence and with nervously clasped hands had gone to Zenas Henry's side, where she now stood, her eyes large with thought. Her uncle turned toward her. "Well, my dear, what have you to say?" he asked. "It is--is very kind of a stranger to be so noble, so generous," she declared gently. "He mustn't think that I do not appreciate it. But I couldn't take a cent of the money," she went on with quick decision. "Even had it been willed to me in the first place, it would have made no difference. I don't want to be unkind or to hurt anybody's feelings. But can't you see that Madam Lee was really nothing in my life? She came in and went out of it like a phantom, and she did not begin to mean to me what she did to this old friend of hers. Just because at the close of her days it was discovered that I was of her kin, it established no bond of affection between us--nothing but a legal claim. If she had lived and we had grown dear to one another, and she had given the fortune to me out of her heart, then I should have accepted it gladly. But to have it bestowed on me merely by right of succession--I couldn't think of touching a penny of it!" She caught her breath, and her chin rose a trifle higher. "And besides," she continued, "I would rather just be indebted to Zenas Henry and my own family. My grandmother was unjust to my parents, unkind. Although she lived to be sorry for it and would, doubtless, have done differently when she was older, she was harsh and cruel to them. I have forgiven but I never can forget it. I don't want the Lee money. Zenas Henry and the three captains give me all I need, and I have no fears but that in the future Bob can look out for me." There was something in the proudly poised figure, so slender and erect, so firm and self-respecting in its calm decision, that roused every hearer's admiration and drew from the New York financier an involuntary homage. Nevertheless with a fear that impulse might have prompted the girl's verdict, he felt impelled to explain: "But you are tossing away a large sum--thousands, child! You and your people would be rich." "We don't want to be rich!" cried Delight, with quivering nostril. "Do we, Zenas Henry?" she slipped an arm about his neck as he collapsed into his seat on the piazza rail. "We are happy just as we are! You don't want me to take the Lee money, do you?" she asked, putting her cheek against his. "No, honey, no! You shan't be beholden to any one but me," he answered. "I hoped you'd decide as you have. 'Twould take half the pleasure out of my life if it warn't us that was to do for you. Just the same, Mr. Galbraith, we thank you kindly for bringin' the offer, an' your friend for makin' it; an' though we refuse it, 'tain't done in no unfriendly spirit." "I understand that," nodded the financier. Nevertheless he gazed with no small amount of awe and respect at these poor fisherfolk who could so lightly fling aside a fortune. "Mebbe," resumed Zenas Henry, "you'll tell this friend of Madam Lee's that we've took note of his squareness." "Oh, yes, do tell him that it was splendid of him, splendid!" interrupted Delight. "He's a gentleman, whoever he is," Captain Phineas added. "Tell him so from all of us." "You might like to tell him so yourselves," returned Mr. Galbraith slowly. "Eh?" Zenas Henry questioned. "Oh, we might write him, you mean. That's so. Likely it would be more decent. We'd be surer of his knowin' how we felt if 'twas put down in black an' white. What's his name?" "Robert Morton." "Robert Morton! Robert Mor--not our--not _Bob_!" "Yes." He saw Delight flush, and her eyes suddenly fill with tears. "Bob!" she whispered half-aloud. "Bob!" Zenas Henry drew her closer. "What does the girl want with money," he demanded, "when she's got a man like that? He's better than all the money on earth." "But she'll get the money just the same, Zenas Henry," piped Captain Jonas. "She'll get it. Have you thought of that?" "It will be Bob's money, not mine," returned Delight with shy dignity. CHAPTER XXIII FAME COMES TO THE DREAMER OF DREAMS Richard Galbraith returned thoughtfully over the Harbor Road not sorry at the turn affairs had taken. The honorable and magnanimous thing had been done with the Lee fortune, and it had been firmly and proudly refused. Now it could go unreservedly to Robert Morton for whom the financier had a particular regard and in whose wisdom to make a sensible use of it he felt every confidence. The money would not only place the young man in a position to marry without delay, but indirectly its benefits would reach the two individuals that Madam Lee would most earnestly have desired to help. Nor did the capitalist's regard for Delight, which had steadily been growing, decrease when viewed from this new angle. The Lees were a proud race and the girl came justly by the attribute. He was not sure, now that he reflected on the matter, but that he himself would have scorned the legacy in the same high-handed fashion. Nevertheless he had not expected this termination of the interview, had not expected it at all. His recently acquired relatives were proving themselves interesting persons. Who would have dreamed that a penniless fisherman's daughter would have tossed the Lee ducats back into his face? He laughed to himself when he thought of the paradox. He had always admired spirit in a woman. The car rolled on, flashing past swamps of swaying iris bedded deep in the salt marsh-grass, past tangles of fragrant honeysuckle and garlands of clinging clematis, and presently shot out into the sunny stretch of road that like a white ribbon bound the blue waters of the bay. When it reached the bluff where the sand mounted into green-capped dunes, patched in their hollows with shadows of violet, it slowed down and came to a stop before Willie Spence's weathered cottage. The old inventor and Bob were seated idly on the workshop steps. No longer did the vibrant hammer and purring plane blend their metallic notes with the music of the surf. Their work was done, and until he was "kitched with a new idee" Willie had nothing to do but smoke beneath the shade of the grapevine and rambler rose and watch the vast reach of water to the line where it melted into the blue of the sky. Since his interview with Mr. Galbraith, Robert Morton had had all he could do to keep from Willie the assurance that Janoah's accusations were false and that instead of misfortune good luck was winging its way toward the low gray house on the bay. Bob was a generous fellow and it added tenfold to his present happiness to know that joy was also coming to one toward whom he cherished an abiding affection. The secret, however, was Mr. Galbraith's, and until the New Yorker saw fit to impart it he must maintain silence. Therefore, with smiles wreathing his face and the wonderful story locked tightly in his possession, he tried to be patient until the final revelation should be made. And now with the approach of the capitalist he knew that at last the great moment had arrived. The dream of years was to come true and the darling of Willie's brain, his greatest and most ambitious idea, was to be made a potent factor in the broad universe. So perfectly did he understand the quaint, half-shrinking inventor that he knew well no money, no fame, no praise could mean to him what this recognition would. Persons were to use the thing he had thought out,--to use it neither because of friendship nor interest, but because it was a practical, indispensable article which no mind had previously given to the world. In the days and weeks Bob had spent in the Spence cottage it was impossible not to read all this and more in the sensitive, hungering nature of the man who had worked beside him. Love and parenthood in its smaller and more specific sense had passed Willie Spence by, but in their place there had sprung into life a broader altruism and a larger creative impulse. The children his mind begot were as much of his blood and marrow as if they had actually been born of his own flesh; and to have one of them go victoriously forth into that moving current that reached so far beyond his own humble door would be like sending a child into battle. It transformed the father to one of the elect. Surely, thought Robert Morton, great and unexpected issues had centered about his visit to Wilton. When confronted by the present unfoldings, who would have the temerity to boast that one's destinies were matters of chance? "Well," called Mr. Galbraith as he came up the walk, "you two people look comfortable. Is there room on that doorstep for one more?" "Certainly, sir! Certainly!" Willie replied. "But wouldn't you rather we heaved a box or something out of the shop for you to set on? You'll find these steps a good way down, I'm afraid." "Not a bit of it," the New Yorker answered, dropping into the welcome shade of the trellis. "You have deserted the shop, I see. Does that mean your work is done?" "Done an' delivered," smiled Willie. "We've discharged our cargo an' ain't took nothin' else aboard yet. We're just kinder ridin' at anchor." "How did your friend, Mr. Brewster, like your handiwork?" In spite of his native modesty Willie's bronzed face lighted with pride. "Say, you'd oughter seen him!" exclaimed he, forgetting everything else in his pleasure. "He was struck clean abeam! He never suspected nothin' about it an' the surprise took him broadside. An' it works!" continued the little man with enthusiasm. "Yes, siree! It works! That cockleshell of a _Sea Gull_ goes rippin' along through the eel grass, her propeller clear and free as if she had twenty fathoms of water under her. It's as pretty a sight as you'd care to look on." Mr. Galbraith watched the shining eyes of the inventor. "Mr. Spence," he said, "that idea of yours is going to be a very useful and valuable one. Have you thought of that?" Willie flushed. "Well," replied he with hesitation, "yesterday when I was shuckin' clams it did come to me that mebbe there'd be other folks besides Zenas Henry would like it." "A great many folks!" rejoined the capitalist. "I am in a position to know, because shipbuilding chances to be my business." "So I was told," his listener remarked quietly. An expression of quick surprise passed over the other's countenance. "Yes," he went on, "both Mr. Snelling and I are interested in boats in our way." "It's a fine job," Willie observed evasively. "Yes, it is. Not only is shipbuilding a fascinating occupation but it is a patriotic one as well, for I believe the resurrection of our merchant marine to be one of the most important duties of our nation. Everything that works toward that end is a service to the country, in my estimation." "You're right, sir," was the rejoinder. "I'm terrible fond of ships myself. They're human as people an' as different. You can turn 'em out from the same model, but no two of 'em will ever be alike. I've got a little yawl down on the shore I wouldn't take a thousand dollars for. She's knowin' as if she was alive. I can tell to an inch how much sail she'll stand an' how much water she'll draw. She answers to the tiller quick as a child to your voice, too--quicker'n most children. I've had her for years, an' smooth weather or foul she ain't never gone back on me. Folks disappoint you sometimes; but a boat never does." As if sensing that he was venturing on dangerous ground, he stopped abruptly. "So you build boats, do you?" he commented to change the subject. Richard Galbraith nodded. "That's my calling," he assented. "And since it is, I am in a position to handle things that have to do with boats of all kinds. That is why your motor-boat idea has interested me so deeply. I saw its possibilities from the moment I first laid eyes on it, and I wish to congratulate you on having given the public such a useful invention." "It ain't got far toward the public," objected Willie, with a deprecating shrug of his shoulders. "But it is going to," Mr. Galbraith declared with promptness. "Bob, Mr. Snelling and I have taken matters into our own hands and have ventured to have an application for a patent prepared--description, claims and all; and after you have sworn to the affidavit and affixed your signature, we will send it off to Washington, where I haven't a doubt it will be granted. I thought this would save you the bother of attending to it yourself." Poor Willie was too amazed to speak. "Now Galbraith and Company will want the monopoly of that patent, Mr. Spence," hurried on the financier. "We are going to make you a proposition either for the purchase of it outright, or for its use on a royalty basis." With a supreme disregard for business, Willie wheeled on him before he could go further and said simply: "Law, Mr. Galbraith, you can use the thing an' welcome. Turn out as many of 'em as you like. It won't make no odds to me. But the patent--think of havin' a real patent on somethin' I've thought out! Just you picture it!" He repeated the words in a soft, musing voice that hushed his hearers into stillness. "I never thought to live to see the day anything of mine would be patented. That means that nobody else anywhere in the world ever was kitched by that same idee before, don't it? It's sorter--sorter wonderful an' gratifyin'. But if it hadn't been for the rest of you that's helped me, the claptraption would never have been in any kind of shape. 'Twould 'a' been just a hit-or-miss contrivance like the rest of the idees I've got indoors. You see, I never had the schoolin' to manage my notions, even when once I'd got 'em. I know that well enough. So if I should get a patent on this thing, 'twould be mostly due to you that's helped me, an' I thank you most humble." His voice trembled with feeling. "After all you've done--the three of you--you wouldn't expect me to take money from you for usin' the scheme, would you? Take it an' welcome, an' may it bring luck to your business! But there's one thing I would like," he added timidly. "If we should get them patent papers from the government an' they ain't no particular use to you, I'd like to keep 'em by me to read over now an' again. 'Twould sorter make it all seem more real some way, an' less as if I'd dreamed it. I've imagined this happenin' so many times an' woke up to find 'twas only imaginin's." The blue eyes softened into mistiness. "To think of gettin' a patent! To think of it! Celestina will be glad. I'm afraid, by an' large, I've bothered her quite considerable with my strings, an' spools, an' tacks, an' such. She'll like to know some of 'em went for somethin', after all. The Brewsters an' Delight will be pleased, too. An' there's Janoah! Oh, Janoah must be told right away, Bob, quick's ever we can fetch it. 'Twill clear the air 'twixt him an' me, an' make us both happier. I ain't never been able to convince him that if you put your trust in folks they seldom betray it. Who knows but when he finds out what's happened he'll kitch _that_ idee? If he should, 'twould be worth all the inventions and patents in the world put together. Look for the best, I say, an' you get it every time," continued the little old man, with a smile of exquisite serenity. "The universe is full of kindly souls with hearts a-beatin' inside 'em same's yours. Meet 'em with your hands out, an' their hands will come the other halfway." "It is a pity you can't take out a patent on that notion, Mr. Spence, and sow it broadcast," returned the New Yorker soberly. Willie's gaze traveled with wistful and reverent faith across the other's face to the sky above him. "Somehow," he murmured, "I like to believe that idee was patented centuries ago by One who put it right to work by believin' the best of all us poor sinners. Folks ain't used the notion yet, much as they might, but they're gettin' round to, an' the day'll come when not to believe in the other feller's soul will be like--well, like havin' a motor-boat without our attachment," concluded he whimsically. 
14979	----	CAPE COD and ALL the PILGRIM LAND A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Interests of Southeastern Massachusetts Entered as Second Class Matter at the Post Office at HYANNIS, MASS. JUNE 1922 Volume 6, Number 4 PUBLISHED BY THE CAPE COD PUBLISHING CO., Inc. HYANNIS, MASS Lemuel C. Hall, Editor Charles L Gifford, Business Mgr * * * * * [Illustration: Frontispiece--DANCING ON THE SANDS] CONTENTS FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESK FRONTISPIECE--Dancing on the Sands THE PORTAL OF THE CAPE--L.C. Hall WHERE SHALL I SPEND MY VACATION WELLFLEET--Edward L. Smith A SQUEAK FOR A LIFE--P.T. Chamberlain CAPE TROUT STREAMS. OCEAN TRAVELS--Emma M. Pray EDITORIALS "CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE"--E.M. Chase "BY HEART"--Lillian E. Andrews. "BY TELEPHONE"--E.M. Chase. FALMOUTH INNER HARBOR "BASS RIVER"--Arethusa CAPE COD NOTES A DELAYED LETTER A MILLION QUARTS OF STRAWBERRIES * * * * * FOR AUTO TOURISTS The following tourist routes from Boston to points in Pilgrim Land will be found useful to autoists: BOSTON TO BUZZARDS BAY VIA BROCKTON 0.0 Park Square, westerly on Boylston Street, bearing left on Huntington Avenue at Copley Square. 1.1 Turn right on Massachusetts Avenue and bear left on Westland Avenue. 1.4 Pass through entrance to Fenway, curving left and bearing right at Y. 1.6 Y, after crossing stone bridge, keep left. 1.9 Y, bear left across stone bridge; turning right and crossing Brookline Avenue. 2.9 Y, bear slightly left, crossing Brookline Avenue. 3.3 Cross Huntington Avenue and enter Jamaica Way. 4.4 Jamaica Pond on right; bear right on Pond Street, but at Y keep left on Jamaica Way. 5.9 After passing Arnold Arboretum on right, jog right and left into Morton Street, passing under railroad and continuing on Morton Street, to 6.3 Y, keep right on Morton Street. 7.9 Turn right on Blue Hill Avenue and follow trolley to 9.1 Mattapan Square. Straight ahead over bridge, bearing left on Blue Hills Parkway. 9.5 Y, turn left and follow trolley on Brook Road. 10.2 Junction of five roads, turn right on White Street. 10.5 Through five corners, running into Reedsdale Road. 11.1 Four corners, turn right on Randolph Avenue, with trolleys. 17.4 Randolph, five corners, bear right with trolley. 19.5 Avon. Pass monument on left, follow trolley. 23.4 Brockton. Straight ahead on Main Street. 27.8 W. Bridgewater. Turn left at monument, following trolley. 30.5 Bridgewater. Straight through. 39.1 Middleboro. Turn left with trolley. 50.6 Tremont. Follow trolley. 54.4 Wareham. Straight ahead, turn left with trolley over bridge. 57.1 E. Wareham. Turn right at garage; cross railroad at Onset Junction; follow trolley. 58.4 Onset. Follow trolley. 61.1 Buzzards Bay. BUZZARDS BAY TO PROVINCETOWN 0.0 Buzzards Bay station on right; straight ahead, avoiding left-hand roads. 5.4 Three corners, turn right over canal bridge. 5.7 Sagamore. Straight ahead, turning left at end of road. 8.0 Sandwich. Curve left. 19.4 Barnstable. Straight ahead. 22.9 Yarmouthport. Straight ahead. 27.4 Dennis. Straight ahead. 32.8 Brewster. Straight ahead. 39.7 Orleans. Straight ahead. 43.5 Eastham. Straight ahead. 52.7 Wellfleet. Straight ahead around curves. 57.6 Truro. Straight ahead. 67.5 Provincetown. BUZZARDS BAY TO PROVINCETOWN VIA FALMOUTH 0.0 Buzzards Bay. Railroad station on right; go straight ahead. 0.7 Turn right over bridge across canal; turn sharp right at store. 3.5 Monument Beach. Turn left, passing railroad station; straight ahead. 16.4 Falmouth. Turn left at park. 26.2 Mashpee. Straight through. 32.7 Marston Mills. Bear right up grade. 34.0 For Cotuit, bear right. 35.3 Osterville. Y, bear left through irregular four corners. 37.1 Centerville. Straight ahead, but at end of road, turn left. 42.0 Hyannis. Straight ahead. 47.1 S. Yarmouth. Turn sharp right and cross bridge. 48.5 W. Dennis. Straight ahead, bearing right at Y. 51.0 W. Harwich. Straight ahead. 53.8 Harwichport. Straight ahead. 60.4 Chatham. Just before reaching village, turn left at white church. 69.1 Orleans. Bear right at irregular four corners and follow macadam road to 96.9 Provincetown. SAGAMORE TO PLYMOUTH Keep straight ahead after crossing canal bridge. Good road all the way to Plymouth. BOSTON TO PLYMOUTH 0.0 Boston. Park Square. Follow route given above to Mattapan Square. 9.1 Mattapan Square. Straight ahead over bridge, bearing left on Blue Hills Parkway. Y, turn left and follow trolley on Brook Road, cross Central Avenue and bear left on Brook Road. End of Brook Road, curve left to Adams Street. 12.4 E. Milton. Cross railroad and keep straight ahead. 14.7 Quincy. Washington Square, curve left with trolley. 21.1 Hingham. Railroad station on right; straight ahead with trolley to Y at top of grade, bear right on Summer Street, leaving trolley. 26.1 Cohasset. Railroad station on right; four corner, straight ahead. 27.9 N. Scituate. Cross railroad; straight on to 38.2 Marshfield. Turn right on Moraine Street. 46.8 Kingston. Cross railroad, follow trolley to 51.2 Plymouth. "Y" means the fork of two roads. * * * * * NOTE--The map plainly shows the routes that can be taken by automobiles on the Cape. The red lines show state highways and macadam roads. Any road marked in red can be safely taken. Patronize the garages, hotels and stores on this sheet. THEY ARE RELIABLE AND GOOD. [Transcriber's Note: Map missing from original text.] * * * * * FROM THE PUBLISHERS' DESK THE MAN WHO WANTS TO DO IT ALL You're to blame if your mind is wasting time. It does the work you select. Fill your head with trifles and there'll be no space for big things. Hack ideas occupy as much room as thoroughbred inspirations. Unimportant details frequently require as much attention as constructive plans. Proportion is the sixth sense and without it the other five are practically useless. Apply your days discreetly--don't do anything which you can hire somebody else to execute for you. Concentrate on paying propositions. Aside from the arts and fine crafts, nobody ever got far single-handed. Delegate the lesser duties to assistants. Let them make an occasional mistake. If you're saving your thoughts for the responsibility of management a few inaccuracies in the organization won't amount to much. Differentiate between incidents and issues. One can't lead and follow simultaneously. Rely on subordinates. You can't be the whole works. As the head of the concern, you're the highest priced employee. Figure your hour value and invest it accordingly. Triphammers may drive tacks, but not profitably. The operation is too expensive for the return. Thoroughness is an admirable quality when intelligently exercised, but a folly when the game isn't worth the candle. You're a good bargainer but you make bad deals despite the concessions secured if the final terms represent a reduction which does not cover the cost of your energy. You can hire folk to handle most interviews and satisfy the demands of the average caller. Correspondence clerks can read and answer the greater part of the mail. One letter in twenty deserves your consideration--the nineteen are merely routine communications which should never come under your notice. Study the future; observe the trend of events--weigh conditions. Success is the servant of forethought and you won't be able to measure possibilities except you have free moments to reflect and scheme. Get the dimes out of our eyes and find where the thousands are located. Engage experts to purchase supplies and run systems--reserve yourself for decisive matters; that's real economy. Hold the throttle--watch the gauge and signals or there will be a wreck and you'll be in it. Stick to your cab, keep the schedule. The engineer who tries to be fireman, conductor and brakeman as well, is headed for a smash. "THE PORTAL OF THE CAPE" L.C. HALL The present town of Bourne can claim many interesting facts about its early history although not for 200 years after the coming of the Pilgrims did it become a separate town. It was included within the limits of the town of Sandwich until the comparatively recent date of 1884. In 1622 Governor Bradford visited the Indian village of Manomet, so called in their language, but which became corrupted into Monument, a name by which the place was long known. It is probable that the reason of the visit was partly for the purpose of establishing a short cut between Buzzards Bay and Plymouth, via the Manomet (or Monument) River. [Illustration: THE PORTAL OF THE CANAL] This river, now obliterated by the Cape Cod canal, had its origin in Great Herring Pond in the Plymouth woods and flowed by a rather circuitous route into Buzzards Bay at a point near the present railroad bridge over the canal. It was in 1627 that the colonists established a trading post on the banks of this river, the exact point being known and marked. It was on the south side of the river a short distance south of the Bourne bridge spanning the canal. This structure was built for the purpose of facilitating their intercourse with the Narragansett country, New Amsterdam (New York), and the shores of Long Island sound. By transporting their goods up the creek from Scusset harbor (Sandwich) and transferring them to what is now Bournedale by land, they reached the boatable waters of the Manomet (or Monument) river and the open waters of Buzzards Bay. Governor Bradford says; "For our greater convenience of trade, to discharge our engagements, and to maintain ourselves, we built a small pinnace at Manomet, a place on the sea, twenty miles to the south, to which by another creek on this side, we transport our goods by water within four or five miles and then carry them overland to the vessel; thereby avoiding the compassing of Cape Cod with those dangerous shoals, and make our voyage to the southward with far less time and hazzard. For the safety of our vessel and our goods we also there built a house and keep some servants, who plant corn, raise swine, and are always ready to go out with the bark--which takes good effect and turns to advantage." The first communication between the Plymouth colony and the Dutch at Fort Amsterdam was through this post. With a ship load of sugar, linen and food stuffs, De Razier, the noted merchant, arrived at Manomet in September, 1627, and Governor Bradford sent a boat to Scusset harbor to convey him to Plymouth. There the trading was done and the first merchandising venture of New England consummated. In 1635 a tidal wave swept over this part of the Cape on the 15th of August, destroying the trading post and partially filling the river with sand. When the white men came Bourne contained other Indian hamlets beside Manomet. At the south was Pokesit (Pocasset) and still to the south was Kitteaumut (Cataumet), while to the north of all these was Comasskumkanit, the home of the Herring pond Indians. Bourne is the first town reached when driving Capeward. After passing through Wareham from the west and nearing Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod and the town of Bourne is entered after passing over the new concrete bridge over Cohasset Narrows, the most northerly arm of Buzzards Bay. This fine concrete structure, completed last year at an expense of about a quarter of a million dollars, is really the "Portal of the Cape," although there is another way to reach it from the direction of Plymouth, also passing through the town of Bourne. [Illustration: YACHT RACE IN BUZZARD'S BAY] The village of Buzzards Bay is a railroad junction point and there the Cape Cod canal makes its exit into Buzzards Bay. Thence to Bourne proper is only about a mile. Bourne, the village, is intersected by the canal and is connected by the highway bridge over the canal. There are two main highways following the course of the canal. The one on the north side follows its course most of the way, passing the village of Bournedale, thence to Sagamore, by crossing over the easterly canal bridge. The other road is on the south side of the canal and the two join at Sagamore village, where a single main road runs to the Sandwich line and the central and lower Cape. Southerly the town extends toward Falmouth and along the line of the Woods Hole branch railroad lie the summer resort villages of Monument Beach, Pocasset and Cataumet. These resorts are popular from their sightly location along the shores of Buzzards Bay. The views are entrancing, the waters of the bay are suitable for warm sea bathing and boating is here a sport that is at its best. Back of these villages lie woodlands extending easterly to Sandwich and Mashpee. Among the pioneers of Bourne are recognized Ebenezer Nye, John Smith, Elisha Bourne, John Gibbs, Jr., Benjamin Gibbs and others who followed them. The land was purchased from the Indians and permanent homes were early established there. In 1717 a unique proposal was made in the General Court for the assessment of the towns on the Cape for the building and maintenance of a fence from Peaked Hill cliffs on the Massachusetts bay side to the head waters of Buzzards bay on the other side, to keep the wolves of Plymouth county from invading Barnstable county where they destroyed sheep and caused other destruction. Had the project gone through it would have been a practical fencing off of the entire Cape from the rest of the continent. Probably the thing of greatest interest to tourists today in the town of Bourne is the Cape Cod canal. It completely bisects the town along its eight mile course through the land and is of never failing interest to all strangers. Traffic passing through, consisting of tugs towing barges, colliers, of large and small tonnage, freight boats and occasional government craft can be seen at close view from the highways on either side and from the bridges that span the canal. The opening and closing of the two huge jack-knife bridges is seldom without interested spectators during daylight hours. At night the canal is brilliantly lighted along its banks and the passage through of the big New York boat is a sight that attracts a great many people. The value of the canal to the system of national defense was demonstrated during the war and a bill is now before Congress for the purchase of it and for its operation by the war department. Probabilities point to much greater development under government ownership when it will probably be widened and deepened and there is a possibility that locks will be installed to regulate the rushing current that now more or less hampers navigation. The people of Bourne foresee advantages to their town through these contemplated developments and hope for the establishment of a landing place which will provide terminal facilities for steamers handling passengers and freight. [Illustration: SCENE FROM "PAGEANT OF CAPE COD" HELD AT BOURNE] Aside from its extensive summer business along the shores of Buzzards bay and its popular colony at Sagamore Beach on Cape Cod bay, Bourne has comparatively little commercial activity. One large manufacturing plant exists at Sagamore where the Keith Car and Manufacturing Company is located and gives employment to a large number of men. There freight cars are built and repaired under the management of Eben S.S. Keith, a former member of the Governor's council and one of the leading citizens of the Cape. Bourne enjoys the distinction of being a former summer capital of the country. When Grover Cleveland was president of the United States he established his summer home at Gray Gables, near Buzzards Bay village, and there was transacted the government's business during his stay there. Gray Gables is still owned by his widow although it is no longer occupied by her. Another distinguished resident of Bourne was the late Joseph Jefferson, the veteran actor, whose palatial residence "Crows' Nest" on Buttermilk bay was one of the show places of the section. In a little cemetery, just over the town line in Sandwich his body now reposes, marked with a huge bowlder which he picked out during his life time to mark his grave. Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Jefferson were close and intimate friends and companions upon fishing trips about Cape Cod territory. Bourne, not "that bourne from whence no traveller returns," but Bourne, the "Portal to Cape Cod," is a large and interesting town. Within its limits abide many summer residents, occupying large and small cottages and estates of refinement and beauty. It has many drives of sylvan beauty, through shaded roads, by emerald ponds, and over hills and through vales, commanding views of placid and glimmering Buzzards bay and the broad reaches of Cape Cod bay on its northerly side. Like other Cape Cod towns, it has a history of maritime adventure behind it and a glorious future as a summer resting place before it. The possibilities of its shores have scarcely begun to be developed. We need not admonish all who visit Cape Cod to "see Bourne" for those who visit the Cape cannot possibly escape it unless they come by boat or flying machine. In order to reach the Cape, Bourne must necessarily be encountered and those who tarry there will find the time well spent. [Illustration] WHERE SHALL I SPEND MY VACATION Where shall I spend my vacation? This is the question that thousands of people are asking themselves today. Since half the fun of a vacation is the anticipation of it, the planning of it is something that needs to be given consideration. It might be asked, "why take a vacation?" and that question might be answered by asking, "Why sleep, and why eat?" for vacations are necessary parts of peoples' lives and those who have never known the joys of them have never truly lived. Vacations help to keep people young, they help to broaden their views and renew their bodily and mental vigor. [Illustration: SOME TYPICAL CAPE COD COTTAGES] A vacation does not necessarily have to be expensive. Any change of environment will do, but it is much more pleasurable to meet new scenes and breathe new atmospheres. Whether one depends upon the trains for transportation, or the boats, or automobiles and whether one stops at the hotels, at the boarding houses or camps, depends largely upon one's circumstances and inclination. Ideas of vacations vary. Some delight in visiting the most sumptuous hotels, to indulge in social intercourse and to enjoy complete relaxation. Others like to live the strenuous life, to rough it in camp and woods and field. No matter what the desires are all of them can be culminated upon Cape Cod. So the answer to the question of our caption is, "spend it on Cape Cod." In a little more detail it may be said that Cape Cod has all the attributes of an ideal vacation spot. It can be reached over smooth highways which present no difficulties to the motorist. It can be reached by train or boat, or even by flying machine if one so desires. When reached a variety of entertainment may be found to suit all tastes. There is Old Ocean everywhere, surging restlessly upon the shores or lying placid in the bays and inlets. Those who enjoy boating and bathing can indulge in those pleasures to their heart's content. If they enjoy beautiful scenery, green trees, blue waters, level spaces or hilly vistas, Cape Cod has them all. If they wish to stop in modern hotels, to receive service of the most exuberant kind, to be entertained royally, the hotels of Cape Cod will answer their purpose. If they like to fish, to camp, to live an out door life, indulge in golf, tennis, or other games, Cape Cod can furnish them with the opportunity. If they search for the quaint and curious they can find it; if they want to visit a section rich in Colonial history, to visit spots where the Pilgrim Fathers trod, Cape Cod is the only place where such can be found. To particularize as to the attractions of different parts of the Cape the following brief summary may serve to help solve the vacation problem. Provincetown--At the tip end of the Cape, except for a narrow strip of land entirely surrounded by water. It has all the attractions of an island and none of its disadvantages. The town is quaint in its architecture, unique in its surroundings and especially attractive to artists who form a large part of the summer colony there. It is the summer rendevouz of the North Atlantic fleet of the U.S. Navy and the home port of a large fishing fleet. It has excellent hotels, and rooms and board may be obtained in many private families. It may be reached by boat from Boston, by train or by automobile. Truro and Highland Light--Highland Light is located upon a high bluff overlooking the broad Atlantic in the town of Truro. The topography of Truro is distinctive and picturesque with sand dunes, rolling hills and salty marshes. Golf links and good fishing. Wellfleet--Wellfleet is a pretty village in which there are good hotels, a land locked harbor, and plenty of shell fish. Many summer residents have their homes there and it is a favorite camping place. Eastham--A town on the lower part of the Cape, quiet and pastoral. An ideal place for campers and cottagers. Orleans--By many considered one of the prettiest places on Cape Cod. Has hotels and can provide for many boarders in private families. A fine place for boating and picnics. [Illustration: WHARVES AT PROVINCETOWN] Brewster--A quiet and peaceful rural town bordering on the bay. Contains many beautiful ponds within its limits and provides excellent bathing and fishing. Chatham--A summer resort town of growing popularity. Has several first class hotels and numerous cottages. It is located at the elbow of the Cape, fronts on the Atlantic ocean and has many safe bays and inlets for boating and bathing. It is noted for its golf links and is destined to become the summer center for golfing enthusiasts. Harwich--Consists of numerous villages all of which are attractive for summer residence. It borders on Nantucket sound, has fine beaches, summer hotels and cottages. It has a community life in summer that is not surpassed anywhere. Dennis--This town reaches entirely across the Cape and is split up into several villages. On the south side it is bordered by Nantucket sound and on the north by Massachusetts bay. Has excellent summer hotels and good bathing and fishing. Yarmouth--A town with quiet and shady streets, sloping shores and many old residences. One of the historic towns of the regions and presents a variety of attractions. Barnstable--The county seat and largest town on the Cape. Attractions exceedingly varied. Noted for the excellence of its clams. Hyannis--Known as the Metropolis of the Cape. It is a center for summer business. Here are to be found excellent hotels, good stores and attractive tea rooms. Its main street is lined with summer stores which are branches of New York and Boston's exclusive shops. Adjacent to it are Hyannisport, a summer colony of fine residences. Centerville, Craigville, said to have the finest beach in New England, Osterville (called the little Newport), and Cotuit, one of the prettiest spots along the shores of Vineyard Sound. This region is growing more and more popular every year as the summer home of people of wealth and refinement and presents all the attractions of resorts which cater to the diversion of vacationists. Falmouth--Falmouth is one of the larger villages on the Cape that draws a fine class of summer residents who populate its fine hotels and summer homes. It has varied scenery as it lies between Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound. Its hotels are among the best and for attractiveness cannot be rivalled anywhere. At Woods Hole, a part of Falmouth, is found another settlement of exclusive character. Falmouth has several other villages, all with fine hotels, golf links and boat harbors. Sandwich--This town on the North side of the Cape is one of the old and original settlements and is on the banks of the Cape Cod canal. It has extensive woodlands dotted with well stocked ponds and is very attractive to campers. Bourne--Sagamore Beach, within the confines of the town of Bourne, is on the north shore and is a pretentious cottage colony with two excellent hotels. Golf links are adjacent and it has its own water system, community house and tennis courts. Cataumet and Pocasset are parts of Bourne which border on Buzzards Bay as well as Monument Beach and the village of Buzzards Bay, itself. These are typical bayside resorts where boating, bathing, fishing and golf are extensively indulged in. The town is intersected by the Cape Cod canal and the traffic that flows through it passes in front of the summer colonies. Martha's Vineyard--This is an off-shore island reached by a half-hour's boat ride from Woods Hole. A poet has said of it, "a little bit of Heaven dropped from out the sky one day" which aptly describes it. Oak Bluffs, Edgartown. Vineyard Haven, Tisbury, Chilmark and Gay Head are its principal villages. The island presents all the best features of an ideal summer vacation spot away from the mainland, yet possessing all the essential features which go to make life comfortable. Its hotels are many and excellent. Nantucket--Further at sea, a two and a half hours' steamboat ride from Woods Hole. Unique is a word that inadequately describes it. All over the United States there are people who assert that there is no place like Nantucket on the face of the globe. It has a large summer population and tourists are adequately cared for. It has the most regular climate of any place along the New England coast, the temperature averaging 76 degrees during the summer months. It is cooled by the Atlantic breezes. Onset--This is a busy and thriving summer resort located in a beautiful spot on upper Buzzards Bay. It attracts many thousands of people during the summer months, who come to spend a few weeks, days, or the season there. It is a cottage colony supplemented by hotels and boarding houses that fit the purses of all classes. At some of these places, either on Cape Cod itself or the islands, every person can find conditions suited to his or her individual taste. WELLFLEET EDWARD L. SMITH Cape Cod has many fine distinctions that make it stand out from a commonplace world and Wellfleet, as a town name, marks the Cape with a place-name known all over the globe, but in no other locality than on the coast of Barnstable Bay. It is true that a misguided, homesick, and ill-advised denizen of the Cape, roaming the arid, inland sand wastes of Nebraska, foisted the name of "Wellfleet" on his townsite. But as it has to date remained "unwept, unhonored and unsung," so is it quite unknown to sailors or to the sea, being about fifteen hundred miles from salt water and an immeasurable distance from being appropriately named. The origin of the name "Wellfleet" has always been a source of lively interest to those who delight to delve to the roots of things historical. So many of our early towns in Massachusetts were named by the Englishmen who settled them for English towns familiar to them before they came oversea, that England is the natural source from whence such a Saxon-English name as Wellfleet might come. After forty years of desultory search by the writer, the problem is yet unsolved, though a good Yankee guess may not come very far out of the way. When that part of old Nawsett now Wellfleet was first settled it was noted for the abundance of shell fish in the harbor and creeks, or cricks as then called, and oysters were both especially plentiful and choice. In England, on the coast of Essex, and not far from the Thames, was a stretch of oyster beds noted in the sixteenth century for their production of oyster different from all other locations and revered by epicures of those far-away times to be the luscious complement necessary to their royal as well as more common plebeian feasts. But we had best let old John Norden, who in 1594 published the results of his life-long investigations into the history of Essex, tell the story, which here is given verbatim as it appears in his work, "SPECTLI BRITTANNIE PARS." "Some part of the sea shore of Essex yealdeth the beste oysters in England, which are called Walflete oysters: so called of a place in the sea; but of which place in the sea it is, hath been some disputation. And by the circumstances that I have observed thereof in my travail, I take it to be the shore which lieth betwene St. Peter's chappell and Crowch the bredthe onlie of Denge hundred, through which upon the verie shore, was erected a wall for the preservation of the lande. And thereof St. Peter's on the wall. And all the sea shore which beateth on the wall is called Walfleet. And upon that shore on, and not elswher, but up in Crouche creeke, at the ende of the wall, wher also is an ilande called commonlie and corruptlie Walled (but I take it more trulie Wallflete) Island, wher and about which ilande thys kinde of oyster abonndeth. Ther is greate difference betwene theis oysters and others which lie ypon other shores, for this oyster, that in London and els wher carieth the name of Walflete is a little full oyster with a verie greene finn. And like vnto theis in quantetie and qualitie are none in this lande, thowgh farr bigger, and for some mens diettes better." From the above we may understand that Wellfleet oysters, which have been celebrated in the English markets for between three and four hundred years, might easily have led the settlers of Nawsett to believe that at Billinsgate, they had a new Wallfleet Oyster bed. The fact that Wallfleet oysters were marketed at Billinsgate, always the big fish market of the Londoners, and that our Wellfleet was at first known as Billingsgate, seems more than a mere coincidence. The difference in spelling between the names "Wallfleet" and "Wellfleet" is not material. Barnstable; town, county and bay, take their name from Barnstaple on the coast of Devon. Norden, who was a highly educated man of University breeding, and a polished writer, varied the spelling of some words even in the same paragraph as witness "Crowch" and "Crouche," also "Ilande" and "Island." The diversified spellings of many of our common names is so marked as to be beyond comment except to note their wide variety, due to attempts to follow the peculiar phonetics of untaught individuals. In the one particular of "Well," who of us has not heard that word pronounced "W-a-a-l." when used as an interjection? All of which makes it seem inescapable from the theory that Wellfleet on the Cape is named after WALLFLEET on the coast of Essex, England. A SQUEAK FOR A LIFE 1850 P.T. CHAMBERLAIN "Whither bound?" said his wife to the captain one morn As he stood, oars and fish lines in his hands, "Outside Sandy Neck, to try fisherman's luck For bluefish, or mackerel or clams." "Good luck and good-bye," said his fond loving wife, "The weather looks pleasant and fair, You'll be back at the landing on the full of the tide, And the children and I'll wait you there." But when rounding Beach Point, with his good catch of fish, The captain was caught in a squall, Black clouds, wind and thunder, lightning and hail, While the rain in torrents did fall. Quick he lowered his sail, but the wind snapped his mast, Away they went over the side. One gunwale under water, the other in air, Lifted high by the surging tide. Then the captain braced himself as with sinews of steel, A hand on each gunwale places he, So he balanced and steadied his frail little craft, Rolling there in the trough of the sea. His wife from the window saw his peril in the storm. And away to the landing she sped. Tied her white linen apron to a handy boat book, And waved it high o'er her head. "Home, home for a lantern," to the laddie she cried. Home, home for the lantern ran he, Returning, he swung it, back and forth, to and fro, That his brave sailor father might see. Soaked to the skin with the rain and the spray, His face as white as the foam, "Must I drown in sight of my wife," he said, "Must I die within reach of my home." "For the sake of my helpless little ones, For the sake of my faithful wife. I pray Thee, O Lord, to forgive all my sins, Give me this one chance for my life." Still darker grew the storm, black and green looked the waves, The shore line to the captain grew dim, But he knew by the lantern and the waving white flag, Where his loved ones were watching for him. Three hours he struggled with the full flooding tide. Now the Channel Rock danger is o'er. One more stretch of water, some more dangerous rocks, Then the gleaming surf, then the shore. "A rope, bring a rope," the kind neighbors shout, "A rope now the captain will save." They coiled a stout rope and with powerful hand, Flung it out o'er the turbulent wave. Joy! Joy! he is saved! He clutches the rope, With cold, bruised and stiffening hand, A long pull, a strong' pull, and more dead than alive, Through the surf they draw him to land. "Home, home for hot coffee," to the lassie she cried, Home, home for hot coffee, went she, Returning, brought coffee, dry clothing, warm food, A fleet-footed lassie was she. But the kid, boylike, would investigate the boat, And so he climbed over its side. "Half full of water," he said, "not a bluefish or clam, Must have all floated out on the tide." With boat hook and lantern, the kids travelled home, "Little sister, now what do you think, Hadn't we said, 'Now I lay me,' to the Lord every night? Would He let Pa and our dory sink?" "No, no," said the lassie, "No, no, that ain't so, Naughty children very often are we, 'Tis 'cause Ma puts a Bible in Pa's chest of clothes Every time that he goes 'way to sea." Gratitude profound, thanksgiving and joy Filled the heart of the loving wife, But the captain, a man of few words, only said, "Yes, a pretty narrow squeak for a life." RICHES C.A. COTTRELL If I can leave behind me, here and there A friend or two to say when I am gone That I have helped to make their pathways fair, Had brought them smiles when they were bowed with care, The riches of this world I'll carry on. If only three or four shall pause to say When I have passed beyond this earthly sphere, That I brought gladness to them on a day When bitterness was theirs, I'll take away More riches than a billionaire leaves here. CAPE TROUT STREAMS The chronic trout fisherman is by nature secretive. He is loath to tell where he made his big catches and shrouds the location of the streams in mystery. If pinned down closely he will sometimes indicate a general locality but it is hard to get him to be more definite. The reason for this is obvious. He is zealous of his rights as a "discoverer" and feels that he is not obliged to share his knowledge with anybody. He won't take the risk of having the stream "fished out" by others than himself. The secrets of the location of gold strikes in the days of '49 were no more closely kept. When the 15th of April comes around each year there are certain wise men who proceed to load up their automobiles with their fishing tackle and in the early morning turn Capeward. They have experiences of previous years to guide them and know certain brooks and pools where the speckled beauties await them. The wise ones know just where to throw their lines and the kind of bait that is sure to lure the denizens of that particular spot. For fishing is a science, as well as a sport requiring skill and judgment. The born fisherman seems to have an uncanny sense of piscatorial thoughts and almost instinctively can determine just the right thing to do and the right time to do it, while the mere amateur fisherman who only wets a line occasionally guesses whether to use a fly or a worm. Yes, the Cape is a noted Mecca for trout fishermen, at least certain parts of the Cape. Within the confines of Bourne, Mashpee, Falmouth and Barnstable are many likely trout brooks and from them are annually taken many catches that gladden the hearts of the sportsmen. These brooks run into the ponds and the sea, they run through marshes and woods. They abound in trout, of the square-tail variety, and those who know them keep their secrets closely. Sometimes a fisherman exhibits a basket of fish that astonishes all beholders. Big speckled beauties they are and in quantity sufficient to satisfy any one. Some of the biggest of them may be "salters," fish caught near the mouths of the brooks that run into the sea and weighing all the way from a pound to two pounds or more. There is authentic information that trout weighing more than two and a half pounds have been taken from these Cape Cod streams. Unfortunately for the general public many of the brooks are "posted," but there are a lot of fishermen that "don't believe in signs" and when they see a sign of "no fishing here" they are apt to challenge the statement and some of them aver that there is very good fishing there indeed. It is a matter of history that the Pilgrims found trout in the Cape Cod streams. It is a matter of fact that many of the brooks have been stocked by private individuals and by the state. Every year the fish in these stocked brooks increase in size and the sophisticated fishermen keep track of them from year to year. The state keeps a record of the stocking of streams and that information can be obtained and made use of. At Sandwich the state maintains a trout hatchery where millions of eggs are secured. These eggs develop into fry and fingerlings and they are distributed throughout the state, the Cape getting its full share. A visit to this hatchery is interesting. It demonstrates how the state strives to increase sport for its residents. Science and experience are exercised and the result is that the fishing advantages of the state are steadily increasing. One of the chief drawbacks of having well stocked streams is the unsportsmanlike conduct of many fishermen. To them a trout is a trout regardless of its size and hundreds of small fish are taken from the streams that should be put back and allowed to grow for another year. There may be satisfaction for some in catching a large quantity of seven-inch fish, but there is a greater satisfaction in catching fewer in number and larger in size. Many of the streams are suitable for fly-casting and experienced fishermen delight in that method of filling their creel. To cast a gossamer silk line with an alluring fly into the deeper pools and to feel the thrill of a strike as the fly flits over the surface is a joy that far outweighs the less spectacular method of fishing with worm or grub and dragging the trout from the water by main strength. There is a skill in fly-casting that comes from long practice and the fisherman who is expert in this method cares to use no other. The trout is a shy fish and the blundering sportsman who goes stumbling through the underbrush, who allows his shadow to fall upon the pool, or who in other ways announces to the fish lurking under the bank that he is present with homicidal intent often wonders why it is that the results are so small for the amount of effort expended. He may aver that the stream is barren of fish when the fact is that his own clumsiness is responsible for his lack of success. In other words there are all kinds of fishermen; to the victor belongs the spoils and the greater the skill the greater the spoil. We are not asserting that Cape Cod trout streams are as prolific as are some in more remote regions, they are fished too frequently for that, but any one wanting a day's sport will not find them entirely lacking and very often will proudly exhibit catches that will by no means be insignificant, even to the most experienced and enthusiastic fisherman. * * * * * "No sah, ah doan't neber ride on dem things," said an old coloured lady looking in on the merry-go-round. "Why, de other day I seen dat Rastus Johnson git on an' ride as much as a dollah's worth an' git off at the very same place he got on at, an' I sez to him: 'Rastus,' I sez, 'yo' spent yo' money, but whar yo' been?'" --Ladies Home Journal. OCEAN TRAVELS EMMA B. PRAY Not very long ago, in one of the newspapers, I read of a lady who had traveled some thirty thousand odd miles in her life time, and the item set me to thinking of the many times I had traveled with my husband some years ago when he commanded a clipper ship on Eastern voyages. For Curiosity's sake I looked over my journals and found that in the few voyages I had made I had covered two hundred forty-nine thousand two hundred sixteen miles--but how it all came about is a long story. When I was a young girl, if any one had told me that I should spend a certain number of years travelling about in Eastern countries, passing three or four months at a time on the ocean, I should have said, "What an idea! Here I am, born and brought up in a small New Hampshire town, in a family whose idea seems to be to keep as far away from the water as possible, and with no thought of ever crossing it, 'Unless,' as my father used to say, 'there should be a bridge built by which we could do so'." In fact my knowledge of a ship and its belongings was nearly equal to that of the young lady who was about to make her first trip across the ocean with her father. Seeing the sailors about to weigh anchor she inquired why they were working so hard. Her father replied, "They are weighing the anchor, my dear." "How absurd! If the Captain wants to know the weight of the anchor why doesn't he have it weighed beforehand and not wait until we get ready to start and then keep us waiting for the men to weigh it?" However, it is the unexpected that always happens, and one day I married a young sea captain from a seaport town. He was soon to sail for Australia, and to me such a trip was literally going to the ends of the earth. I feel sure that my parents never expected me to return. What preparations we made for that voyage! What pickles, preserves, cakes, and everything that would keep, were packed for me and sent aboard our ship which was lying in New York harbor! Our cabins were beautifully fitted up with every convenience and comfort that we could have on shore. The saloon, or after-cabin, was finished in bird's-eye maple and satin wood veneering. Wilton carpets and furnishings of raw silk made a homelike and attractive room. Our stateroom, with large double bed, and our own private bath opening from the stateroom, left us nothing to wish for in the line of comfort. The second cabin, or dining quarters for the Captain and First Officer, was finished like the after-cabin, while forward of the two was the mess room for the Second and petty officers. At last the day came on which we were to sail, and, realizing that I was not a born sailor, I made up my mind that I must make myself over into one, though the making over process proved to be nearly the death of me. For the first ten days I can recall but little outside of a promiscuous tumbling about of movable objects and, though urged strongly to go on deck I refused to do so, caring little whether I lived or died. However, one day I was literally taken up, carried on deck, and placed in a steamer chair, and from that time I recovered rapidly. So many people have asked me if the time at sea did not hang heavily on my hands. What did I do? Was I not lonesome, homesick, and innumerable other like questions to which I have honestly replied that I was not lonesome or homesick. We purchased books by the hundred before sailing, and with a piano and flute, passed many pleasant hours. So much fancy work was always on hand that I have cared but little for it since. Whenever the weather permitted I walked two or three miles up and down the quarter deck, so many times up and back making a mile. Occasionally we took with us as passenger some young man whom we knew very well and who wished to take such a voyage. At one time a brother of mine, also one of the Captain's were our companions; two other times, young men from our own state proved to be excellent company, and to this day we enjoy nothing more than talking over our odd experiences in the different countries to which we traveled. Though I was the only lady on board I did not feel the lack of companionship of other women. A queer life it was! No one to come and no one to go, with nothing but the sky and water to be seen. In two weeks time we had the N.E. Trade Winds and fairly flew along. Each day brought its own particular work aboard the ship, for a sailor is never idle. There is always something for him to do. Chafing gear, of which there is a large amount, is always being worn out and has to be renewed, sails made and repaired, work on rigging, tarring, painting, etc. Perhaps the most interesting part of each day was the marking off of the chart at noon. At that time the Captain would work out his latitude and longitude, mark our position for the last twenty-four hours, and shape our course for the next twenty-four. We often towed lines for dolphin, and it was curious to see their change of color as they were hauled in. We had them baked occasionally and found them very fair eating. On opening one, at one time, it was found to be packed with flying fish which had been swallowed whole and which some of the sailors took out and had cooked for themselves, though for my part I should have preferred having the first eating of them. The flying fish which came aboard were usually served to me as they were considered a great delicacy. We caught many jelly fish or Portuguese men of war as they are sometimes called, and they were very curious to look at. They are of a jelly-like substance, with apparently no eyes or mouth, and are bluish in color. They have a pink crest and when the wind strikes them, as they float on the water, they rock and sway like a boat. Dangling from the lower part are many small feelers, some of which are short and thick, and others of great length, which they turn and twist rapidly about. A shade of homesickness came over me as I saw the North Star for the last time but I was soon interested in the Southern Cross of which I had heard so much. I wish I could describe some of the beautiful colorings shown in the tropical sunsets. I missed the twilight effects as seen at home, for as quickly as the sun goes down, darkness closes in. As I was enjoying my evening walk with the Captain at one time, a small boy who had been sent to sea apparently with the idea of getting him out of the way, came to me and said, "Wouldn't you like some Youth's Companions to read? I have lots of them." At that time I had more of a juvenile than a matronly air and I presume he thought they would furnish me with appreciative reading matter. He had not then learned that he should not speak unless spoken to. One day on being told to make a rope fast he replied, "I did hitch it." An order to let go a brace was answered by the question, "Which string do you mean?" At one time he was placed on duty to open and close shutters during squally weather and the officer told him to use a good application of soap and water before coming aft. When the novelty of his new duty had worn off and he had rather forgotten why he had been placed there the officer called to him and said, "What did I tell you to do?" "Wash myself, sir," was the reply. It was a long while before he could obey an order without replying and at the same time to remember his "Sir" when a reply was necessary. As we approached the equator it could be seen that some special interest in the voyage was being taken among the sailors and we learned that three of them had never crossed the line before and that an initiation of so doing was about to take place. The crew assembled at the bow of the ship and at the blowing of a trumpet by one of their number, Neptune appeared inquiring the name of the ship, where she was bound, etc., and announced that he would like to pay her a visit. Before his apparent arrival a staysail had been fastened to the rigging and filled with water. A bucket had been filled with a mixture of lamp black and grease with a few other combinations, while a razor, a foot or more in length, had been made by the carpenter. As soon as Neptune and Amphitrite--two sailors fantastically dressed--appeared, the candidate for crossing the line was blindfolded and brought before them. A number of absurd questions were asked the candidate and he was finally ordered to be shaved, which was done by applying the mixture with an old paint brush and shaving it off with the razor. He was then thrown backwards into the sail of water and I was much surprised to see how good naturedly the men took so many surprises--for we had an excellent view from the quarter deck, of the whole entertainment. We heard afterwards that it was considered a great success, also that one of the men had been watching through a glass for the equator, seeming to think that a straight line passing through the center of the earth should certainly be seen. He thought he surely saw it when a hair was drawn tightly across a spy glass without his seeing it and the glass then given to him. In one of his rambles about the decks, on a moonlight night, one of our passengers told me of some of the tattooes he had seen on the arms of different sailors. One had his mother's gravestone, with a weeping willow over it; another had the Goddess of Liberty remarkably well done. The large number of different sketches was really quite an entertainment. That reminds me of an engraved whale's tooth which I have in my possession and which was given to my grandfather in Nantucket many years ago. A full rigged ship with every rope, even to the smallest one, is carved upon it, with the engraver's name and the name of the ship. It is now nearly a hundred years old and among my most prized possessions. We soon sighted the Island of Fernando Norouha which is a penal settlement for the convicts of Brazil. This island is about six miles in circumference and two thousand and twenty feet high. It had a rocky barren appearance with nothing to be seen but a few birds around it. About thirty miles from this island are the Martin Van Rocks, three hundred feet high. In the south Atlantic we sighted the group of Tristan Da Cunha Islands which had a very gloomy, foggy look. Tristan is inhabited by English people and I have been told that the women are particularly handsome there. In this region it is very chilly and damp and though the thermometer stood at fifty-five degrees it seemed much colder. At this time we began to prepare for the heavy weather of our Easting, as the run across the Indian Ocean is called. New sails were bent and everything battened down. The days were very short, the sun rising at about half past seven and setting at five o'clock. We usually made the run about forty degrees south in order to get better winds. What a dreary outlook it was! Nothing but sky and water with waves which were mountains high. The only bit of life outside of our ship's company was a number of birds of a different nature from any I had ever seen and they followed the ship day after day. Cape pigeons and albatross were in large numbers. We caught many of the latter and measured them. I remember one weighing thirty pounds and measuring fifteen feet from tip to tip of the wings. Cape hens about as large as good sized turkeys, ice birds, and many other small birds. I enjoyed feeding them and it was very funny to watch them tumble over each other in their efforts to get something to eat. Such a noise as they did make with their squabblings! Many sharks were caught and I never knew a sailor to have any compunctions about disposing of these man-eating creatures. A shark line was towed astern at different times and one day it took the combined efforts of five men to haul one in. Whales, all of ninety feet in length, stayed about the ship several days at a time. We saw many sun-fish which are a light gray in color. They have one large fin out of the water and are very hard to harpoon. Once in a while another ship would come in view and if near enough we always spoke to one another by our flag code. This was always an interesting event. Certain sentences given in the code book would be represented by certain flags, each flag representing a letter of the alphabet. The questions usually asked were, "Where are you from?" "Where bound?" "How many days out?" and then a wish for a pleasant passage. My experience in running down the Easting has always been the same and I have made the trip a number of times. I have heard of ships running across the Indian Ocean with royals set but whenever I have been, we have had a succession of heavy gales. In thirty-six degrees fifty minutes south and Lon. twenty-nine degrees fifty-nine minutes east a heavy gale sprung up which gradually turned into a hurricane. The barometer was falling fast when I retired and at eleven o'clock it stood at 28.50. I have merely to close my eyes now and I can hear the wind as it shrieked and roared about us. We ran before those mountainous seas with but one thought and that to keep them from breaking over the ship. All hands were on deck all night, each one lashed, with the exception of those who were between decks passing out oil cases which were broken open and thrown overboard by those on deck. Fifteen hundred cases were used that night with good effect. The seas were as high but the oil prevented them from breaking over the ship. During the worst of the gale one man was washed overboard but his loss was not discovered for nearly twenty minutes, and even if it had been, nothing could have been done to save him in such tremendous seas. Clark Russell says that the grandeur and sublimity of the ocean can be best seen on a yard arm during a gale of wind, but somehow I have not been able to make those words applicable to the gales through which I have passed. Through our ninety degrees of Easting I had but little exercise. The lee side of the cabin usually found me with my books, work and numerous small articles for ready use. I think the most exercise I had during those days was when I tried to dress, as it was almost impossible to stand in one spot any length of time on account of the rolling and pitching of the ship. With a firm stand I would place myself in front of my mirror, only to gradually slide away across the room to a lounge where I would sit down, then I would climb back, and with as much speed as possible do what I could before disappearing again. In a length of time I was able to make my toilet, and when made it was not changed during the day in those latitudes. They were certainly strenuous days, but we were well and had good appetites for the excellent meals which were served to us by our capable Chinese steward and cook. The doings and sayings of our cabin boy would fill a book, but he was trustworthy and attended faithfully to our wants. One night after I had retired, a heavy thunder storm came up which might have caused us considerable trouble had not our usual strict discipline been carried out. Having become so used to confused sounds on deck I did not realize that the ship had been struck by lightning, though I heard a sound which in my dozing condition I laid to something falling down in the bathroom. When the Captain came in to ask if I were all right I sleepily said, "Why not? I think something has fallen down." He did not tell me until morning that the ship had been struck and had caught fire aloft. By changing the course the sparks were made to fall overboard while men were sent aloft to cut away the blazing fragments. About ten minutes before the vessel was struck, a dozen men were aloft furling a sail just where the lightning struck us, and when the storm was over it seemed a special act of Providence that we still had these men with us. I have so often been asked what could we possibly have to eat that would be appetizing for such lengthy voyages. We always carried fowl in large numbers and it was very seldom that we did not have fresh eggs enough for our table during the voyage. Potatoes, onions, and lemons we always had in abundance and they were very important items of our food. The following is one of the menus served to us on quite a stormy day as we were running across the Indian Ocean. For breakfast: baked beans, fish balls, brown bread, hot biscuits, tea and coffee. For dinner: soup, roast chicken, cold tongue, boiled potatoes, squash, and onions, English pudding, hard sauce, and coffee. For supper: warm biscuit, cold chicken, cold tongue, fried potatoes, cake and tea. In fine weather our menus were more elaborate and I never knew any one to complain of being hungry aboard ship while I was going to sea. After eighty-seven days of such sea life I was aroused one morning to go on deck and see if I could see anything that looked like land and saw what at first seemed to me to be a small cloud in the distance about thirty miles away. As the morning wore on, the Australian coast gradually loomed up before us, the land first seen proving to be Cape Bridgewater. We sighted Cape Otway in the afternoon, the lighthouse being plainly seen in the evening, and such a beautiful evening as it was! Not a cloud in the sky! The stars shone like diamonds and the reflection on the water of the beautiful moon put a finish to the charm of a perfect night. The Southern Cross was almost directly over us, while in close proximity to the moon was the brilliant Venus. We remained on deck very late that night to enjoy our beautiful scene. During the evening a very pretty phenomenon took place when the sky became a brilliant red, like the reflection of a fire, forming an arc through which the stars could be plainly seen. It remained thus for some time, until it gradually changed into a white light, the Southern Lights or Aurora Australis as the change is called. * * * * * [Illustration: THE OLD TOWN CRIER] EDITORIAL PROSPERITY IS HERE Whatever may be the situation throughout the country, Cape Cod shows evidences of prosperity that cannot be overlooked. In fact, dull times on the Cape are a thing of the past and each year sees a steady growth, increasing land values and larger summer population. While the Cape has not increased very fast in permanent population it has shown a remarkable advancement in wealth and prosperity. Lands that a few years ago had little value have been developed, cottages and homes have been built, agricultural interests developed and all along the line the Cape has moved steadily forward. This year there has been a great many real estate changes, shore colonies are being opened up and builders are busy everywhere supplying the demand for more summer homes. All signs point to the fact that the Cape is at that stage in its development where it is becoming widely and favorably known as a summer resort region. Its business facilities are increasing, the quality of its stores improving and from a more or less provincial community it is developing into a region second to none in prosperity along the New England coast. It has been widely and extensively advertised and although it has not boomed as have some of the southern resorts its growth has been more steady and sane and it is devoid of those inflated values which are apt to be followed by a depression in so many cases. The Cape's growth has been a conservative one and therefore a permanent one. Again we wish to warn prospective lot buyers upon the Cape not to have dealings with real estate agents of the type known as "land sharks." The reputable agents are well known and can be depended upon to give a square deal, but there are get-rich-quick men who stand ready to take advantage of the unwary and sell them sand lots among the dunes and locations among the scrub oaks, remote from habitations and worthless for any purpose. Beautiful prospectus and misleading blue prints do not afford a sufficient basis for lot buying and personal investigation is as needful here as anywhere else. Cheap land is apt to be dear at any price and unless one personally investigates what is being offered it will be well to go slow. There are plenty of real seaside bargains left on the Cape. In the vicinity of the popular resorts land values are apt to be high, but there are numberless localities that have not yet been developed that present good possibilities and the seeker after a summer home can find such localities without much trouble and a very little money will buy land suitable for their purposes amid surroundings that are congenial, scenic and healthful. Among the hundreds of new cottages that are being built upon the Cape this season are those ranging from the simple cottage costing only a few hundred dollars and those which are destined to be pretentious summer homes, but whether hundreds of dollars are spent or thousands all are assured pleasant, healthful environments with opportunities for rest and recreation unsurpassed. We predict a brilliant future for our region. It is just beginning to be understood and appreciated. Its advantages are becoming known and its attractiveness understood. * * * * * HABITS AND THE GAME Your habits will determine largely whether you give or take orders. Is it your habit to shirk responsibility--to "pass the buck"--whenever possible? If so, you will never be the "boss." One man has no one to whom he can pass the buck. That person is the chief. Accept and welcome responsibility. Have the courage to face the consequences of your acts and decisions. Develop self-confidence, not egotism. Let that confidence be founded on experience, study, common sense, and careful work. Indulge in retrospection. Examine decisions that you have made, in an attempt to develop the faculty for reaching conclusions on tenable grounds quickly, Quick decisions expedite the processes of business and inspire confidence in one's co-workers. The man who does not know his mind cannot guide efficiently the mental or physical energies of others. Are you careless? Do you permit to pass unquestioned points about which you are uncertain? Do you take it for granted that these things will "get by" or that they never will be noticed? Again you are shifting the burden, expecting that someone will do the work you should have done. That carelessness will militate against you to prevent your elevation to an executive position. The boss cannot be careless and hold the respect of his associates or his position. Success comes to the one who plays the game. There is no royal road to it, or chance about it. It comes from eternally plugging at it, by study and concentration and an absence of the fear of making a mistake. A mistake is not such a frightful thing as many imagine. An honest mistake can be readily changed into a success many times. The fear of making mistakes frequently deters a weak man from going ahead where another will study well the situation, form a conclusion, and go ahead. Your own character and habits determine whether you are a leader or a follower. * * * * * GET AFTER THE BILLBOARDS If your town has not yet taken action against the billboard nuisance it is time that it did. Have a strong town by-law passed and see that it is enforced. There is no question that public sentiment is against the billboard. They should be made outlaws upon the highways. State legislation has been enacted against them, but its effectiveness has been tempered by the timidity of those charged with the enforcement of the laws to destroy the "property values" that is claimed for them. Public sentiment, rightly used, can do more than laws. Offending billboard advertisers can be shown that such advertising is injudicious and in time they will voluntarily give it up. By law, billboards can be debarred from localities possessing unusual scenic beauty. The Mohawk Trail and Cape Ann are examples of the application of this principle. Cape Cod has just as great claims. Its scenic beauty is marred and destroyed by the glaring monstrosities that greet the traveler everywhere. Let them be removed and an irritating offense against the nerves and asthetic senses will be removed. The only way to get rid of the billboards is to act. * * * * * HELP THE CAUSE In certain ways the whole community can be helped by concerted action. The interest of the whole is the interest of all. Anything that tends to help others will help you. Just now a question of importance is the further development of Cape Cod by the establishment of terminal facilities on the Cape Cod canal. This will cost money, but it will be money well expended. If we wait for someone to do the developing for us we will have to wait a long time. The state is ready to do its share, but it wants the locality itself to do a part. A canal terminal is the one thing needful to make the canal of local advantage. We have the opportunity and we should grasp it. It is a case where local conservatism should be forgotten and every community should help bear the burden of an expense that will assist in the development of Cape Cod as a whole. CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE E.M. Chase "Willie." "What." "Is that the way to answer your mother?" "Yesum, I mean nomum." "I want you to stay out in the front yard where you can watch my flower garden this afternoon. I have planted some flower seeds out there and I want you to keep the neighbors' hens way. Your father is going to put a wire netting around the garden as soon as he can get a chance." "Why not ask the neighbors to keep their hens at home?" mildly inquired Mr. Brown. "I have told them time and time again, but the Bakers say it must be the Jones' hens and the Joneses say it is the Bakers' hens. As a matter of fact all their hens come over, but I don't want to make a fuss, I can't afford to lose the only two neighbors I have." "But ma, I promised Ned I'd go fishing with him." "You had no business to promise anything of the kind, now go out there and say no more about it." It was a warm spring day, just the right kind of weather to go fishing or rambling through the woods or playing marbles with the other boys or to do almost anything except stay in the front yard and watch neighbors' hens. Willie thought himself much abused and cast about for a means of escape. He dared not run away; he had tried that before and the memory of the results was rather painful. A shrill whistle interrupted his bitter thought and a moment later Ned came in view carrying a fishing rod, basket, and can of bait. "Hello, Bill, ain't yer ready yet?" "Can't go." "Tough luck, what's the trouble?" "I gotta stay here and keep the hens out of ma's garden." "Why don't yer cut it, you can stay away from home until late then your ma will get worried and be so glad when you show up she won't whip yer." "Not on your life, I did once. I never got home 'til long after dark. Mother licked me good for running away then pa whoppoped me for scaring ma, nope, I've learned my lesson." "Gee, Bill, it's dirt mean, but I'll tell you what I will do, I'll come back and play marbles with yer if the fish don't bite good." "I wish the old hens was in Tophet. Say, Ned, ain't got a book yer could let a feller have, have yer?" "Sure, one of the latest. I just finished it and it's a corker. I promised Joe Hykes he could take it next but you will have time to read it this afternoon and Joe is off playin' ball." Willie grabbed the book eagerly. It had an alluring cover, the design was worked out in bright red, brilliant yellow and poisonous green and it represented a man in the act of killing a young and presumably beautiful woman. It was of the dime novel variety entitled "Conclusive Evidence," just the thing to appeal to the imaginative Willie. Soon all thought of hens slipped from Willie's mind, his heart beat rapidly, he breathlessly followed the hero's thrilling adventures, he almost shed tears when the girl who had helped the hero outwit the villain was found mysteriously murdered. With keen interest he watched the authorities carry the hero to jail. He was first in the audience at the trial, he drew a long breath when only circumstantial evidence could be brought out, his heart sank when the villain rushed into the court room and cried out that he had conclusive evidence, his hopes went down, a sharp pain assailed him in the shoulder, he thought the villain had grabbed him, he jumped up and--in place of the court room, prisoner, judge, jury, witnesses, interested onlookers, etc., he saw his mother standing beside him and--horrors--a dozen or more hens blissfully digging in the loosened earth of the garden. "Where did you get that book, Willie?" "It was lent to me, ma, don't tear it ma, don't tear it, it ain't mine, ma--" "That will do, Willie, it is not fit for you or any other boy to read, now you come in the house and go to bed." "But ma, it is only four o'clock and I'm hungry and I won't let 'em in the garden again, ma, please can't I stay out here, ma?" "You do as I told you without further delay." All alone in his room, confined to his bed by the stern mandates of his mother, with everything out of doors calling him, Willie could not sleep and then when darkness fell hunger gnawed at his vitals and sleep refused to put an end to his misery. He counted to a thousand then half drifted into the land of dreams. A wicked little green imp whispered in his ear. "Conclusive Evidence," whispered it so loudly Willie awoke, then he thought, or tried to think of some plan of revenge on his heartless mother. He could think of none that would not return to himself fourfold, then he reasoned that after all it was not so much his mother's fault as the neighbors for keeping hens that would not stay at home. Perhaps the little green imp came and whispered into his ear again, I don't know, but how else account for Willie's queer actions? He slipped quietly out of bed, paused to listen at the door of his mother's room but heard no sound. Reassured, he crept noiselessly down the back stairs into the kitchen, out through the rough room into the shed where the corn was kept. He filled the pockets with hen corn, the bright moonlight shining in through the window gave him all the light he needed, until his pajamas looked as though they had the bubonic plague. Still moving with extreme caution, he went into the kitchen again, secured a pan into which he put his corn; he then proceeded to fill the pan nearly full of water. He listened but all was quiet, so he ventured even into the pantry where his mother kept the cookie crock. He again filled his pockets, this time with cookies. His night work over he carried the pan containing the corn and water to his room, put the pan as far under the bed as possible to avoid discovery, then seated himself by the open window to enjoy his lunch. His father, who never seemed to get around to things, had not mended the screen that belonged in Willie's window so Willie sat with his head as far out of doors as the size of his body would permit and ate his cookies. He was wise enough not to leave tell-tale crumbs. Willie slept well and soundly after his midnight adventures and in the morning appeared at the breakfast table promptly. He ate enough to make up for what he had missed the night before, then enough to last until noon time. When he finished his mother said: "Now Willie, go out and watch the garden again, your father did not get around to putting up the netting yesterday, and mind, if I catch you reading another book you will not get off as easily as you did yesterday." "Yesum." Willie first made a trip to his room, then to the sewing room. "What are you doing, Willie?" came the maternal voice. "Nuthin', just lookin' for my cap, I'm going out now." Once more out where he could watch the hens, Willie proceeded to unload his pockets. He brought to light some sheets of paper, a pencil, a large needle, a spool of black linen thread and all of the soaked corn he had been able to put in his pockets. He tore the paper in strips about an inch wide and three inches long. On each slip he wrote, "Please keep us home." On the other side, "Conclusive Evidence." He cut pieces of string, linen thread, about six inches long, some longer. With the aid of the needle he threaded a piece of corn on one end of each string, on the other end he tied one of the slips of paper. When all were finished he scattered them broadcast over and about the garden. "Willie, come to dinner." No Willie appeared on the scene. "Willie, dinner is ready." Still no sign of the lad and his mother started after him with a queer look in her eye. Strange was the sight her eyes beheld as she came around the corner into the front yard. Hens fled before her approach but such funny looking hens; they all had more or less tags flying from their bills. They had swallowed the corn but the strings and tags were beyond their ability to masticate and they blew out defiantly in the breeze. One tag had become loosened and Mrs. Brown picked it up and read the scribbled words. While she was thinking just what she ought to do to Willie, Mrs. Baker came across the yard, bristling like a frightened porcupine. "What have you been doing to my hens?" she demanded. Mrs. Brown, like the efficient woman she was, saw her opportunity and rose to the occasion. "Your hens, Mrs. Baker, why nothing. I have been in the kitchen all the morning until I just came out to call Willie to dinner. Willie has been keeping the hens out of my garden, not your hens, you know you have assured me your hens never come over here." Thinking discretion the better part of valor Mrs. Baker suddenly remembered something that needed immediate attention and she hastened to attend to it. Mrs. Brown watched her out of sight, smiling in appreciation of the genius she had raised, then she turned and confronted Mrs. Jones, coldly angry. "What do you mean, Mrs. Brown, by tagging my hens until they look like a mark down sale?" "What are you talking about, Mrs. Jones? Your hens couldn't have been over here could they? I am sure neither Willie nor I have been out of the yard." "I smell something burning." In spite of the fact that the Jones homestead was quite a distance and the wind in the direction to blow all odors in the opposite direction Mrs. Brown did not try to detain her. Neither did she punish Willie, in fact she gave him an extra piece of pie for dinner. * * * * * The Browns, Joneses and Bakers are still on the best of terms, but Mr. Brown never put the wire netting up and yet Mrs. Brown plants her garden with never a thought of neighbors' hens. Incidentally Willie and Ned have developed into first class fishermen. BY HEART LILLIAN E. ANDREWS Captain Enoch Burgess went down Mapleville's main street at a rate of speed that threatened to break all records. The tails of his linen coat stood out like the sails of a Gloucester fisherman homeward bound with a "full bin fare." He stamped up Abner Crowell's walk, and slammed the kitchen door. Abner was weeding onions. He stared after the captain curiously. "Looks like squally weather," he commented. "I wonder what's sent Enoch on his beam ends like that." As Abner bent with a grunt to his task, his wife came hurrying toward him, her apron strings flying like distress signals. "Abner," she demanded excitedly, "did you ever hear of Captain Enoch's havin' fits?" "No, I dunno's I ever did," replied Abner, twitching up an enterprising wild mustard. "Well, he's havin' one now," insisted Mrs. Crowell. "He come trampin' in an' says, 'Git right out o' my way, Mis' Crowell,' an' now he's a pacin' up an' down his room like a caged hyeny. You leave them onions, an' go an see what under the canopy ails him. I'll stand at the foot of the stairs ready to run for help, if he should be dangerous." Abner groaned. Reluctantly he brushed the dirt from his knees, and went into the house. Captain Enoch's heavy steps jarred the floor of his little room. Three times Abner knocked. Growing wrathful at being ignored, he applied his lips to the key-hole. "Hey, there," he bellowed. "You gone clean crazy, Enoch? It's only me--Abner--open the door!" Captain Enoch opened the door so suddenly Abner nearly fell over the threshold. "I didn't hear you," apologized Captain Enoch. "I dunno's I'd heard a fog horn. I'm going loony, I guess." Despondency suddenly overcame him. He sat down abruptly. "I'm afraid I'm love cracked," he groaned despairingly. "Love cracked!" repeated Abner in blank astonishment. "Wall, I snum! Love cracked!" Captain Enoch glared at him ferociously. "Stop that parrotin'," he commanded. "If you dare to grin, I'll larnbast you good an' plenty." As Abner appeared properly subdued, he went on explanatorily. "I've be'n callin' on M'lissy Macy reg'lar whenever I've be'n ashore for the last ten years. M'lissy makes the best doughnuts I ever e't, an' I calculated we'd be married sometime, though I ain't never mentioned it special. But when I went to call on M'lissy this afternoon, there set Tom Peters in the big rockin' chair holdin' M'lissy's yeller cat an' lookin' as cheerful as a rat in a shipload of cheese. It come over me all at once what a marryin' critter he is. The old punkin'-head's had two wives already, ain't he?" "Three," corrected Abner. "He's be'n a widower once an' a grass widower twice. Mebbe he's gittin' lonesome again. You'll have to git up your spunk and do some courtin'. Why don't you pop the question? It hadn't orter be so awful hard after you be'n goin' to see M'lissy ten years." "You talk like a nincompoop," snapped Captain Enoch. "I never asked a woman to marry me in my life. How be I goin' to know what to say? S'pose you tell me how you asked Mis' Crowell." Abner's face turned as red as Captain Enoch's. "Wall, I--er--er," he stammered. "That's about what I expected," said the captain sarcastically. "I s'pose Mis' Crowell did the askin' and you didn't dare to say 'No.'" Abner glanced toward the door where a board had creaked faintly. "She--she didn't really ask," he remarked hastily, "but she was pretty good at understandin' what I was thinkin' about." "If M'lissy understands, she's careful not to let me know it," said Captain Enoch sadly. "Mebbe she's afraid of being bold. Just to think of proposin' makes me feel as if somebody was pourin' cold water down the back of my neck." Abner had a sudden flash of memory. "Why don't you learn a regular proposal that nobody can find any fault with an' say it right off like sayin' a piece?" he asked. "Pegleg Brierly used to have a book in his dunnage that had all kinds of proposals printed in it. 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony' was the name of it. Pegleg said he didn't have any notion of fallin' in love, but if he should happen to, he didn't cal'late to be caught nappin'. He's livin' down on the back road now, and he's still an old bach. If he's kept the book, mebbe he'd sell it, or lend it to you." The change from despair to hope brought the captain to his feet. "Abner, if you'll git me that book, I'll give you twenty-five dollars," he promised earnestly. "But mind you don't tell what you want it for." "I won't tell anybody that don't know about it already," declared Abner with perfect truthfulness. "I'll have to be awful di-plo-mat-ic," he went on, "or Pegleg will be sure to suspect something. And I pity you an' M'lissy if he got hold of the real reason why you wanted it. Pegleg can scatter news faster than a pea dropper can drop peas." With his clam hoe and bucket under his arm, Abner appeared at the door of Pegleg's shanty the next afternoon. "Thought I'd dig a mess o' clams for supper," he explained casually, "an' seeing's I was passin', I dropped in. Some time since you an' me crossed the line on the old Almeda, ain't it?" "A matter of twenty year," agreed Pegleg. "Them was great days," reminiscenced Abner. "Do you remember how we used to read your 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony'? I was thinkin' about it only yesterday." Pegleg grinned. "I paid fifty cents for that book," he remarked. "An' I ain't never had any real use for it. I've got it now in my old dunnage bag." "I'd kind o' like to see it, if it's handy," suggested Abner. "The tide's risin', but I guess I've got a few minutes to spare." Pegleg disappeared into the shanty and returned after some time with a dog-eared volume, minus a portion of its pages, and with the edges of the remainder strangely scalloped. "Th' pesky rats has be'n chewin' it," he complained loudly. "They've clean e't up the first chapter." Abner drew a secret breath of relief. The "How to Propose" chapter was not the first one. Eagerly he turned the battered volume over. "If you 'll sell it, I'd like to have it," he remarked carelessly. "Half of the pages is e't up, so I s'pose you'll sell it for half price." "Make it thirty-five cents an' you can have it," bargained Pegleg. "The rats ain't gnawed into the readin' so awful bad, only in the first chapter." "Wall, thirty-five then, as you're an old shipmate," conceded Abner. Pegleg looked at him shrewdly, as he laid down three dimes and a nickel. "I didn't know but mebbe you was buyin' it for Captain Burgess," he hazarded. "He's boardin' to your house, an' folks say he's courtin' M'lissy Macy." "Folks is always sayin' things," responded Abner. "Mebbe Enoch might know a 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony' from a last year's pill almanac, if somebody showed him." Once around the corner of the beach from Pegleg's shanty, Abner danced a hornpipe, shocking a flock of gulls. "Thirty-five cents from twenty-five dollars leaves twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents," he calculated swiftly. "And I'll get a mess of clams beside. The papers will be mentionin' me as a financier pretty soon." "Did Pegleg suspect anything?" was Captain Enoch's first question when Abner returned in triumph. "Oh, he suspected," replied Abner jubilantly. "He wouldn't be Pegleg if he didn't. But I didn't help him any, and he looked dreadful disappointed. You can eat your chowder in peace, if you ain't so love sick you've lost your appetite." "It ain't hurt my appetite a mite," retorted the Captain. "And I ain't goin' to let it. Let's see that book. I want to find out how much I've be'n cheated." With trembling fingers Captain Enoch turned to the chapter of proposals. "'How to Propose to a Fat Lady,'" he read. "Humph! M'lissy ain't fat. 'How to Propose to a Lady of Dignity and Refinement. 'That sounds more like it. But the big words are thicker than a school of mummychogs." "Read it out loud," urged Abner. Captain Enoch put a long forefinger on the first line and cleared his throat. "'Dear and esteemed lady,'" he began, "'it is with deep respect that I venture to introduce the subject of matrimony in your presence. You are my ideal of womanhood and your smile is more precious to me than the Kohinoor.' What's the Kohinoor?" he asked, pausing. "Skip it," suggested Abner. "I ain't no 'cyclopedia. Go on." "'It is with painful trep-trep-trepidation that I bring my suit before you.'" Captain Enoch paused again. "'Suit?'" he repeated. "I don't see how that fits in. What's a suit got to do with a proposal?" "Mebbe it's a hint that you might want your clo's mended after you was married," decided Abner. "Anyway, it sounds all right the way it's wrote. Stop a stoppin'. You never'll git it read, if you don't keep goin'." Thus adjured the captain proceeded. "'Oh, dear one, beloved lady of my dreams, my own--' There's a blank place. It says under it, 'name of lady.'" "Wall, say M'lissy," interjected Abner. Captain Enoch's bronzed countenance was the color of a tomato on a tin can, but he went on valiantly, "'My own M'lissy, come to my arms, and fill my measure of happiness to overflowing by promising to become my wife, and I will shield and protect you from all the storms of life.' It ends like an advertisement for umbrellas," he complained. "It don't do no such thing," contended Abner vigorously. "It's a real high-toned proposal and any woman ought to be satisfied with it. The man that wrote that must have known an awful lot about women. Now you go ahead and learn that proposal and there you be all ready for the parson." "Yes, 'there I be,'" mimicked the captain ungratefully. "It would take a college professor to say them words fast, and I'm only a plain sailor man." But in spite of his sarcasm the captain attacked his self-appointed task with the grim determination that had made him respected in every port wherever the big deep water tramp, of which he was the proud master, had dropped her huge mudhook. The steamer was laid up at Boston, having a splendid collection of tropical barnacles scraped from her stout hull. If it had not been for the barnacles, the captain would not have been ashore. For a week the captain studied strenuously, hardly allowing himself time to sleep. Abner offered to assist him at rehearsals and every afternoon he drilled Captain Enoch diligently. He was a firm disciplinarian and insisted upon his pupil's being letter perfect. Book in hand, he corrected the captain vigorously. "It's 'es-teemed lady'" he admonished the captain. "You said 'steamed.' M'lissy ain't cooked. An' you stutter yet when you come to that word right after painful. Can't you say it plainer?" "'Trep-trep-trepidation,'" stammered the captain again. "Say it yourself," he dared Abner. "I'll bet you can't do no better." "I ain't tryin' to say it," Abner reminded him with dignity. "If I was I'd make it out someway. I wouldn't be beat by any word ever put in a dictionary. You're doin' better," he complimented the captain, after the sixth recital. "Mebbe you'll git it after awhile." But when Captain Enoch felt that his monitor was most needed and had begun to look hopefully forward to a one hundred per cent rehearsal, Abner took a sudden notion to go sword fishing. "The time to go sword fishin' is when sword fish are due," he insisted with Solomonic wisdom. "I'm going to be off Nantucket shoals by daybreak to-morrow." "But how be I goin' to git along without you to boost me on that proposal?" demanded the captain. "If you had any feelin' at all, you wouldn't leave me just when I need you most." Abner considered the situation for some moments. "I got it," he declared joyfully. "Buy a phonygraft an' some blank records an' keep sayin' that proposal just the same as you do to me. You can hear yourself poppin' as plain as you can hear a bell buoy ring-in'. It takes me to plan things," he added with becoming pride. Captain Enoch went to Boston and visited his vessel, as he told Mrs. Crowell when he returned. Also, he visited the "phonygraft man," a circumstance he failed to relate. When Mapleville's express agent delivered at the Crowell home a large bundle addressed to Captain Enoch Burgess, the captain smuggled it surreptitiously upstairs, closed the windows of his room and stuffed the key hole with a wad of paper. It was some hours before he succeeded in mastering the various adjustments of the phonograph, and ventured to hear himself "pop." Listening with critical intentness, he discovered that two sentences were missing. Grimly he tried again. The word that had been so long his stumbling block suddenly showed its vindictiveness once more. "'It is with painful trep-trep-' darn it!" repeated the phonograph with startling distinctness. Wrathfully the captain snatched the record and hurled it under the bed. A number of others soon kept it company. The next day the captain went to Boston again. This time even the phonograph dealer was astonished at the number of blank records Captain Enoch demanded. With reckless abandon the captain proceeded to use the new supply of records. Dripping with perspiration from the heat of his closely-shut room and from his strenuous mental exertion, he finally came to the last one, and word by word and sentence by sentence heard himself make an absolutely correct and flawless proposal to Miss Macy. Solemnly the captain wiped his brow. "I declare I wish Abner could hear it," he remarked proudly. "There ain't a single mistake, big words an' all. It ought to please M'lissy, if anything will." At the thought of Melissa Captain Enoch's honest heart began to beat faster. He threw open his window with all the eagerness of a lover, and looked over toward Melissa's old-fashioned house with its comfortable veranda and wide chimney. His bronzed face turned suddenly white and he gripped the window sill with all the strength of his powerful hands. Two men were turning in at Melissa's gate. The short fat man was Thomas Peters, the tall thin one the village clergyman. To Captain Enoch the fact that Peters and the minister were calling upon Melissa together could mean but one thing. Hours and years of the captain's life seemed to pass, as he watched the two men go slowly up Melissa's gravel walk. When the door closed behind them, he turned about, dazed and trembling. He was breathing hard like a man at the end of a race. Half an hour later he had packed his bag and paid his board bill, leaving Mrs. Crowell in a state of bewilderment and curiosity that was sufficient to disturb her peace of mind for many a day. From Boston the tramp had wallowed her way around the Horn to San Francisco and back again as far as Rio Janiero when Captain Enoch received his first mail from home. A travel-stained letter, bearing Abner Crowell's cramped handwriting, threw the captain into a sudden panic. "I don't know whether to open it, or not," he debated nervously. "I want to know what's in it, an' I'm scared to find out. I'm a good mind to throw it overboard and forget I ever got it." Curiosity finally overcame his dread. The letter was encouragingly brief. "'Dere Enoch,'" he read. "'I'd like to know what you blowed up an' went off the way you did for. Abner Crowell." "P.S. Mrs. Crowell sends her respecks, and Miss Melissa Macy her regards, if you want 'em. A.C." "P.S. Number two. All you need, Enoch Burgess, is about ten inches more on your ears. A.C.'" "'Miss Melissa Macy,'" repeated Captain Enoch. "He would have said Mrs. Peters, if she was married." The captain leaped to his feet and rushed on deck. A boat was just leaving the steamer's side, the mate sitting placidly under an awning. "Hey, wait," roared the captain wildly. "I'm goin' to git our clearance papers," he shouted, as the astonished mate ordered the boat back. "I ain't goin' to hang around here waitin' for a lazy planter to git a cargo of coffee aboard. I don't care if there ain't any more coffee in the world; folks can drink tea. I'm goin' home as quick as steam can take me." Lights were beginning to shine in the homes of Mapleville when the captain came to the end of his long journey. A shining path stretched temptingly from Melissa's windows to the gate and the captain followed it eagerly. Back of the crimson geraniums and the canary's cage he could see Melissa sitting at a low table. The yellow cat occupied the big rocker. It was all so pleasant and home-like a lump rose in the captain's throat. He decided to steal quietly in and surprise Melissa. But at the door he stopped as suddenly as if he had been shot. A deep bass voice was uttering words that sounded strangely familiar. "'Dear and esteemed lady,'" he heard. Cautiously he tip-toed across the hall. A phonograph was on the table in front of Melissa. As he bent forward the proposal "to a dignified and refined lady" came to an end. Tenderly Melissa put both arms about the shining horn of the phonograph and kissed it! The sight was too much for the captain. With one bound, he cleared the threshold and entered the cosy sitting room. "M'lissy Macy," he declared boldly, "I ain't goin' to have you wastin' kisses on an old phonograph when I'm right here. Where'd you find that record, M'lissy?" he asked at last. Melissa blushed delightfully. "Mis' Crowell heard you and told me you was practisin' how to propose and, after you went away, I went and got every single one of them records," confessed Melissa. "I've played 'em over and over, even the 'darn it!' one. I know that proposal by heart." "So do I," responded Captain Enoch grimly, as he salvaged another kiss. "I've be'n a reg'lar old putty-head," he admitted with unsparing honesty, "but if you'll promise to teach me, I'd like to learn a whole lot more by heart." "I'll do my best," promised Melissa mischievously. BY TELEPHONE E.M. CHASE Time--Very recently. Place--A flat in Back Bay. "Bessie Lane, where in the world did you drop from?" "The station just now and I'm famished." "I haven't a thing for lunch but you take off your wraps while I attend to things." "There, I've ordered a delicious lunch and it will be here in fifteen or twenty minutes. What a handy thing a telephone is." "Oh, yes, very handy indeed." "Why the sarcasm, my dear Bessie?" "You seem to forget that I live in the country." "But not out of reach of 'phones, Bessie." "No, but we are on a sixteen-party line with eighteen other subscribers. Not long ago I went to the dentist and had a tooth treated. The next morning I awoke with a toothache. About the middle of the forenoon, nine-thirty to be exact, I thought I would call up the dentist to find out if the treatment ought to make my tooth ache. I gave the bell a vigorous ring--" "Why should you ring a bell to telephone?" "My dear citified Annie, we do not run our universe by electricity as you do in the city, and it is our only means of attracting 'central.' I rang the bell, put the receiver to my ear and heard, 'I am using the line.' "I mumbled an apology, waited a few minutes and tried again. It is unpleasant to have the bell ring in your ear, so out of courtesy to the other subscribers I gently lifted off the receiver, put it to my ear and heard, 'That cottage by the shore will suit--' "Fifteen minutes later I tried again and please remember my tooth was paining all the time. I listened, the line was quiet, I called central and asked 'One nine ring two four please.' "'That line is busy.' "Well, I thanked my lucky stars that I have a good supply of patience. After five minutes I tried again. I listened to see if the line was busy and heard, 'Killed by an automobile, all mangled to pieces.' Too horror stricken to realize I was listening to conversation not intended for my ears I listened on. The details fairly made my blood run cold and the unknown speaker had the most tragic voice I ever heard. She continued, 'It was terrible, I almost fainted, it was one of my best roosters, too!' "Just then a neighbor brought in my mail and I spent a few minutes reading letters and looking over the morning Post but the persistent tooth reminded me and I tried again. Wonder of wonders I got the dentist's office and asked if the dentist was there. 'No, he is not here just now but he will be back in a few minutes, shall I tell him to call you?' "'If you will, please, this is--' "'I knew your voice instantly, Bessie, and I'll tell him.' "I waited and waited, then waited some more, then I tried again. 'Get off the line, somebody else wants a chance to use it. You there, Jim?' "I was almost in despair. When I was sure my snappy friend had had time enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know--' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any one I know?' "Thoroughly exasperated I called central and demanded, 'one nine ring two four.' "'Line busy.' "I made up my mind never to use a 'phone again, or try to when my own number rang. I grabbed the receiver off the hook and thought my trial was over, for of course I knew it was the dentist at last. 'Is this you, Bessie? Did you know Jennie Knowles has broken her ankle?' "'No, I didn't, and I don't care if she has broken her neck, I want the line.' "Of course my rudeness lost me a friend for a while, until I saw her and made ample apologies, but I made my last attempt and was connected with the dentist. I told him about the toothache; it took some time as I had to explain three times that I was using the line but I did it. 'Does it ache very badly? Can't you stand it until to-morrow? Then the treatment will desensitize it sufficiently and I can work on it without hurting you at all.' "'Oh, no, it doesn't ache at all, I called you up to hear your voice, certainly I can stand it, I've stood much worse trials.' I slammed up the receiver, looked at the clock and it was two-fifteen. Too late to attend the lecture in the library so I went out and called on Alice, yes, indeed, I repeat, telephones are very handy and save lots of time." "Here is our lunch, we're in the city now, come on, Bessie." FALMOUTH INNER HARBOR Twelve years ago on May 11, 1910, the H.W. Miller, the first two-masted schooner came into the harbor, then known as Deacon's Pond, now Falmouth Inner Harbor. Other smaller vessels had been in, but this was the first which marked the commercial use of the basin. A harbor in this place had been talked about for several years, but the first legal action was taken in the February town meeting of 1906, when a committee of five men: Geo. W. Jones, Charles S. Burgess, Asa L. Pattee, Nathan S. Ellis and Charles A. Robinson were appointed to look into the matter and carry out the wishes of the town. Joseph Walsh was our representative in Boston, and presided at the meeting, acting as moderator. Heman A. Harding, then senator from the Cape district, acted as legal adviser for the State. There were many meetings of the committee and interested citizens, and among the latter A.W. Goodness, A.B. Clough and W.E.A. Clough were untiring in their efforts and were largely responsible for the success of the project. On January 20, 1907, the Harbor and Land Commissioners called for a hearing "for building jetties and dredging to make a boat harbor at Deacon's Pond, Falmouth." The first plan was drawn by Frank W. Hodgdon in September, 1907. The first appropriation made for the cost was $25,000 from the State and $10,000 from the Town. The lower part of the land dredged was purchased on July 13, 1804, from Abram and Lois Bowerman by Watson Jenkins, Joseph Mayhew, Stephen Davis, Consider Hatch and Joseph Davis, Jr., and used as a site for salt works by the whole or part of them. On August 1, 1805, the same Abram and Lois Bowerman deeded additional land to Joseph Davis, Jr., and on June 17, 1816, the same parties sold more land to Nymphas Davis, the son of Joseph, Jr. As Joseph Davis, Sr., the father of Joseph, Jr., was then a deacon in the Congregational church, the name was gradually changed from the old name of "Bowerman's Pond" to "the deacon's pond" and it finally became Deacon's Pond. Later, when the name did not locate the harbor sufficiently, it was officially changed to "Falmouth Inner Harbor." There were formerly two outlets from the pond into Vineyard Sound, and some of the old deeds refer to the East and West rivers. There was also a ditch across the marsh, probably through the land now owned by Edward Gallagher. In 1870-1 the land about the pond and also "Great Hill" was sold by George H. Davis, the son of Nymphas Davis, to the Falmouth Land and Wharf Company, and remained in its possession several years, later becoming the property of G. Edward Smith, the president of the company. In 1888 Mr. Smith sold the beach, extending from the line of the Falmouth Wharf Company west to the land now covered by the harbor, to George H. Davis. One of the old rivers had long since been filled and the other changed its course so often through the beach that the town was obliged to set stone posts to define the middle line and establish a definite boundary. When the land was finally acquired by the State, the channel was cut through the land of the widow of George H. Davis on the eastern side and a small triangular piece on the western side belonging to Henrietta F. Goodnow. On February, 18, 1909, the harbor and Land Commissioners advertised another hearing in regard to the "Improvement of Deacon's Pond Harbor" and still another on February 24, 1910. After these hearings had been held and improvements made, the channel was wide and deep enough to permit schooners to enter. However, the sand drifted in and on March 11, 1911, there was another hearing called in regard to removing a "shoal at the entrance to the harbor" and about 32,000 cubic feet of earth was then removed. Since then other deepenings have been made until now, during the summer season, it is a common sight to see some sixty boats of all descriptions lying in the water. In 1921 the harbor was further improved by extending the jetty on the west side about 200 feet into Vineyard Sound. BASS RIVER There's a gently flowing river, Bordered by whispering trees, That ebbs and flows in Nobscussett And winds through Mattacheese. Surely the Indian loved it In the ages so dim and gray, River beloved of the Pale Face Who dwell near its banks today. Lovely it lies in the moonlight, A silver scroll unrolled, And glorious when the sunset Turns it to molten gold. Yet we love it when the mist clouds Hang over it like a pall; No less when the hand of the Frost King Holds it in icy thrall. In all of its moods and changes We joy in its billows salt, With the deep strong love of a lover Blinded to every fault. Always its gleaming beauty Raises our thoughts from the clod; Up, up to the crystal river, That flows from the Throne of God. They pass on,--the generations,-- Thou stayest, while men depart; They go with thy lovely changes Shrined in each failing heart. Beautiful old Bass River! Girt round with murmuring trees; Long wilt thou flow in Nobscussett. And wander through Mattacheese. ARETHUSA. * * * * * A CORRECTION The article in our May issue, "Automobile Tour of Cape Cod," was written before the advent of automobiles to Nantucket, and therefore did not take account of the fact that autos are now not only allowed but plentiful there. The fact that the article was not up to date escaped the attention of the editor. CAPE CODE NOTES The Harwich Independent says: Indications are that the coming summer will be another record breaker along our shores. A big building boom is on in cottages now under construction, and we are to have new comers from New York, Boston, and other places. Cottages for rental are being rapidly taken. * * * * * Artist George Elmer Browne left America for France the first of May with a class of 40 pupils. Mrs. Browne and Miss Hallett will accompany him for the summer. Provincetown will miss the Brownes this summer, but wishes them a pleasant and successful season abroad. * * * * * Charles A. Atwood, night operator in the Sagamore telephone exchange, has been awarded a Theodore N. Vail medal for his services on the occasion of a night fire in the building where the exchange is located, March 27, 1921, when he made his way through the smoke to the switchboard and gave the alarm first to the Keith Car Works and next to the local fire chief. After that he was overcome by the smoke, and the staircase was on fire when he was revived. He got back into the operating room after that and remained on duty the rest of the night. * * * * * William Ellis and his son George were hunting driftwood along the beach in the neighborhood of Peaked Hill bars, at the Provincetown end and came on a sack lying in the tidewash, which was found to contain 200 pounds of gamboge. It is thought their find came from the wreck of the ship Peruvian, which met its fate on those shoals Dec. 26, 1872, as no other vessel has since been wrecked there which had gamboge as a part of its cargo. The gamboge was said to be in perfect condition, in spite of its long immersion in the sea water. Gamboge is a resin, orange red in color, but yellow when in powder form. It was used in medicine as an emetic and artists, especially those using water colors will recall it as a yellow pigment. * * * * * Dr. B.D. Eldredge of Harwich passed his 90th birthday on Monday, May 1st. This extreme age has dealt very lightly with the Doctor whose general appearance is much the same as when many years younger, but his step and carriage show some infirmity. He is destined to add another decade of life, and the many congratulatory greetings extended to him by friends voiced that prediction. Doctor Eldredge is still in professional practice. * * * * * The "Emperor Jones," Eugene G. O'Neill's, of Provincetown, drama, has been produced in Boston. The Provincetown players may be said to have done themselves well by presenting as a maiden effort in Boston, this play by O'Neill in which Charles Gilpin plays the leading role. "The Emperor Jones" is O'Neill's first offering to Boston theatre world although he learned his trade at Prof. Baker's Harvard 47 Workshop. * * * * * In a stock judging contest at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, recently, Lawrence High School of Falmouth won second place, scoring 1100 out of a possible 1200 points. Eight teams competed in the contest, with 54 competitors for individual prizes. The team from the Lawrence High School was composed of Arthur Briggs, Edward Briggs and Harold Dushane, and these young men are to be congratulated upon their ability as judges of live stock. They deserve special credit for the reason that the other teams competing were selected from much larger schools than Lawrence High. Mr. Williams, who is taking the place of Mr. Hawkes as agricultural instructor, accompanied the boys to Amherst, the party making the trip by auto. A DELAYED LETTER In looking over some old manuscripts the other day the editor came across the following letter which is so full of longing for the country of the writer's ancestry that we publish it herewith, just as it was written in 1918: Denver, Colorado. "A state of Maine man, Mr. Dana, has just handed me a copy of your magazine of December, 1917. Because I am a Cape Codder marooned in the Rocky Mountains for 40 years, though I started to run away to sea when I was 8 years old--man proposes, God disposes. I read it through from stem to gudgeon including the poetry and the advertisements. My ancestor, Thomas Baxter, Yarmouth, Mass., married the daughter of Capt. John Gorham, Temperance Gorham Sturgis, widow of Edmund Sturgis, Jr., Jan. 26, 1879. He was a lieutenant under Capt. John Gorham in the great swamp fight, King Philip's war, and that part of Maine (then Massachusetts) called Gorham, was set off to them for services against the Narragansett Indians. "With such ancestry, followed by worthy descendants, don't you think I have a love for Cape Cod sand? Capt. Gorham's wife was Desire Howland, daughter of John Howland of the Mayflower and the first son of Thomas, John Baxter, married Desire Gorham, June 11, 1706, and with his two brothers built the old mill at Hyannis of which it is sung: "The Baxter boys they built a mill, And when it went, it never stood still. And when it went it made no noise, Because 'twas built by Baxter's boys." "I hope to pass my last years in my cottage in South Dennis and to quote from Edna Howes' poem on page 23, entitled 'Who's Worrin'?' "Cod and haddock, boned and white, A drying on their flakes, There's none can beat the cod fish balls That mother only makes. And clams and quahogs, scallops, too, A layin' close at hand A waitin' and a longin' To be dug from out the sand." "My word, Edna, you make my mouth water! "On page 11 you say that no Canadian lynx or wild cat has been seen on the Cape for 100 years. Make it about 50 years instead, because there was a catamount in South Yarmouth woods in 1867 and I think I saw it--and I could prove it if George Thatcher was alive and had his memory with him. "How I would enjoy being out in a cat boat off Hyannis, or Dennisport, or North Dennis. Say! if the bluefish haven't been all caught by the time I get there I will certainly try my luck. I would rather catch rock cod, or perch, or tautog, than fill a creel with brook trout, under any conditions, any day in the year; but then you don't care, and I don't care if you don't--but I do." Yours truly, JOHN N. BAXTER. A MILLION QUARTS OF STRAWBERRIES Cape Cod strawberries are destined to become as famous as her cranberries, her fishing, and her renown as a summer resort. One million quarts of them left her fields the past season! And the industry is still growing! Cape Cod leads New England in the magnitude of this industry and Falmouth holds the honor of being the home of the Cape Cod strawberry. There are in Falmouth something over two hundred acres in strawberries, and these acres extend over an area of between six and seven square miles. The berries for the most part are grown on land cleared from woods within the past fifteen years. New land is being cleared each season and the territory is becoming more and more extensive, the industry expanding and Falmouth as a specialized farming center more and more prominent. The sturdy pioneers of this industry in Falmouth are Portuguese people who drifted to the section from nearby industrial centers like New Bedford and Fall River and who later persuaded their friends and relatives from across the sea to join them in this land of plenty. They are splendid people, hard working, thrifty and industrious, and make most excellent citizens. Although but few have had the opportunity to attend school, they are most intelligent farmers, ready and willing to adopt methods that will financially improve their business. The majority are, however, limited in land area and many times are obliged to crop their small farms to excess, for strawberries are the main cash crop, and very few who have more recently come here have the necessary funds to acquire much land or equipment. The acreage in berries will vary from one-half an acre to four acres. Cultural methods are practically all hand work. The land is cleared by hand, plants set and runners placed by hand, fertilizer applied by hand, hand hoed, hand weeded and naturally hand picked. The rows are set 4-1/2 to 5 feet apart, plants 14 to 15 inches in the row. The matted row system is used, but instead of allowing runners to set at will, each one is placed. The beds are raised six inches, rows when fully set are from 3-1/2 to 4 feet wide. Pine needles are used for a mulch mainly because they were handy at first, clean of weeds and easy to apply, but the pine needle is getting more and more obsolete, like the tallow candle, and unless the grower changes his method of mulching or else uses a motor truck and goes a long distance he is out of luck in the future. The industry has seen hard times and about six years ago it was doubtful if it could survive. Growers were working as individuals and selling their berries and buying their fertilizer, crates and baskets. It was not uncommon for one grower to ship his season's crop to as many as seven or eight different commission houses. This all led to confusion. The commission man could not depend on a steady and sure supply. By splitting up a crop in this way the grower actually competed with himself. Finally, by necessity, he was forced to combine with his neighbor and pool a common interest. The growers were guided into a co-operative association, to a large degree, by the assistance of Mr. Wilfrid Wheeler, then Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture. Mr. George C. Lillie was employed as manager, and right from the start the association rallied and has been gaining ground ever since. At present this association, known as the Cape Cod Strawberry Growers' Association, numbers ninety-eight men. They are incorporated, hold shares in the association, and sell their berries through one commission house instead of seven or eight. There are two grades of berries sold, only one of which carries the association stamp. Each member has a number which is placed on his crate and about 80 per cent of the crop is shipped under the stamp of the association. The members are paid on Wednesdays and Saturdays during the shipping season. They also pool their fertilizer order of over 200 tons, as well as that for crates and baskets. Payment for these commodities are deducted from returns on the berries. Last season the association shipped about seventy carloads of berries. This is probably over two-thirds of the entire output for Falmouth. Each car holds about 170 80-quart crates, and practically half are shipped in iced cars. The berries leave Falmouth at 9 p.m. and arrive in Boston at 6 a.m. They are there distributed to various points, some going, we understand, as far north as Bangor, Maine. The varieties grown are Echo, Howard 17, Abington and King Edward. The first named are more common, but indications point to a rapid change to the Howard 17. The Echo berry has proved a splendid variety for this section, as it stands up so well under shipment. The Howard 17 is nearly as good a shipper, but considered a better quality berry and does nicely on our Cape soils. The picking season is from three to four weeks. Pickers are usually paid 2 cents a quart, and a good picker will make from $3 to $4 a day. Five thousand quarts is considered a fair yield per acre for the section. The members of the association do not put all their eggs in one basket, however. They grow besides strawberries, turnips, corn, potatoes, carrots and raspberries for cash crops. Turnips follow strawberries in volume and last fall the members shipped about twenty-five carloads.--_Falmouth Enterprise_. 
13982	----	CAP'N ABE, STOREKEEPER A Story of Cape Cod by JAMES A. COOPER 1917 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. A CHOICE II. CAP'N ABE III. IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM IV. THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS V. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT VI. BOARDED BY PIRATES VII. UNDER FIKE VIII. SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY IX. SUSPICION HOVERS X. WHAT LOUISE THINKS XI. THE LEADING MAN XII. THE DESCENT OF AUNT EUPHEMIA XIII. WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY XIV. A CHOICE OF CHAPERONS XV. THE UNEXPECTED XVI. A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS XVII. THE ODDS AGAINST HIM XVIII. SOMETHING BREAKS XIX. MUCH ADO XX. THE SUN WORSHIPERS XXI. DISCOVERIES XXII. SHOCKING NEWS XXIII. BETWEEN THE FIRES XXIV. GRAY DAYS XXV. AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT XXVI. AT LAST XXVII. SARGASSO XXVIII. STORM CLOUDS THREATEN XXIX. THE SCAR XXX. WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT XXXI. AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL XXXII. ON THE ROLL OF HONOR CHAPTER I A CHOICE "Of course, my dear, there is nobody but your Aunt Euphemia for you to go to!" "Oh, daddy-professor! Nobody? Can we rake or scrape up no other relative on either side of the family who will take in poor little me for the summer? You will be home in the fall, of course." "That is the supposition," Professor Grayling replied, his lips pursed reflectively. "No. Dear me! there seems nobody." "But Aunt Euphemia!" "I know, Lou, I know. She expects you, however. She writes----" "Yes. She has it all planned," sighed Louise Grayling dejectedly. "Every move at home or abroad Aunt Euphemia has mapped out for me. When I am with her I am a mere automaton--only unlike a real marionette I can feel when she pulls the strings!" The professor shook his head. "There's--there's only your poor mother's half-brother down on the Cape." "What half-brother?" demanded Louise with a quick smile that matched the professor's quizzical one. "Why----Well, your mother, Lou, had an older half-brother, a Mr. Silt. He keeps a store at Cardhaven. You know, I met your mother down that way when I was hunting seaweed for the Smithsonian Institution. Your grandmother was a Bellows and her folks lived on the Cape, too. Her family has died out and your grandfather was dead before I married your mother. The half-brother, this Mr. Silt--Captain Abram Silt--is the only individual of that branch of the family left alive, I believe." "Goodness!" gasped the girl. "What a family tree!" Again the professor smiled whimsically. "Only a few of the branches. But they all reach back to the first navigators of the world." "The first navigators?" "I do not mean to the Phoenicians," her father said. "I mean that the world never saw braver nor more worthy sailors than those who called the wind-swept hamlets of Cape Cod their home ports. The Silts were all master-mariners. This Captain Abe is a bachelor, I believe. You could not very well go there." Louise sighed. "No; I couldn't go there--I suppose. I couldn't go there----" Her voice wandered off into silence. Then suddenly, almost explosively, it came back with the question: "Why couldn't I?" "My dear Lou! What would your aunt say?" gasped the professor. He was a tall, rather soldierly looking man--the result of military training in his youth--with a shock of perfectly white hair and a sweeping mustache that contrasted clearly with his pink, always cleanly shaven cheeks and chin. Without impressing the observer with his muscular power. Professor Grayling was a better man on a long hike and possessed more reserve strength than many more beefy athletes. His daughter had inherited his springy carriage and even the clean pinkness of his complexion--always looking as though she were fresh from her shower. But there was nothing mannish about Lou Grayling--nothing at all, though she had other attributes of body and mind for which to thank her father. They were the best of chums. No father and daughter could have trod the odd corners of the world these two had visited without becoming so closely attached to each other that their processes of thought, as well as their opinions in most matters, were almost in perfect harmony. Although Mrs. Euphemia Conroth was the professor's own sister he could appreciate Lou's attitude in this emergency. While the girl was growing up there had been times when it was considered best--usually because of her studies--for Lou to live with Aunt Euphemia. Indeed, that good lady believed it almost a sin that a young girl should attend the professor on any of his trips into "the wilds," as she expressed it. Aunt Euphemia ignored the fact that nowadays the railroad and telegraph are in Thibet and that turbines ply the headwaters of the Amazon. Mrs. Conroth dwelt in Poughkeepsie--that half-way stop between New York and Albany; and she was as exclusive and opinionated a lady as might be found in that city of aristocracy and learning. The college in the shadow of which Aunt Euphemia's dwelling basked, was that which had led the professor's daughter under the lady's sway. Although the girls with whom Lou associated within the college walls were up-to-the-minute--if not a little ahead of it--she found her aunt, like many of those barnacles clinging to the outer reefs of learning in college towns, was really a fossil. If one desires to meet the ultraconservative in thought and social life let me commend him to this stratum of humanity within stone's throw of a college. These barnacles like Aunt Euphemia are wedded to a manner of thought, gained from their own school experiences, that went out of fashion inside the colleges thirty years ago. Originally, in Lou Grayling's case, when she first lived with Aunt Euphemia and was a day pupil at an exclusive preparatory school, it had been drilled into her by the lady that "children should be seen but not heard!" Later, although she acknowledged the fact that young girls were now taught many things that in Aunt Euphemia's maidenhood were scarcely whispered within hearing of "the young person," the lady was quite shocked to hear such subjects discussed in the drawing-room, with her niece as one of the discussers. The structure of man and the lower animals, down to the number of their ribs, seemed no proper topic for light talk at an evening party. It made Aunt Euphemia gasp. Anatomy was Lou's hobby. She was an excellent and practical taxidermist, thanks to her father. And she had learned to name the bones of the human frame along with her multiplication table. However, there was little about Louise Grayling to commend her among, for instance, the erudite of Boston. She was sweet and wholesome, as has been indicated. She had all the common sense that a pretty girl should have--and no more. For she was pretty and, as well, owned that charm of intelligence without which a woman is a mere doll. Her father often reflected that the man who married Lou would be playing in great luck. He would get a _mate_. So far as Professor Grayling knew, however (and he was as keenly observant of his daughter and her development as he was of scientific matters), there was as yet no such man in sight. Lou had escaped the usual boy-and-girl entanglements which fret the lives of many young folk, because of her association with her father in his journeys about the world. Being a perfectly normal, well-balanced girl, black boys, brown boys, yellow boys, or all the hues and shades of boys to be met with in those odd corners of the earth where the white man is at a premium, did not interest Lou Grayling in the least. Without being ultraconservative like Aunt Euphemia, she was the sort of girl whom one might reckon on doing the sensible--perhaps the obvious--thing in almost any emergency. Therefore, after that single almost awed exclamation from the professor--his sole homage to Mrs. Grundy--he added: "My dear, do as you like. You are old enough and wise enough to choose for yourself--your aunt's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Only, if you don't mind----" "What is it, daddy-prof?" she asked him with a smile, yet still reflective. "Why, if you don't mind," repeated the professor, "I'd rather you didn't inform me where you decide to spend your summer until I am off. I--I don't mind knowing after I am at sea--and your aunt cannot get at me." She laughed at him gaily. "You take it for granted that I am going to Cape Cod," she cried accusingly. "No--o. But I know how sorely I should be tempted myself, realizing your aunt's trying disposition." "Perhaps this--this half-uncle may be quite as trying." "Impossible!" was the father's rather emphatic reply. "What?" she cried. "Traitor to the family fame?" "You do not know Cape Cod folk. I do," he told her rather seriously. "Some of them are quaint and peculiar. I suppose there are just as many down there with traits of extreme Yankee frugality as elsewhere in New England. But your mother's people, as I knew them, were the very salt of the earth. Our wanderings were all that kept you from knowing the old folk before they passed away." "You tempt me," was all Louise said. Then the conversation lapsed. It was the day following that the professor was to go to Boston preparatory to sailing. At the moment of departure his daughter, smiling, tucked a sealed note into his pocket. "Don't open it, daddy-prof, till you are out of sight of Cohasset Rocks," she said. "Then you will not know where I am going to spend the time of your absence until it is too late--either to oppose or to advise." "You can't worry me," he told her, with admiration in his glance. "I've every confidence in you, my dear. Have a good time if you can." She watched him down the long platform between the trains. When she saw him assisted into the Pullman by the porter she turned with a little sigh, and walked up the rise toward Forty-second Street. She could almost wish she were going with him, although seaweed and mollusk gathering was a messy business, and the vessel he sailed in was an ancient converted coaster with few comforts for womenkind. Louise Grayling had been hobbled by city life for nearly a year now and she began to crave new scenes. There were some last things to do at the furnished apartment they were giving up. Some trunks were to go to the storehouse. Her own baggage was to be tagged and sent to the Fall River boat. For, spurred by curiosity as well as urged by a desire to escape Aunt Euphemia for a season, Louise was bent upon a visit to Cape Cod. At least, she would learn what manner of person her only other living relative was--her mother's half-brother, Captain Abram Silt. In the train the next day, which wandered like an erratic caterpillar along the backbone of the Cape, she began to wonder if, after all, she was displaying that judgment which daddy-professor praised so highly. It was too early in the season for the "millionaire's special" to be scheduled, in which those wealthy summer folk who have "discovered" the Cape travel to and from Boston. Lou was on a local from Fall River that stopped at every pair of bars and even hesitated at the pigpens along the right of way. Getting aboard and getting off again at the innumerable little stations, were people whose like she had never before seen. And their speech, plentifully sprinkled with colloquialisms of a salt flavor, amused her, and sometimes puzzled her. Some of the men who rode short distances in the car wore fishermen's boots and jerseys. They called the conductor "skipper," and hailed each other in familiar idioms. The women were not uncomely, nor did they dress in outlandish manner. Great is the sway of the modern Catalogue House! But their speech was blunt and the three topics of conversation most popular were the fish harvest, clamming, and summer boarders. "Land sakes! is that you, Em'line Scudder? What sent you cruisin' in these waters? I thought you never got away from the Haven." "Good-day, Mrs. Eldredge. You're fairin' well? I just _had_ to come over to Littlebridge for some fixin's. My boarders will be 'long and I got to freshen the house up a little." "You goin' to have the same folks you had last year, Em'line?" "Oh, yes. They're real nice---for city people. I tell Barzillai----" "How is Barzillai?" "Middlin'. His leg ain't never been just right since he was helpin' ice the _Tryout_, come two summers ago. You know, one o' them big cakes from the ice fact'ry fell on him. . . . I tell Barzillai the city folks are a godsend to us Cape Codders in summer time, now that sea-goin' don't seem so pop'lar with the men as it useter be." "I dunno. Some of these city folks don't seem to be sent by the Lord, but by the other feller!" was the grim rejoinder. "I had tryin' times with my crowd last summer; and the children with 'em was a visitation--like the plagues of Egypt!" Louise was an amused yet observant listener. She began thus early to gain what these good people themselves would call a "slant" upon their characters and their outlook on life. Aside from her interest in her fellow-travelers, there were other things to engage the girl's attention. New places always appealed to her more than unfamiliar human beings; perhaps because she had seen so many of the latter in all quarters of the globe and found so little variety in their characters. There were good people and bad people everywhere, Louise had found. Greedy, generous, morose, and laughing; faithful and treacherous, the quick and the stupid; those likable at first meeting as well as those utterly impossible. Of whatever nation and color they might be, she had learned that under their skins they were all just human beings. But Nature--ah! she was ever changing. This girl who had seen so much of the world had never seen anything quite like the bits of scene she observed from the narrow window of the car. Not beautiful, perhaps, but suggestive and provocative of genre pictures which would remain in her memory long afterward. There were woods and fields, cranberry bogs and sand dunes, between the hamlets; and always through the open window the salt tang of the air delighted her. She was almost prepared to say she was glad she had ventured when she left the train at Paulmouth and saw her trunks put off upon the platform. A teetering stage, with a rack behind for light baggage, drawn by a pair of lean horses, waited beside the station. The stage had been freshened for the season with a thin coat of yellow paint. The word "_Cardhaven_" was painted in bright blue letters on the doors of this ancient coach. "No, ma'am! I can't possibly take your trunks," the driver said, politely explanatory. "Ye see, miss, I carry the mail this trip an' the parcel-post traffic is right heavy, as ye might say. . . . Belay that, Jerry!" he observed to the nigh horse that was stamping because of the pest of flies. "We'll cast off in a minute and get under way. . . . No, miss, I can't take 'em; but Perry Baker'll likely go over to the Haven to-night and he'll fetch 'em for ye. I got all the cargo I can load." Soon the horses shacked out of town. The sandy road wandered through the pine woods where the hot June sunshine extracted the scent of balsam until its strength was almost overpowering. Louise, alone in the interior of the old coach, found herself pitching and tossing about as though in a heavy sea. "It is fortunate I am a good sailor," she told herself, somewhat ruefully. The driver was a large man in a yellow linen duster. He was not especially communicative--save to his horses. He told them frankly what he thought of them on several occasions! But "city folks" were evidently no novelty for him. As he put Louise and her baggage into the vehicle he had asked: "Who you cal'latin' to stop with, miss?" "I am going to Mr. Abram Silt's," Louise had told him. "Oh! Cap'n Abe. Down on the Shell Road. I can't take ye that fur--ain't allowed to drive beyond the tavern. But 'tain't noways a fur walk from there." He expressed no curiosity about her, or her business with the Shell Road storekeeper. That surprised Louise a little. She had presumed all these people would display Yankee curiosity. It was not a long journey by stage, for which she was thankful. The noonday sun was hot and the interior of the turnout soon began to take on the semblance of a bake-oven. They came out at last on a wind-swept terrace and she gained her first unobstructed view of the ocean. She had always loved the sea--its wideness, its mystery, its ever changing face. She watched the sweep of a gull following the crested windrow of the breakers on a near-by reef, busy with his fishing. All manner of craft etched their spars and canvas on the horizon, only bluer than the sea itself. Inshore was a fleet of small fry--catboats, sloops, dories under sail, and a smart smack or two going around to Provincetown with cargoes from the fish pounds. "I shall like it," she murmured after a deeper breath. They came to the outlying dwellings of Cardhaven; then to the head of Main Street that descended gently to the wharves and beaches of the inner harbor. Halfway down the hill, just beyond the First Church and the post-office, was the rambling, galleried old structure across the face of which, and high under its eaves, was painted the name "_Cardhaven Inn_." A pungent, fishy smell swept up the street with the hot breeze. The tide was out and the flats were bare. The coach stopped before the post-office, and Louise got out briskly with her bag. The driver, backing down from his seat, said to her: "If ye wait till I git out the mail I'll drive ye inter the tavern yard in style. I bait the horses there." "Oh, I'll walk," she told him brightly. "I can get dinner there, I suppose?" "Warn't they expectin' you at Cap'n Abe's?" the stage driver asked. "I want to know! Oh, yes. You can buy your dinner at the tavern. But 'tain't a long walk to Cap'n Abe's. Not fur beyond the Mariner's Chapel." Louise thanked him. A young man was coming down the steps of the post-office. He was a more than ordinarily good-looking young fellow, deeply tanned, with a rather humorous twist to his shaven lips, and with steady blue eyes. He was dressed in quite common clothing: the jersey, high boots, and sou'wester of a fisherman. He looked at Louise, but not offensively. He did not remove his hat as he spoke. "I heard Noah say you wished to go to Cap'n Abe's store," he observed with neither an assumption of familiarity nor any bucolic embarrassment. "I am bound that way myself." "Thank you!" she said with just enough dignity to warn him to keep his distance if he chanced to be contemplating anything familiar. "But I shall dine at the hotel first." A brighter color flooded into his cheeks and Louise felt that she might have been too sharp with him. She mended this by adding: "You may tell me how to get to the Shell Road and Mr. Silt's, if you will be so kind." He smiled at that. Really, he was an awfully nice-looking youth! She had no idea that these longshore fishermen would be so gentlemanly and so good looking. "Oh, you can't miss it. Take the first left-hand street, and keep on it. Cap'n Abe's store is the only one beyond the Mariner's Chapel." "Thank you," she said again and mounted the broad steps of the Inn. The young fellow hesitated as though he were inclined to enter too. But when Louise reached the piazza and glanced quickly down at him, he was moving on. The cool interior of a broad hall with a stairway mounting out of it and a screened dining-room at one side, welcomed the girl. A bustling young woman in checked gingham, which fitted her as though it were a mold for her rather plump figure, met the visitor. "How-do!" she said briskly. "Goin' to stop?" "Only for dinner," Louise said, smiling--and when she smiled her gray eyes made friends. "Almost over. But I'll run an' tell the cook to dish you up something hot. Come right this way an' wash. I'll fix you a table where it's cool. This is 'bout the first hot day we've had." She showed the visitor into the dressing-room and then bustled away. Later she hovered about the table where Louise ate, the other boarders having departed. "My name's Gusty Durgin," she volunteered. "I reckon you're one o' them movin' picture actresses they say are goin' to work down to The Beaches this summer." "What makes you think so?" asked Louise, somewhat amused. "Why--you kinder look it. I should say you had 'screen charm.' Oh! I been readin' up about you folks for a long time back. I subscribed to _The Fillum Universe_ that tells all about you. I'd like to try actin' before the cam'ra myself. But I cal'late I ain't got much 'screen charm,'" the waitress added seriously. "I'm too fat. And I wouldn't do none of them comedy pictures where the fat woman always gets the worst of it. But you must take lovely photographs." "I'm not sure that I do," laughed Louise. "Land sakes! Course you do. Them big eyes o' yourn must just look fetchin' in a picture. I don't believe I've ever seen you in a movie, have I, Miss------?" "Grayling." "'Grayling'! Ain't that pretty?" Gusty Durgin gave an envious sigh. "Is it your honest to goodness, or just your fillum name?" "My 'honest to goodness,'" the visitor confessed, bubbling with laughter. "Land sakes! I should have to change mine all right. The kids at school useter call me 'Dusty Gudgeon.' Course, my right name's Augusta; but nobody ever remembers down here on the Cape to call anybody by such a long name. Useter be a boy in our school who was named 'Christopher Columbus George Washington Marquis de Lafayette Gallup.' His mother named him that. But everybody called him 'Lafe'--after Lafayette, ye see. "Land sakes! I should just have to change my name if I acted in the pictures. Your complexion's real, too, ain't it?" pursued this waitress with histrionic ambitions. "Real pretty, too, if 'tis high colored. I expect you have to make up for the pictures, just the same." "I suppose I should. I believe it is always necessary to accentuate the lights and shadows for the camera." "'Accentuate'--yep. That's a good word. I'll remember that," said Gusty. "You goin' to stay down to The Beaches long---and will you like it?" "The Beaches?" "That's where you'll work. At the Bozewell house. Swell bungalow. All the big bugs live along The Beaches." "I am not sure just how long I shall stay," confessed Louise Grayling; "but I know I am going to like it." CHAPTER II CAP'N ABE "I see by the _Globe_ paper," Cap'n Abe observed, pushing up from his bewhiskered visage the silver-bowed spectacles he really did not need, "that them fellers saved from the wreck of the _Gilbert Gaunt_ cal'late they went through something of an adventure." "And they did," rejoined Cap'n Joab Beecher, "if they seen ha'f what they tell about." "I dunno," the storekeeper went on reflectively, staring at a huge fishfly booming against one of the dusty window panes. "I dunno. Cap'n Am'zon was tellin' me once't about what he and two others went through with after the _Posy Lass,_ out o' Bangor, was smashed up in a big blow off Hat'ras. What them fellers in the _Globe_ paper tell about ain't a patch on what Cap'n Am'zon suffered." There was an uncertain, troubled movement among Cap'n Abe's hearers. Even the fishfly stopped droning. Cap'n Beecher looked longingly through the doorway from which the sea could be observed as well as a strip of that natural breakwater called "The Neck," a barrier between the tumbling Atlantic and the quiet bay around which the main village of Cardhaven was set. All the idlers in the store on this June afternoon were not natives. There were several young fellows from The Beaches--on the Shell Road to which Cap'n Abe's store was a fixture. In sight of The Beaches the wealthy summer residents had built their homes--dwellings ranging in architectural design from the mushroom-roofed bungalow to a villa in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The villa in question had been built by I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King, and Lawford Tapp, only son of the house, was one of the audience in Cap'n Abe's store. "Cap'n Amazon said," boomed the storekeeper a good deal like the fishfly--"Cap'n Amazon said the _Posy Lass_ was loaded with lumber and her cargo's 'bout all that kep' her afloat as fur as Hat'ras. Then the smashin' big seas that come aboard settled her right down like a wounded duck. "The deck load went o' course; and about ev'rything else was cleaned off the decks that warn't bolted to 'em. The seas rose up and picked off the men, one after t'other, like a person'd clean off a beach plum bush." "I shouldn't wonder," spoke up Cap'n Beecher, "if we seen some weather 'fore morning." He was squinting through the doorway at an azure and almost speckless sky. There was an uneasy shuffling of boots. One of the boys from The Beaches giggled. Cap'n Abe--and the fishfly--boomed on together, the storekeeper evidently visualizing the scene he narrated and not the half-lighted and goods-crowded shop. At its best it was never well illumined. Had the window panes been washed there was little chance of the sunshine penetrating far save by the wide open door. On either hand as one entered were the rows of hanging oilskins, storm boots, miscellaneous clothing and ship chandlery that made up only a part of Cap'n Abe's stock. There were blue flannel shirts dangling on wooden hangers to show all their breadth of shoulder and the array of smoked-pearl buttons. Brown and blue dungaree overalls were likewise displayed--grimly, like men hanging in chains. At the end of one row of these quite ordinary habiliments was one dress shirt with pleated bosom and cuffs as stiff as a board. Lawford Tapp sometimes speculated on that shirt--how it chanced to be in Cap'n Abe's stock and why it had hung there until the flies had taken title to it! Centrally located was the stove, its four heavily rusted legs set in a shallow box which was sometimes filled with fresh sawdust. The stovepipe, guyed by wires to the ceiling, ran back to the chimney behind Cap'n Abe. He stood at the one space that was kept cleared on his counter, hairy fists on the brown, hacked plank--the notches of the yard-stick and fathom-stick cut with a jackknife on its edge--his pale eyes sparkling as he talked. "There she wallered," went on the narrator of maritime disaster, "her cargo held together by rotting sheathing and straining ribs. She was wrung by the seas like a dishrag in a woman's hands. She no longer mounted the waves; she bored through 'em. 'Twas a serious time--to hear Cap'n Am'zon tell it." "I guess it must ha' been, Abe," Milt Baker put in hastily. "Gimme a piece o' that Brown Mule chewin' tobacker." "I'll _sell_ it to ye, Milt," the storekeeper said gently, with his hand on the slide of the cigar and tobacco showcase. "That's what I mean," rejoined Milt boldly, fishing in his pocket for the required nickel. "For fourteen days while the _Posy Lass_ was drivin' off shore before an easterly gale, Cap'n Am'zon an' two others, lashed to the stump o' the fo'mast, _ex_-isted in a smother of foam an' spume, with the waves picklin' 'em ev'ry few minutes. And five raw potaters was all they had to eat in all that endurin' time!" "Five potatoes?" Lawford Tapp cried. "For three men? And for fourteen days? Good-_night_!" Cap'n Abe stared at him for a moment, his eyes holding sparks of indignation. "Young man," he said tartly, "you should hear Cap'n Am'zon himself tell it. You wouldn't cast no doubts upon his statement." Cap'n Joab snorted and turned his back again. Young Tapp felt somewhat abashed. "Yes, sir!" proceeded Cap'n Abe who seldom lost the thread of one of his stories, "they was lashed to that stump of a mast and they lived on them potaters--scraping 'em fine with their sheath-knives, and husbandin' 'em like they was jewels. One of 'em went mad." "One o' the potaters?" gasped Amiel Perdue. "_Who_ went crazy--your brother, Cap'n Abe?" Milt asked cheerfully. He had squandered a nickel in trying to head off the flow of the storekeeper's story, and felt that he was entitled to something besides the Brown Mule. Cap'n Abe kept to his course apparently unruffled: "Cap'n Am'zon an' the other feller lashed the poor chap--han's _an_' feet--and so kep' him from goin' overboard. But mebbe 'twarn't a marciful act after all. When they was rescued from the _Posy Lass_, her decks awash and her slowly breakin' up, there warn't nothing could be done for the feller that had lost his mind. He was put straightaway into a crazy-house when they got to port. "Now, them fellers saved from the _Gilbert Gaunt_ didn't go through nothin' like that, it stands to reason. Cap'n Am'zon----" Lawford Tapp was gazing out of the door beside Cap'n Joab, whose deeply tanned, whisker-fringed countenance wore an expression of disgust. "I declare! I'd love to see this wonderful brother of his. He must have Baron Munchausen lashed to the post," the young man whispered. "Never heard tell of that Munchausen feller," Cap'n Joab reflected. "Reckon he didn't sail from any of the Cape ports. But you let Abe tell it, Cap'n Am'zon Silt is the greatest navigator an' has the rip-snortin'est adventoors of airy deep-bottom sailor that ever chawed salt hoss." "Did you ever see him?" Lawford asked. "See who?" "Cap'n Amazon?" "No. I didn't never see him. But I've heard Cap'n Abe talk about him--standin' off an' on as ye might say--for twenty year and more." "Odd you never met him, isn't it?" "No. I never happened on Cap'n Am'zon when I was sea-farin'. And he ain't never been to Cardhaven to my knowledge." "Never been here?" murmured Lawford Tapp more than a little surprised. "Wasn't he born and brought up here?" "No. Neither was Cap'n Abe. The Silts flourish, as ye might say--or, useter 'fore the fam'ly sort o' petered out--down New Bedford way. Cap'n Abe come here twenty-odd year back and opened this store. He's as salt as though he'd been a haddocker since he was weaned. But he's always stuck mighty close inshore. Nobody ever seen him in a boat--'ceptin' out in a dory fishin' for tomcod in the bay, and on a mighty ca'm day at that." "How does it come that he is called captain, then?" Lawford asked, impressed by Cap'n Beecher's scorn of the storekeeper. The captain reflected, his jaws working spasmodically. "It's easy 'nough to pick up skipper's title longshore. 'Most ev'ry man owns some kind of a boat; and o' course a man's cap'n of his own craft--or 'doughter be. But I reckon Abe Silt aimed his title honest 'nough." "How?" urged Lawford. "When Abe fust come here to Cardhaven there was still two-three wrecking comp'nies left on the Cape. Why, 'tain't been ten years since the Paulmouth Comp'ny wrecked the _Mary Benson_ that went onto Sanders Reef all standin'. They made a good speck out o' the job, too. "Wal, Abe bought into one o' the comp'nies--was the heaviest stockholder, in fac', so nat'rally was cap'n. He never headed no crew--not as I ever heard on. But the title kinder stuck; and I don't dispute Abe likes it." "But about his brother--this Captain Amazon?" The line of Cap'n Joab Beecher's jaw, clean shaven above his whisker, looked very grim indeed, and he wagged his head slowly. "I don't know what to make of all this talk o' Cap'n Abe's," was his enigmatical reply. Lawford turned to gaze curiously at the storekeeper. He certainly looked to be of a salt flavor, did Cap'n Abe Silt, though so many of his years had been spent behind the counter of this gloomy and cluttered shop. He was not a large man, nor commanding to look upon. His eyes were too mild for that--save when, perhaps, he grew excited in relating one of his interminable stories about Cap'n Amazon. Cap'n Amazon Silt, it seemed, had been everything on sea and land that a mariner could be. No romance of the sea, or sea-going, was too remarkable to be capped by a tale of one of Cap'n Amazon's experiences. Some of these stories of wild and remarkable happenings, the storekeeper had told over and over again until they were threadbare. Cap'n Abe's brown, gray-streaked beard swept the breast of his blue jersey. He was seldom seen without a tarpaulin on his head, and this had made his crown as bare and polished as a shark's tooth. Under the bulk of his jersey he might have been either thin or deep-chested, for the observer could not easily judge. And nobody ever saw the storekeeper's sleeves rolled up or the throat-latch of his shirt open. Despite the fact that he held a thriving trade in his store on the Shell Road (especially during the summer season) Cap'n Abe lived emphatically a lonely life. Twenty years' residence meant little to Cardhaven folk. Cap'n Abe was still an outsider to people who were so closely married and intermarried that every human being within five miles of the Haven (not counting the aristocrats of The Beaches) could honestly call each of the others cousin in some degree. The house and store was set on a lonely stretch of road. It was unlighted at night, for the last street lamp had been fixed by the town fathers at the Mariner's Chapel, as though they said to all mundane illumination as did King Canute to the sea, "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther." Betty Gallup came cross lots each day to "rid up" Mr. Silt's living-room, which was behind the store, the chambers being overhead. She was gone home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself. He declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder, anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of "blood-ends," she was all at sea. He intimated that there were digestive reasons for her husband's death at the early age of sixty-eight. Milt Baker had successfully introduced another topic of conversation, far removed it would seem from any adventurous happening connected with Cap'n Amazon Silt's career. "I hear tell," said Milt, chewing Brown Mule with gusto, "that them folks cavortin' down on The Beaches for a week past is movin' picture actors. That so, Lawford?" "There's a camera man and a director, and several handy men arrived," the son of the Salt Water Taffy King replied. "They are going to use Bozewell's house for some pictures. The Bozewells are in Europe." "But ain't none of the actorines come?" demanded Milt, who was a sad dog--let him tell it! He had been motorman on a street car in Providence for a couple of winters before he married Mandy Card, and now tried to keep green his reputation for sophistication. "I believe not," Lawford answered, with reflection. "I presume the company will come later. The director is taking what he calls 'stills' of the several localities they propose using when the films are really made." "One of 'em told me," chuckled Amiel Perdue, "that they was hopin' for a storm, so's to get a real wreck in the picture." "Hoh!" snorted Cap'n Joab. "Fine time o' year to be lookin' for a no'theaster on the Cape." "And do they reckon a craft'll drift right in here if there is a storm an' wrack herself to please 'em?" piped up Washy Gallup--no relation to Betty save through interminable cross-currents of Card and Baker blood. "Sometimes them fillum fellers buy a boat an' wreck it a-purpose. Look what they did to the old _Morning Star_," Milt said. "I read once of a comp'ny putting two locomotives on one track an' running 'em full-tilt together so's to get a picture of the smashup." "Crazy critters!" muttered Cap'n Joab. "But wait till ye see the fillum actresses," Milt chuckled. "Tell ye what, boys, some of 'em 'll make ye open your eyes!" "Ye better go easy. Milt, 'bout battin' your eyes," advised Amiel Perdue. "Mandy ain't lost her eyesight none either." Washy's thin whine broke through the guffaw: "I seen a picture at Paulmouth once't about a feller and a girl lost in the woods o' Borneo. It was a stirrin' picture. They was chased by headhunters, and one o' these here big man-apes tackled 'em--what d'ye call that critter now? Suthin' like ringin' a bell." "Orang-outang," suggested Lawford. "That's it. Sounds jest like the Baptist Meetin' House bell. It's cracked." "Them orang-outangs don't sound like no bell--not when they holler," put in Cap'n Abe, leaning on his counter and staring at the tireless fishfly again. "Cap'n Am'zon Silt, when he was ashore once't in Borneo, met one o' them critters." "Gosh all fishhooks!" ejaculated Milt. "Ain't there no place on this green airth that brother o' yourn ain't been, Cap'n Abe?" "He ain't never been in jail, Milt," said the storekeeper mildly, and the assembly broke into an appreciative chuckle. It was well known that on the last Fourth of July Milt Baker had been shut into the calaboose at Paulmouth to sober up. "As I was sayin'," pursued Cap'n Abe reflectively, "Cap'n Amazon went up country with a Dutchman--a trader, I b'lieve he said the man was--and they got into a part where the orang-outangs was plentiful." "Jest as thick as sandpipers along The Beaches, I shouldn't wonder," put in Cap'n Joab, at last tempted beyond his strength. "No; nor like mackerel when ye get a full seine-haul," responded the storekeeper, unruffled, "but thicker'n you'd want sand fleas to be if the fleas measured up to the size of orang-outangs." Lawford Tapp burst into open laughter. "They can't catch you, can they, Cap'n Abe?" he said. "If that brother of yours has gone through one-half the perils by land and sea I've heard you tell about, he's beat out most sailors from old Noah down to Admiral Dewey." Cap'n Abe's brows came together in pronounced disapproval. "Young man," he said, "if Cap'n Am'zon was here now ye wouldn't darst cast any aspersions on his word. He ain't the man to stand for't." "Well, I'd like to see Cap'n Amazon," Lawford said lightly, "if only for the sake of asking him a question or two." "You'll likely get your wish," returned the storekeeper tartly. "What d'ye mean?" drawled Milt Baker, who always bobbed up serenely. "Ye don't say Cap'n Am'zon's likely to show up here at Cardhaven after all these years?" There was barely a second's hesitation on Mr. Silt's part. Then he said: "That's exactly what I mean. I got a--ahem!--a letter from Cap'n Am'zon only lately." "And he's comin' to see ye?" gasped Cap'n Joab, turning from the door to stare like the others at the storekeeper. "Yes," the latter confessed. "And he's likely to stay quite a spell when he does come. Says suthin' 'bout settlin' down. He's gettin' along in years like the rest of us. Mebbe I'll let him keep store for me this summer whilst I take a vacation," added Cap'n Abe more briskly, "like I been wantin' to do for a long spell back." "You took a vacation of a week or more about--was it ten year ago?" demanded Cap'n Joab. "I looked after the place for ye then." "Ahem! I mean a real vacation," Cap'n Abe declared, still staring at the fishfly now feebly butting its head against the pane. "That week was when I went to the--'hem--buryin' of my a'nt, Joab. I'll go this time mebbe for two-three months. Take a v'y'ge somewhere, I've always wanted to." "Land sakes!" exploded Cap'n Joab. "I know ye been talkin' 'bout cruisin' around--to see your folks, or the like--for the longest spell. But I didn't s'pose ye re'lly meant it. And your brother comin', too! Well!" "If he can tell of his adventures as well as you relate them," laughed Lawford, "Cap'n Amazon should be an addition to the Cardhaven social whirl." "You take my advice, young man," Cap'n Abe said, with sternness, "and belay that sort o' talk afore Cap'n Am'zon when he does come. He's lived a rough sort o' life. He's nobody's tame cat. Doubt his word and he's jest as like as not to take ye by the scruff of the neck and duck ye in the water butt." There was a general laugh. Almost always the storekeeper managed to turn the tables in some way upon any doubting Thomas that drifted into his shop. Because of his ability in this particular he had managed to hold his audience all these years. Lawford could think of no reply with which to turn the laugh. His wit was not of a nimble order. He turned to the door again and suddenly a low ejaculation parted his lips. "There's that girl again!" Milt Baker screwed his neck around for a look. "See who's come!" he cackled. "I bet it's one o' them moving picture actresses." Lawford cast on the ribald Milt a somewhat angry glance. Yet he did not speak again for a moment. "Tidy craft," grunted Cap'n Joab, eying the young woman who was approaching the store along the white road. "I saw her get out of Noah's ark when he landed at the post-office this noon," Lawford explained to Cap'n Joab. "She looks like a nice girl." "Trim as a yacht," declared the old man admiringly. She was plainly city bred--and city gowned--and she carried her light traveling bag by a strap over her shoulder. Her trim shoes were dusty from her walk and her face was pink under her wide hat brim. Lawford stepped out upon the porch. His gaze was glued again to this vision of young womanhood; but as he stood at one side she did not appear to see him as she mounted the steps. The heir of the Salt Water Taffy King was twenty-four, his rather desultory college course behind him; and he thought his experience with girls had been wide. But he had never seen one just like Louise Grayling. He was secretly telling himself this as she made her entrance into Cap'n Abe's store. CHAPTER III IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM Louise came into the store smiling and the dusty, musty old place seemed actually to brighten in the sunshine of her presence. Her big gray eyes (they were almost blue when their owner was in an introspective mood) now sparkled as her glance swept Cap'n Abe's stock-in-trade--the shelves of fly-specked canned goods and cereal packages, with soap, and starch, and half a hundred other kitchen goods beyond; the bolts of calico, gingham, "turkey red," and mill-ends; the piles of visored caps and boxes of sunbonnets on the counter: the ship-lanterns, coils of rope, boathooks, tholepins hanging in wreaths; bailers, clam hoes, buckets, and the thousand and one articles which made the store on the Shell Road a museum that later was sure to engage the interest of the girl. Now, however, the clutter of the shop gained but fleeting notice from Louise. Her gaze almost immediately fastened upon the figure of the bewhiskered old man, with spectacles and sou'wester both pushed back on his bald crown, who mildly looked upon her--his smile somehow impressing Louise Grayling as almost childish, it was so kindly. Cap'n Joab had dodged through the door after Lawford Tapp. The other boys from The Beaches followed their leader. Old Washy Gallup and Amiel Perdue suddenly remembered that it was almost chore time as this radiant young woman said: "I wish to see Mr. Abram Silt--Captain Silt. Is he here?" "I'm him, miss," Cap'n Abe returned politely. Milt Baker surely would have remained of all the crowd of idlers, gaping oilily at the visitor across the top of the rusty stove, had not a shrill feminine voice been heard outside the store, "Is Milt Baker there? Ain't none o' you men seen him? Land sakes! he's as hard to hold as the greased pig on Fourth o' July--an' jest 'bout as useful." "Milt," said Cap'n Abe suggestively, "I b'lieve I hear Mandy callin' you." "I'm a-comin'!--I'm a-comin', Mandy!" gurgled Milt, cognizant of the girl's gay countenance turned upon him. "What did you want, miss?" asked Cap'n Abe, as the recreant husband of the militant Mandy stumbled over his own feet getting out of the store. Louise bubbled over with laughter; she could not help it. Cap'n Abe's bearded countenance broke slowly into an appreciative grin. "Yes," he said, "she does have him on a leadin' string. I do admit Mandy's a card." The girl, quick-witted as she was bright looking, got his point almost at once. "You mean she was a Card before she married him?" "And she's a Card yet," Cap'n Abe said, nodding. "Guess you know a thing or two, yourself. What can I do for you?" "You can say: 'Good-evening, Niece Louise,'" laughed the girl, coming closer to the counter upon which the storekeeper still leaned. "Land sakes!" "My mother was a Card. That is how I came to see your joke, Uncle Abram." "Land sakes!" "Don't you believe me?" "I--I ain't got but one niece in the world," mumbled Cap'n Abe. "An'--an' I never expected to see _her_." "Louise Grayling, daughter of Professor Ernest Grayling and Miriam Card--your half-sister's child. See here--and here." She snapped open her bag, resting it on the counter, and produced an old-fashioned photograph of her mother, a letter, yellowed by time, that Cap'n Abe had written Professor Grayling long before, and her own accident policy identification card which she always carried. Cap'n Abe stretched forth a hairy hand, and it closed on Lou's as a sunfish absorbs its prey. The girl's hand to her wrist was completely lost in the grip; but despite its firmness Cap'n Abe's handclasp was by no means painful. He released her and, leaning back, smiled benignly. "Land sakes!" he said again. "I'm glad to see little Mirry's girl. An' you do favor her a mite. But I guess you take mostly after the Graylings." "People say I am like my father." "An' a mighty nice lookin' man--an' a pleasant--as I remember him," Cap'n Abe declared. "Come right in here, into my sittin'-room, Niece Louise, an' lemme take a look at you. Land sakes!" He lifted the flap in the counter to let her through. The doorway beyond gave entrance to a wide hall, or "entry," between the store and the living-room. The kitchen was in a lean-to at the back. The table in the big room was already spread with a clean red-and-white checked tablecloth and set with heavy chinaware for a meal. A huge caster graced the center of the table, containing glass receptacles for salt, red and black pepper, catsup, vinegar, and oil. Knives, forks, and spoons for two--all of utilitarian style--were arranged with mathematical precision beside each plate. In one window hung a pot with "creeping Jew" and inchplant, the tendrils at least a yard long. In the other window was a blowzy-looking canary in a cage. A corpulent tortoise-shell cat occupied the turkey-red cushion in one generous rocking chair, There was a couch with a faded patchwork coverlet, several other chairs, and in a glass-fronted case standing on the mantlepiece a model of a brigantine in full sail, at least two feet tall. "Sit down," said Cap'n Abe heartily. "Drop your dunnage right down there," as Louise slipped the strap of her bag from her shoulder. "Take that big rocker. Scat, you, Diddimus! and let the young lady have your place." "Oh, don't bother him, Uncle Abram. What a beauty he is," Louise said, as the tortoise-shell--without otherwise moving--opened one great, yellow eye. "He's a lazy good-for-nothing," Cap'n Abe said mildly. "Friends with all the mice on the place, I swan! But sometimes he's the only human critter I have to talk to. 'Cept Jerry." "Jerry?" "The bird," explained Cap'n Abe, easing himself comfortably into a chair, his guest being seated, and resting his palms on his knees as he gazed at her out of his pale blue eyes. "He's a lot of comfort--Jerry. An' he useter be a great singer. Kinder gittin' old, now, like the rest of us. "Does seem too bad," went on Cap'n Abe reflectively, "how a bird like him has got to live in a cage all his endurin' days. Jerry's a prisoner--like I been. _I_ ain't never had the freedom I wanted, Miss------? "Louise, please. Uncle Abram. Lou Grayling," the girl begged, but smiling. "Then just you call me Cap'n Abe. I'm sort o' useter that," the storekeeper said. "Of course I will. But why haven't you been free?" she asked, reverting to his previous topic. "Seems to me--down here on the Cape where the sea breezes blow, and everything is open----" "Yes, 'twould seem so," Cap'n Abe said, but he said it with hesitation. "I been some hampered all my life, as ye might say. 'Tis something that was bred in me. But as for Jerry------ "Jerry was give to me by a lady when he was a young bird. After a while I got thinkin' a heap about him bein' caged, and one sunshiny day--it was a marker for days down here on the Cape, an' we have lots on 'em! One sunshiny day I opened his door and opened the window, and I says: 'Scoot! The hull world's yourn!'" "And didn't he go?" asked the girl, watching the rapt face of the old man. "Did he go? Right out through that window with a song that'd break your heart to hear, 'twas so sweet. He pitched on the old apple tree yonder--the August sweet'nin'--and I thought he'd bust his throat a-tellin' of how glad he was to be free out there in God's sunshine an' open air." "He came back, I see," said Louise thoughtfully. "That's just it!" cried Cap'n Abe, shaking his head till the tarpaulin fell off and he forgot to pick it up. "That's just it. He come back of his own self. I didn't try to ketch him. When it grew on toward sundown an' the air got kinder chill, I didn't hear Jerry singin' no more. I'd seen him, off'n on, flittin' 'bout the yard all day. When I come in here to light the hangin'-lamp cal'latin' to make supper, I looked over there at the window. I'd shut it. There was Jerry on the window sill, humped all up like an old woman with the tisic." "The poor thing!" was Lou's sympathetic cry. "Yes," said Cap'n Abe, nodding. "He warn't no more fit to be let loose than nothin' 'tall. And I wonder if _I_ be," added the storekeeper. "I've been caged quite a spell how. "But now tell me, Niece Louise," he added with latent curiosity, "how did you find your way here?" "Father says--'Daddy-professor,' you know is what I call him. He says if we had not always been traveling when I was not at school, I should have known you long ago. He thinks very highly of my mother's people." "I wanter know!" "He says you are the 'salt of the earth'--that is his very expression." "Yes. We're pretty average salt, I guess," admitted Cap'n Abe. "I never seen your father but once or twice. You see, Louise, your mother was a lot younger'n me an' Am'zon." "Who?" "Cap'n Am'zon. Oh! _I_ ain't the only uncle you got," he said, watching her narrowly. "Cap'n Am'zon Silt----" "Have I another relative? How jolly!" exclaimed Louise, clasping her hands. "Ye-as. Ain't it? Jest," Cap'n Abe said. "Ahem! your father never spoke of Cap'n Am'zon?". "I don't believe daddy-prof even knew there was such a person." "Mebbe not. Mebbe not," Cap'n Abe agreed hastily. "And not to be wondered at. You see, Am'zon went to sea when he was only jest a boy." "Did he?" "Yep. Ran away from home--like most boys done in them days, for their mothers warn't partial to the sea--and shipped aboard the whaler _South Sea Belle_. He tied his socks an' shirt an' a book o' navigation he owned, up in a handkerchief, and slipped out over the shed roof one night, and away he went." Cap'n Abe told the girl this with that far-away look on his face that usually heralded one of his tales about Cap'n Amazon. "I can remember it clear 'nough. He walked all the way to New Bedford. We lived at Rocky Head over against Bayport. Twas quite a step to Bedford. The _South Sea Belle_ was havin' hard time makin' up her crew. She warn't a new ship. Am'zon was twelve year old an' looked fifteen. An' he was fifteen 'fore he got back from that v'y'ge. Mebbe I'll tell ye 'bout it some time--or Cap'n Am'zon will. He's been a deep-bottom sailor from that day to this." "And where is he now?" asked Louise. "Why--mebbe!--he's on his way here. I shouldn't wonder. He might step in at that door any minute," and Cap'n Abe's finger indicated the store door. There was the sound of a footstep entering the store as he spoke. The storekeeper arose. "I'll jest see who 'tis," he said. While he was absent Louise laid aside her hat and made a closer inspection of the room and its furniture. Everything was homely but comfortable. There was a display of marine art upon the walls. All the ships were drawn exactly, with the stays, spars, and all rigging in place, line for line. They all sailed, too, through very blue seas, the crest of each wave being white with foam. Flanking the model of the brigantine on the mantle were two fancy shell pieces--works of art appreciated nowhere but on the coast. The designs were ornate; but what they could possibly represent Louise was unable to guess. She tried to interest the canary by whistling to him and sticking her pink finger between the wires of his cage. He was ruffled and dull-eyed like all old birds of his kind, and paid her slight attention. When she turned to Diddimus she had better success. He rolled on his side, stuck all his claws out and drew them in again luxuriously, purring meanwhile like a miniature sawmill. When Cap'n Abe came back the girl asked: "Wasn't your customer a young man I saw on the porch as I came in?" "Yep. Lawford Tapp. Said he forgot some matches and a length o' ropeyarn. I reckon you went to that young man's head. And his top hamper ain't none too secure, Niece Louise." "Oh, did I?" laughed the girl, understanding perfectly. "How nice." "Nice? That's how ye take it. Lawford Tapp ain't a fav'rite o' mine." "But he seemed very accommodating to-day when I asked him how to reach your store." "So you met him up town?" "Yes, Uncle Abe." "He's perlite enough," scolded the storekeeper. "But I don't jest fancy the cut of his jib. Wanted to know if you was goin' to stop here." "Oh!" exclaimed Louise. "That is what I want to know myself. Am I?" CHAPTER IV THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS Cap'n Abe reached for his spectacles and pulled them down upon his nose to look at his guest through the lenses. Not that they aided his sight in the least; but the act helped to cover the fact that he was startled. "Stop here?" he repeated. "Where's your father? Ain't he with you up to the Inn?" "No, Cap'n Abe. He is in Boston to-day. But he will sail to-morrow for a summer cruise with a party for scientific research. I am all alone. So I came down here to Cape Cod." Louise said it directly and as simply as the storekeeper himself might have spoken. Yet it seemed really difficult for Cap'n Abe to get her meaning into his head. "You mean you was intendin' to cast anchor here--with _me_?" "If it is agreeable. Of course I'll pay my board if you'll let me. You have a room to spare, haven't you?" "Land sakes, yes!" "And I am not afraid to use my hands. I might even be of some slight use," and she smiled at him till his own slow smile responded, troubled and amazed though he evidently was by her determination. "I've roughed it a good deal with daddy-prof. I can cook--some things. And I can do housework----" "Bet Gallup does that," interposed Cap'n Abe, finally getting his bearings. "Hi-mighty, ye did take me aback all standin', Niece Louise! Ye did, for a fac'. But why not? Land sakes, there's room enough, an' to spare! Ye don't hafter put them pretty han's to housework. Betty Gallup'll do all that. An' you don't have to pay no board money. As for cookin'----That remin's me. I'd better git to work on our supper. We'll be sharp for it 'fore long." "And--and I may stay?" asked Louise, with some little embarrassment now. "You are sure it won't inconvenience you?" "Bless you, no! I cal'late it's more likely to inconvenience _you_," and Cap'n Abe chuckled mellowly. "I don't know what sort o' 'roughin' it' you've done with your pa; but if there's anything much rougher than an ol' man's housekeepin' down here on the Cape, it must be pretty average rough!" She laughed gayly. "You can't scare me!" "Ain't a-tryin' to," he responded, eying her admiringly. "You're an able seaman, I don't dispute. An' we'll git along fine. Hi-mighty! there's Am'zon!" Louise actually turned around this time to look at the door, expecting to see the mariner in question enter. Then she said, half doubtfully: "Do you suppose your brother will object if he does come, Cap'n Abe?" "Land sakes, no!" the storekeeper quickly assured her. "'Tain't that. But I cal'lated 'bout soon's Am'zon anchored here I'd cast off moorin's myself." "Go away?" Louise demanded. "Yes. Like poor old Jerry, mebbe," said Cap'n Abe, looking at the caged bird. "Mebbe I'll be glad to come back again--and in a hurry. But while Cap'n Am'zon is here I can take a vacation that I've long hankered for, Niece Louise. I--I got my plans all made." "Don't for one moment think of changing them on my account," Louise said briskly. "I shall like Uncle Amazon immensely if he's anything like you, Cap'n Abe." "He--he ain't so _much_ like me," confessed the storekeeper. "Not in looks he ain't. But hi-mighty! I know he'll be as pleased as Punch to see ye." "Are you sure of that?" "Wait till you see how he takes to ye," declared her reassuring uncle. "Now, lemme git my apern on and set to work on supper." "Can't I help, Cap'n Abe?" "In them things?" the storekeeper objected. "Well--I'll have plenty of house dresses when my trunks come. I left my checks at the station for a man named Perry Baker. They said he'd bring them over to-night." "He will," Cap'n Abe assured her. But he stopped a moment, stock-still in the middle of the room, and stared at her unseeingly. Evidently his mind was fixed upon an idea suddenly suggested by her speech. "He will," he repeated. Then: "I'll get the fat kettle over an' the fry-cage ready. Amiel brought me a likely cod. 'Tain't been out o' the water two hours." "I love fish," confessed Louise, following him to the kitchen door. "Lucky you do, if you're going to stay a spell on Cape Cod. For that's what you'll eat mornin', noon, and night. Fish and clams, an' mebbe a pot o' baked beans on a Saturday, or a chicken for Sunday's dinner. I don't git much time to cook fancy." "But can't this woman who comes to do the work cook for you?" "She can't cook for me," snorted Cap'n Abe. "I respect my stomach too much to eat after Bet Gallup. She's as good a man afore the mast as airy feller in Cardhaven. An' that's where she'd oughter be. But never let her in the galley." "Oh, well," Louise said cheerfully. "I'm a dab at camp cooking myself, as I told you. Uncle Amazon and I will make out--if he comes." "Oh! Ah! 'Hem!" said Cap'n Abe, clearing his throat. He stooped to pick up a dropped potlid and came up very red in the face. "You needn't borrow any trouble on that score, Cap'n Am'zon's as good a cook as I be." Only twice did Cap'n Abe make forced trips into the shop. The supper hour of Cardhaven was well established and the thoughtful housewives did not seek to make purchases while the fat was hot in Cap'n Abe's skillet. One of these untimely customers was a wandering child with a penny. "I might have waited on him, Cap'n Abe," Louise declared. "Land sakes! so you might," the storekeeper agreed. "Though if he'd seen you behind my counter I reckon that young 'un of 'Liathel Grummet's would have been struck dumber than nature made him in the fust place." The other customer was a gangling, half-grown youth after a ball of seine twine and the girl heard him say in a shocked whisper to Cap'n Abe: "Say! is it true there's one o' them movin' picture actresses goin' to stop here with you, Cap'n Abe? Ma heard so." "You tell your ma," Cap'n Abe said sternly, "that if she keeps on stretchin' her ears that a-way, she'll hear the kambuoy over Bartell Shoals in a dead calm!" Cap'n Abe's bald poll began to shine with minute beads of perspiration. He looked over the bib of his voluminous apron like a bewhiskered gnome very busy at some mysterious task. Louise noticed that his movements about the kitchen were remarkably deft. "All hands called!" he called out at length. "I'm about to dish up." "Shall I put on another plate, Cap'n Abe? You expected somebody else to supper?" "Nope. All set. I'm always ready for a messmate; but 'tain't often one boards me 'cept Cap'n Joab now and then. His woman likes to git him out from under foot. You see, when a woman's been useter seein' her husband only 'twixt v'y'ges for forty year, I 'spect 'tis something of a cross to have him litterin' up the house ev'ry day," he confessed. "But as I can't leave the shop myself to go visitin' much in return, Joab acks offish. We Silts was always bred to be hospitable. Poor or rich, we could share what we had with another. So I keep an extry plate on the table. "I've had occasion," pursued the philosophical storekeeper, drawing up his own chair across the table from the girl, "to be at some folks' houses at meal time and had 'em ask me to set up and have a bite. But it never looked to me as if they meant it 'nless there was already an extry plate there. "Just like having a spare bedroom. If you can say: 'Stay all night, we got a room for ye,' then that's what I call hospitality. I wouldn't live in a house that warn't big enough to have at least one spare room." "I believe I must be very welcome here, Cap'n Abe," Louise said, smiling at the kindly old man. "Land sakes, I sh'd hope ye felt so!" ejaculated Cap'n Abe. "Now, if you don't mind, Niece Louise." He dropped his head suddenly and closed his eyes in reverence. "For what we are about to partake of, Lord, make us duly thankful. Amen!" His countenance became animated again. "Try them biscuit. I made 'em this morning 'twixt Marcy Coe selectin' that piece of gingham for a new dress and John Peckham buying cordage for his smack. But they warmed up right nice in the oven." Meanwhile he heaped her plate with codfish and fried potatoes cooked to a delicate brown. There was good butter, fat doughnuts, and beach-plum preserve. It was a homely meal but Louise ate it graciously. Already the air of Cardhaven had sharpened her appetite. "Lend me your apron," insisted the girl when they had finished, "and I will wash these dishes." "I us'ally let them go till Betty Gallup comes in the morning," the storekeeper said rather ruefully. "It don't look right to me that you should mess with these greasy dishes jest as we get under way, as ye might say." "You must not make company of me, Cap'n Abe," Louise declared. "There, I hear a customer in the store," and she gave him a little pat on the shoulder as he delivered the huge apron into her hand. "I dunno," he said, smiling upon her quizzically, "as I shall really want to cast off if Cap'n Am'zon _does_ come. Seems to me 'twould be hi-mighty nice to have a girl like you around the place, Louise." "Then don't go," she said, briskly beginning to clear off. "_I_ sha'n't mind having two of you for me to boss. Two captains! Think of it." "Yes. I know. But I got all my plans laid," he murmured, and then went slowly into the store. There seemed to be some briskness in the after-supper trade, and Louise suspected that it was founded upon the news of her arrival at Cap'n Abe's store. Several of his rather tart rejoinders reached her ears as she went from kitchen to livingroom and back again. Finally removing the apron, her task done, she seated herself with Diddimus in her lap within the radiance of the lamp and within hearing of all that was said in the store. "No. I dunno's I ever did tell ye quite all my business, Joab. Some things I missed, includin' the list of my relations." "Yes, I hear tell most of these movin' picture actresses are pretty, Miz' Peckham. They pick 'em for that puppose, I shouldn't wonder. I didn't ask her what part she was goin' to play--_if_ any." "Land sakes, Mandy, she's just got here! I ain't no idee how long she'll stay. If you think there's any danger of Milt not tendin' to his clammin' proper whilst she's here you'd better send him on a cruise with Cap'n Durgin. The _Tryout_ sails for the Banks to-morrow, I understand." "No, Washy. That was my A'nt Matildy I went away to help bury ten years ago. She's still dead--an' this ain't her daughter. This is my ha'f sister's child, she that was Miriam Card. She got married to a scientific chap that works for the government, I guess when you write to Washington for your garden seeds next spring, you better ask about him, if ye want to know more'n _I_ can tell ye." "You got it right for once't, Joab. I do expect Cap'n Am'zon. Mebbe to-night. He may come over from the depot with Perry Baker--I can't tell. What'll I do with the girl? Land sakes! ain't Cap'n Am'zon just as much her uncle as _I_ be? Some o' you fellers better stow your jaw-tackle if Cap'n Am'zon does heave to here. For he ain't no tame cat, like I told you." "You back again, Lawford Tapp? Hi-mighty! what you forgot this time? Fishhooks? Goin' fishin', be you? Wal, in my 'pinion you're throwin' your hook into unproductive waters around here, as ye might say. Even chummin' won't sarve ye. _Good_-night!" After getting rid of this importunate customer, Cap'n Abe closed his door and put out his store lights--an hour earlier than usual--and came back to sit down with Louise. His visage was red and determination sat on his brow. "I snum!" he emphatically observed. "Cardhaven folks seem bit with some kind o' bug. Talk 'bout curiosity! 'Hem! I dunno what Cap'n Am'zon'll think of 'em." "_I_ think they are funny," Louise retorted, her laughter bubbling up again. "Likely it looks so to you," said Cap'n Abe. "They're pretty average funny I do guess to a stranger, as ye might say. But after you've summered 'em and wintered 'em for twenty-odd years like I have, land sakes! the humor's worn hi-mighty thin!" CHAPTER V WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT Cap'n Abe produced a pipe. He looked at his niece tentatively. "Do--do you mind tobacker smoke?" "Daddy-prof is an inveterate," she laughed. "Huh? An--an invet'rate _what_?" "Smoker. I don't begrudge a man smoking tobacco as long as we women have our tea. A nerve tonic in both cases." "I dunno for sure that I've got any nerves," Cap'n Abe said, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. "Mebbe I was behind the door when they was given out. But a pipeful o' tobacker this time o' the evening _does_ seem sort o' satisfyin'. That, and knittin'." Having filled his pipe and lit it, he puffed a few times to get it well alight and then reached for a covered basket that Louise had noticed on a small stand under Jerry's cage. He drew from this a half-fashioned gray stocking that was evidently intended for his own foot and the needles began to click in his strong, capable hands. "Supprise you some, does it, Louise?" Cap'n Abe said. "Cap'n Am'zon taught me. Most old whalers knit. That, an' doin' scrimshaw work, was 'bout all that kep' 'em from losing their minds on them long v'y'ges into the Pacific. An' I've seen the time myself when I was hi-mighty glad I'd l'arned to count stitches. "Land sakes! Some o' them whalin' v'y'ges lasted three-four years. Cap'n Am'zon was in the old bark _Neptune's Daughter_ when she was caught in the ice and drifted pretty average close't to the south pole. "You know," said Cap'n Abe reflectively, "the Antarctic regions ain't like the Arctic. 'Cause why? There ain't no folks there. Cap'n Am'zon says there ain't 'nough land at the south pole to make Marm Scudder's garden--and they say she didn't need more'n what her patchwork quilt would cover. Where there's land there's folks. And if there was land in the Antarctic there'd be Eskimos like there is up North. "'Hem! Well, that wasn't what I begun on, was it? This knitting. Cap'n Am'zon says that many's the time he's thanked his stars he knowed how to knit." "I shall be glad to meet him," said Louise. "If he comes," Cap'n Abe rejoined, "an' I go away as I planned to, 'twon't make a mite o' difference to you, Niece Louise. You feel right at home here--and so'll Cap'n Am'zon, though he ain't never been to Cardhaven yet. He'll be a lot better company for you than I'd be." "Oh, Cap'n Abe, I can scarcely believe that!" cried the girl. "You don't know Cap'n Am'zon," the storekeeper said. "I tell ye fair: he's ev'rything that I ain't! As a boy--'hem!--Am'zon was always leadin' an' me follerin'. I kinder took after my mother, I guess. She was your grandmother. Your grandfather was a Card--and a nice man he was. "Our father--me an' Am'zon's--was Cap'n Joshua Silt of the schooner _Bravo_. Hi-mighty trim and taut craft she was, from all accounts. I--I warn't born when he died," added Cap'n Abe, hesitatingly. "You were a posthumous child!" said Louise. "Er--I guess so. Kinder 'pindlin', too. Yes! yes! Cap'n Am'zon's ahead o' me--in ev'ry way. When father died 'twas pretty average hard on mother," Cap'n Abe pursued. "We was llvin' at Rocky Head, I guess I told you b'fore?" "Yes," Louise said, interested. "The _Bravo_ was makin' reg'lar trips from Newport to Bangor, Maine. Short-coastin' v'y'ges paid well in them days. There come a big storm in the spring--onexpected. Mother'd got a letter from Cap'n Josh--father he'd put out o' Newport with a sartain tide. He warn't jest a fair-weather skipper. Cap'n Am'zon gits his pluck an' darin' from Cap'n Josh. "Well, mother knowed he must be out o' sight of Fort Adams and the Dumplin's when the storm burst, and that he'd take the inside passage, the wind bein' what it was. She watched from Rocky Head and she seen what she knowed to be the _Bravo_ heave in sight. "There warn't no foolin' her," pursued Cap'n Abe, whose pipe had gone out but whose knitting needles twinkled the faster. "No. She knowed the schooner far's she could glim her. She watched the Bravo caught in the cross-current when the gale dropped sudden, and tryin' to claw off shore. "But no use! She was doomed! There warn't no help for the schooner. She went right on to Toll o' Death Reef and busted up in an hour. Not a body ever was beached, for the current, tide, _an_' gale was all off shore. And it happened in plain sight of our windows. "Two months later," Cap'n Abe said reflectively, "I come into the world. Objectin', of course, like all babies. Funny thing that. We all come into it makin' all kinds of a hullabaloo against anchorin' here; and we most of us kick just as hard against slippin' our moorin's to get out of it. "Land sakes!" he exclaimed in conclusion. "There ye be. I guess my mother hated the sea 'bout as much as any longshore woman ever did. And there's a slew of 'em detest it worse'n cats. Why, ye couldn't hire some o' these Cape Cod females to get into a boat. Their men for generations was drowned and more'n forty per cent. of the stones in the churchyards along the coast, sacred to the mem'ry of the men of the fam'lies, have on 'em: '_Lost at sea_.' "Can't blame the women. Old Ella Coffin that lives on Narrer P'int over yonder ain't been to the main but once't in fifteen years. That was when an off-shore gale blew all the water out o' the breach 'twixt the p'int and the mainland. "Ye see," said Cap'n Abe, smiling again, "Narrer P'int is re'lly an island, even at low water. But _then_ a hoss an' buggy can splatter across't the breach. But it makes Marm Coffin seasick even to ride through water in a buggy. Marked, she is, as you might say. "Well, now, Louise, child," the storekeeper added, "I'm a-gassin' 'bout things that don't much int'rest you, I cal'late. I'll light a lamp an' show you up to your room. When Perry Baker comes by and by, I'll help him in with your trunks. You needn't worry about 'em." It had been foggy on the Sound the night before and Louise had not slept until the boat had rounded Point Judith. So she was not averse to retiring at this comparatively early hour. Cap'n Abe led her upstairs to a cool, clean, and comfortable chamber. The old four-posted, corded bedstead stood in the middle of the room, covered with a blue-and-white coverlet, with sheets and pillow cases as white as foam. It could not be doubted that Cap'n Abe had carried out his idea of hospitality. The spare room was always ready for the possible guest. "Good-night, uncle," she said, smiling at him as he handed her the lamp. "I believe I am going to have a delightful time here." "Of course you be! Of course!" he exclaimed. "An' if I ain't here, Cap'n Am'zon will show you a better time than I could. Good-night. Sleep well, Louise." He kissed her on the forehead. But she, impulsively, pressed her fresh lips to the storekeeper's weather-beaten cheek. Before she closed the door of the bedroom she heard him clumping downstairs in his heavy boots. After that he must have removed his footgear for, although she heard doors open and close, she could not distinguish his steps. "I'm glad I came!" she told herself with enthusiasm as she prepared to retire. "What a delightful old place it is! And Uncle Abram--why, he's a _dear_! Daddy-prof was not half enthusiastic enough about the Cape Cod folk. It has been a distinct loss to me that I was never here before." She laid out her toilet requisites upon the painted pine bureau and hung her negligee over the back of a chair. As she retied the ribbon in one of the sleeves of her nightgown she thought: "And that Tapp boy came back a second time! Some fisherman's son, I suppose. But exceedingly nice looking!" A little later the feather bed had taken her into its arms and she almost instantly fell asleep. Occasionally through the night she was roused by unfamiliar sounds. There was a fog coming in from the sea and the siren at the lighthouse on the Neck began to bellow like a bereft cow. There were movements downstairs. Once she heard a wagon stop, and voices. Then the bumping of heavy boxes on the side porch. Her trunks. Voices below in the living-room--gruff, yet subdued. Creaking footsteps on the stair; then Louise realized that they were carrying something heavy down and out to the waiting wagon. She was just dropping to sleep when the wagon was driven away. There came a heavy summons on her door while it was still dark. But a glance at her watch assured Lou Grayling that it was the fog that made the light so dim. "Yes, Cap'n Abe?" she called cheerfully, for even early rising could not quench her good spirits. "'Tain't time to get up yet, Niece Louise," he told her behind the thin panel of the door. "Don't disturb yourself. Cap'n Amazon's come an' I'm off." "You're what?" gasped the girl sitting up in her nest of feathers. "I'm a-goin' to Boston. Jest got time to ketch the clam-train at the depot. Don't you bother; Cap'n Am'zon's here and he'll take care of you till I get back. Betty Gallup'll be here by six or a little after to do the work. You can have her stop at night, if you want to." "But, Uncle----" "Must hurry, Louise," hastily said Cap'n Abe as he heard the bedcords creak and the patter of the girl's feet on the matting. "Cap'n Am'zon knows of a craft that'll sail to-day from Boston and I must jine her crew. Good-bye!" He was gone. Louise, throwing on the negligee, hurried to the screened window. The fog had breathed upon the wires and clouded them. She heard the door open below, a step on the porch, and then a muffled: "Bye, Am'zon. Don't take no wooden money. I'm off." A shrouded figure passed up the road and was quickly hidden by the fog. CHAPTER VI BOARDED BY PIRATES Louise could not go back to sleep. She drew the ruffles of the negligee about her throat and removed the sliding screen the better to see into the outer world. There was a movement in the fog, for the rising breeze ruffled, it. Full daybreak would bring its entire dissipation. Already the mist held a luster heralding the sun. The "hush-hush" of the surf along The Beaches was more insistent now than at any time since Louise had come to Cap'n Abe's store, while the moan of the breakers on the outer reefs was like the deep notes of a distant organ. A cock crew, and at his signal outdoor life seemed to awaken. Other chanticleers sounded their alarms; a colt whistled in a paddock and his mother neighed softly from her stall; a cow lowed; then, sweet and clear as a mountain stream, broke forth the whistle of a wild bird in the marsh. This matin of the feathered songster rose higher and higher till he reached the very top note of his scale and then fell again, by cadences, until it mingled with the less compelling calls of other birds. There was a warm pinkness spreading through the fog in one direction, and Louise knew it must be the reflection of the light upon the eastern horizon. The sun would soon begin a new day's journey. The fog was fast thinning, for across the road she could see a spiral of blue smoke, mounting through it from the chimney of a neighbor. The kitchen fire there had just been lighted. Below, and from the living-rooms behind the store, the girl heard some faint noises as though the early morning tasks of getting in wood and filling the coal scuttle were under way. Uncle Amazon must be "takin' holt" just as Cap'n Abe said he would. Louise was curious to see the returned mariner; but it was too early to go down yet. She might really have another nap before she dressed, she thought, yawning behind a pink palm. There was a step in the store. Her room overlooked by two windows the roof of the front porch and she could hear what went on below plainly. The step was lighter than Cap'n Abe's. The bolts of the two-leaved door rattled and it was set wide; she heard the iron wedges kicked under each to hold it open. Then a smell of pipe smoke was wafted to her nostrils. A footstep on the Shell Road announced the approach of somebody from The Beaches. Louise yawned again and was on the point of creeping into bed once more when she descried the figure coming through the fog. She saw only the boots and legs of the person at first; but the fog was fast separating into wreaths which the rising breeze hurried away, and the girl at the window soon saw the full figure of the approaching man--and recognized him. At almost the same moment Lawford Tapp raised his eyes and saw her; and his heart immediately beat the call to arms. Louise Grayling's morning face, framed by the sash and sill of her bedroom window, was quite the sweetest picture he had ever seen. It was only for a moment he saw her, her bare and rounded forearm on the sill, the frilly negligee so loosened that he could see the column of her throat. Her gray eyes looked straight into his--then she was gone. "Actress, or not," muttered the son of the Salt Water Taffy King, "there's nothing artificial about her. And she's Cap'n Abe's niece. Well!" He saw the figure on the porch, smoking, and hailed it: "Hey, Cap'n Abe! Those fishhooks you sold me last evening aren't what I wanted--and there's the _Merry Andrew_ waiting out there for me now. I want----" The figure in the armchair turned its head. It was not Cap'n Abe at all! "Mornin', young feller," said the stranger cordially. "You'll have to explain a leetle about them hooks. I ain't had a chance to overhaul much of Abe's cargo yet. I don't even know where he stows his small tackle. Do you?" Fully a minute did Lawford Tapp keep him waiting for an answer while he stared at the stranger. He was not a big man, but he somehow gave the impression of muscular power. He was dressed in shabby clothing--shirt, dungaree trousers, and canvas shoes such as sailors work and go aloft in. The pipe he smoked was Cap'n Abe's--Lawford recognized it. There was not, however, another thing about this man to remind one of the old storekeeper. This stranger was burned to a rich mahogany hue. Not alone his shaven face, but his bared forearms and his chest where the shirt was left unbuttoned seemed stained by the tropical sun. Under jet-black brows the eyes that gazed upon Lawford Tapp seemed dark. His sweeping mustache was black; and such hair as was visible showed none of the iron gray of advancing age in it. He wore gold rings in his ears and to cap his piratical-looking figure was a red bandana worn turbanwise upon his head. "What's the matter with you, young feller? Cat got your tongue?" demanded the stranger. "Well, of all things!" finally gasped Lawford. "I thought you were Cap'n Abe. But you're not. You must be Cap'n Amazon Silt." "That's who I be," agreed the other. "His brother!" "Ain't much like Abe, eh?" and Cap'n Amazon smiled widely. "Only your voice. That is a little like Cap'n Abe's. Well, I declare!" repeated Lawford, coming deliberately up the steps. Cap'n Amazon rose briskly and led the way into the store. The fog was clearing with swiftness and a ray of sunlight slanted through a dusty window with sufficient strength to illumine the shelves behind the counter. "Those boxes yonder are where Cap'n Abe keeps his fishhooks. But isn't he here?" "He's off," Cap'n Amazon replied. "Up anchor'd and sailed 'bout soon's I come. Been ready to go quite a spell, I shouldn't wonder. Had his chest all packed and sent it to the depot by a wagon. Walked over himself airly to ketch the train. These the hooks, son?" "But where's he _gone_?" "On a v'y'ge," replied Cap'n Amazon. "Why shouldn't he? Seems he's been lashed here, tight and fast, for c'nsider'ble of a spell. He and this store of hisn was nigh 'bout spliced. I don't see how he _has_ weathered it so long." "Gone away!" murmured Lawford. Cap'n Amazon eyed him with a tilt to his head and possibly a twinkle of amusement in his eye. "Young man, what's your name?" he asked bluntly. Lawford told him. "Wal, it strikes me," Cap'n Amazon said, "that your tops'ls air slattin' a good deal. You ain't on the wind." "I am upset, I declare!" "Sure you got the right hooks this time?" "Yes. I believe so." "Then if your _Merry Andrew_--what is she, cat-rigged or----" "Sloop." "Then if your _Merry Andrew_ sloop's a-waiting for you, _that's_ the way out," said Cap'n Amazon coolly, pointing with his pipestem to the door. "Come again--when you want to buy anything in Abe's stock. Good day!" Lawford halted a moment at the door to look back at the bizarre figure behind the counter, leaning on the scarred brown plank just as Cap'n Abe so often did. The amazing difference between the storekeeper's well remembered appearance and that of his substitute grew more startling. As Cap'n Amazon stood there half stooping, leaning on his hairy fists, the picture rose in Lawford Tapp's mind of a pirate, cutlass in teeth and his sash full of pistols, swarming over the rail of a doomed ship. The young man had it in his mind to ask a question about that wonderfully pretty girl above. But, somehow, Cap'n Amazon did not appear to be the sort of person to whom one could put even a mildly impudent question. The young man walked slowly down the road toward the shore where his boat was beached. He had no idea that a pair of gray eyes watched him from that window where he had glimpsed the vision of girlish beauty only a few minutes before. The neighborhood was stirring now and Louise had not gone back to bed. Instead, she dressed as simply as she could until it would be possible to get at her trunks. While thus engaged she observed the neighborhood as well as she could see it from the windows of her chamber. Down the Shell Road, in the direction of the sea, there were but two or three houses--small dwellings in wind-swept yards where beach grass was about all the verdure that would grow. Across the road from the store, however, and as far as she could see toward Cardhaven, were better homes, some standing in the midst of tilled fields and orchards. Sandy lanes led to these homesteads from the highway. She could see the blunt spire of the Mariner's Chapel. Yet Cap'n Abe's house and store stood quite alone, for none of the other dwellings were close to the road. She set her chamber door ajar and suddenly heard the clash of voices. The one that seemed nearest to the stair was gruff, but feminine. "That must be Betty Gallup," thought Louise. "It is nearly six. I'll go down and interview the lady who Cap'n Abe said ought to sail before the mast." The foot of the stairway was in the back entry which itself opened upon the rear porch. As she came lightly down the stairs Louise saw a squat, square figure standing in the open doorway. It was topped by a man's felt hat and was dressed in a loose, shapeless coat and a scant skirt down to the tops of a pair of men's shoes. Over the shoulder of this queer looking person--of whose sex it was hard to be sure--Louise could see an open letter that was evidently being perused not for the first time. The hands that held the letter were red and hard and blunt-fingered, but not large. They did not look feminine, however; not in the least. The light tap of the girl's heels as she stepped on the bare floor at the foot of the stairway aroused this person, who turned, revealing a rather grim, weather-beaten face, lit by little sharp brown eyes that proceeded to stare at Louise Grayling with frank curiosity. "Humph!" ejaculated the woman. Oh, it was a woman, Louise could now see, although Betty Gallup boasted a pronounced mustache and a voice both deep and hoarse, while she looked every inch the able seaman she was. "Humph!" she exclaimed again. "You don't look much like a pirate, that's one comfort!" Louise burst into gay laughter--she could not help it. "I see by this letter Cap'n Abe left for me that you're his niece--his ha'f sister's child--name, Louise Grayling; and that you've come to stay a spell." "Yes," the girl rejoined, still dimpling. "And I know you must be Mrs. Gallup!" "Bet Gallup. Yep. Ain't much chance of mistaking me," the woman said, still staring at Louise. "Humph! you're pretty 'nough not to need m'lasses to ketch flies. Why didn't Cap'n Abe stay to home when you come visiting him?" "Why, he had his plans all laid to go away, if Uncle Amazon came." "Ya-as. That's so. You are _his_ niece, too, I s'pose." "Whose niece? Uncle Amazon's? I suppose I am," Louise gayly replied, "though when I came I had no idea there was a second uncle down here on the Cape." "What's that?" demanded Betty Gallup, her speech crackling like a rifle shot. "I had not heard before of Cap'n Amazon," the girl explained. "You see, for several reasons, I have known very little about my mother's kinfolk. She died when I was a baby. We have traveled a good deal, father and I." "I see. I been told you worked for them movin' pictures. Mandy Card was over to my house last night. Well! what do you think of your Uncle Am'zon?" "I can express no opinion until I have met him," Louise returned, again dimpling. "Haven't ye seen him?" gasped Betty in astonishment. "Not yet." "Ye didn't see him when he came last night?" "I was in bed." "Then how--how d'ye know Cap'n Abe's gone? Or that this man is Am'zon Silt? Nobody ever seen this critter 'round Cardhaven before," Betty Gallup declared with strong conviction. "Oh, no; Uncle Amazon has never been here to visit Cap'n Abe before. Cap'n Abe told me all about it," the girl explained, fearing that scandal was to take root here and now if she did not discourage it. "Of course Uncle Abe went away. He came to my door and bade me good-bye." Louise was puzzled. She saw an expression in Betty Gallup's face that she could not interpret. "Ye heard Cap'n Abe _say_ he was goin'," muttered Betty. "_His_ voice sounds mighty like Cap'n Abe's. But mebbe Abe Silt didn't go after all--not rightly." "What _do_ you mean, Mrs. Gallup?" demanded Louise in bewilderment. "Well, if you ask me, I should say we'd been boarded by pirates. Go take a look at that Uncle Am'zon of yourn. He's in the store." CHAPTER VII UNDER FIRE "Uncle Amazon?" burst out Louise. "A pirate?" "That's what he looks like," repeated Betty Gallup, nodding her head on which the man's hat still perched. "I never saw the beat! Why, that man give me the shock of my life when I came in here just now!" "What _do_ you mean?" the amazed girl asked, "Why, as I come in--I was a lettle early, knowin' you was here--I heard as I s'posed Cap'n Abe in the sittin'-room. I saw this letter, sealed and directed to me, on the dresser there. 'Humph!' says I, 'Who's writin' billy-doos to _me_, I'd admire to know?' And I up and opened it and see it's in Cap'n Abe's hand. Just then I heard him behind me----" "Heard _who_? Not Cap'n Abe?" "No, no! This other feller--this Cap'n Am'zon Silt, as he calls himself. But I _thought_ 'twas Cap'n Abe's step I heard. He says: 'Oh! you've found the letter?' I declare I thought 'twas your uncle's voice!" "But it was my uncle's voice, of course," Louise reminded her, much amused, "Cap'n Amazon Silt is my uncle, too." "Humph! I s'pose so. Looks to be. If 'tis him. Anyhow," pursued the jerkily speaking Betty Gallup, "I turned 'round when he spoke spectin' to see Cap'n Abe--for I hadn't read this letter then--_and there he warn't_! Instead--of all the lookin' critters! There! you go take a peek at him and see what you think yourself. I'll put the breakfast on the table. He's made coffee and the mush is in the double-biler and the biscuits in the oven are just browning. I reckon he's as handy 'round the kitchen as Cap'n Abe is. Lots of these old sailors be." "Fancy! an uncle who is a pirate!" giggled Louise and she ran through the living-room and the dividing hall to the door of the store. First she saw Cap'n Amazon from the rear. The red bandana swathing his bead, below which was a lank fringe of black hair, was the only bizarre thing she noticed about her new-found relative. He seemed to have very quick hearing for almost instantly he swung smartly around to face her. "Oh!" was expelled from the girl's lips, for she was as startled as Lawford Tapp and Betty Gallup had been. Compared with the mild-appearing, heavily whiskered Cap'n Abe, this brother of the storekeeper was in looks what Betty had pronounced him. His dark complexion, the long mustache, as black and glossy as a crow's wing, the gold rings in his ears, with the red handkerchief to top it all, made Cap'n Amazon Silt as romantic a figure as ever peered out of a Blackbeard or a Henry Morgan legend. There were intricate traceries on his forearms in red and blue ink; beneath the open collar of his shirt the girl gained a glimpse of other tattooing. There was a faint scar traced along his right jaw, almost from ear to chin, which added a certain grimness to his expression. Yet his was not at all a sinister face. His eyes twinkled at her kindly--almost like Cap'n Abe's eyes--and the huge mustache lifted in a smile. "Ahoy!" he cried jovially. "So this is my niece, Louise, is it? Well, to be sure! Abe didn't overpraise you. You _be_ a pretty tidy craft." The girl dimpled, coming forward to give him her hand. As on the day before, her hand was lost in a warm, firm clasp, while her uncle continued to look her over with approval. "Yes, sir!" he ejaculated. "You look to me like one o' the tidiest craft I ever clapped eyes on. I don't scarcely see how Abe could go away and leave you. Dunno's he's got an eye for a pretty woman like me. Bless you! I been a slave to the women all my life." "Yet never married, Uncle Amazon?" she cried roguishly. "Tell you how 'twas," he whispered hoarsely, his hand beside his mouth. "I never could decide betwixt and between 'em. No, sir! They are all so desir'ble that I couldn't make up my mind. So I stayed single." "Perhaps you showed wisdom, Uncle Amazon," laughed the girl. "Still--when you grow old----" "Oh! there's plenty of sailors' snug harbors," he hastened to say. "And time enough to worry about that when I _be_ old." "I thought----Why! you look younger than Cap'n Abe," she said. "Ain't it a fact? He's let himself run to seed and get old lookin'. That's from stayin' ashore all his life. It's the feel of a heavin' deck under his feet that keeps the spring in a man's wishbone. Yes, sir! Abe's all right--good man and all that--but he's no sailor," Cap'n Amazon added, shaking his head. "Now, here!" he went on briskly, "we ought to have breakfast, hadn't we? I left that woman Abe has pokin' around here, to dish up; and it's 'most six bells. Feel kind of peckish myself, Louise." "I'll run to see if the biscuits are done," said the girl; and she hurried to the kitchen ahead of him. Betty Gallup was waiting for her. "What d'ye think of him?" she whispered anxiously. "Why, he's splendid!" the girl replied scarcely stifling her laughter. "He's a _character_!" "Humph! Mebbe. But even if he is your uncle, I got to say right now he ain't a man I'd trust. Nothin' a-tall like Cap'n Abe!" "I think he seems a great deal like Uncle Abram." "Humph! How long you knowed Abram Silt? Come here yesterday for the fust time. Lemme tell you, Miss Grayling, we've knowed Cap'n Abe around here for twenty year and more. Course, he ain't Cardhaven born; but we know him. He's as diff'rent from this pirate that calls himself Cap'n Am'zon Silt as chalk is from cheese." The mush was on the table, Louise called Cap'n Amazon from the store. They sat down to the table just as she had sat opposite to Cap'n Abe the evening before. She thought, for a moment, that Cap'n Amazon was going to ask a blessing as her other uncle had. But no, he began spooning the mush into a rather capacious mouth. Into the room from the rear strolled Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat. Louise tried to attract his attention; but she was comparatively a stranger to turn. The cat went around to the chair where Cap'n Abe always sat. He leaped into Cap'n Amazon's lap. "Well, I never!" said Cap'n Amazon. "Seems quite to home, doesn't he?" Diddimus, preparing to "make his bed," looked up with topaz eyes into the face of the captain. Louise could see the cat actually stiffen with surprise. Then, with a "p-sst-maow!" he leaped down and ran out of the room at high speed. "What--what do you think of that?" gasped Cap'n Amazon. "The cat's gone crazy!" The girl was in a gale of laughter. "Of course he hasn't," she said. "He thought you were Cap'n Abe--till he looked into your face. You can't blame the cat, Uncle Amazon." Cap'n Amazon smote his knee a resounding smack of appreciation. "You got your bearin's correct, Louise, I do believe. I must have surprised the critter. And Abe set store by him, I've no doubt." "Diddimus will get over it," said the amused Louise. "There's that bird," Cap'n Amazon said suddenly, looking around at the cage hanging in the sunlit window. "What's Abe call him?" "Jerry." "And he told me to be hi-mighty tender with that canary. Wouldn't trust nobody else, he said, to feed and water him." He rose from the table, leaving his breakfast. "I wonder what Jerry thinks of me?" He whistled to the bird and thrust a big forefinger between the wires of the cage. Immediately, with an answering chirp, the canary hopped along his perch with a queer sidewise motion and, reaching the finger, sprang upon it with a little flutter of its wings. "There!" cried Cap'n Amazon, with boyish relief. "_He_ takes to me all right." "That don't show nothin'," said Betty Gallup from the doorway. She had removed her hat and coat and was revealed now as a woman approaching seventy, her iron-gray hair twisted into a "bob" so that it could be completely hidden when she had the hat on her head. "That don't show nothin'," she repeated grimly. Cap'n Amazon jerked his head around to look at her, demanding: "Why don't it, I want to know?" "'Cause the bird's pretty near stone-blind." "Blind!" gasped Louise, pity in her tone. "It can't be," murmured the captain, hastily facing the window again. "I found that out a year an' more ago," Betty announced. "Didn't want to tell Cap'n Abe--he was that foolish about the old bird. Jerry's used to Cap'n Abe chirping to him and putting his finger 'twixt the slats of the cage for him to perch on. He just thinks you're Cap'n Abe." She clumped out into the kitchen again in her heavy shoes. Cap'n Amazon came slowly back to his chair. "Blind!" he repeated. "I want to know! Both his deadlights out. Too bad! Too bad!" He did not seem to care for any more breakfast. Footsteps in the store soon brought the substitute shopkeeper to his feet again. "I s'pose that's somebody come aboard for a yard o' tape, or the seizings of a pair of shoes," he growled. "I'd ought to hauled in the gang-plank when we set down." He disappeared into the store and almost at once a shrill feminine voice greeted him as "Cap'n Abe." Vastly abused, Louise arose and softly followed to the store. "Give me coupla dozen clothespins and a big darnin' needle, Cap'n Abe. I got my wash ready to hang out and found them pesky young 'uns of Myra Stout's had got holt o' my pin bag and fouled the pins all up usin' 'em for markers in their garden. I want--land sakes! Who--what---- _Where's_ Cap'n Abe?" "He ain't here just now," Cap'n Amazon replied. "I'm his brother. You'll have to pick out the needle you want. I can find and count the clothespins, I guess. Two dozen, you say?" "Land sakes! Cap'n Abe gone away? Don't seem possible." "There's a hull lot of seemin' impossible things in this world that come to pass just the same," the substitute storekeeper made answer, with some tartness. "Here's the needle drawer. Find what you want, ma'am." Louise was frankly spying. She saw that the customer was a lanky young woman in a sunbonnet. When she dropped the bonnet back upon her narrow shoulders with an impatient jerk, the better to see the needles, it was revealed that her thin, light hair was drawn so tightly back from her face that it actually seemed to make her pop-eyed. She had a rather pretty pink and white complexion, and aside from the defect of hairdressing might have been attractive. She possessed a thin and aquiline nose, however, the nostrils fairly quivering with eagerness and curiosity. "Land sakes!" she was saying. "I know Cap'n Abe's been talkin' of goin' away--the longest spell! But so suddent--'twixt night and mornin' as ye might say------" "Exactly," said Cap'n Amazon dryly, and went on counting the pins from the box into a paper sack. "What 'bout the girl that's come here? That movie actress?" asked the young woman with added sharpness in her tone. "What you going to do with _her_?" Cap'n Amazon came back to the counter and even his momentary silence was impressive. He favored the customer with a long stare. "Course, 'tain't none o' my business. I was just askin'----" "You made an int'restin' discovery, then, ma'am," he said. "It _ain't_ any of your business. Me and my niece'll get along pretty average well, I shouldn't wonder. Anything else, ma'am? I see the needle's two cents and the pins two cents a dozen. Six cents in all." "Well, I run a book with Cap'n Abe. I ain't got no money with me," said the young woman defiantly. "Le's see; what did you say your name was?" and Cap'n Amazon drew from the cash drawer a long and evidently fully annotated list of customers' names, prepared by Cap'n Abe. "I'm Mandy Baker--she 'twas Mandy Card." "Yes. I find you here all right. Your bill o' ladin' seems good. Good-mornin', ma'am. Call again." Mandy Baker looked as though she desired to continue the conversation. But there was that in Cap'n Amazon's businesslike manner and speech that impressed Mrs. Baker--as it had Lawford Tapp--that here was a very different person from the easy-going, benign Cap'n Abe. Mandy sniffed, jerked her sunbonnet forward, and departed with her purchases. Cap'n Amazon's quick eye caught sight of Louise's amused face in the doorway. "Kind of a sharp craft that," he observed, watching' Mandy cross the road. "Reminds me some o' one o' them Block Island double-enders they built purpose for sword-fishing. When you strike on to a sword-fish you are likely to want to back water 'bout as often as shove ahead. I cal'late this here Mandy Baker is some spry in her maneuvers. And I bet she's got one o' the laziest husbands in this whole town. 'Most always happens that way," concluded the captain, who seemed quite as homely philosophical and observant as his brother. As a stone thrown into a quiet pool drives circling ripples farther and farther away from the point of contact, so the news of Cap'n Abe's secret departure and the appearance of the strange brother in his place, spread through the neighborhood. The coming of Louise to the store on the Shell Road had also set the tongues to clacking. Mandy Baker, who took her husband's rating in women's eyes at his own valuation, was up in arms. A pretty girl, and an actress at that!--for until recent years that was a word to be only whispered in polite society on the Cape--was considered by such as Mandy to be under suspicion right from the start. The mystery of Cap'n Amazon, however, quite overtopped the gossip about Louise. Idlers who seldom dropped into the store before afternoon came on this day much earlier to have a look at Cap'n Amazon Silt. Women left their housework at "slack ends" to run over to the store for something considered suddenly essential to their work. Some of the clam-diggers lost a tide to obtain an early glimpse of Cap'n Amazon. Even the children came and peered in at the store door to see that strange, red-kerchief-topped figure behind Cap'n Abe's counter. Cap'n Joab Beecher was one of the earliest arrivals. Cap'n Joab had been as close to Cap'n Abe as anybody in Cardhaven. There had been some little friction between him and the storekeeper on the previous evening. Cap'n Joab felt almost as though Cap'n Abe's sudden departure was a thrust at him. But when he introduced himself to Cap'n Amazon the latter seized the caller's hand in a seaman's grip, and said heartily: "I want to know Cap'n Joab Beecher, of the old _Sally Noble_. I knowed the bark well, though I never happened to clap eyes on _you_, sir. Abe give me a letter for you. Here 'tis. Said you was a good feller and might help wise me to things in the store here till I'd l'arned her riggin' and how to sail her proper." Cap'n Joab was frankly pleased by this. He spelled out the note Cap'n Abe had addressed to him slowly, being without his reading glasses, and then said: "I'm yours to command, Cap'n Silt. Land sakes! I s'pose your brother had a puffict right to go away. He'd talked about goin' enough. Where's he gone?" "On a v'y'ge," said Cap'n Amazon. "No! Gone to sea?" "Yes. Sailing to-day--out o' Boston." "I want to know! Abe Silt gone to sea! Wouldn't never believed it. Always 'peared to be afraid of gettin' his paws wet--same's a cat," ruminated Cap'n Joab. "What craft's he sailin' in?" The Boston morning paper lay before Cap'n Amazon, opened at the page containing the shipping news. His glance dropped to the sailing notices and with scarcely a moment's hesitancy he said: "_Curlew_, Ripley, master, out o' Boston. I knowed of her--knowed Cap'n Ripley," and he pointed to the very first line of the sailing list. "If Abe got there in time he like enough j'ined her crew." "Shipped before the mast?" exploded Cap'n Joab. "Well," Cap'n Amazon returned sensibly, "if you were skipper about where would you expect a lubber like Abe Silt to fit into your crew?" "I swanny, that's so!" agreed Cap'n Joab. "But it's goin' to be hard lines for a man of his years--and no experience." Cap'n Amazon sniffed. "I guess he'll get along," he said, seemingly less disturbed by his brother's plight than other people. "Three months of summer sailin' won't do him no harm." That he was under fire he evidently felt, and resented it. His brother's old neighbors and friends desired to know altogether too much about his business and that of Cap'n Abe. He told Louise before night: "I tell you what, Abe's got the best of it! If I'd knowed I was goin' to be picked to pieces by a lot of busybodies the way I be, I'd never agreed to stay by the ship till Abe got back. No, sir! These folks around here are the beatenest I ever see." Yet Louise noticed that he seemed able to hold his own with the curious ones. His tongue was quite as nimble as Cap'n Abe's had been. On the day of her arrival, Lou Grayling had believed she would be amused at Cardhaven. Ere the second twenty-four hours of her stay were rounded out, she knew she would be. CHAPTER VIII SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY During the day Cap'n Amazon and Amiel Perdue carried Louise's trunks upstairs and into the storeroom, handy to her own chamber. It seems Cap'n Amazon had not brought his own sea chest; only a "dunnage bag," as he called it. "But there's plenty of Abe's duds about," he said; "and we're about of a size." When Louise went to unpack her trunks she found a number of things in the storeroom more interesting even than her own pretty summer frocks. There were shells, corals, sea-ivory--curios, such as are collected by seamen the world over. Cap'n Abe was an indefatigable gatherer of such wares. There was a green sea chest standing with its lid wide open, tarred rope handles on its ends, that may have been around the world a score of times. It was half filled with old books. All the dusty, musty volumes in the chest seemed to deal with the sea and sea-going. Many of them, long since out of print and forgotten, recounted strange and almost unbelievable romances of nautical life--stories of wrecks, fires, battles with savages and pirates, discoveries of lone islands and marvelous explorations in lands which, since the date of publication, have become semi-civilized or altogether so. Here were narratives of men who had sailed around the world in tiny craft like Captain Slocum; stories of seamen who had become chiefs of cannibal tribes, like the famous Larry O'Brien; several supposedly veracious narratives of the survivors of the Bounty; stories of Arctic and Antarctic discovery and privation. There were also several scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings of nautical wonders--many of these clipped from New Bedford and Newport papers which at one time were particularly rich in whalers' yarns. Interested in skimming these wonderful stories, Lou Grayling spent most of the afternoon. Here was a fund of entertainment for rainy days--or wakeful nights, if she chanced to suffer such. She carried one of the scrapbooks into her bedroom that it might be under her hand if she desired such amusement. In arranging her possessions in closet and bureau, she found no time on this first day at Cap'n Abe's store to stroll even as far as The Beaches; but the next morning she got up betimes, as soon as Cap'n Amazon himself was astir, dressed, and ran down and out of the open back door while her uncle was sweeping the store. The sun was but then opening a red eye above the horizon. The ocean, away out to this line demarcating sea and sky, was perfectly flat. Unlike the previous dawn, this was as clear as a bell's note. Louise had been wise enough to wear high shoes, so the sands above high-water mark did not bother her. The waves lapped in softly, spreading over the dimpling gray beach, their voice reduced to a whispering murmur. Along the crescent of the sands, above on the bluffs, were set the homes of the summer residents--those whom Gusty Durgin, the waitress at the hotel, termed "the big bugs." On the farthest point visible in this direction was a sprawling, ornate villa with private dock and boathouses, and a small breakwater behind which floated a fleet of small craft. Louise heard the "put-put-a-put" of a motor and descried a swift craft coming from this anchorage. She saw, by sweeping it with her glance, that not a soul but herself was on the shore--neither in the direction of the summer colony nor on the other hand where the beach curved sharply out to the lighthouse at the end of the Neck. The motor boat was fast approaching the spot where Louise stood. It being the single moving object on the scene, save the gulls, she began to watch it. There was but one person in the motor boat. He was hatless and was dressed in soiled flannels. It was the young man, Lawford Tapp, of whom Cap'n Abe did not altogether approve. "He must work for those people over there," Louise Grayling thought. "He is nice looking." It could not be possible that Lawford Tapp had descried and recognized the figure of the girl from the Tapp anchorage! He no longer wore his hip boots. After shutting off his engine, he guided the sharp prow of the launch right up into the sand and leaped into shallow water, bringing ashore the bight of the painter to throw over a stub sunk above high-water mark. "Good-morning! What do you think of it?" he asked Louise, with a cordial smile that belonged to him. "It is lovely!" she said. "Really wonderful! I suppose you have lived here so long it does not appeal to you as strongly as to the new-beholder?" "I don't know about that. It's the finest place in the world; I think. There's no prettier shore along the Atlantic coast than The Beaches." "Perhaps you are right. I do not know much about the New England coast," she confessed. "And that--where the spray dashes up so high, even on this calm morning?" "Gull Rocks. The danger spot of all danger spots along the outer line of the Cape. In rough weather all one can see out there is a cauldron of foam." Before she could express herself again the purr of a swiftly moving motor car attracted her attention, and she turned to see a low gray roadster coming toward them from the north. The Shell Road, before reaching the shore, swerved northward and ran along the bluffs on which the bungalows and summer cottages were built. These dwellings faced the smooth white road, the sea being behind them. As Louise looked the car slowed down and stopped, the engine still throbbing. A girl was at the wheel. She was perhaps fifteen, without a hat and with two plaits of yellow hair lying over her slim shoulders. "Hey, Ford!" she shouted to the young man, "haven't you been up to Cap'n Abe's yet? Daddy's down at the dock now and he's in a tearing hurry." She gazed upon Lou Grayling frankly but made no sign of greeting. She did not wait, indeed, for a reply from the young man but threw in the clutch and the car shot away. "I've got to go up to the store," he said. "L'Enfant Terrible is evidently going to Paulmouth to meet the early train. Must be somebody coming." Louise looked at him quickly, her expression one of perplexity. She supposed this child in the car was the daughter of Lawford's employer. But whoever before heard a fisherman speak just as he did? Had Cap'n Abe been at home she certainly would have tapped that fount of local knowledge for information regarding Lawford. He did not look so much the fisherman type without his jersey and high boots. "How do you like the old fellow up at the store?" Lawford asked, as they strolled along together. "Isn't he a curious old bird?" "You mean my Uncle Amazon?" "Goodness! He _is_ your uncle, too, isn't he?" and a flush of embarrassment came into his bronzed cheek. "I had forgotten he was Cap'n Abe's brother. He is so different!" "Isn't he?" responded Louise demurely. "He doesn't look anything like Uncle Abram, at least." "I should say not!" ejaculated Lawford. "Do you know, he's an awfully--er--romantic looking old fellow. Looks just as though he had stepped out of an old print" "The frontispiece of a book about buccaneers, for instance?" she suggested gleefully. "Well," and he smiled down upon her from his superior height, "I wasn't sure you would see it that way." "Do you know," she told him, still laughing, "that Betty Gallup calls him nothing but 'that old pirate.' She has taken a decided dislike to him and I have to keep smoothing her ruffled feathers. And, really, Cap'n Amazon is the nicest man." "I bet he's seen some rough times," Lawford rejoined with vigor. "We used to think Cap'n Abe told some stretchers about his brother; but Cap'n Amazon looks as though he had been through all that Cap'n Abe ever told about--and more." "Oh, he's not so very terrible, I assure you," Louise said, much amused. "Did you notice the scar along his jaw? Looks like a cutlass stroke to me. I'd like to know how he came by it. It must have been some fight!" "You will make him out a much more terrible character than he can possibly be." "Never mind. If he's anything at all like Cap'n Abe, we'll get it all out of him. I bet he can tell us some hair-raisers." "I tell you he's a nice old man, and I won't have you talk so about him," Louise declared. "We must change the subject." "We'll talk about _you_," said Lawford quickly. "I'm awfully curious. When does your--er--work begin down here?" "My work?" Then she understood him and dimpled. "Oh, just now is my playtime." "Making pictures must be interesting." "I presume it looks so to the outsider," she admitted. It amused her immensely that he should think her a motion picture actress. "Your coming here and Cap'n Amazon exchanging jobs with his brother have caused more excitement than Cardhaven and the vicinity have seen in a decade. Or at least since _I_ have lived here." "Oh! Then are you not native to the soil?" "No, not exactly," he replied. And then after a moment he added: "It's a great old place, even in winter." "Not dull at all?" "Never dull," he reassured her. "Too much going on, on sea and shore, to ever be dull. Not for me, at least. I love it." They reached the store. Louise bade the young man good-morning and went around to the back door to greet Betty. Lawford made his purchases in rather serious mood and returned to his motor boat. His mind was fixed upon the way Louise Grayling had looked as he stepped ashore and greeted her. He had been close enough to her now, and for time enough as well, to be sure that there was nothing artificial about this girl. She was as natural as a flower--and just as sweet! There was a softness to her cheek and to the curve of her neck like rich velvet. Her eyes were mild yet sparkling when she became at all animated. And that demure smile! And her dimples! When a young man gets to making an accounting of a girl's charms in this way, he is far gone indeed. Lawford Tapp was very seriously smitten. He saw his youngest sister, Cicely, whom the family always called L'Enfant Terrible, speeding back to the villa in the automobile. She had not gone as far as Paulmouth, after all, and she reached home long before he docked the launch. Lawford did not pay much attention to what went on in the big villa. His mother and sisters lived a social life of their own. He merely slept there, spending most of his days on the water. The Salt Water Taffy King was not at the private dock when Lawford arrived. Mr. Israel Tapp was an irritable and impatient man. He "flew off the handle" at the slightest provocation. Many times a day he lost his temper and, as Lawford phlegmatically expressed it, "blew up." These exhibitions meant nothing particularly to Mr. Tapp. They were escape-valves for a nervous irritability that had grown during his years of idleness. Born of a poor Cape family, but with a dislike for fish-seines and lobster-pots, he had turned his attention from the first to the summer visitors, even in his youth beginning to flock to the old-fashioned ports of the Cape. Catering to their wants was a gold mine but little worked at that time. He began to sell candy at one of the more popular resorts. Then he began to make candy. His Salt Water Taffy became locally famous. He learned that a good many of the wealthier people who visited the Cape in summer played all the year around. They went to Atlantic City or to the Florida beaches in the winter. So Israel Tapp branched out and established salt water taffy kitchens all up and down the coast. "I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King" became a catch-word. It was then but a step to incorporating a company and establishing huge candy factories. I. Tapp went on by leaps and bounds. While yet a comparatively young man he found himself a multi-millionaire. Even a rather expensive family could not spend his income fast enough. He built the ornate villa at The Beaches and, like Lawford, preferred to live there rather than elsewhere. His wife and the older girls insisted upon having a town house in Boston and in traveling at certain times to more or less exclusive resorts and to Europe. Their one ambition was to get into that exclusive social set in which they felt their money should rightfully place them. But a house on the Back Bay does not always assure one's entrance to the circles of the "gilded codfish." Mr. Tapp went down to the dock again after a time. Lawford had the _Merry Andrew_ all ready to set out on the proposed fishing trip. The sloop was a pretty craft, clinker built, and about the fastest sailing boat within miles of Cardhaven. Lawford was proud of her. "So you're back at last, are you?" snapped the Salt Water Taffy King. He was a portly little man with a red face and a bald brow. His very strut pronounced him a self-made man. He glared at his son, whose cool nonchalance he often declared was impudence. "I've been waiting some time for you, dad. Hop aboard," Lawford calmly said. "You took your time in getting back here," responded his father, by no means mollified. "And you knew I was waiting. But you had to stand and talk to a girl over there. Cicely says it is that picture actress who is staying at Cap'n Abe's. Is that so?" "I presume Cicely is right," his son answered. "There is no other here at present to my knowledge." "Of all things!" ejaculated Mr. Tapp. "You are always making some kind of a fool of yourself, Lawford. Don't, for pity's sake, be _that_ kind of a fool." "What do you mean, dad?" and now the young man's eyes flashed. It was seldom that Lawford turned upon his father in anger. "You know very well what I mean. Keep away from such women. Don't get messed up with actor people. I won't have it, I tell you! I am determined that at least _one_ rich man's son shall not be the victim of the wiles of any of these stage women." The flush remained in Lawford's cheek. It hurt him to hear his father speak so in referring to Louise Grayling. He, too, possessed some of the insular prejudice of his kind against those who win their livelihood in the glare of the theatrical spotlight. This gentle, well-bred, delightful girl staying at Cap'n Abe's store was a revelation to him. He held his tongue, however, and held his temper in check as well. "I don't see," stormed I. Tapp, "why you can't take up with a nice girl and marry. Why, at your age I was married and we had Marian!" "Don't you think that should discourage me, dad?" Lawford put in. "Marian is nobody to brag of, I should say." "Hah!" ejaculated his father. "She's a fool, too. But there are nice girls. I was talking to your mother about your case last night. Of course, I don't want you to say anything to her about what I'm going to tell you now. She's got the silliest notions," pursued Mr. Tapp who labored under the belief that all the wisdom of the ages had lodged under his own hat. "Expects her daughters to marry dukes and you to catch a princess or the like." "There are no such fish in these waters," laughed Lawford. "At least, none has so much as nibbled at my hook." "And no nice girl will nibble at it if you don't come ashore once in a while and get into something besides fisherman's duds." "Now, dad, clothes do not make the man." "Who told you such a fool thing as that? Some fool philosopher with only one shirt to his back said it. Bill Johnson proved how wrong that was to my satisfaction years and years ago. Good old Bill! I wanted to branch out. We had just that one little candy factory and I worked in it myself every day. "I got the idea," continued I. Tapp, launched on a favorite subject now, "that my balance sheet and outlook for trade might impress the bank people. I wanted to build a bigger factory. So I took off my apron one day and walked over to the bank. I saw the president. He looked like a fashion plate himself and he swung a pair of dinky glasses on a cord as he listened to me and looked me over. Then he turned me down--flat! "I told Bill about it. Bill was kind of tied up just then himself. That was before he made his big strike. But he was a different fellow from me. Bill always looked like ready money. "'Isra,' he says to me, 'I'll tell you how to get that money from the bank.' "'It can't be done, Bill,' I told him. 'The president of the bank showed me that my business was too weak to stand such spread-eagling. "'Nonsense!' says Bill. 'It isn't your business, it's your nerve that you've got to hire money on--and your clothes. You do what I tell you. Come to my tailor's in the morning.' "Well, to cut a long story short, I did it. I rigged up to beat that bank president himself. When he saw me in about two hundred dollars' worth of good clothes he considered the case again and recommended the loan to his board. 'You put your facts much more lucidly to-day, Mr. Tapp,' is the way he expressed himself. But take it from me, Lawford, it was my clothes that made the impression. "So!" ruminated Mr. Tapp, "that is one thing Bill Johnson did for me. And later, as you know, he came into the candy business with me and his money helped make I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King. Lawford, Bill is like a brother to me. His girl, Dorothy, is one of the nicest girls who ever stepped in a slipper." "Dorothy Johnson is a really sweet girl, dad," Lawford agreed. "I like her." "There!" ejaculated I. Tapp. "You let that liking become something stronger. Dorothy's just the girl for you to marry." "_What_?" gasped the skipper of the _Merry Andrew_, almost losing his grip on the steering wheel. "You get my meaning," said his father, scowling. "I've always meant you should marry Bill's daughter. I had your mother write her last night inviting her down here. Of course, your mother and the girls think Bill Johnson's folks are too plain. But I'm boss once in a while in my own house." "And you call mother a matchmaker!" "I know what I want and I'm going to get it," said I. Tapp doggedly. "Dorothy is the girl for you. Don't you get entangled with anybody else. Not a penny of my money will you ever handle if you don't do as I say, young man!" "You needn't holler till you're hit, dad," Lawford said, trying to speak carelessly. "Oh! _I_ sha'n't holler," snarled the Taffy King. "I warn you. One such play as that and I'm through with you. I'm willing to support an idle, ne'er-do-well; but he sha'n't saddle himself with one of those theatrical creatures and bring scandal upon the family. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age? I had a booth at 'Gansett, two at Newport, a big one at Atlantic City, and was beginning to branch out. I worked like a dog, too." "That's why I think I don't have to work, dad," said Lawford coolly. CHAPTER IX SUSPICION HOVERS Betty Gallup, clothed as usual in her man's hat and worn pea-coat, but likewise on this occasion with mystery, seized Louise by the hand the instant she appeared and drew her into the kitchen, shutting the door between that and the living-room. "What is the matter?" the girl asked. "Have you broken something--or is the canary dead?" "Sh!" warned Betty, her little brown eyes blinking rapidly. "I heard something last night." "I didn't. I slept like a baby. The night before I heard that old foghorn----" "I mean," interrupted Betty, "something was told me." "Well, go on." Louise made up her mind that she could not stem the tide of talk. "About your uncle, Cap'n Abe. He--he never was seen to take that train to Boston. I got it straight, or pretty average straight. Mandy Baker told me, and Peke Card's wife, Mary Lizbeth, told her, who got it right from Lute Craven who works in the post-office uptown, and Lute got it from Noah Coffin. You know, he't drives the ark you come over in from Paulmouth. Well! Noah was at Paulmouth depot as he always is of course when the clam train stops at five-thutty-five. He says he didn't see Cap'n Abe nor nobody that looked like him board that train yest'day mornin'." "Why, Betty!" Louise could only gasp. This house-that-Jack-built narrative quite took her breath away. "Besides," went on Betty; "there's more to it. Cap'n Abe's chest was took back to the depot by Perry Baker when he brought your trunks over, sure 'nough. And Perry Baker says he shipped that chest to Boston for your uncle, marked to be called for. It went by express." "But--but what of it?" asked the puzzled girl. "Humph! Stands to reason," declared Mrs. Gallup, "that Cap'n Abe wouldn't have done no such foolish thing as that. It costs money to ship a heavy sea chest by express. He could have took it on his ticket as baggage, free gratis, for nothin'!" "I really don't see," Louise now said rather severely, "that these facts you state--if they are facts--are any of our business, Betty. Uncle Abram might have taken the train at some other station. He was not sure, perhaps, whether he would join the ship Cap'n Amazon recommended, so why should he not send his chest by express?" "Cap'n Am'zon! Humph!" sniffed Betty. "Nobody knows whether that's his name or not. _He_ comes here without a smitch of clo'es, as near as I can find out." Louise was amused; yet she was somewhat vexed as well. The curiosity, as well as the animosity, displayed by Betty and others of the neighbors began to appall her. If Cape Cod folk were, as her daddy-professor had declared, "the salt of the earth," some of the salt seemed to have lost its savor. "We were talking about Cap'n Abe," said Louise severely. "Just as he had his own good reasons for going away when and how he did, he probably had his reasons for taking nobody into his confidence. This Perry Baker, the expressman, must know that Cap'n Abe sent the trunk from the house, here." "Humph! Yes! Nobody's denyin' that." "Then Cap'n Abe must have known exactly what he wished to do. Cap'n Amazon surely had nothing to do with the chest, with how his brother took the train, or with _where_ he took it. Really, Betty, what do you suspect Cap'n Amazon has done?" "I don't know what he's done," snapped Betty. "But I wouldn't put nothin' past him, from his looks. The old pirate!" "You will make me feel very bad if you continue to talk this way about my Uncle Amazon," said the girl, far from feeling amused now. "It is not right. I hope you will not continue to repeat such things. If you do you will some time be sorry for it, Betty." "Humph!" sniffed the woman. "Mebbe I will. But I'm warnin' you, Miss Grayling." "Warning me of what?" "Of that man. That old sinner! I never see a wickeder looking feller in my life--and I've sailed with my father and my husband to 'most ev'ry quarter of the globe. He may be twin brother to the Angel Gabriel; but if he is, his looks belie it!" There was nothing in all this of enough consequence to disturb the girl, only in so far as she was vexed to find the neighbors so gossipy and unkind. She gazed thoughtfully upon Cap'n Amazon as he sat across from her at the breakfast table, and wondered how anybody could see in his bronzed face anything sinister. That he was rather ridiculously gotten up, it was true. Those gold earrings! But then, she had seen several of the older men about the store wearing rings in their ears. If he did not always have that bright-colored kerchief on his head! But then, he might wear that because he was susceptible to neuralgia and did not wish to wear a hat all the time as seemed to have been Cap'n Abe's custom. When he smiled at her and his eyes crinkled at the corners, he was as kindly of expression, she thought, as Cap'n Abe himself. And he was a much better looking man than the brother who had gone away. "Cap'n Amazon," she said to him, "I believe you must be just full of stories of adventure and wonderful happenings by sea and land. Uncle Abram said you had been everywhere." Cap'n Amazon seemed to take a long breath, then cleared his throat, and said: "I've been pretty nigh everywhere. Seen some funny corners of the world, too, Louise." "You must tell me about your adventures," she said. "Your brother told me that you ran away to sea when you were only twelve years old and sailed on a long whaling voyage." "Yep. _South Sea Belle_. Some old hooker, she was," said Cap'n Amazon briskly. "We was out three year and come home with our hold bustin' with ile, plenty of baleen, some sperm, and a lump of ambergris as big as a nail keg--or pretty nigh." Right then and there he launched into relating how the wondrous find of ambergris came to be made, neglecting his breakfast to do so. He told it so vividly that Louise was enthralled. The picture of the whaling bark beating up to the dead and festering leviathan lying on the surface of the ocean to which the exploding gases of decomposition had brought the hulk, lived in her mind for days. The mate of the _South Sea Belle_, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted upon boarding the carcass. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth so great a sum to the perfumer. "'Twas a big haul--one o' the biggest lumps o' ambergris ever brought into the port of New Bedford," concluded Cap'n Amazon. "Helped make the owners rich, and the Old Man, too. Course, I got my sheer; but a boy's sheer on a whaler them days wouldn't buy him no house and lot. So I went to sea again." "You must have been at sea almost all your life, Cap'n Amazon." "Pretty nigh. I ain't never lazed around on shore when there was a berth in a seaworthy craft to be had for the askin'. I let Abe do that," he added, in what Louise thought was a rather scornful tone. "Why, I don't believe Uncle Abram has a lazy bone in his body! See the nice business he has built up here. And he told me he owned shares in several vessels and other property." "That's true," Cap'n Amazon agreed promptly. "And a tidy sum in the Paulmouth National Bank. I got a letter to the bank folks he left to introduce me, if I needed cash. Yes, Abe's done well enough that way. But he's the first Silt, I swanny! that ever stayed ashore." "And now you are going to remain ashore yourself," she said, laughing. "I'm going to try it, Louise. I've done my sheer of roaming about. Mebbe I'll settle down here for good." "With Cap'n Abe? Won't that be fine?" "Yep. With Abe," he muttered and remained silent for the rest of the meal. On Saturday the store trade was expected to be larger than usual. Louise told Cap'n Amazon she would gladly help wait on the customers; but he would not listen to that for a moment. "I'm not goin' to have you out there in that store for these folks to look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly. "You stay aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew. Besides, there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue. Abe said he sometimes helped around. He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the stores is stowed." The morning was still young when Betty came downstairs in hot rage and attacked Cap'n Amazon. It seemed she had gone up to give the chambers their usual weekly cleaning, and had found the room in which the captain slept locked against her. It was Cap'n Abe's room and it seemed it was Cap'n Abe's custom--as it was Cap'n Amazon's--to make his own bed and keep his room tidy during the week. But Betty had always given it a thorough cleaning and changed the bed linen on Saturdays. "What's that room locked for? I want to know what you mean?" the woman demanded of Cap'n Amazon. "Think I'm goin' to work in a house where doors is locked against me? I'm as honest as any Silt that ever hobbled on two laigs. Nex' thing, I cal'late, you'll be lockin' the coal shed and countin' the sticks in the woodpile." She had much more to say--and said it. It seemed to make her feel better to do so. Cap'n Amazon looked coolly at her, but did not offer to take the key out of his trousers' pocket. "What d'ye mean?" repeated Betty, breathless. "I mean to keep my cabin locked," he told her in a perfectly passive voice, but in a manner that halted her suddenly, angry as she was. "I don't want no woman messin' with my berth nor with my duds. That door's no more locked against you than it is against my niece. You do the rest of your work and don't you worry your soul 'bout my cabin." Louise, who was an observant spectator of this contest, expected at first that Betty would not stand the indignity--that she would resign from her situation on the spot. But that hard, compelling stare of Cap'n Amazon seemed to tame her. And Betty Gallup was a person not easily tamed. She spluttered a little more, then returned to her work. Though she was sullen all day, she did not offer to reopen the discussion. "What a master he must have been on his own quarter-deck," Louise thought. "And he must have seen rough times, as that Lawford Tapp suggested. My! he's not much like Cap'n Abe, after all." But with her, Cap'n Amazon was as gentle as her own father. He stood on his dignity with the customers who came to the store, and with Betty; but he was most kindly toward Louise in every look and word. That under his self-contained and stern exterior dwelt a very tender heart, the girl was sure. For the absent Cap'n Abe he appeared to feel a strong man's good-natured scorn for a weak one; but Louise saw him stand often before Jerry's cage, chirping to the bird and playing with him. And at such times there was moisture in Cap'n Amazon's eye. "Blind's a bat! Poor little critter!" he would murmur. "All the sunshine does is to warm him; he can't see it no more. Out-o'-doors ain't nothin' to him now." Nor would he allow anybody but himself to attend to the needs of poor little Jerry. He had promised Abe, he said. He kept that promise faithfully. Diddimus, the cat, was entirely another problem. At first, whenever he saw Cap'n Amazon approach, he howled and fled. Then, gradually, an unholy curiosity seemed to enthrall the big tortoise-shell. He would peer around corners at Cap'n Amazon, stare at him with wide yellow eyes through open doorways, leap upon the window sill and glower at the substitute storekeeper--in every way showing his overweening interest in the man. But he absolutely would not go within arm's reach of him. "I always did say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon. "They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's hacienda and he had a tame wildcat--had had it from a kitten. Brought it up on a bottle himself. "He thought a heap of that critter, and when he laid in his hammock under the trees--an' that was most of the time, for them Caribs are as lazy as the feller under the tree that wished for the cherries to fall in his mouth!--Yes, sir! when he laid in his hammock that yaller-eyed demon would lay in it, too, and purr like an ordinary cat. "But a day come when the man fell asleep and had a nightmare or something, and kicked out, cracking that cat on the snout with his heel. Next breath the cat had a chunk out o' his calf and if I hadn't been there with a gun he'd pretty near have eat the feller!" The personal touch always entered into Cap'n Amazon's stories. He had always been on me spot when the thing in point happened--and usually he was the heroic and central figure. No foolish modesty stayed his tongue when it came to recounting adventures. He had all his wits, as well as all his wit, about him, had Cap'n Amazon. This was shown by an occurrence that very Saturday afternoon. Milt Baker, like the other neighbors, was becoming familiar, if not friendly, with the substitute storekeeper and, leaning on the showcase. Milt said: "Leave me have a piece of Brown Mule, Cap'n Am'zon. I'm all out o' chewin'. Put it on the book and Mandy'll pay for it." "Avast there!" Cap'n Amazon returned. "Seems to me I got something in the bill o' ladin' 'bout that," and he drew forth the long memorandum Cap'n Abe had made to guide his substitute's treatment of certain customers. "No," the substitute storekeeper said, shaking his head negatively. "Can't do it." "Why not, I want to know?" blustered Milt. "I guess my credit's good." He already had the Brown Mule in his hand. "Your wife's credit seems to be good," Cap'n Amazon returned firmly. "But here's what I find here: 'Don't trust Milt Baker for Brown Mule 'cause Mandy makes him pay cash for his tobacker and rum. We don't sell no rum.' That's enough, young man." Milt might have tried to argue the case with Cap'n Abe; but not with Cap'n Amazon. There was something in the steady look of the latter that caused the shiftless clam digger to dig down into his pocket for the nickel, pay it over, and walk grumblingly out of the store. "Does beat all what a fool a woman will be," commented Cap'n Amazon, rather enigmatically; only Louise, who heard him, realized fully what his thought was. Jealous and hard-working Mandy Baker had chosen for herself a handicap in the marriage game. CHAPTER X WHAT LOUISE THINKS Sunday morning such a hush pervaded the store on the Shell Road, and brooded over its surroundings, as Lou Grayling had seldom experienced save in the depths of the wilderness. She beheld a breeze-swept sea from her window with no fishing boats going out. There was nobody on the clam flats, although the tide was just right at dawn. The surfman from the patrol station beyond The Beaches paced to the end of his beat dressed in his best, like a man merely taking a Sunday morning stroll. The people she saw seemed to be changed out of their everyday selves. Not only were they in Sabbath garb, but they had on their Sabbath manner. Even to Milt Baker, the men were cleanly shaven and wore fresh cotton shirts of their wives' laundering. Cap'n Amazon appeared from his "cabin" when the first church bells began to ring, arrayed in a much wrinkled but very good suit of "go ashore" clothes of blue, which were possibly those he had worn when he arrived at the store on the Shell Road. He wore a hard, glazed hat of an old-fashioned naval shape and, instead of the usual red bandana, he wore a black silk handkerchief tied about his head. Just why he always kept his crown thus swathed, Louise was very desirous of knowing. Yet she did not feel like asking him such a very personal question. Had it been Cap'n Abe she would not for a moment have hesitated. Louise had heard of men being scalped by savages and she was almost tempted to believe that this had happened to Cap'n Amazon in one of his wild encounters. "We'll go to the First Church, Niece Louise," he said firmly. "Abe always did. These small-fry craft, like the Mariner's Chapel, are all right, I don't dispute; but they are lacking in ballast. It's in my mind to attend the church that's the most like a well-founded, deep-sea craft." Louise was more impressed than amused by this philosophy. The captain seemed to have put on his "Sunday face" like everybody else. As they came out of the yard old Washington Gallup hobbled by, but instead of stopping to chatter inconsequently, for he was an inveterate gossip, he saluted the captain respectfully and hobbled on. Indeed, the captain was a figure on this day to command profound respect. It is no trick at all for a big man to look dignified and impressive; but Cap'n Amazon was not a big man. However, in his blue pilot-cloth suit, cut severely plain, and with his hard black hat on his head he made a veritable picture of what a master-mariner should be. On his quarter-deck, in fair or foul weather, Louise was sure that he had never lacked the respect of his crew or their confidence. He was distinctly a man to command--a leader and director by nature. He was, indeed, different from the seemingly easy-going, gentle-spoken Cap'n Abe, the storekeeper. They had scarcely started up the Shell Road when the whir of a fast-running automobile sounded behind them and the mellow hoot of a horn. Louise turned to see a great touring car take the curve from the direction of The Beaches and glide swiftly toward them. Lawford Tapp was guiding the car. "Then he's a chauffeur as well as fisherman and boatman," she thought. She could not see how he was dressed under the coat he wore; but he touched his cap to her and Cap'n Amazon as he drove by. Beside Lawford on the driving seat was a plump little man who seemed to be violently quarreling with the chauffeur. In the tonneau was a matronly woman and three girls including "L'Enfant Terrible," all, Louise thought, rather overdressed. "Those folks, so I'm told," said Cap'n Amazon placidly, "come from that big house on the p'int--as far as you can see from our windows. More money than good sense, I guess. Though the man, he comes of good old Cape stock. But I guess that blood can de-te-ri-orate, as the feller said. Ain't much of it left in the young folks, pretty likely. They just laze around and play all the time. If 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' you can take it from me, Niece Louise, that all play and no work makes Jill a pretty average useless girl. Yes, sir!" To the First Church it was quite a walk, up Main Street beyond the Inn and the post-office. There was some little bustle on Main Street at church-going time for some of the vacation visitors--those of more modest pretensions than the occupants of the cottages at The Beaches--had already arrived. At the head of the church aisle Cap'n Amazon spoke apologetically to the usher: "Young man, my brother, Mr. Abram Silt, hires a pew here; but I don't rightly know its bearings. Would you mind showin' me and my niece the course?" They were accommodated. After service several shook hands with them; but Louise noticed that many cast curious glances at the black silk handkerchief on Cap'n Amazon's head and did not come near. Despite his dignity and the reverence of his bearing, he did look peculiar with that 'kerchief swathing his crown. Gusty Durgin, the waitress at the Cardhaven Inn, claimed acquaintanceship after church with Louise. "There's goin' to be more of your crowd come to-morrow, Miss Grayling," she said. "Some of 'em's goin' to stop with us at the Inn. How you makin' out down there to Cap'n Abe's? Land sakes! _that_ ain't Cap'n Abe!" "It is his brother, Cap'n Amazon Silt," explained Louise. "I want to know! He looks amazin' funny, don't he? Not much like Cap'n Abe. You see, my folks live down the Shell Road. My ma married again. D'rius Vleet. Nice man, but a Dutchman. I don't take up much with these furiners. "Now! what was I sayin'? Oh! The boss tells me there's a Mr. Judson Bane of your crowd goin' to stop with us. Sent a telegraph dispatch for a room to be saved for him. With bath! Land sakes! ain't the whole ocean big enough for him to take a bath in? We ain't got nothing like that. And two ladies--I forget their names. You know Mr. Bane?". "I have met him--once," confessed Louise. "Some swell he is, I bet," Gusty declared. "I'm goin' to speak to him. Mebbe he can get me into the company. I ain't so _aw_-ful fat. I seen a picture over to Paulmouth last night where there was a girl bigger'n I am, and she took a re'l sad part. "She cried re'l tears. _I_ can do that. All I got to do is to think of something re'l mis'rable--like the time our old brahma hen, Beauty, got bit by Esek Coe's dog, and ma had to saw her up. Then the tears'll squeeze right out, _just as ea'sy_!" Louise thought laughter would overcome her "just as easy" despite the day and place. She knew a hearty burst of laughter in the church edifice would amaze and shock the lingering congregation. Seeing that Cap'n Amazon was busy with some men he had met, the girl walked out to the little vestibule of the church. Here a number of women and men were discussing various matters--the sermon, the weather, clamming, boating, and the colony at The Beaches. Two women stood apart from the others and presently Louise was attracted to them by the sound of Lawford Tapp's name. "I dunno who he is exactly, bein' somethin' o' a stranger here," one of the women said. "But I was told he was some poor relation who allers lived among the fisher folk. But he does seem to know how to run thet autermobile, don't he?" "I should say!" returned the other woman. "An' he's well spoken, too--from what I heard him say down to the store." "Yes, I know that too. Well, I hope he buys the outfit--Jimmy wants to sell it bad enough--an' needs the money, believe me!" And thereupon the two women took their departure. The conversation hung in Louisa's mind and she looked exceedingly thoughtful when Cap'n Amazon broke away from those with whom he had been talking and joined her. "Nice man, that Reverend Jimson, I guess," the captain said, as they wended their way homeward; "but he's got as many ways of holdin' a feller as an octopus. And lemme tell you, that's a plenty! Arms seem to grow on devilfish 'while you wait' as the feller said. "I sha'n't ever forget the time I was a boy in the old _Mary Bedloe_ brig, out o' Boston, loaded with sundries for Jamaica, to bring back molasses--and something a leetle mite stronger. That's 'bout as near as I ever got to having traffic with liquor--and 'twas an unlucky v'y'ge all the way through. "Before we ever got the rum aboard," pursued Cap'n Amazon, "on our way down there, our water went bad. Yes, sir! Water does get stringy sometimes on long v'y'ges. It useter on whalin' cruises--get all stringy and bad; but after she'd worked clear she'd be fit to drink again. "But this time in the _Mary Bedloe_ it was something mysterious happened to the drinking water. Made the hull crew sick. Cap'n Jim Braman was master. He was a good navigator, but an awful profane man. Swore without no reason to it. "Well----Where was I? Oh, yes! We had light airs in the Caribbean for once, and didn't make no more headway in a day than a brick barge goin' upstream. We come to an island--something more than a key--and Cap'n Braman ordered a boat's crew ashore for water. I was in the second's boat so I went. We found good water easy and the second officer, who was a nice young chap, let us scour around on our own hook for fruit and such, after we'd filled the barrels. "I was all for shellfish them days, and I see some big mussels attached to the rocks, it bein' low water. Some o' them mussels, when ye gut 'em same as ye would deep-sea clams, make the nicest fry you ever tasted. "Wal," said Cap'n Amazon, walking sedately home from church with his amused niece on his arm, "I wanted a few of them mussels. There was a mud bottom and so the water was black. Just as I reached for the first mussel I felt something creeping around my left leg. I thought it was eel-grass; then I thought it was an eel. "Next thing I knowed it took holt like a leech in half a dozen places. I jumped; but I didn't jump far. There was two o' the things had me, and that left leg o' mine was fast as a duck's foot in the mud!" "Oh, Uncle Amazon!" gasped Louise. "Yep. A third arm whipped out o' the water had helt me round the waist tighter'n any girl of my acquaintance ever lashed her best feller. Land sakes, that devilfish certainly give me a hi-mighty hug! "But I had what they call down in the Spanish speakin' islands a machette--a big knife for cuttin' your way through the jungle. I hauled that out o' the waistband of my pants and I began slicing at them snake-like arms of the critter and yelling like all get-out. "More scare't than hurt, I reckon. I was a young feller, as I tell you, and hadn't seen so much of the world as I have since," continued Cap'n Amazon. "But the arms seemed fairly to grow on that devilfish. I wasn't hacked loose when the second officer come runnin' with his gun. I dragged the critter nearer inshore and he got a look at it. Both barrels went into that devilfish, and that was more than it could stomach; so it let go," finished the captain. "Mercy! what an experience," commented Louise, wondering rather vaguely why the minister of the First Church had reminded her uncle of this octopus. "Yes. 'Twas _some_," agreed Cap'n Amazon. "But let's step along a little livelier, Niece Louise. I'm goin' to give you a re'l fisherman's chowder for dinner, an' I want to git the pork and onions over. I like my onions well browned before I slice in the potaters." Cap'n Amazon insisted on doing most of the cooking, just as Cap'n Abe had. Louise had baked some very delicate pop-overs for breakfast that morning and the captain ate his share with appreciation. "Pretty average nice, I call 'em, for soft-fodder," he observed. "But, land sakes! give me something hearty and kind of solid for reg'lar eating. Ordinary man would starve pretty handy, I guess, on breadstuff like this." The chowder was both as hearty and as appetizing as one could desire. Nor would the captain allow Louise to wash the dishes afterward. "No, girl. I'll clean up this mess. You go out and see how fur you can walk on that hard beach now it's slack tide. You ain't been up there to Tapp P'int yit and seen that big house that belongs to the candy king. Neither have I, of course," he added; "but they been tellin' me about it in the store." Louise accepted the suggestion and started to walk up the beach; but she did not get far. There was a private dock running out beyond low-water mark just below the very first bungalow. She saw several men coming down the steps from the top of the bluff to the shore and the bathhouses; a big camera was set up on the sands. This must be Bozewell's bungalow, she decided; the one engaged by the moving picture people. If Judson Bane was to be leading man of the company the picture was very likely to be an important production; for Bane would not leave the legitimate stage for any small salary. Seeing no women in the party and that the men were heading up the beach, Louise went no farther in that direction, and instead walked out upon the private dock to its end. It was not until then that she saw, shooting inshore, the swift launch in which Lawford Tapp had come over in the morning previous. The wind being off the land she had not heard its exhaust. In three minutes the launch glided in beside the dock where she stood. "Come for a sail, Miss Grayling?" he asked her, with his very widest smile. "I'll take you out around Gull Rocks." "Oh! I am not sure----" "Surely you're not down here to work on Sunday?" and he glanced at the actors. She laughed. "Oh, no, Mr. Tapp. I do not work on Sundays. Uncle Amazon would not even let me wash the dishes." "I should think not," murmured Lawford with an appreciative glance at her ungloved hands. "He's a pretty decent old fellow, I guess. Will you come aboard? She's perfectly safe, Miss Grayling." If he had invited her to enter the big touring car he had driven that morning, to go for a "joy ride," Louise Grayling would certainly have refused. To go on a pleasure trip at the invitation of a chauffeur in his employer's car was quite out of consideration. But this was somehow different, or so it seemed. She hesitated not because of who or what he was (or what she believed him to be), but because she had seen something in his manner and expression of countenance that warned her he was a young man not to be lightly encouraged. In that moment of reflection Louise Grayling, asked herself if she felt that he possessed a more interesting personality than almost any man she had ever met socially before. She did so consider him, she told herself, and so--she stepped aboard the launch. She did not need his hand to help her to the seat beside him. She was boatwise. He pushed off, starting his engine; and they were soon chug-chugging out upon the limitless sea. CHAPTER XI THE LEADING MAN "I saw you with Cap'n Amazon going to church this morning," Lawford said. "To the First Church, I presume?" "And you?" "Oh, I drove the folks over to Paulmouth. There is an Episcopal Church there and the girls think it's more fashionable. You don't see many soft-collared shirts among the Paulmouth Episcopalians." There spoke the "native," Louise thought; and she smiled. "It scarcely matters, I fancy, which denomination one attends. It is the spirit in which we worship that counts." He gazed upon her seriously. "You're a thoughtful girl, I guess. I should not have looked for that--in your business." "In my business? Oh!" "We outsiders have an idea that people in the theatrical line are a peculiar class unto themselves," Lawford went on. "But I----" On the point of telling him of his mistake she hesitated. He was unobservant of her amusement and went on with seriousness: "I guess I'm pretty green after all. I don't know much about the world--your world, at least. I love the sea, and sailing, and all the seashore has to offer. Sometimes I'm out here alone all day long." "But what is it doing for you?" she asked him rather sharply. "Surely there can be very little in it, when all's said and done. A man with your intelligence--you have evidently had a good education." "I suppose I don't properly appreciate that," he admitted. "And to really waste your time like this--loafing longshore, and sailing boats, and--and driving an automobile. Why! you are a regular beach comber, Mr. Tapp. It's not much of an outlook for a man I should think." She suddenly stopped, realizing that she was showing more interest than the occasion called for. Lawford was watching her with smoldering eyes. "Don't you think it is a nice way to live?" he asked. "The sea is really wonderful. I have learned more about sea and shore already than you can find in all the books. Do you know where the gulls nest, and how they hatch their young? Did you ever watch a starfish feeding? Do you know what part of the shellfish is the scallop of commerce? Do you know that every seventh wave is almost sure to be larger than its fellows? Do you----" "Oh, it may be very delightful," Louise interrupted this flow of badly catalogued information to say. He expressed exactly her own desires. Nothing could be pleasanter than spending the time, day after day, learning things "at first hand" about nature. For her father--and of course for her--to do this was quite proper, Louise thought. But not for this young fisherman, who should be making his way in the world. "Where is it getting you?" she demanded. "Getting me?" "Yes," she declared with vigor, yet coloring a little. "A man should work." "But I'm not idle." "He should work to get ahead--to save--to make something of himself--to establish himself in life--to have a home." He smiled then and likewise colored. "I--I------A man can't do that alone. Especially the home-making part." "You don't suppose any of these girls about here--the nice girls, I mean--want a man who is not a home provider?" He laughed outright then. "Some of them get that kind, I fear, Miss Grayling. Mandy Card, for instance." "Are you planning to be another Milt Baker?" she responded with scorn. "Oh, now, you're hard on a fellow," he complained. "I'm always busy. And, fixed as I am, I don't see why I should grub and moil at unpleasant things." Louise shrugged her shoulders and made a gesture of finality. "You are impossible, I fear," she said and put aside--not without a secret pang--her interest in Lawford Tapp, an interest which had been developing since she first met the young man. He allowed the subject to lapse and began telling her about the ledges on which the rock cod and tautog schooled; where bluefish might be caught on the line, and snappers in the channels going into the Haven. "Good sport. I must take you out in the _Merry Andrew_," he said. "She's a peach of a sailer--and my very own." "Oh! do you own the sloop, Mr. Tapp?" "I guess I do! And no money could buy her," he cried with boyish enthusiasm. "She's the best lap-streak boat anywhere along the Cape. And _sail_!" "I love sailing," she confessed, with brightening visage. "Say! You just set the day--so it won't conflict with your work--and I'll take you out," he declared eagerly, "But won't it conflict with your duties?" "Humph!" he returned. "I thought your idea was that I didn't have any duties. However," and he smiled again, "you need not worry about that. When you want to go I will arrange everything so that I'll have a free day." "But not alone, Mr. Tapp?" "No," he agreed gravely. "I suppose that wouldn't do. But we can rake up a chaperon somewhere." "Oh, yes!" and Louise dimpled again. "We'll take Betty Gallup along. She's an able seaman, too." "I _bet_ she is!" ejaculated Lawford with emphasis. He handled the boat with excellent judgment, and his confidence caused Louise to see no peril when they ran almost on the edge of the maelstrom over Gull Rocks. "I know this coast by heart," he said. "I believe there's not one of them sailing out of the Haven who is a better pilot than I am. At least, I've learned _that_ outside of textbooks," and he smiled at her. Louise wondered how good an education this scion of a Cape Cod family really had secured. The longer she was in his company the more she was amazed by his language and manners. She noted, too, that he was much better dressed to-day. His flannels were not new; indeed they were rather shabby. But the garments' original cost must have been prohibitive for a young man in his supposed position. Very likely, however, they had been given him, second-hand, by some member of the family for which he worked. The more she saw of him, and the more she thought about it, the greater was Louise's disappointment in Lawford Tapp. She was not exactly sorry she had come out with him in the motor boat; but her feeling toward him was distinctly different when she landed, from that which had been roused in her first acquaintance. It was true he was not an idle young man--not exactly. But he betrayed an ability and a training that should already have raised him above his present situation in the social scale, as Louise understood it. She was disappointed, and although she bade Lawford Tapp good-bye pleasantly she was secretly unhappy. The next morning she chanced to need several little things that were not to be found in Cap'n Abe's store and she went uptown in quest of them. At midday she was still thus engaged, so she went to the Inn for lunch. Gusty Durgin spied her as she entered and found a small table for Louise where she would be alone. A fat woman whom Gusty mentioned as "the boss's sister, Sara Ann Whipple," helped wait upon the guests. Several of the business men of the town, as well as the guests of the Inn, took their dinners there. To one man, sitting alone at a table not far distant, Louise saw that Gusty was particularly attentive. He was typically a city man; one could not for a moment mistake him for a product of the Cape. He was either a young-old or an old-young looking man, his hair graying at the temples, but very luxuriant and worn rather long. A bright complexion and beautifully kept teeth and hands marked him as one more than usually careful of his personal appearance. Indeed, his character seemed to border on that of the exquisite. His countenance was without doubt attractive, for it was intelligent and expressed a quiet humor that seemed to have much kindliness mixed with it. His treatment of the unsophisticated Gusty, who hovered about him with open admiration, held just that quality of good-natured tolerance which did not offend the waitress but that showed discerning persons that he considered her only in the light of an artless child. "D'you know who that is?" Gusty whispered to Louise when she found time to do so. The plump girl was vastly excited; her hands shook as she set down the dishes. "That's Mr. Judson Bane." "Yes. I chanced to meet Mr. Bane once, as I told you," smiled Louise, keeping up the illusion of her own connection with the fringe of the theatrical world. "And Miss Louder and Miss Noyes have come. My, you ought to see _them_!" said the emphatic waitress. "They've got one o' them flivvers. Some gen'leman friend of Miss Noyes' lent it to 'em. They're out now hunting what they call a garridge for it. That's a fancy name for a barn, I guess. And dressed!" gasped Gusty finally. "They're dressed to kill!" "We shall have lively times around Cardhaven now, sha'n't we?" Louise commented demurely. "We almost always do in summer," Gusty agreed with a sigh. "Last summer an Italian lost his trick bear in the pine woods 'twixt here and Paulmouth and the young 'uns didn't darest to go out of the houses for a week. Poor critter! When they got him he was fair foundered eating green cranberries in the bogs." "Something doing," no matter what, was Gusty's idea of life as it should be. Louise finished her meal and went out of the dining-room. In the hall her mesh bag caught in the latch of the screen door and dropped to the floor. Somebody was right at hand to pick it up for her. "Allow me." said a deep and cultivated voice. "Extremely annoying." It was Mr. Bane, hat in hand. He restored the bag, and as Louise quietly thanked him they walked out of the Inn together. Louise was returning to Cap'n Abe's store, and she turned in that direction before she saw that Mr. Bane was bound down the hill, too. "I fancy we are fellow-outcasts," he said. "You, too, are a visitor to this delightfully quaint place?" "Yes, Mr. Bane," she returned frankly. "Though I can claim relationship to some of these Cardhaven folk. My mother came from the Cape." "Indeed? It is not such a far cry to Broadway from any point of the compass, after all, is it?" and he smiled engagingly down at her. "You evidently do not remember me, Mr. Bane?" she said, returning his smile. "Aboard the Anders Liner, coming up from Jamaica, two years ago this last winter? Professor Ernest Grayling is my father." "Indeed!" he exclaimed. "You are Miss Grayling? I remember you and your father clearly. Fancy meeting you here!" and Mr. Bane insisted on taking her hand. "And how is the professor? No need to ask after your health, Miss Grayling." As they walked on together Louise took more careful note of the actor. He had the full habit of a well-fed man, but was not gross. He was athletic, indeed, and his head was poised splendidly on broad shoulders. Louise saw that his face was massaged until it was as pink and soft as a baby's, without a line of close shaving to be detected. The network of fine wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes was scarcely distinguishable. That there was a faint dust of powder upon his face she noted, too. Judson Bane was far, however, from giving the impression of effeminacy. Quite the contrary. He looked able to do heroic things in real life as well as in the drama. And as their walk and conversation developed, Louise Grayling found the actor to be an interesting person. He spoke well and without bombast upon any subject she ventured on. His vocabulary was good and his speaking voice one of the most pleasing she had ever heard. So interested was Louise in what Mr. Bane said that she scarcely noticed Lawford Tapp who passed and bowed to her, only inclining her head in return. Therefore she did not catch the expression on Lawford's face. "A fine-looking young fisherman," observed Mr. Bane patronizingly. "Yes. Some of them are good-looking and more intelligent than you would believe," Louise rejoined carelessly. She had put Lawford Tapp aside as inconsequential. CHAPTER XII THE DESCENT OF AUNT EUPHEMIA It was mid forenoon the following day, and quite a week after Louise Grayling's arrival at Cap'n Abe's store on the Shell Road, that the stage was set for a most surprising climax. The spirit of gloom still hovered over Betty Gallup in the rear premises where she was sweeping and dusting and scrubbing. Her idea of cleanliness indoors was about the same as that of a smart skipper of an old-time clipper ship. "If that woman ain't holystonin' the deck ev'ry day she thinks we're wadin' in dirt, boot-laig high," growled Cap'n Amazon. "Cleanliness is next to godliness!" quoted Louise, who was in the store at the moment. "Land sakes!" ejaculated the captain. "It's next door to a lot of other things, seems like, too. I shouldn't say that Bet Gallup was spillin' over with piety." Louise, laughing softly, went to the door. There was a cloud of dust up the road and ahead of it came a small automobile. Cap'n Amazon was singing, in a rather cracked voice: "'_The Boundin' Biller, Captain Hanks, She was hove flat down on the Western Banks_;------" With a saucy blast of its horn the automobile flashed past the store. There were two young women in it, one driving. Louise felt sure they were Miss Louder and Miss Noyes, mentioned by Gusty Durgin the day before, and their frocks and hats were all that their names suggested. "Them contraptions," Cap'n Amazon broke off in his ditty to say, "go past so swift that you can't tell rightly whether they got anybody to the helm or not. Land sakes, here comes another! They're getting as common as sandfleas on Horseneck Bar, and Washy Gallup says that's a-plenty." He did not need to come to the door to make this discovery of the approach of the second machine. There sounded another blast from an auto horn and a considerable racket of clashing gears. "Land sakes!" Cap'n Amazon added. "Is it going to heave to here?" Louise had already entered the living-room, bound for her chamber to see if, by chance, Betty had finished dusting there. She did not hear the second automobile stop nor the cheerful voice of its gawky driver as he said to his fare: "This is the place, ma'am. This is Cap'n Abe's." His was the only car in public service at the Paulmouth railroad station and Willy Peebles seldom had a fare to Cardhaven. Noah Coffin's ark was good enough for most Cardhaven folk if they did not own equipages of their own. When Willy reached around and snapped open the door of the covered car a lady stepped out and, like a Newfoundland after a plunge into the sea, shook herself. The car was a cramped vehicle and the ride had been dusty. Her clothing was plentifully powdered; but her face was not. That was heated, perspiring, and expressed a mixture of indignation and disapproval. "Are you sure this is the place, young man?" she demanded. "This is Cap'n Abe Silt's," repeated Willy. "Why--it doesn't look------" "Want your suitcase, ma'am?" asked Willy. "Wait. I am not sure. I--I must see if I----. I may not stay. Wait," she repeated, still staring about the neighborhood. As a usual thing, she was not a person given to uncertainty, in either manner or speech. Her somewhat haughty glance, her high-arched nose, her thin lips, all showed decision and a scorn of other people's opinions and wishes. But at this moment she was plainly nonplused. "There--there doesn't seem to be anybody about," she faltered. "Oh, go right into the store, ma'am. Cap'n Abe's somewheres around. He always is." Thus encouraged by the driver the woman stalked up the store steps. She was not a ponderous woman, but she was tall and carried considerable flesh. She could carry this well, however, and did. Her traveling dress and hat were just fashionable enough to be in the mode, but in no extreme. This well-bred, haughty, but perspiring woman approached the entrance to Cap'n Abe's store in a spirit of frank disapproval. On the threshold she halted with an audible gasp, indicating amazement. Her glance swept the interior of the store with its strange conglomeration of goods for sale--on the shelves the rows of glowingly labeled canned goods, the blue papers of macaroni, the little green cartons of fishhooks; the clothing hanging in groves, the rows and rows of red mittens; tiers of kegs of red lead, barrels of flour, boxes of hardtack; hanks of tarred ground-line, coils of several sizes of cordage, with a small kedge anchor here and there. It was not so much a store as it was a warehouse displaying many articles the names and uses for which the lady did not even know. The wondrous array of goods in Cap'n Abe's store did not so much startle the visitor, as the figure that rose from behind the counter, where he was stooping at some task. She might be excused her sudden cry, for Cap'n Amazon was an apparition to shock any nervous person. The bandana he wore seemed, if possible, redder than usual this morning; his earrings glistened; his long mustache seemed blacker and glossier than ever. As he leaned characteristically upon the counter, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, the throat-latch of his shirt open, he did not give one impression of a peaceful storekeeper, to say the least. "Mornin', ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon, not at all embarrassed. "What can I do for you, ma'am?" "You--you are not Captain Silt?" the visitor almost whispered in her agitation. "Yes, ma'am; I am." "Captain Abram Silt?" "No, ma'am; I ain't. I'm Cap'n Am'zon, his brother. What can I do for you?" he repeated. The explanation of his identity may have been becoming tedious; at least, Cap'n Amazon gave it grimly. "Is--is my niece, Louise Grayling, here?" queried the lady, her voice actually trembling, her gaze glued to the figure behind the counter. "'Hem!" said the captain, clearing his throat. "Who did you say you was, ma'am?" "I did not say," the visitor answered stiffly enough now. "I asked you a question." "Likely--likely," agreed Cap'n Amazon. "But you intimated that you was the a'nt of a party by the name of Grayling. I happen to be her uncle myself. Her mother was my ha'f-sister. I don't remember--jest _who'd_ you say you was, ma'am?" "I am her father's own sister," cried the lady in desperation. "Oh, yes! I see!" murmured Cap'n Amazon. "Then you must be her A'nt 'Phemie. I've heard Louise speak of you. Tubbesure!" "I am Mrs. Conroth," said Mrs. Euphemia Conroth haughtily. "Happy to make your acquaintance," said Cap'n Amazon, bobbing his head and putting forth his big hand. Mrs. Conroth scorned the hand, raised her lorgnette and stared at the old mariner as though he were some curious specimen from the sea that she had never observed before. Cap'n Amazon smiled whimsically and looked down at his stained and toil-worn palm. "I see you're nigh-sighted, ma'am. Some of us git that way as we grow older. I never have been bothered with short eyesight myself." "I wish to see my niece at once," Mrs. Conroth said, flushing a little at his suggestion of her advancing years. "Come right in," he said, lifting the flap in the counter. Mrs. Conroth glared around the store through her glass. "Cannot Louise come here?" She asked helplessly. "We live back o' the shop--and overhead," explained Cap'n Amazon. "Come right in, I'll have Betty Gallup call Louise." Bristling her indignation like a porcupine its quills, the majestic woman followed the spry figure of the captain. Her first glance over the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a pronounced sniff. "Catarrh, ma'am?" suggested the perfectly composed Cap'n Amazon. "This strong salt air ought to do it a world of good. I've known a sea v'y'ge to cure the hardest cases. They tell me lots of 'em come down here to the Cape afflicted that way and go home cured." Mrs. Conroth stared with growing comprehension at Cap'n Amazon. It began to percolate into her brain that possibly this strange-looking seaman possessed qualities of apprehension for which she had not given him credit. "Sit down, ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon hospitably. "Abe ain't here, but I cal'late he'd want me to do the honors, and assure you that you are welcome. He always figgers on having a spare berth for anybody that boards us, as well as a seat at the table. "Betty," he added, turning to the amazed Mrs. Gallup, just then appearing at the living-room door, "tell Louise her A'nt 'Phemie is here, will you?" "Say Mrs. Conroth, woman," corrected the lady tartly. Betty scowled and went away, muttering: "Who's a 'woman,' I want to know? I ain't one no more'n _she_ is," and it can be set down in the log that the "able seaman" began by being no friend of Aunt Euphemia's. It was with a sinking at her heart that Louise heard of her aunt's arrival. She had written to her Aunt Euphemia before leaving New York that she had decided to try Cape Cod for the summer and would go to her mother's relative, Captain Abram Silt. Again, on reaching the store on the Shell Road, she had dutifully written a second letter announcing her arrival. She had known perfectly well that some time she would have to "pay the piper." Aunt Euphemia would never overlook such a thing. Louise was sure of that. But the idea that the Poughkeepsie lady would follow her to Cardhaven never for a moment entered Louise's thought. She had put off this reckoning until the fall--until the return of daddy-professor. But here Aunt Euphemia had descended upon her as unexpectedly as the Day of Wrath spoken of in Holy Writ. As she came down the stairs she heard her uncle's voice in the living-room. Something had started him upon a tale of adventure above and beyond the usual run of his narrative. "Yes, _ma'am_," he was saying, "them that go down to the sea in ships, as the Good Book says, sartain sure meet with hair-raisin' experiences. You jumped then, ma'am, when old Jerry let out a peep. He was just tryin' his voice I make no doubt. Ain't sung for months they say. I didn't know why till I--I found out t'other day he was blind---stone blind. "Some thinks birds don't know nothing, or ain't much account in this man-world----But, as I was sayin', I lay another course. I'll never forget one v'y'ge I made on the brigantine _Hermione_. That was 'fore the day of steam-winches and we carried a big crew--thirty-two men for'ard and a big after-guard. "Well, ma'am! Whilst she was hove down in a blow off the Horn an albatross came aboard. You know what they be--the one bird in all the seven seas that don't us'ally need a dry spot for the sole of his foot. If Noah had sent out one from the ark he'd never have come back with any sprig of promise for the land-hungry wanderers shut up in that craft. "'Tis bad luck they do say to kill an albatross. Some sailors claim ev'ry one o' them is inhabited by a lost soul. I ain't superstitious myself. I'm only telling you what happened. "Dunno why that bird boarded us. Mebbe he was hurt some way. Mebbe 'twas fate. But he swooped right inboard, his wing brushing the men at the wheel. Almost knocked one o' them down. He was a Portugee man named Tony Spadello and he had a re'l quick temper. "Tony had his knife out in a flash and jumped for the creature. The other steersman yelled (one man couldn't rightly hold the wheel alone, the sea was kicking up such a bobberation) but Tony's one slash was enough. The albatross tumbled right down on the deck, a great cut in its throat. It bled like a dog shark, cluttering up the deck." "Horrid!" murmured Mrs. Conroth with a shudder of disgust. "Yes--the poor critter!" agreed Cap'n Amazon. "I never like to see innocent, dumb brutes killed. Cap'n Hicks--he was a young man in them days, and boastful--cursed the mess it made, yanked off the bird's head, so's to have the beautiful pink beak of it made into the head of a walking-stick, and ordered Tony to throw the carcass overboard and clean up the deck. I went to the wheel in his stead, with Jim Ledward. Jim says to me: 'Am'zon, that bird'll foller us. Can't git rid of it so easy as _that_.' "I thought he was crazy," went on Cap'n Amazon, shaking his head. "I wasn't projectin' much about superstitions. No, ma'am! We had all we could do--the two of us--handlin' the wheel with them old graybacks huntin' us. Them old he waves hunt in droves mostly, and when one did board us we couldn't scarce get clear of the wash of it before another would rise right up over our rail and fill the waist, or mebbe sweep ev'rything clean from starn to bowsprit. "It was sundown (only we hadn't seen no sun in a week) when that albatross was killed and hove overboard. At four bells of the mornin' watch one o' them big waves come inboard. It washed everything that wasn't lashed into the scuppers and took one of our smartest men overboard with it. But there, floatin' in the wash it left behind, was the dead albatross!" "Oh, how terrible!" murmured Mrs. Conroth, watching Cap'n Amazon much as a charmed bird is said to watch a snake. "Yes, ma'am; tough to lose a shipmate like that, I agree. But that was only the beginning. Cap'n Hicks pitched the thing overboard himself. Couldn't ha' got one of the men, mebbe, to touch it. Jim Ledward says: 'Skipper, ye make nothin' by that. It's too late. Bad luck's boarded us.' "And sure 'nough it had," sighed Cap'n Amazon, as though reflecting. "You never did see such a time as we had in gettin' round the Cape. And we got it good in the roarin' forties, too--hail, sleet, snow, rain, and lightnin' all mixed, and the sea a reg'lar hell's broth all the time." "I beg of you, sir," breathed the lady, shuddering again. Cap'n Amazon, enthralled by his own narrative, steamed ahead without noticing her shocked expression. "One hurricane on top of another--that's what we got. We lost four men overboard, includin' the third officer, one time and another. I was knocked down myself and got a broken arm--had it in a sling nine weeks. We got fever in a port that hadn't had such an epidemic in six months, and seven of the crew had to be took ashore. "Bad luck dogged us and the ship. Only, it never touched the skipper or Tony Spadello--the only two that had handled the albatross. That is, not as far as I know. Last time I see Cappy Hicks he was carryin' his cane with the albatross beak for a handle; and Tony Spadello has made a barrel of money keeping shop on the Bedford docks. "But birds have an influence in the world, I take it, like other folks. You wouldn't think, ma'am, how much store my brother Abe sets by old Jerry yonder." Aunt Euphemia jumped up with an exclamation of relief. "Louise!" she uttered as she saw the girl, amusement in her eyes, standing in the doorway. CHAPTER XIII WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY "I do not see how you can endure it, Louise! He is impossible--quite impossible! I never knew your tastes were low!" Critical to the tips of her trembling fingers, Aunt Euphemia sat stiffly upright in Louise's bedroom rocking chair and uttered this harsh reflection upon her niece's good taste. Louise never remembered having seen her aunt so angry before. But she was provoked herself, and her determination to go her own way and spend her summer as she chose stiffened under the lash of the lady's criticism. "What will our friends think of you?" demanded Mrs. Conroth. "I am horrified to have them know you ever remained overnight in such a place. There are the Perritons. They were on the train with me coming down from Boston. They are opening their house here at what they call The Beaches--one of the most exclusive colonies on the coast, I understand. They insisted upon my coming there at once, and I have promised to bring you with me." "You have promised more than you can perform. Aunt Euphemia," Louise replied shortly. "I will remain here." "Louise!" "I will remain here with Cap'n Amazon. And with Uncle Abram when he returns. They are both dear old men----" "That awful looking pirate!" gasped Mrs. Conroth. "You do not know him," returned the girl. "You do not know how worthy and now kind he is." "You have only known him a week yourself," remarked Aunt Euphemia. "What can a young girl like you know about these awful creatures--fishermen, sailors, and the like? How can you judge?" Louise laughed. "Why, Auntie, you know I have seen much of the world and many more people than you have. And if I have not learned to judge those I meet by this time I shall never learn, though I grow to be as old as"--she came near saying "as you are," but substituted instead--"as Mrs. Methuselah. I shall remain here. I would not insult Cap'n Amazon or Cap'n Abe, by leaving abruptly and going with you to the Perritons' bungalow." "But what shall I say to them?" wailed Aunt Euphemia. "What have you already said?" "I said I expected you were waiting for me at Cardhaven. I would not come over from Paulmouth in their car, but hurried on ahead. I wished to save you the disgrace--yes, _disgrace_!--of being found here in this--this country store. Ugh!" She shuddered again. "I am determined that they shall not know your poor, dear father unfortunately married beneath him." "Aunt Euphemia!" exclaimed Louise, her gray eyes flashing now. "Don't say that. It offends me. Daddy-prof never considered my mother or her people beneath his own station." "Your father, Louise, is a fool!" was the lady's tart reply. "As he is your brother as well as my father," Louise told her coldly, "I presume you feel you have a right to call him what you please. But I assure you, Aunt Euphemia, it does not please me to hear you do so." "You are a very obstinate girl!" "That attribute of my character I fancy I inherit from daddy-professor's side of the family," the girl returned bluntly. "I shall be shamed to death! I must accept the Perritons' invitation. I already have accepted it. They will think you a very queer girl, to say the least." "I am," her niece told her, the gray eyes smiling again, for Louise was soon over her wrath. "Even daddy-prof says that." "Because of his taking you all over the world with him as he did. I only wonder he did not insist upon your going on this present horrid cruise. "No. I have begun to like my comfort too well," and now Louise laughed outright. "A mark of oncoming age, perhaps." "You are a most unpleasant young woman, Louise." Louise thought she might return the compliment with the exchange of but a single word; but she was too respectful to do so. "I am determined to remain here," she repeated, "so you may as well take it cheerfully, auntie. If you intend staying with the Perritons any length of time, of course I shall see you often, and meet them. I haven't come down here to the Cape to play the hermit, I assure you. But I am settled here with Cap'n Amazon, and I am comfortable. So, why should I make any change?" "But in this common house! With that awful looking old sailor! And the way he talks! The rough adventures he has experienced--and the way he relates them!" "Why, I think he is charming. And his stories are jolly fun. He tells the most thrilling and interesting things! I have before heard people tell about queer corners of the world--and been in some of them myself. Only the romance seems all squeezed out of such places nowadays. But when Cap'n Amazon was young!" she sighed. "You should hear him tell of having once been wrecked on an island in the South Seas where there were only women left of the tribe inhabiting it, the men all having been killed in battle by a neighboring tribe. The poor sailors did not know whether those copper-colored Eves would decide to kill and eat them, or merely marry them." "Louise!" Aunt Euphemia rose and fairly glared at her niece. "You show distinctly that association with these horrid people down here has already contaminated your mind. You are positively vulgar!" She sailed out of the room, descended the stairs, and "beat up" through the living-room and store, as Betty Gallup said "with ev'ry stitch of canvas drawin' and a bone in her teeth." Louise agreed about the "bone"--she had given her Aunt Euphemia a hard one to gnaw on. The girl followed Mrs. Conroth to the automobile and helped her in. Cap'n Amazon came to the store door as politely as though he were seeing an honored guest over the ship's side. "Ask your A'nt 'Phemie to come again. Too bad she ain't satisfied to jine us here. Plenty o' cabin room. But if she's aimin' to anchor near by she'll be runnin' in frequent I cal'late. Good-day to ye, ma'am!" Aunt Euphemia did not seem even to see him. She was also afflicted with sudden deafness. "Louise! I shall never forget this--never!" she declared haughtily, as Willy Peebles started the car and it rumbled on down the Shell Road. Unable to face Cap'n Amazon just then for several reasons, Louise did not re-enter the store but strolled down to the sands. There was a skiff drawn up above high-water mark and the hoop-backed figure of Washy Gallup sat in it. He was mending a net. He nodded with friendliness to Louise, his jaw working from side to side like a cow chewing her cud--and for the same reason. Washy had no upper teeth left. "How be you this fine day, miss?" the old fellow asked sociably. "It's enough to put new marrer in old bones, this weather. Cold weather lays me up same's any old hulk. An' I been used to work, I have, all my life. Warn't none of 'em any better'n me in my day." "You have done your share, I am sure, Mr. Gallup," the girl said, smiling cheerfully down upon him. "Yours is the time for rest." "Rest? How you talk!" exclaimed Washy. "A man ought to be able to aim his own pollock and potaters, or else he might's well give up the ship. I tell 'em if I was only back in my young days where I could do a full day's work, I'd be satisfied." Louise had turned up a fiddler with the toe of her boot. As the creature scurried for sanctuary, Washy observed: "Them's curious critters. All crabs is." "I think they are curious," Louise agreed. "Like a cross-eyed man. Look one way and run another." "Surely--surely. Talk about a curiosity--the curiousest-osity I ever see was a crab they have in Japanese waters; big around's a clam-bucket and dangling gre't long laigs to it like a sea-going giraffe."' Louise was thankful for this opportunity for laughter, for that "curiousest-osity" was too much for her sense of the ludicrous. Like almost every other man of any age that Louise had met about Cardhaven--save Cap'n Abe himself--Washy had spent a good share of his life in deep-bottomed craft. But he had never risen higher than petty officer. "Some men's born to serve afore the mast--or how'd we git sailors?" observed the old fellow, with all the philosophy of the unambitious man. "Others get into the afterguard with one, two, three, and a jump!" His trembling fingers knotted the twine dexterously. "Now, there's your uncle." "Uncle Amazon?" asked Louise. "No, miss. Cap'n Abe, I mean. This here Am'zon Silt, 'tis plain to be seen, has got more salt water than blood in _his_ veins. Cap'n Abe's a nice feller--not much again him here where he's lived and kep' store for twenty-odd year. 'Ceptin' his yarnin' 'bout his brother all the time. But from the look of Cap'n Am'zon I wouldn't put past him anything that Cap'n Abe says he's done--and more. "But Abe himself, now, I'd never believed would trust himself on open water." "Yet," cried Louise, "he's shipped on a sailing vessel, Uncle Amazon says. He's gone for a voyage." "Ye-as. But _has_ he?" Washy retorted, his head on one side and his rheumy old eyes looking up at her as sly as a ferret's. "What do you mean?" "We none of us--none of the neighbors, I mean--seen him go. As fur's we know he didn't go away at all. We're only taking his brother's word for it." "Why, Mr. Gallup! You're quite as bad as Betty. One would think to hear you and her talk that Cap'n Amazon was a fratricide." "Huh?" "That he had murdered his brother," explained the girl. "That's fratter side, is it? Well, I don't take no stock in such foolishness. Them's Bet Gallup's notions, Cap'n Am'zon's all right, to _my_ way o' thinkin'. I was talkin' about Cap'n Abe." "I do not understand you at all, then," said the puzzled girl. "I see you don't just foller me," he replied patiently. "I ain't casting no alligators at your Uncle Am'zon. It's Cap'n Abe. I doubt his goin' to sea at all. I bet he never shipped aboard that craft his brother tells about." "Goodness! Why not?" "'Cause he ain't a sea-goin' man. There's a few o' such amongst Cape Codders. Us'ally they go away from the sea before they git found out, though." "'Found out?'" the girl repeated with exasperation. "Found out in _what_?" "That they're _scare't_ o' blue water," Washy said decidedly. "Nobody 'round here ever seen Cap'n Abe outside the Haven. He wouldn't no more come down here, push this skiff afloat, and row out to deep water than he'd go put his hand in a wild tiger's mouth--no, ma'am!" "Why, isn't that very ridiculous?" Louise said, not at all pleased. "Of course Cap'n Abe shipped on that boat just as Cap'n Amazon said he was going to. Otherwise he would have been back--or we would have heard from him." "He did, hey?" responded Washy sharply, springing the surprise he had been leading up to. "Then why didn't he take his chist with him? It's come back to the Paulmouth depot, so Perry Baker says, it not being claimed down to Boston." CHAPTER XIV A CHOICE OF CHAPERONS Washy Gallup's gossip should not have made much impression upon Louise Grayling's mind, but it fretted her. Perhaps her recent interview with Aunt Euphemia had rasped the girl's nerves. She left the old fisherman with a tart speech and returned to the store. There were customers being waited upon, so she had no opportunity to mention the matter of Cap'n Abe's chest to the substitute storekeeper at once. Then, when she had taken time to consider it, she decided not to do so. It really was no business of hers whether Cap'n Abe had taken his chest with him when he sailed from Boston or not. She had never asked Cap'n Amazon the name of the vessel his brother was supposed to have shipped on. Had she known it was the _Curlew_, the very schooner on which Professor Grayling had sailed, she would, of course, have shown a much deeper interest. And had Cap'n Amazon learned from Louise the name of the craft her father was aboard, he surely would have mentioned the coincidence. It stuck in the girl's mind--the puzzle about Cap'n Abe's chest--but it did not come to her lips. Looking across the table that evening, after the store was closed, as they sat together under the hanging lamp, she wondered that Cap'n Amazon did not speak of it if he knew his brother's chest had been returned to the Paulmouth express agent. Without being in the least grim-looking in her eyes, there was an expression on Cap'n Amazon's face, kept scrupulously shaven, that made one hesitate to pry into or show curiosity regarding any of his private affairs. He might be perfectly willing to tell her anything she wished to know. He was frank enough in relating his personal experiences up and down the seas, that was sure! Cap'n Amazon puffed at his pipe and tried to engage the attention of Diddimus. The big tortoise-shell ran from him no longer; but he utterly refused to be petted. He now lay on the couch and blinked with a bored manner at the captain. If Louise came near him he purred loudly, putting out a hooked claw to catch her skirt and stop her, and so get his head rubbed. But if Cap'n Amazon undertook any familiarities, Diddimus arose in dignified silence and changed his place or left the room. "Does beat all," the Captain said reflectively, reaching for his knitting, "what notions dumb critters get. We had a black man and a black dog with us aboard the fo'master _Sally S. Stern_ when I was master, out o' Baltimore for Chilean ports. Bill was the blackest negro, I b'lieve, I ever see. You couldn't see him in the dark with his mouth and eyes both shut. And that Newfoundland of his was just as black and his coat just as kinky as Bill's wool. The crew called 'em the two Snowballs." "What notion did the dog take, Uncle Amazon?" Louise asked as he halted. Sometimes he required a little urging to "get going." But not much. "Why, no matter what Bill did around the deck, or below, or overside, or what not, the dog never seemed to pay much attention to him. But the minute Bill started aloft that dog began to cry--whine and bark--and try to climb the shrouds after that nigger. Land sakes, you never in your life saw such actions! Got so we had to chain the dog Snowball whenever it came on to blow, for there's a consarned lot o' reefin' down and hoistin' sail on one o' them big fo'masters. The skipper't keeps his job on a ship like the _Sally S. Stern_ must get steamboat speed out o' her. "So, 'twas 'all hands to stations!' sometimes three and four times in a watch. Owners ain't overlib'ral in matter of crew nowadays. Think because there's a donkey-engine on deck and a riggin' to hoist your big sails, ye don't re'lly need men for'ard at all. "That v'y'ge out in pertic'lar I remember that there was two weeks on a stretch that not a soul aboard had more'n an hour's undisturbed sleep. And that dog! Poor brute, I guess he thought Bill was goin' to heaven and leavin' him behind ev'ry time the nigger started for the masthead. "I most always," continued Cap'n Amazon, "seen to it myself that the dog was chained when Bill was likely to go aloft. I liked that dog. He was a gentleman, if he was black. And Bill was a good seaman, and with a short tongue. The dog was about the only critter aboard he seemed to cotton to. Nothin' was too good for the dog, and the only way I got Bill to sign on was by agreeing to take the Newfoundland along. "Well, we got around the Horn much as us'al. Windjammers all have their troubles there. And then, not far from the western end o' the Straits we got into a belt of light airs--short, gusty winds that blew every which way. It kept the men in the tops most of the time. Some of 'em vowed they was goin' to swing their hammocks up there. "Come one o' those days, with the old _Sally_ just loafin' along," pursued Cap'n Amazon, sucking hard on his pipe, "when I spied a flicker o' wind comin', and the mate he sent the men gallopin' up the shrouds. I'd forgot the dog. So had Nigger Bill, I reckon. "Bill was one o' the best topmen aboard. He was up there at work before the dog woke up and started ki-yi-ing. He bayed Bill like a beagle hound at the foot of a coon tree. Then, jumping, he caught the lower shrouds with his forepaws. "The new slant of the wind struck us at the same moment. The old _Sally S._ heeled to larboard and that Newfoundland was jerked over the rail." "The poor thing!" Louise cried. "You'd ha' thought so. I wouldn't have felt no worse if one of the men had gone over. Owner's business, or not, I sung out to the second to get his boat out and I kicked off my shoes, grabbed a life-ring, and jumped myself." "You! Uncle Amazon?" gasped his niece. "Yep. The mate had the deck and I was the only man free. There wasn't much of a sea runnin', anyway. No pertic'lar danger. That is, not commonly. "But the minute I come up to the surface and rose breast-high, dashin' the water out o' my eyes so's to look around for the dog, I seen I'd been a leetle mite too previous, as the feller said. I hadn't taken into consideration one pertic'lar chance--like the feller't married one o' twins an' then couldn't tell which from t'other. "I see Snowball the dog, all right; but headin' for him like a streak o' greased lightin' was the triandicular fin of a shark. I'd forgot all about those fellers; and we hadn't see one for weeks, anyway. In warmer waters than them the _Sally S. Stern_ was then in, the sharks will come right up and stand with their noses out o' the sea begging like a dog for scraps. They'd bark, if they knew how, by gravy! "Well," went on Cap'n Amazon while Louise listened spellbound, "that dog Snowball was in a bad fix. A dog's a dog--almost human as you might say. But I wasn't aimin' puttin' myself in a shark's mouth for a whole kennel full o' dogs. "Mind you, not minutes but only seconds had passed since the dog shot outboard. The ship was not movin' fast. She heeled over again' and her spars and flappin' canvas was almost over my head as I glanced up. "And then I seen a sight--I did, for a fact. I cal'late you never give a thought to how high the teetering top of a mast on such a vessel as the _Sally S. Stern_ is, from the ocean level. Never did, eh? "Well," as the enthralled Louise shook her head, "they're taller than a lot of these tall buildings you see in the city. 'Skyscrapers' they call 'em. That's what the old Sally's topmasts looked like gazin' up at 'em out of the sea. They looked like they brushed the wind-driven clouds chasin' overhead. "And out o' that web of riggin' and small spars, and slattin' canvas, and other gear, I seen a man's body hurled into the air. It was Snowball, the man. Bill his right name was. "Flung himself, he did, clean out o' the ship and as she heeled back to starboard he shot down, feet first, straight as a die, and made a hole in the sea not ha'f a cable's length from me and nearer the dog than I was. And as he came down I seen his open knife flashing in his hand. "Yes, my dear, that was a mem'rable leap. Talk about these fellers jumpin' off that there Brooklyn Bridge! 'Tain't much higher. "The mate brought the _Sally S. Stern_ up into the wind, the second's crew got the boat over, and they picked me up in a jiffy. Then I stood up and yelled for 'em to pull on, for I could see the man, the dog, and the shark almost in a bunch together. "But," concluded Cap'n Amazon, "a nigger ain't often much afraid of a shark. When we got to 'em there was a patch of bloody water and foam; but it wasn't the blood of neither of the Snowballs that was spilled. They come out of it without a scratch." "Oh, Cap'n Amazon, what a really wonderful life you have led!" Louise said earnestly. Cap'n Amazon's eye brightened, and he looked vastly pleased. Whenever he made a serious impression with one of his tales of personal achievement or peril, he was as frankly delighted as a child. "Yes, ain't I?" he observed. "I don't for the life of me see how Abe's stood it ashore all these years. An' him keepin' a shop!" and he sniffed scornfully. Before Louise could make rejoinder, or bolster up the reputation of the absent Cap'n Abe in any way, the noise of an automobile stopping before the store was audible, "Now, if that's one o' them summer fellers, for gas I shall raise the price of it--I vow!" ejaculated Cap'n Amazon, but getting up briskly and laying aside his pipe and knitting. The summons did not come on the store door. Somebody opened the gate, came to the side door and rapped. Cap'n Amazon shuffled into the hall and held parley with the caller. "Why, come right in! Sure she's here--an' we're both sittin' up for comp'ny," Louise heard the captain say heartily. He ushered in Lawford Tapp. Not the usual Lawford, in rough fisherman's clothing or boating flannels--or even in the chauffeur's uniform Louise supposed he sometimes wore. But in the neat, well-fitting clothing of what the habit-advertising pages of the magazines term the "up to date young man." His sartorial appearance outclassed that of any longshoreman she had ever imagined. Louise gave him her hand with just a little apprehension. She realized that for a young man to make an evening call upon a girl in a simple community such as Cardhaven might cause comment which she did not care to arouse. But it seemed Lawford Tapp had an errand. "I do not know, Miss Grayling, whether you care to go out in my _Merry Andrew_ now that your friends have arrived," he said. "But if you do, we might go on Thursday." "Day after to-morrow? Why not?" she replied with alacrity. "Of course I shall be glad to go--as I already assured you. My--er--friends' coming makes no difference." She thought he referred to Aunt Euphemia and the Perritons. "They will not take up so much of my time that I shall have to desert all my other acquaintances." Lawford cheered up immensely at this statement. Cap'n Amazon had gone into the store at once and now returned with, his box of "private stock two-fors," one of which choice cigars each of the men took. "Light up! Light up!" he said cordially. "My niece don't mind the smell of tobacker." Cap'n Amazon was much more friendly with Lawford than Louise might have expected him to be. But, of course, hospitality was a form of religion with the Silt brothers. They could neither of them have treated a guest shabbily. Indeed, under the influence of the cigar and the presence of another listener, the captain expanded. With little urging he related incident after incident of his varied career--stories of stern trial, of dangerous adventure, of grim fights with the ravening sea; peril by shipwreck, by fire, by savages; encounters with whales and sharks, with Malay pirates; voyaging with a hold full of opium-crazed coolie laborers, and of actual mutiny on the hermaphrodite brig, _Galatea_, when Cap'n Amazon alone of all the afterguard was left alive to fight the treacherous crew and navigate the ship. Those two hours were memorable--and would remain so in Louise's mind for weeks. Lawford Tapp, too, quite gave himself up to the charm of the old romancer. To watch Cap'n Amazon's dark intent face and his glowing eyes, while he told of these wonders of sea and land, would have thrilled the most sophisticated listener. "Isn't he a wonder?" murmured Lawford, as Louise accompanied him to the gate and watched him start the automobile engine. "I never heard such a fellow in my life. And good as gold!" Louise had made up her mind to be distinctly casual with the young man hereafter; but his hearty praise of her uncle warmed her manner toward him. Besides, she had to confess in secret that Lawford was most likable. She mentioned her aunt's arrival in the neighborhood and he asked, laughing: "Oh, then shall we have her for our chaperon?" "Aunt Euphemia? Mercy, no! I have chosen Betty Gallup and believe me, Mr. Tapp, Betty is much to be preferred." It was odd that Louise had not yet discovered who and what Lawford Tapp was. Yet the girl had talked with few of the neighbors likely to discuss the affairs of the summer residents along The Beaches. And, of course, she asked Cap'n Amazon no questions, for he was not likely to possess the information. After she had bidden her uncle good-night and retired, thoughts of Lawford Tapp kept her mind alert. She could not settle herself to sleep. With the lamp burning brightly on the stand at the bedside and herself propped with pillows, she opened the old scrapbook found in the storeroom chest and fluttered its pages. Almost immediately she came upon a story related in the Newport _Mercury_. It was the supposedly veracious tale of an ancient sea captain who had been a whaler in the old days. There, almost word for word, was printed the story Cap'n Amazon had told her that evening about the black man and the black dog! CHAPTER XV THE UNEXPECTED The finding of one of Cap'n Amazon's amazing narratives of personal prowess in the old scrapbook shocked Louise Grayling. The mystery of the thing made alert her brain and awoke in the girl vague suspicions that troubled her for hours. Indeed, it was long that night before she could get to sleep. During these days of acquaintanceship and familiarity with the old sea captain she had learned to love him so well for his good qualities that it was easy for her to forgive his faults. If he "drew the long bow" in relating his adventures, his niece was prepared to excuse the failing. There was, too, an explanation of this matter, and one not at all improbable. The reporter of the _Mercury_ claimed to have taken down the story of the black man who had fought a shark for the life of his dog just as it fell from the lips of an ancient mariner. This mariner might have been Cap'n Amazon Silt himself. Why not? The captain might have been more modest in relating his personal connection with the incident when talking with the reporter than he had been in relating the story to his niece. Still, even with this suggested explanation welcomed to her mind, Louise Grayling was puzzled. She went through the entire scrapbook, skimming the stories there related, to learn if any were familiar. But no. She found nothing to suggest any of the other tales Cap'n Amazon had related in her hearing. And it was positive that her uncle had not read this particular story of the black man and the black dog since coming to the store on the Shell Road, for Louise had had possession of the book. Therefore she was quite as mystified when she fell asleep at dawn as she had been when first her discovery was made. She was half determined to probe for an explanation of the coincidence when she came downstairs to a late breakfast. But no good opportunity presented itself for the broaching of any such inquiry. She wished to make preparations for the fishing party in the _Merry Andrew_, and that kept her in the kitchen part of the day. She baked a cake and made filling for sandwiches. Betty Gallup accepted the invitation to accompany Louise on the sloop without hesitation. She approved of Lawford Tapp. Yet she dropped nothing in speaking of the young man to open Louise's eyes to the fact that he was the son of a multi-millionaire. The activities of the moving picture company increased on this day; but it was not until the following morning, when Louise went shoreward with the tackle and the smaller lunch basket, that she again saw Mr. Judson Bane to speak to. As she sat upon the thwart of the old skiff where Washy Gallup had mended his net, the handsome leading man of the picture company strolled by. Bane certainly made a picturesque fisherman, whether he looked much like the native breed or not. An open-air studio had been arranged on the beach below the Bozewell bungalow, and Louise could see a director trying to give a number of actors his idea of what a group of fishermen mending their nets should look like. "He should engage old Washy Gallup to give color to the group," Louise said to Bane, laughing. "Anscomb is having his own troubles with that bunch," sighed the leading man. "Some of them never saw a bigger net before than one to catch minnows. Do you sail in this sloop I see coming across from the millionaire's villa, Miss Grayling?" "Yes," Louise replied. "Mr. Tapp is kind enough to take us fishing." "You are, then, one of these fortunate creatures," and Bane's sweeping gesture indicated that he referred to the occupants of the cottages set along the bluff above The Beaches, "who toil not, neither do they spin. I fancied you might be one of us. Rather, I've heard that down here." "That surmise gained coinage when I first arrived at Cardhaven," Louise said, dimpling. "I did nothing to discourage the mistake, and I presume Gusty Durgin still believes I pose before the camera." "Gusty has aspirations that way herself," chuckled Bane. "She is a character." "I wonder what kind of screen actress I would make?" He smiled down at her rather grimly. "The kind the directors call the appealing type, I fancy, Miss Grayling. Though I have no doubt you would do much better than most. Making big eyes at a camera is the limit of art achieved by many of our feminine screen stars. I do not expect to put in a very pleasant summer amid my present surroundings." "Oh, then you are here for more than one picture." "Several, if the weather proves propitious. I shall play the fisherman hero, or the villain, until my manager has my new play ready in the fall. Believe me, Miss Grayling, I am not in love with this picture drama. But when one is offered for his resting season half as much again as he can possibly earn during the run of a legitimate Broadway production he must not be blamed for accepting the contract. We all bow to the power of gold." Louise, whose gaze was fixed upon the approaching sloop, smiled. She was thinking; "All but Lawford Tapp, the philosophic fisherman!" "I believe," Bane said, with flattery, "that I should delight to play opposite to you, Miss Grayling, rank amateur though you would be. This Anscomb really is a wonderful director and gets surprising results from material that cannot compare with you. I'll speak to him if you say the word. He'd oblige me, I am sure. One of the scripts he has told me about has a part fitted to you." "Oh, Mr. Bane!" she cried. "I'd have to think about that, I fear. And such a tempting offer! Now, if you said that to Gusty Durgin----" At the moment Betty Gallup came into view. Masculine in appearance at any time in her man's hat and coat, she was doubly so now. She frankly wore overalls, but had drawn a short skirt over them; and she wore gum boots. Bane stared at this apparition and gasped: "Is--is it a man--or what?" "Why, Mr. Bane! That is my chaperon." "Chaperon! Ye gods and little fishes! Miss Grayling, no matter where you go, or with whom, you are perfectly safe with _that_ as a chaperon." "How rediculous, Mr. Bane!" the girl cried, laughing. Betty strode through the sand to the spot where they stood. "This is Mr. Bane, Betty," Louise continued, "Mrs. Gallup, Mr. Bane." The actor swept off his sou'wester with a flourish. Betty eyed him with disfavor. "So you're one o' them play-actors, be you? Land sakes! And tryin' to look like a fisherman, too! I don't s'pose you know a grommet from the bight of a hawser." "Guilty as charged," Bane admitted with a chuckle. "But we all must live, Mrs. Gallup." "Humph!" grunted the old woman. "Are you sure that's so in ev'ry case? There's more useless folks on the Cape now than the Recordin' Angel can well take care on." "Oh, Betty!" Louise gasped. But Bane was highly amused. "I'm not at all sure you're not right, Mrs. Gallup. I sometimes feel that if I were a farmer and raised onions, or a fisherman and caught the denizens of the sea, I might feel a deeper respect for myself. As it is, when I work I am only _playing_." "Humph!" exploded Betty again. "'Denizens of the sea,' eh? New one on me. I ain't never heard of _them_ fish afore." The sail of the sloop slatted and then came down with the rattle of new canvas. Having let go the sheet, Lawford ran forward and pitched the anchor over. Then he drew in the skiff that trailed the _Merry Andrew_, stepped in, and sculled himself ashore, beaching the boat, just as Cap'n Amazon came down from the store with a second basket of supplies. "Wish I was goin' with ye," he said heartily. "Would, too, if I could shut up shop. But I promised Abe I'd stay by the ship till he come home again." Louise introduced her uncle to Mr. Bane; but during the bustle of getting into the skiff and pushing off she overlooked the fact that Lawford and the actor were not introduced. "Bring us home a mess of tautog," Cap'n Amazon shouted. "I sartainly do fancy blackfish when they're cooked right. Bile 'em, an' serve with an egg sauce, is my way o' puttin' 'em on the table." "That was Cap'n Abe's way, too," muttered Betty. The cloud on Lawford Tapp's countenance did not lift immediately as he sculled them out to the anchored sloop. Louise saw quickly that his ill humor was for Bane. "I must keep this young man at a distance," she thought, as she waved her hand to Uncle Amazon and Mr. Bane. "He takes too much for granted, I fear. Perhaps, after all, I should have excused myself from this adventure." She eyed Lawford covertly as, with swelling muscles and lithe, swinging body, he drove his sculling oar. "But he does look more 'to the manner born'--much more the man, in fact--than that actor!" Lawford could not for long forget his duty as host, and he was as cheerful and obliging as usual by the time the three had scrambled aboard the _Merry Andrew_. Immediately Betty Gallup cast aside her skirt and stood forth untrammeled in the overalls. "Gimme my way and I'd wear 'em doin' housework and makin' my garding," she declared. "Land sakes! I allus did despise women's fooleries." Louise laughed blithely. "Why, Betty," she said, "lots of city women who do their own housework don 'knickers' or gymnasium suits to work in. No excuse is needed." "Humph!" commented the old woman. "I had no idee city women had so much sense. The ones I see down here on the Cape don't show it." The morning breeze was light but steady. The _Merry Andrew_ was a sweetly sailing boat and Lawford handled her to the open admiration of Betty Gallup. The old woman's comment would have put suspicion in Louise's mind had the girl not been utterly blind to the actual identity of the sloop's owner. "Humph! you're the only furiner, Lawford Tapp, I ever see who could sail a smack proper. But you got Cape blood in you--that's what 'tis." "Thank you, Betty," he returned, with the ready smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "That is a compliment indeed." The surf only moaned to-day over Gull Rocks, for there was little ground swell. The waves heaved in, with an oily, leisurely motion and, it being full sea, merely broke with a streak of foam marking the ugly reef below. A little to the seaward side of the apex of the reef Betty, at a word from Lawford, cast loose the sheet and then dropped the anchor. "Mussel beds all about here," explained the young man to his guest. "That means good feeding for the blackfish. Can't catch them anywhere save on a rock bottom, or around old spiles or sunken wrecks. Better let me rig your line, Miss Grayling. You'll need a heavier sinker than that for outside here--ten ounces at least. You see, the tug of the undertow is considerable." Betty Gallup, looking every whit the "able seaman" now, rigged her own line quickly and opened the bait can. "Land sakes!" she exclaimed. "Where'd you get scallop bait this time o' year, Lawford? You must be a houn' dog for smellin' 'em out." "I am," he laughed. "I know that tautog will leave mussels for scallop any time. And we'll have the eyes of the scallops fried for lunch. They're all ready in the cabin." The pulpy, fat bodies of the scallop--a commercial waste--were difficult to hang upon the short, blunt hooks; but Lawford seemed to have just the knack of it. He showed Louise how to lower the line to the proper depth, advising: "Remember, you'll only feel a nibble. The tautog is a shy fish. He doesn't swallow hook, line, and sinker like a hungry cod. You must snap him quick when he takes the hook, for his mouth is small and you must get him instantly--or not at all." Louise found this to be true. Her hooks were "skinned clean" several times before she managed to get inboard her first fish. She learned, too, why the tackle for tautog has to be so strong. Once hooked, the fish darts straight down under rocks or into crevasses, and sulks there. He comes out of that ambush like a chunk of lead. The party secured a number of these dainty fish; but to lend variety to the day's haul they got the anchor up after luncheon and ran down to the channels there to chum for snappers. Lawford had brought along rods; for to catch the young and gamey bluefish one must use an entirely different rigging from that used for tautog. Louise admired the rod Lawford himself used. She knew something about fancy tackle, and this outfit of the young man, she knew, never cost a penny less than a hundred dollars. "And this sloop, which is his property," she thought, "is another expensive possession. I can see where his money goes--when he has any to spend. He is absolutely improvident. Too bad." She had to keep reminding herself, it seemed, of Lawford Tapp's most glaring faults. Improvidence and a hopeless leaning toward extravagance were certainly unforgivable blemishes in the character of a young man in the position she believed Lawford held. The sport of chumming for snappers, even if they hooked more of sluggish fluke than of the gamier fish to tempt which the chopped bait is devoted, was so exciting that Betty, sailing the sloop, overlooked a pregnant cloud that streaked up from the horizon almost like a puff of cannon smoke. The squall was upon them so suddenly that Louise could not wind in her line in good season. Lawford was quicker; but in getting his tackle inboard he was slow to obey Betty's command: "Let go that sheet! Want to swamp us, foolin' with that fancy fish rod?" "Aye, aye, skipper!" he sang out, laughing, and jumped to cast off the line in question just as the sail bulged taut as a drumhead with the striking squall. There was a "lubber's loop" in the bight of the sheet and as the young man loosed it his arm was caught in this trap. The boom swung viciously outboard and Lawford went with it. He was snatched like some inanimate object over the sloop's rail and, the next instant, plunged beneath the surface of the suddenly foam-streaked sea. CHAPTER XVI A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS Lawford came up as the sloop swept by on her new tack, his smile as broad as ever. He blew loudly and then shouted: "Going---too--fast--for--me! Whoa! Back up a little, ladies, and let me climb aboard." "Well, of all the crazy critters!" the "able seaman" declared. "Stand by with that boathook, Miss Lou, and see if you can harpoon him." Louise swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to laugh too. To tell the truth, the accident to Lawford Tapp had frightened her dreadfully at the moment it occurred. Betty Gallup put over the wheel and the _Merry Andrew_, still under propulsion of the bursting squall, flew about, almost on her heel. Louise, who was shielding her eyes from the flying spray under the sharp of her hand and watching the head and shoulders of Lawford as he plowed through the jumping waves with a great overhand stroke, suddenly shrieked aloud: "Oh, Betty!" "What's the matter? Land sakes!" Both saw the peril threatening the swimmer. The light skiff at the end of the long painter whipped around when the line tautened. As Betty cried out in echo to Louise's wail, the gunnel of the skiff crashed down upon Lawford's head and shoulders. "Oh! Oh! He's hurt!" cried Louise. "He's drowned--dead!" ejaculated Betty Gallup. "Here, Miss Lou, you take the wheel----" But the girl had no intention of letting the old woman go overboard. Betty in her heavy boots would be wellnigh helpless in the choppy sea. If it were possible to rescue Lawford Tapp she would do it herself. The human mind is a wonderfully constituted--mechanism, may we call it? It receives and registers impressions that are seemingly incoordinate; then of a sudden each cog slips into place and the perfection of a belief, of an opinion, of a desire, even of a most momentous discovery, is attained. Thus instantly Louise Grayling had a startling revelation, "Handle the boat yourself, Betty!" she commanded. "_I am going to get him_." Her skirt was dropped, even as she spoke. She wore "sneaks" to-day instead of high boots, and she kicked them off without unlacing them. Then, poising on the rail for a moment, she dived overboard on a long slant. She swam under the surface for some fathoms and coming up dashed the water from her eyes to stare about. The black squall had passed. The sea dimpled in blue and green streaks as before. A few whitecaps only danced about the girl. Where Lawford had gone down---- A round, sleek object--like the head of a seal--bobbed in the agitated water. It was not ten yards away. Had she not been so near she must have overlooked it. He might have sunk again, going down forever, for it was plain the blow he had suffered had deprived Lawford of consciousness. Louise wasted no breath in shouting, nor moments in looking back at Betty and the sloop. All her life she had been confident in the water. She had learned to ride a surfboard with her father like the natives in Hawaii. A comparatively quiet sea like this held no terrors for Louise Grayling. She dived in a long curve like a jumping porpoise, and went down after the sinking man. In thirty seconds she had him by the hair, and then beat her way to the surface with her burden. Lawford's face was dead white; his eyes open and staring. There was a cut upon the side of his head from which blood and water dribbled upon her shoulder as she held him high out of the sea. There sounded the clash of oars in her ears. How Betty had lowered the jib, thrown over the anchor, and manned the skiff so quickly would always be a mystery to Louise. But the "able seaman" knew this coast as well, at least, as Lawford Tapp. They were just over a shoal, and there was safe anchorage for a small craft. "Give him to me. Land sakes!" gasped Betty over her head. "I never see no city gal like you, Miss Lou." Nor had Louise ever seen a woman with so much muscular strength and the knowledge of how to apply it as Betty displayed. She lifted Lawford out of the girl's arms and into the skiff with the dexterity of one trained in hauling in halibut, for Betty had spent her younger years on the Banks with her father. Louise scrambled into the skiff without assistance. Betty was already at the oars and Louise took the injured head of the man in her lap. He began to struggle back to life again. "I--I'm all right," he muttered. "Sorry made such a--a fool--of--myself." "Hush up, _you_!" snapped Betty. "I'd ought to have seed to this skiff. Then you wouldn't have got battered like you did." A tear ran frankly down Betty's nose and dripped off its end. "If anything really bad had happened to you, Lawford, I'd a-never forgive myself. I thought you was a goner for sure." "Thanks to you, I'm not, I guess, Betty," he said more cheerfully. He did not know who had jumped overboard to his rescue. For some reason the girl was suddenly embarrassed by this fact. The skiff reached the plunging sloop and Louise got inboard and aided Betty to get Lawford over the rail. Then she slipped on her skirt. Lawford slumped down in the cockpit, saying he was all right but looking all wrong. "Going to get him back to Tapp Point just as quick as I can," declared the "able seaman" to Louise. "Doctor ought to see that cut." "Oh, Betty!" "Now, now, Miss Lou," murmured the old woman with the light of sudden comprehension in her eyes. "Don't take on now! You've been a brave gal so fur." "And I will keep my courage," Louise said with tremulous smile. "Go right over there an' hold his head, Miss Lou. Pet him up a leetle bit; 'twon't hurt a mite." The vivid blush that dyed the girl's cheeks signaled the fact that Betty had guessed more of the truth than Louise cared to have her or anybody know. She shook her head negatively to the keen-eyed old woman; nevertheless she went forward, found one of Lawford's handkerchiefs and bound up his head. The cut did not seem very deep; yet the shock of the blow he had suffered certainly had dulled the young man's comprehension. "Thank you--thank you," he muttered and laid his head down on his arms again. Betty rounded the end of the Neck where the lighthouse stood. One of the lightkeepers was on the gallery just under the lamp chamber and had been watching them through his glasses. He waved a congratulatory hand as the _Merry Andrew_ shot along, under the "able seaman's" skillful guidance. "I'm goin' to put you ashore in the skiff right there by the store, Miss Lou," Betty said. "Shouldn't I get a doctor and send him over to the Point?" "They've got a telephone there," Betty told her. "I--I hope they'll take good care of him." "They ought to," sniffed Betty. "I'll see to it he's all right, Miss Lou, before I leave him." "Thank you, Betty," returned the girl, too honest to make any further attempt to deny her deep interest in the man. When the sail rattled down and Louise tossed over the anchor, Lawford roused a bit. "Sorry the trip turned out so rotten bad, Miss Grayling," he mumbled. "I--I don't feel just right yet." Louise patted his shoulder. "You poor boy!" she said tenderly. "Don't mind about me. It's you we are worrying about. But I am sure you cannot be seriously injured. Betty will take you directly over to the Point and the folks there will get a doctor for you. Next time we'll have a much nicer fishing trip, Mr. Tapp. Good-bye." He muttered his adieu and watched her get into the skiff after Betty and the baskets. The "able seaman" rowed quickly to the beach. The sharp eyes of Mr. Bane noted their arrival, and he strode over to the spot where the skiff came in, to help Louise out of the boat and bring the baskets ashore. "You need a handy man, I see," the actor observed. "What a fine catch you have had--blackfish, snappers, and fluke, eh? I'll carry the baskets up to your uncle's store for you. Fine old man, your uncle, Miss Grayling. And what stories he can tell of his adventures--my word!" "Come over to-night and tell me how he is, betty, won't you?" the girl whispered to the "able seaman" and the latter, nodding her comprehension, pulled back to the sloop. Neither of them saw that Lawford was watching the little group on shore and that when Bane and the girl turned toward the store the young man looked after them with gloomy visage. The girl's replies to Bane's observation were most inconsequential. Her mind was upon Lawford and his condition. She was personally uncomfortable, too; for although the sun and wind had dried her hair and her blouse, beneath the dry skirt her clothing was wet. As they came to the Shell Road the long, gray roadster Louise had seen before came down from town. L'Enfant Terrible was at the wheel while her two older sisters sat in the narrow seat behind. Cecile tossed a saucy word over her shoulder, indicating Louise and Bane, and her older sisters smiled superciliously upon the two pedestrians. Louise was too deeply occupied with thoughts of the injured man to note this by-play. CHAPTER XVII THE ODDS AGAINST HIM "Horrid taste she has, I must say," drawled Marian. Marian was the eldest of the Tapp girls. To tell the truth (but this is strictly in confidence and must go no further!) she had been christened Mary Ann after Israel Tapp's commonplace mother. That, of course, was some time before I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King, had come into his kingdom and assumed the robe and scepter of his present financial position. "Oh!" ejaculated Cecile. "That's Judson Bane, the Broadway star, she's walking with. I'd like to know him myself." "You coarse little thing!" drawled Marian. "And you not out yet!" Prue, the second sister, observed cuttingly. "You're only a child. I wish you'd learn your place and keep it." "Oh, fudge!" responded L'Enfant Terrible, not deeply impressed by these sisterly admonitions. Marian was twenty-six--two years Lawford's senior. She was a heavy, lymphatic girl, fast becoming as matronly of figure as her mother. She still bolstered up her belief that she had matrimonial prospects; but the men who wanted to marry her she would not have while those she desired to marry would not have her. Marian Tapp was becoming bored. Prue was a pretty girl. She was but nineteen. However, she had likewise assumed a bored air after being in society a single season. "That big actor man will put poor Fordy's nose out of joint with the film lady," Prue said. "Look out for that dog, Cis. It's the Perritons'. If you run over him----" "Nasty little thing!" grumbled Cecile. "And the apple of Sue Perriton's eye," drawled Marian. "Be careful what you are about, Cecile. It all lies with the Perritons whether we get into society this season or not." "And that Mrs. Conroth who is with them," put in Prue. "_She_ is the real thing--the link between the best of New York and Albany society. Old family--away back to the patroons--so old she has to keep moth balls hung in her family tree. My! if mother could once become the familiar friend of miladi Conroth----" "No such luck," groaned Marian. "After all's said and done, mother can't forget the candy kitchen. She always looks to me, poor dear, as though she had just been surreptitiously licking her fingers." "We _do_ have the worst luck!" groaned the second sister. "There's that Dot Johnson coming. Mother says daddy insists, and when I. Tapp does put down his foot----Well!" "We'll put her off on Fordy," suggested, the brighter-witted Cecile. "She rather fancies Ford, I think." "Dot Johnson!" chorused the older girls, in horror. "Not really?" Marian continued. "The Johnsons are impossible." "They've got more money than daddy has," said Prue. "But they have no aspirations--none at all," murmured Marian, in horror. "If Lawford married Dot Johnson it would be almost as bad as his being mixed up with that picture actress." "For him; not for us," said Prue promptly. "Of course, as far as the Johnsons go, they are too respectable for anything. Poor Fordy!" "Goodness!" snapped Cecile. "It's not all settled. The banns aren't up." The girls wheeled into the grounds surrounding the Tapp villa just as Betty Gallup guided the _Merry Andrew_ to the dock and leaped ashore with the mooring rope. Tapp Point consisted of about five acres of bluff and sand. At great expense the Taffy King had terraced the bluff and had made to grow several blades of grass where none at all had been able to gain root before. The girls saw the queer-looking Betty Gallup helping their brother out of the sloop. "Say! something's happened to Ford, I guess," Cecile cried, stopping the car short of the porte-cochere. "Run down and see," commanded Marian languidly. But Prue hopped out of the roadster and started down the path immediately. She and Lawford still had a few things in common. Mutual affection was one of them. "What's happened to him?" she cried. "You're Mrs. Gallup, aren't you?" "I'm Bet Gallup--yes. You run call up Doc Ambrose from over to Paulmouth. Your brother's got a bad knock on the head." "And he's been overboard!" gasped Prue. "I--I'm all right," stammered Lawford. "Let me lie down for a little while. Don't need a doctor." "You're as wet as a drowned rat," his sister said. "Come on up and get some dry clothes, Ford. I'm sure you're awful kind, Mrs. Gallup. I will telephone for the doctor at once." "You bet she's kind! Good old soul!" murmured Lawford. "I'd have been six fathoms deep if it hadn't been for Betty." "She hauled you into the boat, did she?" Prue said in a sympathetic tone. "Well, we won't forget _that_." Betty had stepped aboard the sloop again to reef down and make all taut. Her sailor-soul would not allow her to leave the lapstreak in a frowsy condition. Meanwhile Cecile came flying down from the garage, and between his two sisters Lawford was aided up to the house. Despite the young man's protests, Dr. Ambrose was called and he rattled over in what the jolly medical man termed his "one-horse shay." That rattletrap of a second-hand car was known in every town and hamlet for miles around. Sometimes he got stalled, for the engine of the car was one of the crankiest ever built, and the good physician had to get out and proceed on foot. When this happened the man who owned a horse living nearest to the unredeemed automobile always hitched up and dragged the car home. For Dr. Ambrose was beloved as few men save a physician is ever loved in a country community. "You got a hard crack and no mistake, young man," the physician said, plastering his patient's head in a workmanlike manner. "But you've a good, solid cranium as I've often told you. Not much to get hurt above the ears--mostly bone all the way through. Not easy to crack, like some of these eggshell heads." Lawford felt the effects of the blow, however, for the rest of the evening. His father was away and so he had no support against the organized attack of the women of the family. Although it is doubtful if I. Tapp would have sided with his son. "It really serves you right, Ford, for taking that movie actress sailing," drawled Marian. "It is a judgment upon him," sighed their mother, wiping her eyes. "Oh, Ford, if you only would settle down and not be so wild!" "'Wild!' Oh, bluey!" murmured L'Enfant Terrible, who considered her brother a good deal of a tame cat. "At least," Marian pursued, "you might carry on your flirtation in a less public manner." "'Flirtation!'" ejaculated Lawford, with a spark of anger--and then settled back on the couch with a groan. "My goodness me, Ford!" gasped Prue. "You're surely not in earnest?" "I should hope _not_," drawled Marian. "Oh, Ford, my boy----" "Now, mother, don't turn on the sprinkler again," advised L'Enfant Terrible. "It will do you no good. And, anyway, I guess Ford hasn't any too bright a chance with the Grayling. You ought to have seen that handsome Judson Bane lean over her when they were walking up to Cap'n Abe's. I thought he was going to nibble her ear!" "Cecile!" "Horrid thing!" Prue exclaimed. "I don't know where she gets such rude manners." "That boarding school last winter completely spoiled her," complained the mother. "And I sent her to it because Sue Perriton and Alice Bozewell go there." "And I had a fine chance to get chummy with _them_!" snapped Cecile. "They were both seniors." "But really," Marian went on, "your entanglement with that movie actress is sure to make trouble for us, Ford. You might be a little more considerate. Just as we are getting in with the Perritons. And their guest, Mrs. Conroth, was really very nice to mother this morning on the beach. She has the open sesame to all the society there is on this side of the Atlantic. It's really a wonderful chance for us, Ford." "And--he's bound--to spoil--it all!" Mrs. Tapp sobbed into an expensive bit of lace. "You might be a good sport, Fordy, dear," urged Prue. "Yes, Fordy; don't crab the game," added the vulgar Cecile. "You know very well," said the elder sister, "how hard we have tried to take our rightful place here at The Beaches. We have the finest home by far; daddy's got the most money of any of them, and let's us spend it, too. And still it's like rolling a barrel up a sand bank. Just a little thing will spoil our whole season here." "Do, do be sensible, Ford!" begged his mother. "Sacrifice yourself for the family's good," said Prue. "Dear Ford," began Mrs. Tapp again, "for my sake--for all our sakes--take thought of what you are doing. This--this actress person cannot be a girl you could introduce to your sisters----" "No more of that, mother!" exclaimed the young man, patience at last ceasing to be a virtue. "Criticise me if you wish to; but I will hear nothing against Miss Grayling." "Oh, dear! Now I have offended him again!" sobbed the matron. "You are too utterly selfish for words!" declared Marian. "You're a regular _pig_!" added Prue. "If you get mixed up with an actress, Fordy, I'll have a fine time when I come out, won't I?" complained Cecile. "Caesar's ghost!" burst from the lips of the badgered young man. "I wish Betty Gallup had let me drown instead of hauling me inboard this afternoon!" CHAPTER XVIII SOMETHING BREAKS An express wagon, between the shafts of which was a raw-boned gray horse leaning against one shaft as a prop while he dozed, stood before Cap'n Abe's store as Louise and Mr. Judson Bane came up from the shore front. She thanked the actor as he set the heavy baskets on the porch step. "Those blackfish look so good I long for a fish supper," he said, smiling in open admiration upon her. Louise was quick to establish a reputation for hospitality. Perhaps it was the Silt blood that influenced her to say: "Wait till I speak to Uncle Amazon, Mr. Bane." There was a tall gaunt man in overalls and jumper, who, somehow, possessed a family resemblance to the gray horse, leaning against the door frame, much as his beast leaned against the wagon shaft. Perry Baker and the gray horse had traveled so many years together about Paulmouth and Cardhaven that it was not surprising they looked alike. When Louise mounted the porch steps she could not easily pass the expressman, who was saying, in drawling tones: "Well, I brought it over, seeing I had a light load. I didn't know what else to do with it. Of course, it was Cap'n Abe give it to me to ship. Let's see, I didn't happen to see you here that night you came, an' I brought the young lady's trunks over, did I?" "Not as I know on," barked Cap'n Amazon with brevity. "Funny how we didn't meet then," drawled Perry Baker. There seemed to be a tenseness to the atmosphere of the old store. Louise saw the usual idlers gathered about the cold stove--Washy Gallup on his nail-keg, his jaw wagging eagerly; Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue side by side with their elbows on the counter; Cap'n Joab Beecher leaning forward on his stick--all watching Cap'n Amazon, it seemed, with strained attention. It was like a scene set for a play--for the taking of a film, perhaps. The whimsical thought came to Louise that the director had just shouted: "Get set!" and would immediately add: "Action! Camera! Go!" "Course," Perry Baker drawled, "I sent it to Boston as consigner, myself; so when the chest warn't called for within a reasonable time they shipped it back to me, knowin' I was agent. Funny Cap'n Abe didn't show up for to claim it." Cap'n Amazon, grim as a gargoyle, leaned upon the counter and stared the expressman out of countenance, saying nothing. Perry shifted uneasily in the doorway. The captain's silence and his stare were becoming irksome to bear. "Well!" he finally ejaculated, "that's how 'tis. I'd ha' waited till--till Cap'n Abe come home--if he ever _does_ come; but my wife, Huldy, got fidgety. She reads the papers, and she's got it into her head there's something wrong 'bout the old chest. She dreamed 'bout it. An' ye know, when a woman gets to dreamin' she'll drag her anchors, no matter what the bottom is. She says folks have been murdered 'fore now and their bodies crammed into a chest----" "Why, you long-winded sculpin!" exclaimed Cap'n Amazon, at length goaded to speech. "Bring that chest in and take a reef in your jaw-tackle. I knew a man once't looked nigh enough like you to be your twin; and he was purt nigh a plumb idiot, too." Louise had never before heard her uncle's voice so sharp. It was plain he had not seen his niece until after Perry Baker turned and clumped out upon the porch, thus giving the girl free entrance to the store. She turned, smiling a little whimsically, and said to Bane: "The moment is not propitious, I fear. Uncle Amazon seems to be put out about something." "Don't bother him now, I beg," urged the actor, lifting his hat. "I will call later--if I may." "Certainly, Mr. Bane," she said with seriousness. "Uncle Amazon and I will both be glad to see you." The expressman came heavily up the steps with a green chest on his shoulder. It had handles of tarred rope and had plainly seen much service; indeed, it was brother to the box in the storeroom which Louise had found filled with nautical literature. The girl entered the store ahead of the staggering expressman, but stepped aside for him to precede her, for she wished to beckon to Amiel to come out for the baskets of fish. "Watch out where you're putting your foot, Perry!" Cap'n Joab suddenly exclaimed. His warning was too late. Some youngster, eager to peel his banana, had flung its treacherous skin upon the floor. The expressman set his clumsy boot upon it. "Whee! 'Ware below!" yelled Amiel Perdue. To recover his footing Perry let go of the chest. It fell to the floor with a mighty crash, landing upon one corner and bursting open. During the long years it had stood in Cap'n Abe's storeroom the wood had suffered dry rot. "Land o' Liberty an' all han's around!" bawled the irrepressible Milt Baker. "There ain't ho corpse in that dust, for a fac'!" "What kind of a mess d'ye make that out to be, I want to know?" cackled Washy Gallup. The hinges had torn away from the rotting wood so that the lid lay wide open. Tumbled out upon the floor were several ancient garments, including a suit of quite unwearable oilskins, and with them at least a wheelbarrow load of bricks! "Well, I vum!" drawled the expressman, at length recovering speech. "I hope Huldy'll be satisfied." But Cap'n Joab Beecher was not. He stood up and pointed his stick at the heap of rubbish on the floor and his voice quavered as he shrilly asked: "Then, _where's Cap'n Abe_?" They all turned to stare again at Cap'n Amazon. That hardy mariner seemed to be quite as self-possessed as usual. His grim lips opened and in caustic tone he said: "You fellers seem to think that I'm Abe Silt's keeper. I ain't. Abe's old enough--and ought to be seaman enough--to look out for Abe Silt. What tomfoolery he packed into that chest is none o' my consarn. I l'arnt years ago that Moses an' them old fellers left the chief commandment out o' the Scriptures. That's 'Mind your own business.' Abe's business ain't mine. Here, you Amiel! clear up that clutter an' let's have no more words about it." The decisive speech of the master mariner closed the lips of even Cap'n Joab. The latter did not repeat his query about Cap'n Abe but, with a baffled expression on his weather-beaten countenance, departed with Perry Baker. That a trap had been for Cap'n Amazon, that it had been sprung and failed to catch the master mariner, seemed quite plain to Louise. Betty Gallup's oft-expressed suspicions and Washy Gallup's gossip suddenly impressed the girl. With these vague thoughts was connected in her mind the discovery she had made that one of Cap'n Amazon's thrilling stories was pasted into the old scrapbook. Why she should think of that discovery just now mystified her; but it seemed somehow to dovetail into the enigma. Cap'n Amazon lifted the flap in the counter for Louise and in his usual kindly tone said: "Good fishin', Niece Louise? Bring home a mess?" "Yes, indeed," she told him. "The baskets are outside. Let Amiel bring them around to the back." "Aye, aye!" returned the captain briskly. "Tautog? We'll have 'em for supper," and let her pass as though nothing extraordinary had occurred. But to Louise's troubled mind the bursting of the old chest was like the explosion of a bomb in Cap'n Abe's store. What was the meaning of it all? Why had the chest been filled with bricks and useless garments? And by whom? If by Cap'n Abe, what was his object in doing such a perfectly incomprehensible thing? He had deliberately, it seemed, shipped a quite useless chest to Boston with no expectation of calling for it at the express office. Then, _where had he gone_? Cap'n Joab's query was the one uppermost in Louise Grayling's thought. All these incomprehensible things seemed to lead to that most important question. Had Cap'n Abe gone to sea, or had he not? If not, what had become of him? And how much more regarding his brother's disappearance did Cap'n Amazon know than the neighbors or herself? In her room Louise sat and faced the problem. She deliberated upon each incident connected with Cap'n Abe's departure as she knew them. From almost the first moment of her arrival at the store on the Shell Road, the storekeeper had announced the expected arrival of Cap'n Amazon and his own departure for a sea voyage if his brother would undertake the conduct of the store. The incidents of the night of Cap'n Amazon's coming and of Cap'n Abe's departure seemed reasonable enough. Here had arisen the opportunity long desired by the Shell Road storekeeper. His brother would remain to look out for his business while he could go seafaring. Cap'n Amazon knew just the craft for the storekeeper to sail in, clearing from the port of Boston within a few hours. There was not much margin of time for Cap'n Abe to make his preparations. Perry Baker was at hand with Louise's trunks, and the storekeeper had sent off his chest, supposedly filled with an outfit for use at sea. Just what he had intended to do with useless clothing and a hod of bricks it was impossible to understand. Cap'n Abe had come to her bedroom door to bid Louise good-bye, and she had seen him depart in the fog just at dawn. Yet nobody had observed him at the railroad station and he had not called for the chest at the Boston express office. The chest! That was the apex of the mystery. Never in this world had Cap'n Abe intended to take the chest with him to sea--or wherever else he had it in his mind to go. Nor was the chest intended to be returned to the store until Cap'n Abe himself came back from his mysterious journey. The fact that Perry Baker had shipped it in his own name instead of that of the owner had brought about this unexpected incident. Washy Gallup's gossip--his doubt regarding Cap'n Abe's shipping on a sea voyage--now came home to Louise with force. Washy suggested that the storekeeper was afraid of the sea; that in all his years at Cardhaven he had never been known to venture out of the quiet waters of the bay. To the girl's mind, too, came the remembrance of that talk she had had with Cap'n Abe on the evening of her arrival at the store. Was there something he had said then that explained this mystery? He had told her of the wreck of the Bravo and the drowning of Captain Joshua Silt, his father, in sight of his mother's window. She had been powerfully affected by that awful tragedy; this could not be doubted. And the son, Cap'n Abe, a posthumous child, might indeed have come into the world with that horror of the sea which must have filled his poor mother's soul. "It would explain why Uncle Abram never became a sailor--the only Silt for generations who remained ashore. Yet, he spoke that night as though he loved the sea--or the romance of it, at least," Louise thought. "Perhaps, too, his own inability to sail to foreign shores and his terror of the sea made him so worship Cap'n Amazon's prowess. For they say he was continually relating stories of his brother's adventures--even more marvelous tales than Cap'n Amazon himself has related. "Such a misfortune as Cap'n Abe's fear of the sea may easily explain his brother's good-natured scorn of him. Uncle Amazon doesn't say much about him; but I can see he looks upon Cap'n Abe as a weakling. "But," sighed the girl in conclusion, "even this does not explain the mystery of the chest, or where Cap'n Abe can be hiding. I wonder if Uncle Amazon knows?" CHAPTER XIX MUCH ADO As on previous occasions, Louise Grayling was deterred from putting a searching question to Cap'n Amazon because of his look and manner. The little she had seen of Cap'n Abe assured her that she would have felt no hesitancy in approaching the mild-mannered storekeeper upon any subject. But the master mariner seemed to be an entirely different personality. The way he had overawed the idlers in the store that afternoon when the old chest was broken open, and his refusal to make any further explanation of Cap'n Abe's absence, pinched out Louise's courage as one might pinch out a candle wick. That suspicion was rife in the community, and that the story of the strange contents of Cap'n Abe's chest had spread like a prairie fire, Louise was sure. Yet at supper time Cap'n Amazon was as calm and cheerful as usual and completely ignored the accident of the afternoon. "Hi-mighty likely mess of tautog you caught, Louise," he said, ladling the thick white gravy dotted with crumbly yellow egg yolk upon her plate with lavish hand. "That Lawford Tapp knows where the critters school, if he doesn't know much else." "Oh, Uncle Amazon! I think he is a very intelligent young man. Only he wastes his time so!" "He knows enough book l'arnin', I do allow," agreed Cap'n Amazon. "But fritters away his time as you say. They all do that over to Tapp P'int, I cal'late." "I wonder how it came to be called Tapp Point?" Louise asked, with a suddenly sharpened curiosity. "'Cause it's belonged to the Tapps since away back,--or, so Cap'n Joab says. That sand heap never was wuth a punched nickel a ton till these city folks began to build along The Beaches." Louise, in her own mind, immediately constructed another theory about Lawford Tapp, "the fisherman's son." The sandy point had been sold to the builder of the very ornate villa now crowning it, and the proceeds of that sale had paid for the _Merry Andrew_ sloop and the expensive fishing rod and the clothes of superquality which the young man wore. She shrank, however, from commenting upon this extravagant and spendthrift trait in his character, even to Uncle Amazon. Nor would she have spoken to anybody else upon the subject. Something had happened to Louise Grayling on this adventurous afternoon--something of which she scarcely dared think, let alone talk! The grip of fear at her heart when she thought Lawford was drowning had startled her as much as the accident itself. She had seen men in peril before--in deadly peril--without feeling any personal terror for their fate. In that moment when Lawford was sinking and she was preparing to leap to his aid, Louise had realized this fact. And in her inmost soul she admitted--with a thrill that shook her physically as well as spiritually--that her interest in this Cape Cod fisherman's son was an interest rooted in her inmost being. The incident of the wrecked sea chest held her attention in only a secondary degree. All through supper she was listening for Betty Gallup's heavy step. She knew she could not sleep that night without knowing how Lawford was. For the very reason that she felt so deeply regarding it, she shrank from talking with Cap'n Amazon of the accident that had happened to Lawford. She was glad the substitute storekeeper had "gone for'ard" again to attend to customers when Betty came clumping up the back steps. "He's all right, Miss Lou," said the kindly woman, patting the girl's hand. "I waited to see Doc Ambrose when he come back from the P'int. He says there ain't a thing the matter with him that vinegar an' brown paper won't cure. "But land sakes! Miss Lou, ain't this an awful thing 'bout your Uncle Abe's chest? That old pirate knows more'n he'd ought to 'bout what's come o' Cap'n Abe, even if they ain't brought it home to him yit." "Now, Betty, I wish you wouldn't," begged the girl. "Why should you give currency to such foolish gossip?" "What foolish gossip?" snapped the woman. "Why, about my Uncle Amazon." "How d'ye _know_ he's your uncle at all?" demanded Betty. "You never seen him before he come here. You never knowed nothin' 'bout him, so you said, 'fore you come here to Cardhaven." "But, Betty----" "Ain't no 'buts' about it!" fiercely declared the "able seaman." "Cap'n Abe's gone--disappeared. We don't know what's become of him. Course, Huldy Baker was a silly to think Cap'n Abe had been murdered and cut up like shark bait and shipped away in that old chest." "Oh!" "Yes. 'Cause Perry seen Cap'n Abe himself that night when he took the chest away. That was ridic'lous. But then, Huldy Baker ain't got right good sense, nor never had. "But it stands to reason Cap'n Abe had no intent of shipping aboard any craft with sich dunnage in his chest as they say was in it." "No-o. I suppose that is so," admitted Louise. "Then, what's become of the poor man?" Betty ejaculated. "Why, nobody seems to know. Not even Uncle Amazon." "Have you axed him?" demanded the other bluntly. "No. I haven't done that." "Humph!" was the rejoinder. "You're just as much afeared on him as the rest on us. You take it from me, Miss Lou, he's been a hard man on his own quarter-deck. He ain't no more like Cap'n Abe than buttermilk's like tartaric acid. "Cap'n Abe warn't no seafarin' man," pursued Betty, "though he had the lingo on his tongue and 'peared as salt as a dried pollock. It's in my mind that he wouldn't never re'lly go to sea--'nless he was egged on to it." Here it was again! That same doubt as expressed by Washy Gallup--the suggestion that Cap'n Abe Silt possessed an inborn fear of the sea that he had never openly confessed. "Why do you say that, Betty?" Louise hesitatingly asked the old woman. "'Cause I've knowed Cap'n Abe for more'n twenty year, and in all that endurin' time he's stuck as close to shore as a fiddler. With all his bold talk about ships and sailin', I tell you he warn't a seafarin' man." "But what has Uncle Amazon to do with the mystery of his brother's absence?" demanded Louise. "Humph! If he _is_ Cap'n Abe's brother. Now, now, you don't know no more about this old pirate than I do, Miss Lou. He influenced Cap'n Abe somehow, or someway, so't he cut his hawser and drifted out o' soundings--that's sure! Here this feller callin' himself Am'zon Silt has got the store an' all it holds, an' Cap'n Abe's money, and ev'rything." "Oh, Betty, how foolishly you talk," sighed the girl. "Humph! Mebbe. And then again, mebbe it ain't foolish. Them men to-day thought they could scare that old pirate into admittin' something if they sprung Cap'n Abe's chest on him. Oh, I knowed they was goin' to do it," admitted Betty. "Course, they had no idee what was in the chest. Bustin' it open was an accident. Perry Baker's as clumsy as a cow. But you see, Miss Lou, just how cool that ol' pirate took it all. Washy was tellin' me. He just browbeat 'em an' left 'em with all their canvas slattin'. "Oh, you can't tell me! That old pirate's handled a crew without no tongs, you may lay to that! And what he's done to poor old Cap'n Abe----" She went away shaking a sorrowful head and without finishing her sentence. Louise was unable to shake off the burden of doubt of Cap'n Amazon's character and good intentions. She felt that she could not spend the long evening in his company, and bidding him good-night through the open store door she retired to the upper floor. She felt that sleep was far from her eyelids on this night; therefore she lit a candle and went into the storeroom to get something to read. She selected a much battered volume, printed in an early year of the nineteenth century, its title being: LANDSMEN'S TALES: Seafaring Yarns of a Lubber. Louise became enthralled by the narratives of perilous adventure and odd happenings on shipboard which the author claimed to have himself observed. She read for an hour or more, while the sounds in the store below gradually ceased and she heard Cap'n Amazon close and lock the front door for the night. Silence below. Outside the lap, lap, lap of the waves on the strand and the rising moan of the surf over Gulf Rocks. Louise turned a page. She plunged into another yarn. Breathlessly and, almost fearfully she read it to the end--the very story of the murdered albatross and the sailors' superstitious belief in the bird's bad influence, as she had heard Cap'n Amazon relate it to Aunt Euphemia Conroth. She laid down the book at last in amazement and confusion. There was no doubt now of Cap'n Amazon's mendacity. This book of nautical tales had been written and printed _long before Amazon Silt was born_! And if the falseness of his wild narratives was established, was it a far cry to Betty Gallup's suspicions and accusations? What and who was this man, who called himself Amazon Silt who had taken Cap'n Abe's place in the store on the Shell Road? Louise lay with wide-open eyes for a long time. Then she crept out of bed and turned the key in the lock of her door--the first time she had thought to do such a thing since her arrival at Cardhaven. CHAPTER XX THE SUN WORSHIPERS "Them movin' picture people are hoppin' about The Beaches like sandpipers," observed Cap'n Amazon at the breakfast table. "And I opine they air pretty average useless, too. They were hurrahin' around all day yest'day while you was out fishin'. Want to take a picture of Abe's old store here. Dunno what to do about it." Louise was too much disturbed by her discoveries of overnight to give much attention to this subject. "It's Abe's store, you see," went on Cap'n Amazon. "Dunno how he'd feel 'bout havin' it took in a picture and showed all over the country. It needs a coat o' paint hi-mighty bad. Ought to be fixed up some 'fore havin' its picture took--don't ye think so, Niece Louise?" The girl awoke to the matter sufficiently to advise him: "The lack of paint will not show in the picture, Uncle Amazon. And I suppose they want the store for a location just because it is weather-beaten and old-fashioned." "I want to know! Well, now, if I was in the photograftin' business, seems t' me I'd pick out the nice-lookin' places to make pictures of. I knowed a feller once that made a business of takin' photografts in furin' parts. He sailed with me when I was master of the _Blue Sparrow_--clipper built she was, an' a spankin' fine craft. We----" "Oh, Uncle Amazon!" Louise cried, rising from, the table suddenly, "you'll have to excuse me. I--I forgot something upstairs. Yes--I've finished my breakfast. Betty can clear off." She fairly ran away from the table. It seemed to her as though she could not sit and listen to another of his preposterous stories. It would be on the tip of her tongue to declare her disbelief in his accuracy. How and where he had gained access to Cap'n Abe's store of nautical romances she could not imagine; but she was convinced that many, if not all, of his supposedly personal adventures were entirely fictitious in so far as his own part in them was concerned. She put on her hat and went out of the back door in order to escape further intercourse with Cap'n Amazon for the present. On the shore she found the spot below the Bozewell bungalow a busy scene. This was a perfect day for "the sun worshipers," as somebody has dubbed motion picture people. Director Anscomb was evidently planning to secure several scenes and the entire company was on hand. Louise saw that there were a number of spectators besides herself--some from the town, but mostly young folk from the cottages along The Beaches. Lawford Tapp was present, and she waved her hand to him, yet preserving an air of merely good comradeship. She was glad that he did not know that it was she who had leaped to his rescue the day before. Considering the nature of the feeling she had for him, into the knowledge of which his peril had surprised her, the girl could not endure any intimate conversation with Lawford. Not just then, at least. Tapp was in the midst of a group of girls, and she remarked his ease of manner. She did not wonder at it, for he was a gentleman by instinct no matter what his social level might be. Three of the girls were those Louise Grayling believed to be daughters of Lawford's employer. She saw that he was breaking away from the group with the intention of coming to her. L'Enfant Terrible said something to him and laughed shrilly. She saw Lawford's cheek redden. So Louise welcomed the approach of Mr. Bane, who chanced at the moment to be idle. "Now you will see us grinding them out, Miss Grayling," the actor said. Louise broke into a series of questions regarding the taking of the pictures. Her evident interest in the big leading man halted Lawford's approach. Besides, Miss Louder, who had evidently been introduced to the Taffy King's son, attached herself to him. She was a pretty girl despite the layers of grease paint necessary to accentuate the lights and shadows of her piquant face. Her manner with men was free without being bold. With a big parasol over her shoulder, she adapted her step to Lawford's and they strolled nearer. Bane was speaking of the script he had previously mentioned as containing a part eminently fitted for Louise. As Lawford and Miss Louder passed he said: "I am sure you can do well in that part, Miss Grayling. It is exactly your style." Had Lawford any previous reason for doubting Louise Grayling's connection with the moving picture industry this overheard remark would have lulled such a doubt to sleep. The young man realized well enough that Louise was a very different girl from the blithe young woman at his side. But how could he make I. Tapp see it? Money was not everything in the world; Lawford Tapp was far from thinking it was. He had always considered it of much less importance than the things one could exchange it for. However, never having felt the necessity for working for mere pelf, and being untrained for any form of industry whatsoever, his father's threat of disowning him loomed a serious menace to the young man. Not for himself did Lawford fear. He felt warm blood in his veins, vigor in his muscles, a keen edge to his nerves. He could work--preferably with his hands. He realized quite fully his limitation of brain power. But what right had he to ask any girl to share his lot--especially a girl like Louise Grayling, who he supposed won a sufficient livelihood in a profession the emoluments of which must be far greater than those of any trade he might seek to follow? He saw now that after his somewhat desultory college course, his months of loafing about on sea and shore had actually unfitted him for concentration upon any ordinary work. And he was not sanguine enough to expect an extraordinary situation to come his way. Then, too, the young man realized that Louise Grayling had not given him the least encouragement to lead him to believe that she thought of him at all. At this moment her preference for Bane's society seemed marked. Already Cecile had rasped Lawford regarding the leading man's attentions to Louise. Lawford could not face the taunting glances of Marian and Prue. They had come down to the beach on this particular morning he felt sure to comment--and not kindly--upon Louise Grayling. He hoped that she was not included in the director's plans for the day, and he was glad to see that she had no make-up on, as had these other young women. So he strolled on grimly with Miss Louder, who would not be called for work for an hour. But the young man heard little of her chatter. The tide was at the ebb and the two walked on at the edge of the splashing surf, where the strand was almost as firm as a cement walk. The curve of the beach took them toward the lighthouse and here, approaching with bucket and clam hoe along the flats, was the very lightkeeper who had watched the _Merry Andrew_ and her crew the day, before when Lawford met with his accident. "There ye be, Mr. Lawford," crowed the man, "as chipper as a sandpiper. But I swanny, I didn't ever expect t' hail ye again this side o' Jordan, one spell yest'day." "You had your glass on us, did you?" Lawford said languidly. "I did, young man--I did. An' when that bobbin' skiff walloped ye on the side of the head I never 'spected t' see you come up again. If it hadn't been for this little lady who------Shucks, now! This ain't her 'tall, is it?" "Oh, Mr. Tapp, were you in a boating accident yesterday?" cried Miss Louder. "I was overboard--yes," responded Lawford, but rather blankly, for he was startled by the lightkeeper's statement. "What do you mean, Jonas?" to the lightkeeper. "Didn't Betty Gallup haul me inboard?" "Bet Gallup--nawthin'!" exploded Jonas with disgust. "She handled that sloop o' yourn all right. I give her credit for that. But 'twas that there gal stayin' at Cap'n Abe's. Ye had her out with ye, eh?" "Miss Grayling? Certainly." "She's some gal, even if she is city bred," was the lightkeeper's enthusiastic observation. "An' quick! My soul! Ye'd ought to seen her kick off her skirt an' shoes an' dive after ye! I swanny, she was a sight!" "I should think she would have been!" gasped Miss Louder with some scorn. "Goodness me, she must be a regular stunt actress!" and she laughed shrilly. But Lawford gave her small attention. "Jonas, do you mean that?" he asked. "I thought it was Betty who saved me. Why, dad said this morning he was going to send the old woman a check. He doesn't much approve of me," and the heir of the Taffy King smiled rather grimly, "but as I'm the last Tapp----" "He's glad ye didn't git done for _com_-pletely, heh?" suggested Jonas, and giggled. "I wouldn't for a minute stand in the way of Bet Gallup's gittin' what's due her. She did pick ye both up, Lawford. But, land sakes! ye'd been six fathoms down, all right, if it hadn't been for that gal at Cap'n Abe's." "I--I had no idea of it. I never even thanked her," muttered Lawford. "What can she think of me?" But not even Miss Louder heard this. She realized, however, that the young man who she had been told was "the greatest catch at The Beaches" was much distrait and that her conversation seemed not to interest him at all. They went back toward the scene of the film activities. It was the hour of the usual promenade on the sands. Everybody in the summer colony appeared on the beach while the walking along the water's edge was fine. This promenade hour was even more popular than the bathing hour which was, of, course, at high tide. Groups of women, young and old, strolled under gay parasols, or camped on the sands to chat. Brilliantly striped marquees were set up below some of the cottages, in which tea and other refreshments were served. The younger people fluttered about, talking and laughing, much like a flock of Mother Carey's chickens before a storm. There were several wagons over from the Haven, in which the small-fry summer visitors arrived and joined their more aristocratic neighbors. The wagons stopped upon the Shell Road and the passengers climbed down to the beach between two of the larger cottages. The people at The Beaches had tried on several occasions to inclose the stretch of shore below their summer homes, and to make it a private beach. But even the most acquisitive of the town councilmen (and there were several of the fraternity of the Itching Palm in the council) dared not establish such a precedent. The right of the public to the shore at tide-water could not safely be ignored in a community of fishermen and clam diggers. So the shore on this morning had become a gay scene, with the interest centering on the open air studio of the film company. Lawford saw Louise walking on alone along the edge of the water. Bane had been called into conference by the director. Lawford could not well hasten his steps and desert Miss Louder, but he desired strongly to do so. And ere the film actress lingeringly left him to rejoin her company, Louise was some distance in advance. His sisters were near her. Lawford could see them look at her most superciliously, and the saucy Cecile said something that made Prue laugh aloud. Just beyond the Tapp girls was approaching a group of women and men. Lawford recognized them as the Perritons and their friends. Lawford had no particular interest in the summer crowd himself; but he knew the Perritons were influential people in the social world. With them was a majestic person the young man had never seen before. Undoubtedly the "Lady from Poughkeepsie." Her pink countenance and beautifully dressed gray hair showed to excellent advantage under the black and white parasol she carried. She stepped eagerly before the party, calling: "Louise!" Louise Grayling raised her head and waved a welcoming hand. "What brings you forth so early in the morning, auntie?" she asked, her voice ringing clearly across the sands. There were at least four dumfounded spectators of this meeting, and they were all named Tapp. Lawford stood rooted to the sands, feeling quite as though the universe had fallen into chaos. It was only L'Enfant Terrible who found speech. "Oh, my!" she cried. "What a mistake! The movie queen turns out to be some pumpkins!" CHAPTER XXI DISCOVERIES Louise, knowing Aunt Euphemia so well, was immediately aware that the haughty lady had something more than ordinarily unpleasant to communicate. It was nothing about Uncle Amazon and the Shell Road store; some other wind of mischance had ruffled her soul. But the girl ignored Aunt Euphemia's signals for several minutes; until she made herself, indeed, more familiar with the manner and personal attributes of these new acquaintances. There was a Miss Perriton of about her own age whom she liked at first sight. Two or three men of the party were clean-cut and attractive fellows. Despite the fact that their cottage had been so recently opened for the season, the Perritons had already assembled a considerable house party. "Louise, I wish to talk to you," at last said Mrs. Conroth grimly. "True," sighed her niece. "And how extremely exact you always are in your use of the language, auntie. You never wish to talk _with_ me. _You_ will do all the talking as usual, I fear." "You are inclined to be saucy," bruskly rejoined Aunt Euphemia. "As your father is away I feel more deeply my responsibility in this matter. You are a wayward girl--you always have been." "You don't expect me to agree with you on that point, do you, auntie?" Louise asked sweetly. Mrs. Conroth ignored the retort, continuing: "I am not amazed, after seeing your surroundings at the Silt place, that you should become familiar with these common longshore characters. But this that I have just learned--only this forenoon in fact--astonishes me beyond measure; it does, indeed!" "Let me be astonished, too, auntie. I love a surprise," drawled her niece. "Where were you yesterday?" demanded Aunt Euphemia sharply. Louise at once thought she knew what was coming. She smiled as she replied: "Out fishing." "And with whom, may I ask?" "With Betty Gallup, Uncle Abram's housekeeper." "But the man?" "Oh! Mr. Tapp, you mean? A very pleasant young man, auntie." "That is what I was told, Louise," her aunt said mournfully. "With young Tapp. And you have been seen with him frequently. It is being remarked by the whole colony. Of course, you can mean nothing by this intimacy. It arises from your thoughtlessness, I presume. You must understand that he is not--er----Well, the Tapps are not of our set, Louise." "My goodness, no!" laughed the girl cheerfully. "The Tapps are real Cape Codders, I believe." Aunt Euphemia raised her eyebrows and her lorgnette together. "I do not understand you, I fear. What the Tapps are by blood, I do not know. But they are not in society at all--not at all!" "Not in society?" repeated Louise, puzzled indeed. "Scarcely. Of course, as Mrs. Perriton says, the way the cottagers are situated here at The Beaches, the Tapps _must_ be treated with a certain friendliness. That quite impossible 'I. Tapp,' as he advertises himself, owns all the Point and might easily make it very disagreeable for the rest of the colony if he so chose." She stopped because of the expression on her niece's countenance. "What _do_ you mean?" Louise asked. "Who--who are these Tapps?" "My dear child! Didn't you know? Was I blaming you for a fault of which you were not intentionally guilty? See how wrong you are to go unwarned and unaccompanied to strange places and into strange company. I thought you were merely having a mild flirtation with that young man in the full light of understanding." Louise controlled her voice and her countenance with an effort. "Tell me, Aunt Euphemia," she repeated, "just who Lawford Tapp is?" "His father is a manufacturer of cheap candies. He is advertised far and wide as 'I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King.' Fancy! I presume you are quite right; they probably were nothing more than clam diggers originally. The wife and daughters are extremely raw; no other word expresses it. And that house! Have you seen it close to? There was never anything quite so awful built outside an architect's nightmare." "They own Tapp Point? _That_ is Lawford's home? Those girls are his sisters?" Louise murmured almost breathlessly. "Whom _did_ you take that young man to be, Louise?" "A fisherman's son," confessed her niece, in a very small voice. And at that Aunt Euphemia all but fainted. But Louise would say nothing more--just then. On the approach of some of her friends, Mrs. Conroth was forced to put a cap upon her vexation, and bid her niece good-day as sweetly as though she had never dreamed of boxing her ears. Louise climbed the nearest stairs to the summit of the bluff. She felt she could not meet Lawford at this time, and he was between her and the moving picture actors. Within the past few hours several things that had seemed stable in Louise Grayling's life had been shaken. She had accepted in the very first of her acquaintanceship with Lawford Tapp the supposition that his social position was quite inferior to her own. She was too broadly democratic to hold that as an insurmountable barrier between them. Her disapproval of the young man grew out of her belief in his identity as a mere "hired man" of the wealthy owner of the villa on the Point. She had considered that a man who was so intelligent and well educated and at the same time so unambitious was lacking in those attributes of character necessary to make him a success in life. His love for the open--for the sea and shore and all that pertained to them--coincided exactly with Louise's own aspirations. She considered it all right that her father and herself spent much of their time as Lawford spent his. Only, daddy-prof often added to the sum-total of human knowledge by his investigations, and sometimes added to their financial investments through his work as well. Until now she had considered Lawford Tapp's tendencies toward living such an irresponsible existence as all wrong--for him. The rather exciting information she had just gained changed her mental attitude toward the young man entirely. Louise gave no consideration whatsoever to Aunt Euphemia's snobbish stand in the matter of Lawford's social position. Professor Grayling had laughingly said that Euphemia chose to ignore the family's small beginnings in America. True, the English Graylings possessed a crest and a pedigree as long as the moral law. But in America the family had begun by being small tradespeople and farmers. Of course, Louise considered, Aunt Euphemia would be very unpleasant and bothersome about this matter. Louise had hoped to escape all that for the summer by fleeing to Cap'n Abe's store at Cardhaven. However (and the girl's lips set firmly) she was determined to take her own gait--to stand upon her own opinion--to refuse to be swerved from her chosen course by any consideration. Lawford Tapp was in a financial situation to spend his time in the improvement of his body and mind without regard to money considerations. Louise foresaw that they were going to have a delightful time together along the shore here, until daddy-prof came home in the fall. And then---- She saw no such cloud upon the horizon as Lawford saw. Louise acknowledged the existence of nothing--not even Aunt Euphemia's opposition--which could abate the happiness she believed within her grasp. She admitted that her interest in Lawford had risen far above the mark of mere friendly feeling. When she had seen him sinking the day before, and in peril of his life, she knew beyond peradventure that his well-being and safety meant more to her than anything else in the world. Now she was only anxious to have him learn that she instead of Betty had leaped into the sea after him. She would avoid him no more. Only she did not wish to meet him there on the beach before all those idlers. Louise feared that if she did so, she would betray her happiness. She thrilled with it--she was obsessed with the thought that there was nothing, after all, to separate Lawford and herself! Yet the day passed without his coming to the store on the Shell Road. Louise still felt some disturbance of mind regarding Cap'n Amazon. She kept away from him as much as possible, for she feared that she might be tempted to blurt out just what she thought of his ridiculous stories. She did not like to hear Betty Gallup utter her diatribes against the master mariner; although in secret she was inclined to accept as true many of the "able seaman's" strictures upon Cap'n Amazon's character. It was really hard when she was in his presence to think of him as an audacious prevaricator--and perhaps worse. He was so kindly in his manner and speech to her. His brisk consideration for her comfort at all times--his wistful glances for Jerry, the ancient canary, and the tenderness he showed the bird--even his desire to placate Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat--all these things withstood the growing ill-opinion being fostered in Louise Grayling's mind. Who and what was this mysterious person calling himself Cap'n Amazon Silt? She had, too, a desire to know just how many of those weird stories he told were filched from Cap'n Abe's accumulation of nautical literature. When Cap'n Amazon had gained access to the chest of books Louise could not imagine; but the fact remained that he had at least two of the stories pat. Louise had promised to spend the evening at the Perritons, and did so; but she returned to Cap'n Abe's store early and did not invite her escort in, although he was a youth eager to taste the novelty of being intimate with "one of these old Cape Codders," as he expressed it. "No," she told young Malcolm Standish firmly. "Uncle Amazon is not to be made a peepshow of by the idle rich of The Beaches. Besides, from your own name, you should be a descendant of Miles Standish, and blood relation to these Cape Codders yourself. And Uncle Amazon and Uncle Abram are fine old gentlemen." She said it boldly, whether she could believe it about Cap'n Amazon or not. "I will not play showman." "Oh, say! Ford Tapp comes here. I saw his car standing outside the other evening." "Mr. Tapp," Louise explained calmly, "comes in the right spirit. He is a friend of the--ahem--family. He is well known to Cap'n Abe who owns the store and has made himself acquainted with Cap'n Amazon over the counter." "And how has he made himself so solid with you, Miss Grayling?" Standish asked impudently. "By his gentlemanly behavior, and because he knows a deal more about boat-sailing and the shores than I know," she retorted demurely. "Leave it to me!" exclaimed Malcolm Standish. "I am going to learn navigation and fishology at once." "But--don't you think you may be too late?" she asked him, running up the steps. "Good-night, Mr. Standish!" Upon going indoors she did not find Cap'n Amazon. The lamp was burning in the living-room, but he was not there and the store was dark. Louise mounted the stairs, rather glad of his absence; but when she came to the top of the flight she saw the lamplight streaming through the open door of her uncle's bedroom. Diddimus, with waving tail, was just advancing into the "cabin," as Cap'n Amazon called the chamber he occupied. Knowing that he particularly objected to having any of his possessions disturbed, and fearing that Diddimus might do some mischief there, Louise followed the tortoise-shell, calling to him: "Come out of there! Come out instantly, Diddimus! What do you mean by venturing in where we are all forbidden to enter? Don't you know, Diddimus, that only fools dare venture where angels fear to tread? Scat!" Something on the washstand caught Louise's glance. In the bottom of the washbowl was the stain of a dark brown liquid. Beside it stood a bottle the label of which she could read from the doorway. She caught her breath, standing for half a minute as though entranced. Diddimus, hearing a distant footstep, and evidently suspecting it, whisked past Louise out of the room. There were other articles on the washstand that claimed the girl's notice; but it was to the bottle labeled "Walnut Stain" that her gaze returned. She crept away to her own room, lit her lamp, and did not even see Cap'n Amazon Silt again that night. CHAPTER XXII SHOCKING NEWS "Ford Tapp was here last night," Cap'n Amazon told Louise at the breakfast table. "I cal'late he was lookin' for you, though he didn't just up an' say so. Seemed worried like for fear't you wouldn't have a good opinion of him." "Mercy! what has he done?" cried the girl laughing, for even the sound of Lawford's name made her glad. "Seems it's what he ain't done. What's all this 'bout your jumpin' overboard t'other day and savin' him from drownin'?" and the mariner fairly beamed upon her. "Oh, uncle, you mustn't believe everything you hear!" "No? But Bet Gallup says 'tis so. You air a hi-mighty plucky girl, I guess. I allus have thought so--and so did Abe. But I kind of feel as though I'm sort o' responsible for your safety an' well-bein' while you air here, and I can't countenance no such actions." "Now, uncle!" "Fellers like Ford Tapp air as plenty as horse-briers in a sand lot; but girls like you ain't made often, I cal'late. Next time that feller has to be rescued, you let Bet Gallup do it." She knew Cap'n Amazon well enough now to see that his roughness was assumed. His eyes were moist as his gaze rested on her face, and he blew his nose noisily at the end of his speech. "You take keer o' yourself, Louise," he added huskily. "If anything should happen to you, what--what would Abe say?" The depth of his feeling for her--so plainly and so unexpectedly displayed--halted Louise in her already formed intention. She had arisen on this morning, determined to "have it out" with Cap'n Amazon Silt. On several points she wished to be enlightened--felt that she had a right to demand an explanation. For she was quite positive that Cap'n Amazon was not at all what he claimed to be. His actual personality was as yet a mystery to her; but she was positive on this point: He was _not_ Captain Amazon Silt, master mariner and rover of the seas. He was an entirely different person, and Louise desired to know what he meant by this masquerade. His seamanship, his speech, his masterful manner, were assumed. And in the matter of his related adventures the girl was confident that they were mere repetitions of what he had read. Now Louise suddenly remembered how Cap'n Abe had welcomed her here at the old store, and how cheerfully and tenderly this piratical looking substitute for the storekeeper had assumed her care. No relative or friend could have been kinder to her than Cap'n Amazon. How could she, then, stand before him and say: "Cap'n Amazon, you are an impostor. You have assumed a character that is not your own. You tell awful stories about adventures that never befell you. What do you mean by it all? And, in conclusion and above all, _Where is Cap'n Abe_?" This had been Louise's intention when she came downstairs on this morning. The nagging of Betty Gallup, the gossip of the other neighbors, the wild suspicions whispered from lip to lip did not influence her so much. It was what she had herself discovered the evening before in the captain's "cabin" that urged her on. Now Cap'n Amazon's display of tenderness "took all the wind out of her sails," as Betty Gallup would have said. Louise watched him stirring about the living-room, chirruping to old Jerry and thrusting his finger into the cage for the bird to hop upon it, and finally shuffling off into the store. She hesitatingly followed him. She desired to speak, but could not easily do so. And now Cap'n Joab Beecher was before her. Amiel Perdue had been uptown and brought down the early mail, of which the most important piece was always the Boston morning paper. Cap'n Joab had helped himself to this and was already unfolding it. "What's in the _Globe_ paper, Joab?" asked Cap'n Amazon. "You millionaires 'round here git more time to read it than ever _I_ do, I vum!" "It don't cost you nothin' to have us read it," said Cap'n Joab easily. "The news is all here arter we git through." "Uh-huh! I s'pose so. I'd ought to thank ye, I don't dispute, for keepin' the paper from feelin' lonesome. "I dunno why Abe takes it, anyway, 'cept to foller the sailin's and arrivals at the port o' Boston--'nless he finds more time to read than ever I do. I ain't ever been so busy in my life as I be in this store--'nless it was when I shipped a menagerie for a feller at a Dutch Guinea port and his monkeys broke out o' their cages when we was two days at sea and they tried to run the ship. "That was some v'y'ge, as the feller said," continued Cap'n Amazon, getting well under way as he lit his after-breakfast pipe. "Them monkeys kep' all the crew on the jump and the afterguard scurcely got a meal in peace, I was----" "Belay there!" advised Cap'n Joab, with disgust. "Save that yarn for the dog watch. What was it ye said that craft was named Cap'n Abe sailed in?" Cap'n Amazon stopped in his story-telling and was silent for an instant. Louise, who had stood at the inner doorway listening, turned to go, when she heard the substitute storekeeper finally say: "_Curlew_, out o' Boston." The name caught the girl's instant attention and she felt suddenly apprehensive. "Here's news o' her," Cap'n Joab said in a hushed voice. "And it ain't good news, Cap'n Silt." "What d'ye mean?" asked the latter. "Report from Fayal. A Portugee fisherman's picked up and brought in a boat with 'Curlew' painted on her stern, and he saw spars and wreckage driftin' near the empty boat. There's been a hurricane out there. It--it looks bad, Cap'n Silt." Before the latter could speak again Louise was at his side and had seized his tattooed arm. "Uncle Amazon!" she gasped. "Not the _Curlew_? Didn't I tell you before? That is the schooner daddy-prof's party sailed upon. Can there be two Curlews?" "My soul and body!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab. It was Cap'n Amazon who kept his head. "Not likely to be two craft of the same name and register--no, my dear," he said, patting her hand. "But don't take this so much to heart. It's only rumor. A dozen things might have happened to set that boat adrift. Ain't that so, Cap'n Joab?" Cap'n Joab swallowed hard and nodded; but his wind-bitten face displayed much distress. "I had no idee the gal's father was aboard that schooner with Cap'n Abe." "Why, sure! I forgot it for a minute," Cap'n Amazon said cheerfully. "There, there, my dear. Don't take on so. Abe's with your father, if so be anything has happened the _Curlew_; and Abe'll take keer o' him. Sure he will! Ain't he a Silt? And lemme tell you a Silt never backed down when trouble riz up to face him. No, sir!" "But if they have been wrecked?" groaned Louise. "Both father and Uncle Abram. What shall we do about it, Uncle Amazon?" In this moment of trouble she clung to the master mariner as her single recourse. And impostor or no, he who called himself Amazon Silt did not fail her. "There ain't nothing much we can rightly do at this minute, Niece Louise," he told her firmly, still patting her morsel of a hand in his huge one. "We'll watch the noospapers and I'll send a telegraph dispatch to the ship news office in N'York and git just the latest word there is 'bout the _Curlew_. "You be brave, girl--you be brave. Abe an' Professor Grayling being together, o' course they'll get along all right. One'll help t'other. Two pullin' on the sheet can allus h'ist the sail quicker than one. Keep your heart up, Louise." She looked at him strangely for a moment. The tears frankly standing in his eyes, the quivering muscles of his face, his expression of keen sorrow for her fears--all impressed her. She suddenly kissed him in gratitude, impostor though she knew him to be, and then ran away. Cap'n Joab hissed across the counter: "Ye don't _know_ that Cap'n Abe's on that there craft, Am'zon Silt!" "Well, if I don't--an' if you don't--don't lemme hear you makin' any cracks about it 'round this store so't she'll hear ye," growled Cap'n Amazon, boring into the very soul of the flustered Joab with his fierce gaze. Louise did not hear the expression of these doubts; but she suffered uncertainties in her own mind. She longed to talk with somebody to whom she could tell all that was in her thoughts. Aunt Euphemia was out of the question, of course; although she must reveal to her the possible peril menacing Professor Grayling. Betty Gallup could not be trusted, Louise knew. And the day dragged by its limping hours without Lawford Tapp's coming near the store on the Shell Road. This last Louise could not understand. But there was good reason for Lawford's effacing himself at this time. In the empire of the Taffy King there was revolution, and this trouble dated from the hour on the previous morning when Louise had met and greeted Aunt Euphemia on the beach. The Tapp sisters may have been purse-proud and a little vulgar--from Aunt Euphemia's point of view, at least--but they did not lack acumen. They had seen and heard the greeting of Louise by the Ferritons and the extremely haughty Lady from Poughkeepsie, and knew that Louise must be "a somebody." Cecile, young and bold enough to be direct, was not long in making discoveries. With a rather blank expression of countenance L'Enfant Terrible, for once almost speechless, beckoned her sisters to one side. "Pestiferous infant," drawled Marian, "tell us who she is?" "Is she a Broadway star?" asked Prue. "Oh, she's a star all right," Cecile said, with disgust in her tone. "We've been a trio of sillies, ignoring _her_. Fordy's fallen on both feet--only he's too dense to know it, I s'pose." "Tell us!" commanded Prue. "Who is she?" "She's no screen actress," answered the gloomy Cecile. "Who is she, then?" gasped Marian. "Sue Perriton says she is Mrs. Conroth's niece, and Mrs. Conroth is all the Society with a capital letter there _is_. Now, figure it out," said Cecile tartly. "If you smarties had taken her up right at the start----" "But we didn't kno-o-ow!" wailed Marian. "Go on!" commanded Prue grimly. "Why, Miss Grayling's father is a big scientist, or something, at Washington. Her mother happened to be born here on the Cape; she was a Card. This girl is just stopping over there with that old fellow who keeps the store--her half-uncle--for a lark. What do you know about _that_?" "My word!" murmured Marian. "And Ford------" "He's mamma's precious white-haired boy _this_ time," declared the slangy Cecile. "Do--do you suppose he knew it all the time?" questioned Marian. "Never! Just like old Doc Ambrose says, there isn't much above Fordy's ears but solid bone," scoffed L'Enfant Terrible. "Wait till ma hears of this," murmured Prue, and they proceeded to beat a retreat for home that their mother might be informed of the wonder. Lawford was already out of sight. "How really fortunate Fordy is," murmured Mrs. Tapp, having received the shocking news and been revived after it. "Fancy! Mrs. Conroth's own niece!" "It's going to put us in just _right_ with the best of the crowd at The Beaches," Prue announced. "We've only been tolerated so far." "Oh, Prudence!" admonished Mrs. Tapp. "That's the truth," her second daughter repeated bluntly. "We might as well admit it. Now, if Fordy only puts this over with this Miss Grayling, they'll _have_ to take us up; for it's plain to be seen they won't drop Miss Grayling, no matter whom she marries." "If Fordy doesn't miss the chance," muttered Cecile. "He can't!" "He mustn't!" "He wouldn't be mean enough to drop her just to spite us!" wailed Marian. "No," said Prue. "He won't do that. Ford isn't a butterfly. You must admit that he's as steadfast as a rock in his likes and dislikes. Once he gets a thing in that head of his------Well! I'm sure he's fond of Miss Grayling." "But that big actor?" suggested Cecile. "Surely," gasped Mrs. Tapp, "the girl cannot fancy such a person as _that_?" "My! you should just see Judson Bane," sighed Cecile. "He's the matinee girl's delight," drawled Marian. "Ford has the advantage, however, if he will take it. He's too modest." Mrs. Tapp's face suddenly paled and she clasped a plump hand to her bosom. "Oh, girls!" she gasped. "_Now_ what, mother?" begged Prue. "What will I. Tapp say?" "Oh, bother father!" scoffed L'Enfant Terrible. "He doesn't care what Ford does," Prue said. "Does he ever really care what any of us does?" observed Marian, yet looking doubtfully at her mother. "You don't understand, girls!" wailed Mrs. Tapp, wringing her hands. "You know he made me write and invite that Johnson girl here." "Oh, Dot Johnson!" said Prue. "Well, she is harmless." "She's _not_ harmless," declared Mrs. Tapp. "I. Tapp ordered me to get her here because, he wants Ford to marry her." "Marry Dot Johnson?" gasped Prue. "Oh, bluey!" ejaculated the slangy Cecile. "But of course Ford won't do it," drawled Marian. "Then he means to disinherit poor Ford! Oh, yes, he will!" sobbed the lady. "They've had words about it already. You know very well that when once I. Tapp makes up his mind to do a thing, he does it." And there she broke down utterly, with the girls looking at each other in silent horror. CHAPTER XXIII BETWEEN THE FIRES The discovery of Louise's identity was but a mild shock to Lawford after all. His preconceived prejudice against the ordinary feminine member of "The Profession" had, during his intercourse with Cap'n Abe's niece, been lulled to sleep. Miss Louder and Miss Noyes more nearly embodied his conception of actresses--nice enough young women, perhaps, but entirely different from Louise Grayling. Lawford forgave the latter for befooling him in the matter of her condition in life; indeed, he realized that he had deceived himself. He had accepted the gossip of the natives--Milt Baker was its originator, he remembered--as true, and so had believed Louise Grayling was connected with the moving picture company. Her social position made no difference to him. At first sight Lawford Tapp had told himself she was the most charming woman he had ever seen. For a college graduate of twenty-four he was, though unaware of the fact, rather unsophisticated regarding women. He had given but slight attention to girls. Perhaps they interested him so little because of his three sisters. He remembered now that he and Dot Johnson had been pretty good "pals" before he had gone to college, and while Dot was still in middy blouse and wore her hair in plaits. Now, as he walked along the beach and thought of the daughter of his father's partner, he groaned. He, as well as the women of the family, knew well the Taffy King's obstinacy. His streak of determination had enabled I. Tapp to reach the pinnacle of business wealth and influence. When he wanted a thing he went after it, and he got it! If his father was really determined that Lawford should marry Dot Johnson, and her parents were willing, the young man had an almost uncanny feeling that the candy manufacturer's purpose would be accomplished. And yet Lawford knew that such was a coward-nature feeling. Why should he give up the only thing he had ever really wanted in life--so it seemed to him now--because of any third person's obstinacy? "Of course, she won't have me anyway," an inner voice told him. And, after a time, Lawford realized that that, too, was his coward-nature speaking. On the other hand: "Why should I give her up? Further, why should I marry Dot Johnson against my will, whether I can get Louise Grayling or not?" This thought electrified him. His easy-going, placid disposition had made a coward of him. In his heart and soul he was now ready to fight for what he desired. It was now not merely the question of winning Louise's love. Whether he could win her or not his determination grew to refuse to obey his father's command. He revolted, right then and there. Let his father keep his money. He, Lawford Tapp, would go to work in any case and would support himself. This was no small resolve on the part of the millionaire's son. He could not remember of ever having put his hand into an empty pocket. His demands on the paternal purse had been more reasonable than most young men of his class perhaps, because of his naturally simple tastes and the life he had led outside the classroom. Without having "gone in" for athletics at Cambridge he was essentially an out-of-door man. Nevertheless, to stand in open revolt against I. Tapp's command was a very serious thing to do. Lawford appreciated his own shortcomings in the matter of intellect. He knew he was not brilliant enough to make his wit entirely serve him for daily bread--let alone cake and other luxuries. If his father disinherited him he must verily expect to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. It was that evening, after his fruitless call at Cap'n Abe's store, that the young man met his father and had it out. Lawford came back to Tapp Point in the motor boat. As he walked up from the dock there was a sudden eruption of voices from the house, a door banged, and the Taffy King began exploding verbal fireworks as he crunched the gravel under foot. "I'll show him! Young upstart! Settin' the women on me! Ha! Thinks he can do as he pleases forever and ever, amen! I'll show him!" Just then he came face to face with "the young upstart." I. Tapp seized his son's arm with a vicious if puny grasp and yelled: "What d'you mean by it?" "Mean by what, dad?" asked the boy with that calmness that always irritated I. Tapp. "Settin' your ma and the girls on me? They all lit on me at once. All crying together some foolishness about your marrying this Grayling girl and putting the family into society." "Into society?" murmured Lawford. "I--I don't get you." "You know what they're after," cried the candy manufacturer. "If a dynamite bomb would blow in the walls of that exclusive Back Bay set, they'd use one. And now it turns out this girl's right in the swim------I thought you said she was a picture actress?" "I thought she was," stammered Lawford. "Bah! You thought? You never thought a thing in your life of any consequence." The young man was silent at this thrust. His silence made I. Tapp even angrier. "But it makes no difference--no difference at all, I tell you. If she was the queen of Sheba I'd say the same," went on the candy manufacturer wildly. "I've said you shall marry Dorothy Johnson--I've always meant you should; and marry her you shall!" "No, dad, I'm not going to do any such thing." Suddenly the Taffy King quieted down. He struggled to control his voice and his shaking hands. A deadly calm mantled his excitement and his eyes glittered as he gazed up at his tall son. "Is this a straight answer, Lawford? Or are you just talking to hear yourself talk?" he asked coldly. "I am determined not to marry Dot." "And you'll marry that other girl?" "If she'll have me. But whether or no I won't be forced into marriage with a girl I do not love." "Love!" exploded the Taffy King. Then in a moment he was calm again, only for that inward glow of rage. "People don't really love each other until after marriage. Love is born of propinquity and thrives on usage and custom. You only _think_ you love this girl. It's after two people have been through a good deal together that they learn what love means." Lawford was somewhat startled by this philosophy; but he was by no means convinced. "Whether or no," he repeated, "I think I should have the same right that you had of choosing a wife." His father brushed this aside without comment. "Do you understand what this means--if you are determined to disobey me?" he snarled. "I suppose you won't begrudge me a bite and sup till I find a job, dad?" the son said with just a little tremor in his voice. "I know I haven't really anything of my own. You have done everything for me. Your money bought the very clothes I stand in. You gave me the means to buy the _Merry Andrew_. I realize that nothing I have called my own actually belongs to me because I did not earn it----" "As long as you are amenable to discipline," put in his father gloomily, "you need not feel this way." "But I do feel it now," said Lawford simply. "You have made me. And, as I say, I'll need to live, I suppose, till I get going for myself." His father winced again. Then suddenly burst out: "D'you think for a minute that that society girl will stand for your getting a job and trying to support her on your wages?" "She will if she loves me." "You poor ninny!" burst out I. Tapp. "You've got about as much idea of women as you have of business. And where are you going to work?" "Well," and Lawford smiled a little whimsically, serious though the discussion was, "I've always felt a leaning toward the candy business. I believe I have a natural adaptability for that. Couldn't I find a job in one of your factories, dad?" "You'll get no leg-up from me, unless you show you're worthy of it." "But you'll give me a job?" "I won't interfere if the superintendent of any of the factories takes you on," growled I. Tapp. "But mind you, he'll hire you on his own responsibility--he'll understand that from me. But I tell you right now this is no time to apply for a job in a candy factory. We're discharging men--not hiring them." "I will apply for the first opening," announced the son. I. Tapp stamped away along the graveled walk, leaving the young man alone. Lawford's calmness was as irritating to him as sea water to a raw wound. CHAPTER XXIV GRAY DAYS Those days were dark for Louise Grayling; on her shoulders she bore double trouble. Anxiety for her father's safety made her sufficiently unhappy; but in addition her mind must cope with the mystery of Cap'n Amazon's identity and Cap'n Abe's whereabouts. For she was not at all satisfied in her heart that the storekeeper had sailed from the port of Boston on the _Curlew_; and the status of the piratical looking Amazon Silt was by no means decided to her satisfaction. Her discoveries in his bedroom had quite convinced the young woman that Cap'n Amazon was in masquerade. His comforting words and his thoughtfulness touched her so deeply, however, that she could not quarrel with the old man; and his insistence that Cap'n Abe had sailed on the Curlew and would be at hand to assist Professor Grayling if the schooner had been wrecked was kindly meant, she knew. He scoffed at the return of Cap'n Abe's chest as being of moment; he refused to discuss his brother's reason for stuffing the old chest with such useless lumber as it contained. "Leave Abe for knowing his own business, Niece Louise. 'Tain't any of our consarn," was the most he would say about that puzzling circumstance. Louise watched the piratical figure of Cap'n Amazon shuffling around the store or puttering about certain duties of housekeeping that he insisted upon doing himself, with a wonder that never waned. His household habits were those which she supposed Cap'n Abe to have had. She wondered if all sailors were as neat and as fussy as he. He still insisted upon doing much of the cooking; it was true that he had good reason to doubt Betty Gallup's ability to cook. When there were no customers in the store Louise often sat there with Cap'n Amazon, with either a book or her sewing in her hand. Sometimes they would not speak for an hour, while the substitute storekeeper "made up the books," which was a serious task for him. He seemed normally dexterous in everything else, but he wrote with his left hand--an angular, upright chirography which, Louise thought, showed unmistakably that he was unfamiliar with the use of the pen. "Writing up the log" he called this clerkly task, and his awkward looking characters in the ledger were in great contrast to Cap'n Abe's round, flowing hand. For several days following the discovery in the "_Globe_ paper" of the notice about the _Curlew_, Louise Grayling and Cap'n Amazon lived a most intimate existence. She would not allow Betty Gallup to criticise the captain even slightly within her hearing. They received news from New York which was no news at all. The Boston Chamber of Commerce had heard no further word of the schooner. Louise and the captain could only hope. The world of seafaring is so filled with mysteries like this of the _Curlew_, that Louise knew well that no further word might ever be received of the vessel. Cap'n Amazon rang the changes daily--almost hourly--upon sea escapes and rescues. He related dozens of tales (of course with the personal note in most), showing how ships' companies had escaped the threat of disaster in marvelous and almost unbelievable ways. Louise had not the heart now to stop this flow of narrative by telling him bluntly that she doubted the authenticity of his tales. Nor would she look into the old books again to search out the originals of the stories which flowed so glibly from his lips. Who and what he could really be puzzled Louise quite as much as before; yet she had not the heart to probe the mystery with either question or personal scrutiny. The uncertainty regarding the _Curlew_ and those on board filled so much of the girl's thought that little else disturbed her. Save one thing. She desired to see Lawford Tapp and talk with him. But Lawford did not appear at the store on the Shell Road. Mr. Bane came frequently to call. He was an eager listener to Cap'n Amazon's stories and evidently enjoyed the master mariner hugely. Several of the young people from the cottages along The Beaches called on Louise; but if the girl desired to see Aunt Euphemia she had to go to the Perritons, or meet the Lady from Poughkeepsie in her walks along the sands. Aunt Euphemia could not countenance Cap'n Amazon in the smallest particular. "It is a mystery to me, Louise--a perfect mystery--how you are able to endure that awful creature and his coarse stories. That dreadful tale of the albatross sticks in my mind--I cannot forget it," she complained. "And his appearance! No more savage looking man did I ever behold. I wonder you are not afraid to live in the same house with him." Louise would not acknowledge that she had ever been fearful of Cap'n Amazon. Her own qualms of terror had almost immediately subsided. The news from the _Curlew_, indeed, seemed to have smothered the neighborhood criticism of the captain, if all suspicions had not actually been lulled to rest. Cap'n Amazon spoke no more of his brother, save in connection with Professor Grayling's peril, than he had before. He seemed to have no fears for Cap'n Abe. "Abe can look out for himself," was a frequent expression with him. But Cap'n Amazon never spoke as though he held the danger of Louise's father in light regard. "I'll give 'em a fortnight to be heard from," Cap'n Joab Beecher said confidently. "Then if ye don't hear from Cap'n Abe, or the noospapers don't print nothin' more about the schooner, I shall write her down in the log as lost with all hands." "Don't you be too sartain sure 'bout it," growled Cap'n Amazon. "There's many a wonder of the sea, as you an' I know, Joab Beecher. Look at what happened the crew of the _Mailfast_, clipper built, out o' Baltimore--an' that was when you an' I, Cap'n Joab, was sharpenin' our milk teeth on salt hoss." "What happened her, Cap'n Am'zon?" queried Milt Baker, reaching for a fresh piece of Brown Mule, and with a wink at the other idlers. "Did she go down, or did she go up?" "Both," replied Cap'n Amazon unruffled. "She went up in smoke _an'_ flame, an' finally sunk when she'd burned to the Plimsol mark. "Every man of the crew and afterguard got safely into two boats. This wasn't far to the westward of Fayal--in mebbe somewhere near the same spot where that Portugee fisherman reports pickin' up the _Curlew's_ boat. "When the _Mailfast_ burned the sea was calm; but in six hours a sudden gale came up and drove the two boats into the southwest. They wasn't provisioned or watered for a long v'y'ge, and they had to run for it a full week, ev'ry mile reeled off takin' them further an' further from the islands, and further and further off the reg'lar course of shipping." "Where'd they wind up at, Cap'n Am'zon?" asked Milt. "Couldn't hit nothin' nearer'n the Guineas on that course," growled Cap'n Joab. "There you're wrong," the substitute storekeeper said. "They struck seaweed--acres an' acres of it--square miles of it--everlastin' seaweed!" "Sargasso Sea!" exploded Washy Gallup, wagging his toothless jaw. "I swanny!" "I've heard about that place, but never seen it," said Cap'n Joab. "And you don't want to," declared the narrator of the incident. "It ain't a place into which no sailorman wants to venture. The _Mailfast's_ comp'ny--so 'tis said--was driven far into the pulpy, grassy sea. The miles of weed wrapped 'em around like a blanket. They couldn't row because the weed fouled the oars; and they couldn't sail 'cause the weed was so heavy. But there's a drift they say, or a suction, or something that gradually draws a boat toward the middle of the field." "Then, by golly!" exclaimed Milt Baker, "how in tarnation did they git aout? I sh'd think anybody that every drifted into the Sargasso Sea would be there yit." "P'r'aps many a ship an' many a ship's company _have_ found their grave there," said Cap'n Amazon solemnly. "'Tis called the graveyard of derelicts. But there's the chance of counter-storms. Before the two boats from the _Mailfast_ were sucked down, and 'fore the crew was fair starved, a sudden shift of wind broke up the seaweed field and they escaped and were picked up. "The danger of the Sargasso threatens all sailin' ships in them seas. Steam vessels have a better chance; but many a craft that's turned up missin' has undoubtedly been swallowed by the Sargasso." Louise, who heard this discussion from the doorway of the store, could not fail to be impressed by it. Could the _Curlew_, with her father and Cap'n Abe aboard, have suffered such a fate? There was an element of probability in this tale of Cap'n Amazon's that entangled the girl's fancy. However, the idea colored the old man's further imagination in another way. "Sargasso Sea," he said reflectively, between puffs of his pipe, after the idlers had left the store. "Yes, 'tis a fact, Niece Louise. That's what Abe drifted in for years--a mort of seaweed and pulp." "What _do_ you mean, Uncle Amazon?" gasped the girl, shocked by his words. "This," the master mariner said, with a wide sweep of his arm taking in the cluttered store. "This was Abe's Sargasso Sea--and it come nigh to smotherin' him and bearin' him down by the head." "Oh! you mean his life was so confined here?" Cap'n Amazon nodded, "I wonder he bore it so long." "I am afraid Uncle Abram is getting all he wants of adventure now," Louise said doubtfully. Cap'n Amazon stared at her unwinkingly for a minute. Then all he said was: "I wonder?" CHAPTER XXV AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT Lawford Tapp did not appear at the store and Louise continued to wonder about it; but she shrank from asking Betty Gallup, who might have been able to inform her why the young man did not come again. However, on one bright morning the gray roadster stopped before the door and Louise, from her window, saw that the three Tapp girls were in the car. She thought they had come to make purchases, for the store on the Shell Road was often a port of call for the automobiles of the summer colonists. Suddenly, however, she realized that L'Enfant Terrible was standing up in the driver's seat and beckoning to her. "Oh, Miss Grayling!" shrilled Cecile. "May I come up? I want to speak to you." "No," commanded Prue firmly, preparing to step out of the car. "I will speak to Miss Grayling myself." "I don't see why she can't come down," drawled Marian, the languid. "_I_ have a message for her." "Why!" ejaculated the surprised Louise, "if you all wish to see me I'd better come down, hadn't I?" and she left the window at once. She had remarked on the few occasions during the last few days that she had met the Tapp sisters on the beach, that they had seemed desirous of being polite to her--very different from their original attitude; but so greatly taken up had Louise's mind been with more important matters that she had really considered this change but little. Therefore it was with some curiosity that she descended the stairs and went around by the yard gate to the side of the automobile. "Dear Miss Grayling," drawled Marian, putting out a gloved hand. "Pardon the informality. But mother wants to know if you will help us pour tea at our lawn fete and dance Friday week? It would be so nice of you." Louise smiled quietly. But she was not a stickler for social proprieties; so, although she knew the invitation savored of that "rawness" of which her aunt had remarked, she was inclined to meet Lawford's family halfway. She said: "If you really want me I shall be glad to do what I can to make your affair a success. Tell your mother I will come--and thank you." "So kind of you," drawled Marian. But Cecile was not minded to let the interview end so tamely--or so suddenly. "Say!" she exclaimed, "did Ford see you, Miss Grayling, before he went away?" "He has gone away, then?" Louise repeated, and she could not keep the color from flooding into her cheeks. "He wanted to see you, I'm sure," Cecile said bluntly. "But he started off in a hurry. Had a dickens of a row with dad." "Cecile!" admonished Prue. "That sounds worse than it is." Louise looked at her curiously, though she did not ask a question. "Well, they did have a shindy," repeated L'Enfant Terrible. "When daddy gets on his high horse------" "Ford wished to see you before he went away, Miss Grayling," broke in Prue, with an admonitory glare at her young sister. "He told us he was so confused that day he fell overboard from the _Merry Andrew_ that he did not even thank you for fishing him out of the sea. It was awfully brave of you." "Bully, _I_ say!" cried Cecile. "Really heroic," added Marian. "Mother will never get over talking about it." "Oh! I wish you wouldn't," murmured Louise. "I'm glad Betty and I saved him. Mrs. Gallup did quite as much as I----" "We know all that," Prue broke in quickly. "And daddy's made it up to _her_." "Yes. I know. He was very liberal," Louise agreed. "But mercy!" cried Prue. "He can't send _you_ a check, Miss Grayling. And we all do feel deeply grateful to you. Ford is an awfully good sort of a chap--for a brother." Louise laughed outright at that. "I suppose, though never having had a brother, I can appreciate his good qualities fully as much as you girls," she said. "Will he be long away?" "That we don't know," Marian said slowly. Louise had asked the question so lightly that Miss Tapp could not be sure there was any real interest behind it. But Cecile, who had alighted to crank up, whispered to Louise: "You know what he's gone away for? No? To get a job! He and father have disagreed dreadfully." "Oh! I am so sorry," murmured Louise. She would not ask any further questions. She was troubled, however, by this information, for L'Enfant Terrible seemed to have said it significantly. Louise wondered very much what had caused the quarrel between Lawford and his father. She got at the heart of this mystery when she appeared at the lawn fete to help the Tapp girls and their mother entertain. She was introduced at that time to the Taffy King. Louise thought him rather a funny little man, and his excitability vastly amused her. She caught him staring at her and scowling more than once; so, in her direct way, she asked him what he meant by it. "Don't you approve at all of me, Mr. Tapp?" she asked, presenting him with a cup of tea that he did not want. "Ha! Beg pardon!" ejaculated the candy manufacturer. "Did you think I was watching you?" "I _know_ you were," she rejoined. "And your disapproval is marked. Tell me my faults. Of course, I sha'n't like you if you do; but I am curious." "Huh! I'd like to see what that son of mine sees in you, Miss Grayling," he blurted out. "Does he see anything particular in me?" Louise queried, her color rising, but with a twinkle in her eye. "He's crazy about you," said I. Tapp. "Oh! Is _that_ why you and he disagreed?" "It's going to cost him his home and his patrimony," the candy manufacturer declared fiercely. "I won't have it, I tell you! I've other plans for him. He's got to do as I say, or----" Something in the girl's face halted him at the very beginning of one of his tirades. Positively she was laughing at him? "Is _that_ the reef on which you and Lawford have struck?" Louise asked gently. "If he chooses to address attentions to me he must become self-supporting?" "I'll cut him off without a cent if he marries you!" threatened I. Tapp. "Why," murmured Louise, "then that will be the making of him, I have no doubt. It is the lack I have seen in his character from the beginning. Responsibility will make a man of him." "Ha!" snarled I. Tapp. "How about _you_? Will you marry a poor man--a chap like my son who, if he ever makes twenty dollars a week, will be doing mighty well?" "Oh! This is so--so sudden, Mr. Tapp!" murmured Louise, dimpling. "You are not seriously asking me to marry your son, are you?" "Asking you to?" exploded the excitable Taffy King, with a wild gesture. "I forbid it! Forbid it! do you hear?" and he rushed away from the scene of the festivities and did not appear again during the afternoon. Mrs. Tapp, all of a flutter, appeared at Louise's elbow. "Oh, dear, Miss Grayling! What _did_ he say? He is so excitable." She almost wept. "I hope he has said nothing to offend you?" Louise looked at her with a rather pitying smile. "Don't be worried, Mrs. Tapp," she assured her. "Really, I think your husband is awfully amusing." Naturally disapproval was plainly enthroned upon Aunt Euphemia's countenance when she saw her niece aiding in the entertainment of the guests at the Tapp lawn fete. The Lady from Poughkeepsie had come with the Perritons because, as she admitted, the candy manufacturer's family must be placated to a degree. "But you go too far, Louise. Even good nature cannot excuse this. I am only thankful that young man is not at home. Surely you cannot be really interested in Lawford Tapp?" "Do spare my blushes," begged Louise, her palms upon her cheeks but her eyes dancing. "Really, I haven't seen Lawford for days." "Really, Louise?" "Surely I would not deceive you, auntie," she said. "He may have lost all his interest in me, too. He went away without bidding me good-bye." "Well, I am glad of that!" sighed Aunt Euphemia. "I feared it was different. Indeed, I heard something said------Oh, well, people will gossip so! Never mind. But these Tapps are so pushing." "I think Mrs. Tapp is a very pleasant woman; and the girls are quite nice," Louise said demurely. "You need not have displayed your liking for them in quite this way," objected Aunt Euphemia. "You could easily have excused yourself--the uncertainty about your poor father would have been reason enough. I don't know--I am not sure, indeed, but that we should go into mourning. Of course, it would spoil the summer----" "Oh! Aunt Euphemia!" "Yes. Well, I only mentioned it. For my own part I look extremely well in crepe." Louise was shocked by this speech; yet she knew that its apparent heartlessness did not really denote the state of her aunt's mind. It was merely bred of the lady's shallowness, and of her utterly self-centered existence. That evening, long after supper and after the store lights were out, and while Cap'n Amazon and Louise were sitting as usual in the room behind the store, a hasty step on the porch and a rat-tat-tat upon the side door announced a caller than whom none could have been more unexpected. "Aunt Euphemia!" cried Louise, when the master mariner ushered the lady in. "What has happened?" "Haven't you heard? Did you not get a letter?" demanded Mrs. Conroth. But she kept a suspicious eye on the captain. "From daddy-prof?" exclaimed Louise, jumping up. "Yes. Mailed at Gibraltar. Nothing has happened to that vessel he is on. That was all a ridiculous story. But there is something else, Louise." "Sit down, ma'am," Cap'n Amazon was saying politely. "Do sit down, ma'am." "Not in this house," declared the lady, with finality. "I do not feel safe here. And it's not safe for you to be here, Louise, with this--this man. You don't know who he is; nobody knows who he is. I have just heard all about it from one of the--er--natives. Mr. Abram Silt never had a brother that anybody in Cardhaven ever saw. There is no Captain Amazon Silt--and never was!" "Oh!" gasped Louise. "Nor does your father say a word in his letter to me about Abram Silt being with him aboard that vessel, the _Curlew_. Nobody knows what has become of your uncle--the man who really owns this store. How do we know but that this--this creature," concluded Aunt Euphemia, with dramatic gesture, "has made away with Mr. Silt and taken over his property?" "It 'ud be jest like the old pirate!" croaked a harsh voice from the kitchen doorway, and Betty Gallup appeared, apparently ready to back up Mrs. Conroth physically, as well as otherwise. CHAPTER XXVI AT LAST That hour in the old-fashioned living-room behind Cap'n Abe's store was destined to be marked indelibly upon Louise Grayling's memory. Aunt Euphemia and Betty Gallup had both come armed for the fray. They literally swept Louise off her feet by their vehemence. The effect of the challenge on Cap'n Amazon was most puzzling. As Mrs. Conroth refused to sit down--she could talk better standing, becoming quite oracular, in fact--the captain could not, in politeness, take his customary chair. And he had discarded his pipe upon going to the door to let the visitor in. Therefore, it seemed to Louise, the doughty captain seemed rather lost. It was not that he displayed either surprise or fear because of Aunt Euphemia's accusation. Merely he did not know what to do with himself during her exhortation. The fact that he was taxed with a crime--a double crime, indeed--did not seem to bother him at all. But the clatter of the women's tongues seemed to annoy him. His silence and his calmness affected Mrs. Conroth and Betty Gallup much as the store idlers had been affected when they tried to bait him--their exasperation increased. Cap'n Amazon's utter disregard of what they said (for Betty did her share of the talking, relieving the Lady from Poughkeepsie when she was breathless) continued unabated. It was a situation that, at another time, would have vastly amused Louise. But it was really a serious matter. Mrs. Conroth was quite as excited as Betty. Both became vociferous in acclaiming the captain's irresponsibility, and both accused him of having caused Cap'n Abe's disappearance. "Mark my word," declared Aunt Euphemia, with her most indignant air, "that creature is guilty--guilty of an awful crime!" "The old pirate! That he is!" reiterated Betty. "Louise, my child, come away from here at once. This is no place for a young woman--or for any self-respecting person. Come." For the first time since the opening of this scene Cap'n Amazon displayed trouble. He turned to look at Louise, and she thought his countenance expressed apprehension--as though he feared she might go. "Come!" commanded Mrs. Conroth again. "This is no fit place for you; it never _has_ been fit!" "Avast, there, ma'am!" growled the captain, at last stung to retort. "You are an old villain!" declared Aunt Euphemia. "He's an old pirate!" concluded Betty Gallup. Here Louise found her voice--and she spoke with decision. "I shall stay just the same, aunt. I am satisfied that you all misjudge Captain Amazon." His face--the sudden flash of gratitude in it--thanked her. "Louise!" cried her aunt. "You better come away, Miss Lou," said Betty. "The constable'll git that old pirate; that's what'll happen to him." "Stop!" exclaimed Louise. "I'll listen to no more. I do not believe these things you say. And neither of you can prove them. I'm going to bed. Good-night, Aunt Euphemia," and she marched out of the room. That closed the discussion. Cap'n Amazon bowed Mrs. Conroth politely out of the door and Betty went with her. Louise did not get to sleep in her chamber overhead for hours; nor did she hear the captain come upstairs at all. In the morning's post there was a letter for Louise from her father--a letter that had been delayed. It had been mailed at the same time the one to Aunt Euphemia was sent. The _Curlew_ would soon turn her bows Bostonward, the voyage having been successful from a scientific point of view. Professor Grayling even mentioned the loss of a small boat in a squall, when it had been cast adrift from the taffrail by accident. Betty, with face like a thundercloud, had brought the letter up to Louise. When the girl had hastily read it through she ran down to show it to Cap'n Amazon. She found him reading an epistle of his own, while Cap'n Joab, Milt Baker, Washy Gallup, and several other neighbors hovered near. "Yep. I got one myself," announced Cap'n Amazon. "Oh, captain!" "Yep. From Abe. Good reason why your father didn't speak of Abe in his letter to your a'nt. Didn't in yours, did he?" Louise shook her head. "No? Listen here," Cap'n Amazon said. "'I haven't spoke to Professor Grayling. He don't know Abe Silt from the jib-boom. Why should he? I am a foremast hand and he lives abaft. But he is a fine man. Everybody says so. We've had some squally weather----' "Well! that's nothin'. Ahem!" He went on, reading bits to the interested listeners now and then, and finally handed the letter to Cap'n Joab Beecher. The latter, looking mighty queer indeed, adjusted his spectacles and spread out the sheet. "Ye-as," he admitted cautiously. "That 'pears to be Cap'n Abe's handwritin', sure 'nough." "Course 'tis!" squealed Washy Gallup. "As plain, as plain!" "Read it out," urged Milt while the captain went to wait upon a customer. Louise listened with something besides curiosity. The letter was a rambling account of the voyage of the _Curlew_, telling little directly or exactly about the daily occurrences; but nothing in it conflicted with what Professor Grayling had written Louise--save one thing. The girl realized that the arrival of this letter from Cap'n Abe had finally punctured that bubble of suspicion against the captain that had been blown overnight. It seemed certain and unshakable proof that the substitute storekeeper was just whom he claimed to be, and it once and for all put to death the idea that Cap'n Abe had not gone to sea in the _Curlew_. Yet Louise had never been more puzzled since first suspicion had been roused against Cap'n Amazon. A single sentence in her father's letter could not be made to jibe with Cap'n Abe's epistle, and therefore she folded up her own letter and thrust it into her pocket. In speaking of his companions on shipboard, the professor had written: "I am by far the oldest person aboard the _Curlew_, skipper included. They are all young fellows, both for'ard and in the afterguard. Yet they treat me like one of themselves and I am having a most enjoyable time." Cap'n Abe was surely much older than her daddy-prof! It puzzled her. It troubled her. There was not a moment of that day when it was not the uppermost thought in her mind. People came in from all around to read Cap'n Abe's letter and to congratulate Cap'n Amazon and Louise that the _Curlew_ was safe. The captain took the matter as coolly as he did everything else. Louise watched him, trying to fathom his manner and the mystery about him. Yet, when the solution of the problem was developed, she was most amazed by the manner in which her eyes were opened. Supper time was approaching, and the cooler evening breeze blew in through the living-room windows. Relieved for the moment from his store tasks, Cap'n Amazon appeared, rubbing his hands cheerfully, and briskly approached old Jerry's cage as he chirruped to the bird. "Well! well! And how's old Jerry been to-day?" Louise heard him say. Then: "Hi-mighty! What's this?" Louise glanced in from the kitchen. She saw him standing before the cage, his chin sunk on his breast, the tears trickling down his mahogany face. That hard, stern visage, with its sweeping piratical mustache and the red bandana above it, was a most amazing picture of grief. "Oh! What is it?" cried the girl, springing to his side. He pointed with shaking index finger to the bird within the cage. "Dead!" he said brokenly, "Dead, Niece Louise! Poor old Jerry's dead--and him and me shipmates for so many, many years." "Oh!" screamed the girl, grasping his arm. "_You are Cap'n Abe_!" CHAPTER XXVII SARGASSO After all, when she considered it later, Louise wondered only that she had not seen through the masquerade long before. From the beginning--the very first night of her occupancy of the pleasant chamber over the store on the Shell Road--she should have understood the mystery that had had the whole neighborhood by the ears during the summer. She, more than anybody else, should have seen through Cap'n Abe's masquerade. Louise had been in a position, she now realized, to have appreciated the truth. "You are Cap'n Abe," she told him, and he did not deny it. Sadly he looked at the dead canary in the bottom of the cage, and wiped his eyes. "Poor Jerry!" her uncle said, and in that single phrase all the outer husk of the rough and ready seaman--the character he had assumed in playing his part for so many weeks--sloughed away. He was the simple, tender-hearted, almost childish Cap'n Abe that she had met upon first coming to Cardhaven. Swiftly through her mind the incidents of that first night and morning flashed. She remembered that he had prepared her--as he had prepared his neighbors--for the coming of this wonderful Cap'n Amazon, whose adventures he had related and whose praises he had sung for so many years. Cap'n Abe had taken advantage of Perry Baker's coming with Louise's trunk to send off his own chest, supposedly filled with the clothes he would need on a sea voyage. Then, the house clear of the expressman and Louise safe in bed, the storekeeper had proceeded to disguise himself as he had long planned to do. Not content with the shaving of his beard only, he had dyed his hair and the sweeping piratical mustache left him. Walnut juice applied to his face and body had given him the stain of a tropical sun. Of course, this stain and the dye had to be occasionally renewed. The addition of gold rings in his ears (long before pierced for the purpose, of course) and the wearing of the colored handkerchief to cover his bald crown completed a disguise that his own mother would have found hard to penetrate. Cap'n Abe was gone; Cap'n Amazon stood in his place. To befool his niece was a small matter. At daybreak he had come to her door and bidden Louise good-bye. But she had not seen him--only his figure as he walked up the road in the fog. Cap'n Abe had, of course, quickly made a circuit and come back to re-enter the house by the rear door. From that time--or from the moment Lawford Tapp had first seen him on the store porch that morning--the storekeeper had played a huge game of bluff. And what a game it had been! In his character of Cap'n Amazon he had commanded the respect--even the fear--of men who for years had considered Cap'n Abe a butt for their poor jests. It was marvelous, Louise thought, when one came to think of it. And yet, not so marvelous after all, when she learned all that lay behind the masquerade. There had always been, lying dormant in Cap'n Abe's nature, characteristics that had never before found expression. Much she learned on this evening at supper, and afterward when the store had been closed and they were alone in the living-room. Diddimus, who still had his doubts of the piratical looking captain, lay in Louise's lap and purred loudly under the ministration of her gentle hand, while Cap'n Abe talked. It was a story that brought to the eyes of the sympathetic girl the sting of tears as well as bubbling laughter to her lips. And in it all she found something almost heroic as well as ridiculous. "My mother marked me," said Cap'n Abe. "Poor mother! I was born with her awful horror of the ravenin' sea as she saw the Bravo an' Cap'n Josh go down. I knew it soon--when I was only a little child. I knew I was set apart from other Silts, who had all been seafarin' men since the beginnin' of time. "And yet I loved the sea, Niece Louise. The magic of it, its mystery, its romance and its wonders; all phases of the sea and seafarin' charmed me. But I could not step foot in a boat without almost swoonin' with fright, and the sight of the sea in its might filled me with terror. "Ah, me! You can have no idea what pains I suffered as a boy because of this fear," said Cap'n Abe. "I dreamed of voyagin' into unknown seas--of seein' the islands of the West and of the East--of visitin' all the wonderful corners of the world--of facin' all the perils and experiencin' all the adventures of a free rover. And what was my fate? "The tamest sort of a life," he said, answering his own question. "The flattest existence ever man could imagine. Hi-mighty! Instead of a sea rover--a storekeeper! Instead of romance--Sargasso!" and he gestured with his pipe in his hand. "You understand, Louise? That's what I meant when I spoke of the Sargasso Sea t'other day. It was my doom to live in the tideless and almost motionless Sea of Sargasso. "But my mind didn't stay tame ashore," pursued Cap'n Abe. "As a boy I fed it upon all the romances of the sea I could gather. Ye-as. I suppose I am greatly to be blamed. I have been a hi-mighty liar, Louise! "It began because I heard so many other men tellin' of their adventoors, an' I couldn't tell of none. My store at Rocky Head where I lived all my life till I come here (mother came over to Cardhaven with her second husband; but I stayed on there till twenty-odd year ago)--my store there was like this one. There's allus a lot of old barnacles like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup clingin' to such reefs as this. "So I heard unendin' experiences of men who had gone to sea. And at night I read everything I could get touchin' on, an' appertainin' to, sea-farin'. In my mind I've sailed the seven seas, charted unknown waters, went through all the perils I tell 'bout. Yes, sir, I don't dispute I'm a hi-mighty liar," he repeated, sighing and shaking his head. "But when I come here to the Shell Road, where there warn't nobody knowed me, it struck me forcible," pursued Cap'n Abe, "that my fambly bein' so little known I could achieve a sort of vicarious repertation as a seagoin' man. "Ye see what I mean? I cal'lated if I'd had a brother--a brother who warn't marked with a fear of the ocean--_he_ would ha' been a sailor. Course he would! All us Silts was seafarin' men! "An' I thought so much 'bout this brother that I _might_ ha' had, and what he would ha' done sailin' up an' down the world, learnin' to be a master mariner, an' finally pacin' his own quarter-deck, that he grew like he was real to me, Niece Louise--he re'lly did. I give him a name. 'Am'zon' has been a name in our fambly since Cap'n Reba Silt first put the nose of his old _Tigris_ to the tidal wave of the Am'zon River--back in seventeen-forty. He come home to New Bedford and named his first boy, that was waitin' to be christened, 'Am'zon Silt.' "So I called this--this dream brother of mine--'Am'zon.' These Cardhaven folks warn't likely to know whether I had a brother or not. And I made up he went to sea when he was twelve--like I told ye, my dear. Ye-as. I did hate to lie to ye, an' you just new-come here. But I'd laid my plans for a long while back just to walk out, as it were, an' let these fellers 'round here have a taste o' Cap'n Am'zon Silt that they'd begun to doubt was ever comin' to Cardhaven. An' hi-mighty!" exploded Cap'n Abe, with a great laugh, "I _have_ give 'em a taste of him, I vum!" "Oh, you have, Uncle Abram! You have!" agreed Louise, and burst, into laughter herself. "It is wonderful how you did it! It is marvelous! How _could_ you?" "Nothin' easier, when you come to think on't," replied Cap'n Abe. "I'd talked so much 'bout Cap'n Am'zon that he was a fixed idea in people's minds. I said when he come I'd go off on a v'y'ge. I'd fixed ev'rything proper for the exchange when you lit down on me, Niece Louise. Hi-mighty!" grinned Cap'n Abe, "at first I thought sure you'd spilled the beans." Louise rippled another appreciative laugh. "Oh, dear!" she cried, clapping her hands together. "It's too funny for anything! How you startled Betty! Why, even Lawford Tapp was amazed at your appearance. You--you do look like an old pirate, Uncle Abram." "Don't I?" responded Cap'n Abe, childishly delighted. "That awful scar along your jaw--and you so brown," said the girl. "How did you get that scar, Uncle Abram?" "Fallin' down the cellar steps when I was a kid," said the storekeeper. "But these fellers think I must ha' got it through a cutlass stroke, or somethin'. Oh, I guess I've showed 'em what a real Silt should look like. Yes, sir! I cal'late I look the part of a feller that's roved the sea for sixty year or so, Niece Louise." "You do, indeed. That red bandana--and the earrings--and the mustache--and stain. Why, uncle! even to that tattooing----" He looked down at his bared arm and nodded proudly. "Ye-as. That time I went away ten year ago and left Joab to run the store (and a proper mess he made of things!) I found a feller down in the South End of Boston and he fixed me up with this tattoo work for twenty-five dollars. Course, I didn't dare show it none here--kep' my sleeves down an' my throat-latch buttoned all winds and weathers. But now------" He laughed again, full-throated and joyous like a boy. Then, suddenly, he grew grave. "Niece Louise, I wonder if you can have any idea what this here dead-and-alive life all these years has meant to me? Lashed hard and fast to this here store, and to a stay-ashore life, when my heart an' soul was longin' to set a course for 'way across't the world? Sargasso--that's it. This was my Sargasso Sea--and I was smothered in it!" "I think I understand, Cap'n Abe," the girl said softly, laying her hand in his big palm. "An' now, Louise, that I've got a taste of romance, I don't want to come back to humdrum things--no, sir! I want to keep right on bein' Cap'n Am'zon, and havin' even them old hardshells like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup look on me as a feller-salt." "But how------?" "They never really respected Cap'n Abe," her uncle hurried on to say. "I find my neighbors _did_ love him, an' I thank God for that! But they knew he warn't no seaman, and a man without salt water in his blood don't make good with Cardhaven folks. "But Cap'n Am'zon--he's another critter entirely. They mebbe think he's an old pirate or the like," and he chuckled again, "but they sartin sure respect him. Even Bet Gallup fears Cap'n Am'zon; but, to tell ye the truth, Niece Louise, she used to earwig Cap'n Abe!" "But when the _Curlew_ arrives home?" queried the girl suddenly. "Hi-mighty, ye-as! I see _that_," he groaned. "Looks to me as though somethin'll have to happen to Abe Silt 'twixt Boston and this port. And you'll have to stop your father's mouth, Louise. I depend upon you to help me. Otherwise I shall be undone--completely undone." "Goodness!" cried the girl, choked with laughter again. "Do you mean to do away with Cap'n Abe? I fear you are quite as wicked as Betty Gallup believes you to be--and Aunt Euphemia." He grinned broadly once more. "I got Cap'n Abe's will filed away already--if somethin' should happen," said the old intriguer. "Everything's fixed, Niece Louise." "I'll help you," she declared, and gave him her hand a second time. CHAPTER XXVIII STORM CLOUDS THREATEN The next week Gusty Durgin made her debut as a picture actress. She had pestered Mr. Bane morn, noon, and night at the hotel until finally the leading man obtained Mr. Anscomb's permission to work the buxom waitress into a picture. "But nothin' funny, Mr. Bane," Gusty begged. "Land sakes! It's the easiest thing in the world to get a laugh out of a fat woman fallin' down a sand bank, or a fat man bein' busted in the face with a custard pie. I don't want folks to laugh at my fat. I want 'em to forget that I _am_ fat." "Do you know, Miss Grayling," said Bane, recounting this to Louise, "_that_ is art. Gusty has the right idea. Many a floweret is born to blush unseen, the poet says. But can it be we have found in Gusty Durgin a screen artist in embryo?" Louise was interested enough to go to the beach early to watch Gusty in a moving picture part. "A real sad piece 'tis, too," the waitress confided to Louise. "I got to make up like a mother--old, you know, and real wrinkled. And when my daughter (she's Miss Noyes) is driv' away from home by her father because she's done wrong, I got to take on like kildee 'bout it. It's awful touchin'. I jest cried about it ha'f the night when this Mr. Anscomb told me what I'd have to do in the picture. "Land sakes! I can cry re'l tears with the best of 'em--you see if I can't, Miss Grayling. You ought to be a movie actress yourself. It don't seem just right that you ain't." "But I fear I could not weep real tears," Louise said. "No. Mebbe not. That's a gift, I guess," Gusty agreed. "There! I got to go now. He's callin' me. The boss's sister will have to wait on all the boarders for dinner to-day. An' my! ain't she sore! But if I'm a success in these pictures you can just believe the Cardhaven Inn won't see _me_ passin' biscuits and clam chowder for long." In the midst of the rehearsal Louise saw a figure striding along the shore from the direction of Tapp Point, and her heart leaped. Already there seemed to be a change in the appearance of Lawford. His sisters, who came frequently to see Louise at Cap'n Abe's, had told her their brother, was actually working in one of his father's factories. He had not even obtained a position in the office, but in the factory itself. He ran one of the taffy cutting machines, for one thing, and wore overalls! "Poor Ford!" Cecile said, shaking her head. "He's up against it. I'm going to save up part of my pocket money for him--if he'll take it. I think daddy's real mean, and I've told him so. And when Dot Johnson comes I'm not going to treat her nice at all." Lawford, however, did not look the part of the abused and disowned heir. He seemed brisker than Louise remembered his being before and his smile was as winning as ever. "Miss Grayling!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands. "Lawford! I am _so_ glad to see you," she rejoined frankly. And then she had to pull her hands away quickly and raise an admonitory finger. "Walk beside me--and be good," she commanded. "Do you realize that two worlds are watching us--the world of The Beaches and the movie world as well?" "Hang 'em!" announced Lawford with emphasis, his eyes shining. "Think! I've never even thanked you for what you did for me that day. I thought Betty Gallup hauled me out of the sea till Jonas Crabbe at the lighthouse put me wise." "Never mind that," she said. "Tell me, how do you like your work? And why are you at home again?" "I'm down here for the week-end---to get some more of my duds, to tell the truth. I'm going to be a fixture at the Egypt factory--much to dad's surprise, I fancy." "Do you like it?" she asked him, watching his face covertly. "I hate it! But I can stick, just the same. I have a scheme for improving the taffy cutting machines, too. I think I've a streak in me for mechanics. I have always taken to engines and motors and other machinery." "An inventor!" "Yes. Why not?" he asked soberly, "Oh! I'm not going to be one of those inventors who let sharp business men cheat them out of their eye-teeth. If I improve that candy cutter it will cost I. Tapp real money, believe me!" Louise's eyes danced at him in admiration and she dimpled. "I think you are splendid, Lawford!" she murmured. It was a mean advantage to take of a young man. They were on the open beach and every eye from the lighthouse to Tapp Point might be watching them. Lawford groaned deeply--and looked it. "Don't," she said. "I know it's because of me you have been driven to work." "You know that, Miss Grayling? Louise!" "Yes. I had a little talk with your father. He's _such_ a funny man!" "If you can find anything humorous about I. Tapp in his present mood you are a wonder!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Louise!" He could not keep his hungry gaze off her face. "You're a nice boy, Lawford," she told him, nodding. "I liked you a lot from the very first. Now I admire you." "Oh, Louise!" "Don't look like that at me," she commanded. "They'll see you. And--and I feel as though I were about to be eaten." "You will be," he said significantly. "I am coming to the store to-night. Or shall I go to see your aunt first?" "You'd better keep away from Aunt Euphemia, Lawford," she replied, laughing gayly. "Wait till my daddy-prof comes home. See him." "And you really love me? Do you? Please . . . dear!" She nodded, pursing her lips. "But eighteen dollars a week!" groaned Lawford. "I think the super would have made it an even twenty if it hadn't been for dad." "Never mind," she told him, almost gayly. "Maybe the invention will make our fortune." At that speech Lawford's cannibalistic tendencies were greatly and visibly increased. Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a thorough knowledge of her own heart. Having made up her mind that Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man know his good fortune. Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind. Cap'n Abe said: "Land sakes! you come 'way down here to the Cape to be took in by a feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise? I thought you was a girl with too much sense for that!" "But what has love to do with sense, uncle?" she asked him, dimpling. "Hi-mighty! I s'pect that's so. An', anyway, he does seem to improve. He's really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father's candy factories." "But that's the one thing about him I'm not sure I approve of," sighed Louise. "We could have so much better times if he and I could play along the shore this summer and not have to think about hateful money." "My soul an' body!" gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken irreverently about sacred things. "Money ain't never hateful, Niece Louise." On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth. Returning, the big car stopped before Cap'n Abe's store and Mrs. Tapp came in to call on Louise. The good woman hugged the girl and wept on her bosom. "I'm so happy and so sorry, both together, that I'm half sick," she said. "Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I look at him. And his father's so cross and unhappy that I have to cry for him, too." Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state most of the time. "But I know I. Tapp is sorry for what he's done. Only there's no use expectin' him to admit it, or that he'll change. If Fordy won't marry Dot Johnson I. Tapp will never forgive him. I don't know what I shall say to her when she does come." "Maybe she will not appear at all," Louise suggested comfortingly. "I don't know. I got a letter from her mother putting the visit off till later. But it can't be put off forever. Anyhow, when she comes Lawford says he won't be at home. I hope the girls will act nice to her." "_I_ will," Louise assured her. "And I'll make Mr. Tapp like me yet; you see if I don't." "Oh, I can't hope for that much, my dear," sighed the lachrymose lady, shaking her head; but she kissed Louise again. Lawford waved a hand to her at her chamber window early on Monday morning as L'Enfant Terrible drove him in the roadster to Paulmouth to catch the milk train. All the girls were proud of their brother because, as Cecile said, he was proving himself to be "such a perfectly good sport after all." And perhaps I. Tapp himself admired his son for the pluck he was showing. They corresponded after that--Louise and Lawford. As she could not hope to hear from the _Curlew_ again until the schooner made the port of Boston, Lawford's letters were the limit of her correspondence. Louise had always failed to make many close friends among women. Her interests aside from those at the store and with the movie people were limited, too. The butterfly society of The Beaches did not much attract Louise Grayling. Aunt Euphemia manifestly disapproved of her niece at every turn. The Lady from Poughkeepsie had remained on the Cape for the full season in the hope of breaking up the intimacy between Louise and Lawford Tapp. His absence, which she had believed so fortunate, soon proved to be merely provocative of her niece's interest in the heir of the Taffy King. Nor could she wean Louise from association with the piratical looking mariner at Cap'n Abe's store. The girl utterly refused to be guided by the older woman in either of these particulars. "You are a reckless, abandoned girl!" Aunt Euphemia declared. "I am sure, no matter what others may say, that awful sailor is no fit companion for you. "And as, for Lawford Tapp----Why, his people are impossible, Louise. Wherever you have your establishment, if you marry him, his people, when they visit you will have to be apologized for," the indignant woman continued. "Let--me--see," murmured Louise. "How large an 'establishment' should you think, auntie, we could keep up on eighteen dollars a week?" "Eighteen dollars a week!" exclaimed Aunt Euphemia, aghast. "Yes. That is Lawford's present salary. Wages, I think they call it at the factory. He gets it in cash--in a pay envelope." "Mercy, Louise! You are not in earnest?" "Certainly. My young man is going to earn our living. If he marries me his father will cut him off with the proverbial shilling. I. Tapp has other matrimonial plans for Lawford." "What?" gasped the horrified Mrs. Conroth. "He does not approve of you?" "Too true, auntie. I have driven poor Lawford to work in a candy factory." "That--that upstart!" exploded the lady. But she did not refer to Lawford. It was evident that Aunt Euphemia saw nothing but the threat of storm clouds for her niece in the offing. Trouble, deep and black, seemed, to her mind to be hovering upon the horizon of the future, As it chanced, the weather about this time seemed to reflect Aunt Euphemia's mood. The summer had passed with but few brief tempests. Seldom had Louise seen any phase of the sea in its wrath. September, however, is an uncertain month at best. For several days a threatening haze shrouded the distant sea line. The kildees, fluttered and shrieked over the booming surf. Washy Gallup, meeting Louise as she strolled on the beach, prognosticated: "Shouldn't be surprised none, Miss Lou, if we had a spell of weather. Mebbe we'll have an airly equinoctooral. We sometimes do. "Then ye'll hear the sea sing psalms, as the feller said, an' no mistake. Them there picture folks'll mebbe git a show at a re'l storm. That's what they been wishin' for--an' a wreck off shore. Land sakes! if they'd ever _seed_ a ship go to pieces afore their very eyes they wouldn't ask for a second helpin'--no, ma'am!" That evening threatening clouds rolled up from seaward and mantled the arch of the sky. The fishing boats ran to cover in the harbor before dark. The surf rumbled louder and louder along the shore. And all night the sea mourned its dead over Gull Rocks. CHAPTER XXIX THE SCAR Another fishfly (or was it the same that had droned accompaniment to Cap'n' Abe's story-telling upon a former occasion?) boomed against the dusty panes of the window while the fretful, sand-laden wind swept searchingly about the store on the Shell Road. It was early afternoon; but a green and dreary light lay upon sea and land as dim as though the hour was that of sunset. In the silence punctuating the desultory conversation, the sharp _swish, swish_ of the sand upon the panes almost drowned the complaint of the fishfly. "We're going to have a humdinger of a gale," announced Milt Baker, the last to enter and bang the store door. "She's pullin' 'round into the no'th-east right now, and I tell Mandy she might's well make up her mind to my lyin' up tight an' dry for a while. Won't be no clams shipped from _these_ flats to-morrow." "High you'll likely be," agreed the storekeeper. "How _dry_ ye'll be, Milt, remains to be seen." "_In_-side, or _aout_?" chuckled Cap'n Joab, for Milt Baker's failing was not hidden under a bushel. Amiel hastened to toll attention away from his side partner. "This wind's driv' them picture folks to cover," he said. "They was makin' some fillums over there on the wreck of the _Goldrock_, that's laid out four year or so in Ham Cove------" "Nearer five year," put in Cap'n Joab, a stickler for facts. "You air right, cap'n," agreed Washy Gallup. "Well," said Amiel, "four _or_ five. The heave of her made ha'f of 'em sick, and that big actor man, Bane, got knocked off into the water an' 'twas more by good luck than good management he warn't drowned. I cal'late _he's_ got enough." "The gale that brought the _Goldrock_ ashore had just such another beginning as this," Cap'n Joab said reflectively. "But she'd never been wrecked on a lee shore if her crew had acted right. They mutineed, you know." "The sculpins!" ejaculated the storekeeper briskly. "Can't excuse that. Anything but a crew that'll turn on the afterguard that they've signed on for to obey!" "That's right, Cap'n Am'zon," said Cap'n Joab. "Ye say a true word." "An' for good reason," declared the mendacious storekeeper. "I've had experience with such sharks," and he ran his finger reflectively down the old scar upon his jaw. "I always wanted to ask you 'bout that scar, Cap'n Am'zon," put in Milt Baker encouragingly. "Did you get it in a mutiny?" "Yep." "I didn't know but ye got it piratin'," chuckled Milt. "Bet Gallup, she swears you sailed under the Jolly Roger more'n once." "So I did," declared the captain boldly. "This crew o' mutineers I speak of turned pirates, and they held me--the only one of the afterguard left alive--to navigate the ship. "Guess mebbe you've heard tell, Cap'n Joab, of the mutiny of the _Galatea_?" went on the narrator unblushingly. His fellow skipper nodded. "I've heard of it--yes. But you don't mean to say you sailed on _her_, Am'zon?" "Yes, I did," the storekeeper declared. "I was third aboard her--she carried a full crew. She sailed out o' N'York for Australia and home by the way of the Chile ports and the Horn--a hermaphrodite brig she was; and--she--could--sail! "But she warn't well found. The grub was wuss'n a Blue-nose herrin' smack's. Weevilly bread and rusty beef. The crew had a sayin' that the doc didn't have to call 'em to mess; the smell of it was sufficient. "They was a hard crew I allow--them boys; many of 'em dock rats and the like. Warn't scurcely half a dozen able seamen in the whole crew. And the skipper and mate was master hard on 'em. In the South Atlantic we got some bad weather and the crew was worked double tides, as you might say. "The extry work on top o' the poor grub finished 'em," said the storekeeper. "One day in the mornin' watch the whole crew come boilin' aft and caught the skipper and the mate at breakfast. _They_ lived well. The second was in his berth and I had the deck. "I got knocked out first thing--there's the scar of it," and the captain put a finger again on the mark along his jaw which actually was a memento of contact with the cellar step when he was a child. "Belayin' pin. Knocked me inside out for Sunday. But I cal'late they didn't put the steel to me 'cause I'd been fairly decent to 'em comin' down from N'York. "Then, after the fight was over and they'd hove the others overboard, they begun to see they needed me to navigate the _Galatea_. They give me the choice of four inches of cold steel or actin' as navigator--the bloody crew o' pirates!" "And what did ye do?" demanded Amiel Perdue, his mouth ajar. "Well," snorted the storekeeper, "ye can see I didn't choose a knife in my gizzard. We sailed up an' down the coast of Brazil and the Guineas for two months, sellin' the cargo piecemeal to dirty little Portugee traders an' smugglers. Then we h'isted the black flag and took our first prize--an English barque goin' down to Rio. It was me saved her crew's lives and give 'em a chance't in their longboat. They made Para all right, I heard afterward. "We burned that barque," proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, "after we looted her of everything wuth while. Then----" The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it. A lanky, half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill: "Hi! ain't ye heard 'bout it?" "Bout what?" demanded Milt Baker. "There's a schooner drivin' in on to the Gull Rocks," cried the news vender. "Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say. She's goin' spang onto the reef. Ev'rybody's down there, an' the life-savers are comin' around from Wellriver with their gear." "Gale out o' the no'theast, too!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab, starting for the door. The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute. He went out on the porch. Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all directions were the neighbors--both men and women. The possibility of a wreck--the great tragedy of long-shore existence--would bring everybody not bed-ridden to the sands. He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat buttoned tightly across her flat bosom, her man's hat pulled down over her ears, already halfway to the shore. From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches the summer visitors were trailing down. Below Bozewell's bungalow the motion picture company were running excitedly about. "Like sandpipers," muttered the storekeeper. "Crazy critters. Wonder where that schooner is." He hesitated to leave the premises. Cap'n Abe had never been known to follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the offing. Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers high upon the strand. But suddenly the man remembered that he was _not_ Cap'n Abe! He stood here in an entirely different character. Cap'n Amazon, the rough and ready mariner, had little in common with the timid creature who had tamely kept store on the Shell Road for twenty-odd years. What would the neighbors think of Cap'n Amazon if he remained away from the scene of excitement at such a time? He turned back into the store for his hat and coat and later came out and closed the door. Then he shuffled down the road. At first he closed his eyes--squeezing the lids tight so as not to see the gale-ridden sea. But finally, stumbling, he opened them. Far away where the pale tower of the lighthouse lifted staunchly against the greenish gray sky, the surf was rolling in from the open sea, the waves charging up the strand one after the other like huge white horses, their manes of spume tossed high by the breath of the gale. Black was the sea, and streaked angrily with foam. Thunderously did it roar and break over the Gull Rocks. A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ashore the open sea and what swam on it. The old storekeeper reached the sands below the Shell Road. Scattered in groups along the strand were the people of all classes and degrees brought together by the word that a vessel was in peril. Here a group of fishermen in guernseys and high boots, their sou'westers battened down upon their heads. Yonder Bane and his fellow actors in natty summer suits stood around the camera discussing with the director the possibility of making a film of the scene. Farther away huddled a party of women from the neighborhood, with shawls over their heads and children at their skirts. Beyond them the people from the cottages on the bluff were hurrying to the spot--women in silk attire and men in the lounge suits that fashion prescribed for afternoon wear. The storekeeper saw and appreciated all this. He stood squarely up to the wind, the ends of the red bandana over his ears snapping in the rifted airs, and shaded his eyes with his hand. With his other hand he stroked the scar along his jaw. He had a feeling that he had been cheated. That story of the mutiny of the _Galatea_ was destined to be one of his very best narratives. He had come to take great pride in these tales, had Cap'n Abe. He had heard enough men relate personal reminiscences to realize that his achievements in the story-telling line had a flavor all their own. He could hold his course with any of them, was his way of expressing it. And here something had intervened to shut him off in the middle of a narrative. Cap'n Abe did not like it. His keen vision swept the outlook once more. How darkly the clouds lowered! And the wind, spray-ridden down here on the open strand, cut shrewdly. It would be a wild night. Casually he thought of his cheerful living-room, with his chintz-cushioned rocker, Diddimus purring on the couch, and the lamplight streaming over all. "Lucky chap, you, Abe Silt, after all," he muttered. "Lucky you ain't at sea in a blow like this." It was just then that he saw the laboring schooner in the offing. Her poles were completely bare and by the way she pitched and tossed Cap'n Abe knew she must have two anchors out and that they were dragging. She was so far away that she looked like a toy on the huge waves that rolled in from the horizon line. Now and then a curling wave-crest hid even her topmasts. Again, the curtain of mist hanging above Gull Rocks shrouded her. For the craft was being driven steadily upon the rocks. Unless the wind shifted--and that soon--she must batter her hull to bits upon the reef. The storekeeper, who knew this coast and the weather conditions so well, saw at once that the schooner had no chance for salvation. When the wind backed around into the northeast, as it had on this occasion, it foreran a gale of more than usual power and of more than twenty-four hours' duration. "She's doomed!" he whispered, and wagged his head sadly. The might of the sea made him tremble. The thought of what was about to happen to the schooner--a fate that naught could avert--sickened him. Yet he walked on to join the nearest group of anxious watchers, the spray beating into that face which was strangely marred. CHAPTER XXX WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT It was the tag-end of the season for the summer colony at The Beaches. Mrs. Conroth expected to leave the Perritons that evening--was leaving lingeringly, for she had desired to bear her niece off to New York with her. But on that point Louise had been firm. "No, Aunt Euphemia," she had said. "I shall wait for daddy-prof and the _Curlew_ to arrive at Boston. Then I shall either go there to meet him, or he will come here. I want him to meet Lawford just as quickly as possible, for we are not going to wait all our lives to be married." "Louise!" gasped Mrs. Conroth with horror. "How can you say such a thing!" "I mean it," said the girl, nodding with pursed lips. "You are behaving in a most selfish way," the Lady from Poughkeepsie declared. "Everybody here has remarked how you have neglected me for those Tapps. They have taken full advantage of your patronage to push themselves into the society of their betters." "Perhaps," sighed Louise. "But consider, auntie. This is a free and more or less independent republic. After all, money is the only recognized mark of aristocracy." "Money!" "Yes. How far would the Perritons' blue blood get them--or the Standishes'--or the Graylings'--without money? And consider our own small beginnings. Your great, great, great grandfather was a knight of the yardstick and sold molasses by the quart." "You are incorrigible, Louise," cried Aunt Euphemia, her fingers in her ears. "I will not listen to you. It is sacrilegious." "It's not a far cry," her niece pursued, "from molasses to taffy. And it seems to me one is quite as aristocratic as the other." So she left Mrs. Conroth in a horrified state of mind and stepped out to face the gale. Seeing others streaming down upon the sands, Louise, too, sought the nearest flight of steps and descended to the foot of the bluff. This was Saturday and she hoped that Lawford would come for the week-end. It was not Lawford, however, but his father into whose arms she almost stumbled as she came out from under the shelter of the bank into the full sweep of the gale. "Oh, Mr. Tapp! Why is everybody running so? What has happened?" The Taffy King had a most puzzling expression upon his face. He glared at her as though he did not hear what she said. In his hand he clutched an envelope. "Ha! That you, Miss Grayling?" he growled. "Seen Ford?" "No. Is he at home?" "He's here fast enough," was I. Tapp's ungracious rejoinder. "I supposed he'd come over to see you." "Perhaps he has," she returned wickedly. "He is a very faithful knight." "He's a perfect ninny, if _that's_ what you mean," snapped the Taffy King. "He's made a fool of me, too. I shouldn't wonder if he knew this all along," and he shook the letter in his hand and scowled. "You arouse my curiosity," Louise said. "I hope Lawford has done nothing more to cause you vexation." "I don't know whether he has or not. The young upstart! I feel like punching him one minute, and then the next I've got to take off my hat to him, Miss Grayling. D'you know what he's done?" "Something really fine, I hope. I do not think you wholly appreciate Lawford, Mr. Tapp," the girl told him firmly. "Ha! No. I s'pose he's got to go outside his immediate family to be appreciated," he snarled. But at that Louise merely laughed. "You don't tell me what he has done," she urged. "Why, the young rascal's solved a problem in mechanics that has puzzled us candy makers for years. I'm having a new cutting machine built after his suggestions." "I hope Lawford will be properly reimbursed for his idea," she interrupted. "You know, he and I are going to need the money." "Ha!" snorted I. Tapp again. "Ford's no fool, it seems, when it comes to a contract. He's got me tied hard and fast to a royalty agreement and a lump sum down if the machine works the way he says it will." "I'm so glad!" cried Louise. "You are, eh? What for?" "Because we need not wait so long to be married," she frankly told him. I. Tapp stood squarely in the path and looked at her. "So you are going to marry him, whether I agree or not?" "Yes, sir." "Right in my very teeth?" "I--I hope you won't be _very_ angry, Mr. Tapp," Louise said softly. "You see--we love each other." "Love!" began I. Tapp. Then he stopped, turning the thick letter over and over in his hand. "Well!" and he actually blew a sigh. "Perhaps there is something in that. Seems to be. I set my heart on having my fortune and my partner's joined by Ford and Dot Johnson--and see what's come of it." He suddenly thrust the missive into Louise's hand. "Look at that!" With a growing suspicion of what it meant she opened the outer envelope and then the inner one, drawing out the engraved inclosure. Before she could speak a commotion along the beach drew their attention. "What can it be?" Louise cried. "The lifesavers!" "And their gear--lifeboat and all," Mr. Tapp agreed. "Must be a wreck----" His gaze swept the sea and he seized Louise's arm. "There! Don't you see her? A vessel in distress sure enough. She's drifting in upon Gull Rocks. Bad business, Miss Grayling." "Oh, there is Lawford!" murmured Louise. "He's with the surfmen!" Two teams of heavy farm horses were dragging the boat and the surfmen's two-wheeled cart along the hard sand at the edge of the surf. The bursting waves wetted all the crew as they helped push the wagons, and the snorting horses were sometimes body deep in the water. Lawford, in his fishermen's garments, waved his hand to Louise and his father. The girl smiled upon him proudly and the Taffy King, seeing the expression on her face, suddenly seized the missive from her hand. "I give up! I give up!" he exclaimed. "I said I'd disown him if he refused to marry Dorothy Johnson, my partner's daughter. But 'tain't really Lawford's fault, I s'pose, if Dot won't marry him. It seems she had other ideas along that line, too, and I never knew it till we got this invitation to her wedding." Louise smiled on the little man with tolerance. "Of course, I knew you would see it in the right light in time. But it really has been the making of Lawford," she said calmly. "You think so, do you?" returned the Taffy King. "I wonder what good it would have done him if you hadn't been the prize he wanted? I'm not sure I shouldn't pay you out, Louise Grayling, by making the two of you live for a year on his eighteen dollars a week." "Are you sure that would be such a great punishment?" she asked him softly. They moved on with the crowd about the gear and boat. The patrol had come in good season. It was not probable that the schooner would hold together long after she struck the reef. Not until this moment, when she saw the stern faces of the men and the wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident really meant. A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts, whimpered. The men talked in low voices, the women not at all. Her heart suddenly shorn of its happiness, Louise Grayling stared out at the distant, laboring craft. Death rode on the gale, and lurked where the billows roared and burst over Gull Rocks. The schooner was doomed. That might be the _Curlew_ out there--the schooner her father was aboard--instead of this imperiled vessel. Only the night before she and her uncle had figured out the _Curlew's_ course homeward-bound from her last port of call. She might pass in sight of Cardhaven Head and the lighthouse any day now. The thought sobered Louise. Clinging to I. Tapp's arm she went nearer to the spot where the surfmen had brought their gear and boat. The sea beyond the line of surf--between the strand and the reef--was foam-streaked and broken, a veritable cauldron of boiling water. The captain of the life-saving crew shrank from launching the boat into that wild waste. If the line could be shot as far as the reef the moment the schooner struck, a breeches buoy could be rigged with less danger and, perhaps, with a better chance of bringing the ship's company safely ashore. "'Tis a woeful pickle of water," Washy Gallup shrieked in Louise's ear. "And the wind a-risin'. 'Tis only allowed by law to shoot a sartain charge o' powder in the pottery little gun. Beyond that, is like to burst her. But mebbe they can make it. Cap'n Jim Trainor knows his work; and 'tis cut out for him this day." Gradually the seriousness of the situation began to affect all the lighter-minded spectators. Louise saw the group of moving picture actors at one side. The men dropped their cigarettes and strained forward as they watched the schooner drive in to certain destruction. It was like a play. The schooner, rearing on each succeeding wave, drew nearer and nearer. A hawser parted and they saw her bows swing viciously shoreward, the jib-boom thrusting itself seemingly into the very sky as she topped a huge breaker. The crew had to slip the cable of the second anchor. The foremast came crashing down before she struck. Then, with a grinding thud those on the shore could not hear, but could keenly sense, the fated craft rebounded on the reef. A gasping cry--the intake of a chorused breath--arose from the throng of spectators. The fishermen and sailors recoiled from the cart and left an open space in which the life-saving crew could handle their gear. Cap'n Trainor, the grizzled veteran of the crew, had already loaded the gun and now aimed it. The shot to which was attached the line was slipped into the muzzle. "Back!" the old man ordered, and waved his hand. Then he pulled the lanyard. The line fled out of the box with a speed that made it smoke. But the shot fell short. "'Tis too much wind, skipper," squealed Washy Gallup. "You be a-shootin' into the wind's eye. An' she's risin' ev'ry minute." His only answer was a black look from Cap'n Trainor. The latter loaded the gun again, and yet again. The last time he waited for every one to get well back before he fired the cannon. When she went off she did not burst as they half expected--she turned a double back somersault. "'Tis no use, boys!" the captain roared at them, smiting his hands together. "We must try the boat. But that's a hell's broth out there, and no two ways about it." The stranded schooner, all but hidden at times in the smother of flying spume and jumping waves, hung halfway across the reef. They could see men, like black specks, lashed to her after rigging. Louise, between bursting waves, counted twenty of these figures. "It may be the _Curlew_!" she cried to the Taffy King. "Father told me in his letter there were twenty people aboard her afore and abaft. He may be out there!" and the girl shuddered. "No, no," said I. Tapp. "Not possible. Don't think of such a thing, my girl. But whoever they are, they are to be pitied." There rose a shout at the edge of the surf. The fringe of fishermen had rushed in to aid in launching the boat. Anscomb and his camera man had taken up a good position with the machine. The director was going to get some "real stuff." Louise saw that Lawford was foremost among the volunteers. The lifeboat crew, their belts strapped under their arms, had taken their places in the boat. Captain Trainor stood in the stern with his steering oar. On its truck the lifeboat was run into the surf. "Now!" shrieked the excited moving picture director. "Action! Camera! Go!" There was something unreal about it--it was like a play. And yet out there on that schooner her crew faced bitter death, while the men of the Coast Patrol took their lives in their hands as the lifeboat was run through the bursting surf. The volunteers ran in till those ahead were neck deep in the sea. Then the boat floated clear and, with a mighty shove from behind the surfmen pulled out. Lawford and his mates staggered back with the gear. The lifeboat lifted to meet the onrolling breakers. The men tugged at the oars. Somebody screamed. Those ashore saw the white gash of a split oar. The man in the bow went overboard, not being strapped to the seat. His mate reached for him and the banging broken oar handle hit him on the head. The boat swung broadside and the next instant was rolling over and over in the surf, the crew half smothered. The spectators ran together in a crowd. But Lawford and some of the men who had helped to launch the boat rushed into the surf and dragged the overturned craft and her crew out upon the beach. "One of the crew with a broken arm; another knocked out complete with that crack on the head," sputtered Cap'n Jim Trainor. "Two of my very best men. Come on, boys! Who'll take their places?" Lawford was already putting on the belt he had unbuckled from about one of the injured surfmen. The Taffy King, seeing what his son was about, shouted: "Ford! Ford! Don't dare do that! I forbid you!" Lawford turned a grim face upon his father. "I earn eighteen a week, dad. I am my own boss." A soft palm was placed upon I. Tapp's lips before he could reply. Louise was weeping frankly, but she urged: "Don't stop him, Mr. Tapp. Don't say another word to him. My--my heart is breaking; but I am glad--oh, I am so glad!--that he is a real man." Cap'n Trainor's hard gaze swept the circle of strained faces about him. After all, the men here were mostly "second raters"--weaklings like Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue, or cripples like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup. Suddenly the captain's gaze descried a figure well back in the crowd--one who had not pushed forward during these exciting moments, but who had been chained to the spot by the fascination of what was happening. "Ain't that Cap'n Am'zon Silt back there?" demanded the skipper of the lifeboat crew. "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need you." CHAPTER XXXI AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon. His only ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters. He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar land-locked water. His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds of the wrecked schooner. And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the wreck. But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea, and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into that awful maelstrom of tumbling water. Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness of this present catastrophe. Trembling, the salt tears stinging his eyes more sharply than the salt spray stung his cheeks, the storekeeper had ventured into the crowd of spectators on the sands. So enthralled were his neighbors by what was going forward that they did not notice his appearance. And well they did not. This character of the bluff and ready master mariner that Cap'n Abe had builded--a new order of Frankenstein--and with which he had deceived the community for these many weeks, came near to being wrecked right here and now. He all but screamed aloud in fear when the lifeboat was overturned. Pallid, shaking, panting for every breath he drew, he was slipping out of the unnoticing crowd when Cap'n Jim Trainor of the lifeboat crew called to him. "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need you." For the space of a breath the storekeeper "hung in the wind." He had been poised for flight and the shock of the lifeboat captain's call almost startled him into running full speed up the beach. Then the thought smote upon his harassed mind that Cap'n Trainor was not speaking to Cap'n Abe, storekeeper. The call for aid was addressed to Cap'n Amazon Silt. It was to Cap'n Amazon, the man who had been through all manner of perils by sea and land, who had suffered stress of storm and shipwreck himself, whose reputation for courage the Shell Road storekeeper had builded so long. Should all this fall in a moment? Should he show the coward's side of the shield after all his effort toward vicarious heroism? Another moment of hesitancy and as Cap'n Amazon Silt he would never be able to hold up his head in the company of Cardhaven folk again. Cursed by the horror his mother had felt for the cruel sea that had taken her husband before her very eyes, Cap'n Abe had ever shrunk from any actual venture upon deep water. But Cap'n Amazon must be true to his manhood--must uphold by his actions the character the storekeeper had builded for him. He buttoned his coat tightly across his chest and pushed through the group. Men and women alike made way for him, and in his ringing ears he heard such phrases as: "_He's_ the man to do it!" "That's Cap'n Am'zon for ye!" "There's _one_ Silt ain't afraid of salt water, whatever Cap'n Abe may be!" "Will you come, Cap'n Am'zon?" called the skipper of the life-saving crew. "I'm coming," mumbled the storekeeper, and held up his arms that Milt Baker might fasten the belt about his body. Afterward Milt was fond of declaring that the look on Cap'n Amazon's face at that moment prophesied the tragedy that was to follow. "He seen death facin' him--an' he warn't afraid," Milt said reverently. "In with you, boys!" shouted the skipper. "And hook your belts--every man of you! If she overturns again I want to be able to count noses when we come right side up. Now!" A shuddering cry from the women, in which Louise found herself joining; a "Yo! heave-ho!" from the men who launched the craft. Then the lifeboat was in the surf again, her crew laboring like the sons of Hercules they were to keep her head to the wind and to the breakers. The storekeeper was no weakling; rowing was an accomplishment he had excelled in from childhood. It was the single activity in any way connected with the sea that he had learned and maintained. At first he kept his eyes shut--tight shut. A strange thrill went through him, however. All these years he had shrunk from an unknown, an unexperienced, peril. Was it that Cap'n Abe had been frightened by a bogey, after all? He opened his eyes, pulling rhythmically with the oar--never missing a stroke. His gaze rested on the face of that old sea-dog, Cap'n Jim Trainor. The fierce light of determination dwelt there. The skipper meant to get to the wrecked schooner. He had no doubt of accomplishing this, and Cap'n Abe caught fire of courage from the skipper's transfigured countenance. As for Lawford Tapp, no member of Cap'n Trainor's crew pulled a better oar than he. With the bow ash he drove on like a young giant. Fear did not enter into _his_ emotions. There was nobody to notice the pallor of the storekeeper's visage. Every man's attention was centered on his own oar, while the skipper gazed ahead at the wave-beaten schooner grounded hard and fast upon the reef. There was no lull in the gale. Indeed, it seemed as though the strength of the wind steadily rose. The lifeboat only crept from the shore on its course to Gull Rocks. Each yard must be fought for by the earnest crew. Occasionally Cap'n Trainor called an encouraging sentence at them. For the most part, however, only the ravening sea roared malice in their ears. Around them the hungry waves leaped and fought for their lives; but the buoyant boat, held true to her course by the skipper, bore up nobly under the strain. They won on, foot by foot. The thunder of the breakers over the reef finally deafened them. The rocking schooner, buffeted by waves that could not drive her completely over the reef, towered finally above the heads of the men in the lifeboat. Cap'n Trainor's straining eyes deciphered her name painted on the bow. He threw a hand upward in a surprised gesture, still clinging to the steering oar with his other hand, and shrieked aloud: "The _Curlew_! By mighty! who'd ha' thought it? 'Tis the _Curlew_." He, too, knew of Cap'n Abe's supposed voyage on the seaweed ship. The oarsmen read the word upon the skipper's lips rather than heard his voice. Two, at least, were shocked by the announcement--Lawford and the storekeeper. There was no opportunity for comment upon this wonder. Skillfully the lifeboat was brought around under the lee of the wreck. Already most of her crew had crept down to the rail and were waiting, half submerged, to drop into the lifeboat. But one figure was still visible high up in the shrouds. When the waves sucked out from under her the keel of the lifeboat almost scratched the reef. Then it rose on a swell to the very rail of the wreck, wedged so tightly on the rock. The castaways came inboard rapidly, bringing their injured skipper with them. The lifeboat was quickly overburdened with human freight. "No more! No more!" shouted Cap'n Trainor. "We'll have to make another trip." "Where's the professor? Bring down the professor! There he is!" yelled the mate of the _Curlew_, who had given his attention to the injured master of the wrecked craft. "Who lashed him fast up there?" There was a movement forward. The storekeeper had got up and pulled a stout-armed member of the _Curlew's_ crew into his place. "Take my oar!" commanded Cap'n Abe. "I got a niece--he's her father. Hi-mighty! I just got to get him aboard!" With an agility that belied his years he leaped for the schooner's rail as the next surge rose. He swarmed inboard and started up the shrouds. Those below remained silent while he climbed. He reached the helpless man, whipped out his knife, cut the lashings. Slight as the storekeeper seemed, his muscles were of steel. As though the half-conscious professor were a child, he lowered him to the slanting deck. "Only room for one o' you!" roared Cap'n Trainor. "Only one! We're overloaded as 'tis. Better wait." "You'll take _him_!" shouted Cap'n Abe, and dropped his burden at Lawford Tapp's feet. The next moment the lifeboat shot away from the side of the wreck, leaving the Man Who Was Afraid marooned upon her deck. That was a perilous journey for the overladen boat. Only the good management of Cap'n Trainor could have brought her safely to shore. And when she banged upon the beach it was almost a miracle that she did not start all her bottom boards. Many willing hands hauled the heavy boat up upon the sands. The rescued crew of the schooner tumbled out and lifted their injured captain ashore. But it was Lawford who brought in Professor Grayling. Louise had watched with the Taffy King all through the battle of the lifeboat with the sea, suffering pangs of terror for Lawford's safety, yet feeling, too, unbounded pride in his achievement. Now she pressed down to meet him at the edge of the sea and found that the drenched, dazed man Lawford bore up in his arms was her own father! The meeting served to rouse the professor. He stared searchingly over the group of rescued men. "Where's the man who cut my lashings and helped me down to the deck? I don't see him," he said. "Louise, my dear, this is a very, very strange homecoming. And all my summer's work gone for nothing! But that man----" "Cap'n Amazon Silt," said Lawford. "He stayed behind. There wasn't room in the boat." "Cap'n Am'zon!" exclaimed several excited voices. But only one--and that Louise Grayling's--uttered another name: "Cap'n Abe! Isn't _he_ with you? Didn't you bring him ashore?" "By heaven! that's so, Louise!" groaned Lawford. "They must both be out there. The two brothers are marooned on that rotten wreck!" Already the kindly neighbors were hurrying the castaways in groups of twos and threes to the nearer dwellings. Anscomb was getting foot after foot of "the real stuff." The moving picture actors and the cottagers hung on the outskirts of the throng of natives, wide-eyed and marveling. They had all, on this day, gained a taste of the stern realities of life as it is along the shore. Louise was desirous of getting her father to the store, for he was exhausted. Lawford turned back toward the group of life-saving men standing about the beached boat. "If they can get her launched again they'll need me," he shouted back over his shoulder. "Poor Cap'n Abe and Cap'n Amazon------" "You've done enough, boy," his father declared, clinging to the sleeve of Lawford's guernsey. "Don't risk your life again." "Don't worry, dad. A fellow has to do his bit, you know." Betty Gallup came to the assistance of Louise and helped support the professor. The woman's countenance was all wrinkled with trouble. "He must be out there, too," she murmured to Louise. "Ain't none o' these chaps off the _Curlew_ jest right yet--scar't blue, or suthin'. They don't seem to rightly sense that Cap'n Abe was with 'em all the time aboard that schooner." "Poor Cap'n Abe!" groaned Louise again. "And that old pirate's with him," said Betty. But her tone lacked its usual venom in speaking of Cap'n Amazon. "Who'd ha' thought it? I reckoned he was nothing but a bag o' wind, with all his yarns of bloody murder an' the like. But he is a Silt; no gettin' around that. And Cap'n Abe allus did say the Silts were proper seamen." "Poor, poor Cap'n Abe!" sobbed Louise. "Now, now!" soothed Betty. "Don't take on so, deary. They'll get 'em both. Never fear." But the rising gale forbade another launching of the lifeboat for hours. The night shut down over the wind-ridden sea and shore, and by the pallid light fitfully playing over the tumbling waters the watchers along the sands saw the stricken _Curlew_ being slowly wrenched to pieces by the waves that wolfed about and over her. CHAPTER XXXII ON THE ROLL OF HONOR Stretched upon the couch in the living-room behind the store, with Diddimus purring beside him, Professor Grayling heard that evening the story of Cap'n Abe's masquerade. Betty Gallup had gone back to the beach and Louise could talk freely to her father. "And he saved me, for your sake!" murmured the professor. "He gave me his place in the lifeboat! Ah, my dear Lou! there is something besides physical courage in this world. And I don't see but that your uncle has plenty of both kinds of bravery. Really, he is a wonderful man." "He _was_ a wonderful man," said Louise brokenly. "I do not give up hope of his ultimate safety, my dear. The gale will blow itself out by morning. Captain Ripley is so badly hurt that he is being taken to Boston to-night, and the crew go with him. But if there is interest to be roused in the fate of the last man left upon the wreck----" "Oh, I am sure the neighbors will do everything in their power. And Lawford, too!" she cried. "The schooner is not likely to break up before morning. The departure of her crew to-night will make it all the easier for Mr. Abram Silt's secret to be kept," the professor reminded her. "Yes. We will keep his secret," sighed Louise. "Poor Uncle Abram! After all, he can gain a reputation for courage only vicariously. It will be Cap'n Amazon Silt who will go down in the annals of Cardhaven as the brave man who risked his life for another, daddy-prof." Aunt Euphemia did not leave The Beaches on this evening, as she had intended. Even she was shaken out of her usual marble demeanor by the wreck and the incidents connected with it. She came to the store after dinner and welcomed her brother with a most subdued and chastened spirit. "You have been mercifully preserved, Ernest," she said, wiping her eyes. "I saw young Lawford Tapp bring you ashore. A really remarkable young man, and so I told Mrs. Perriton just now. So brave of him to venture out in the lifeboat as a volunteer. "I have just been talking to his father. Quite a remarkable man--I. Tapp. One of these rough diamonds, you know, Ernest. And he is so enthusiastic about Louise. He has just pointed out to me the spot on the bluff where he intends to build a cottage for Lawford and Louise." "What's this?" demanded Professor Grayling, sitting up so suddenly on the couch that Diddimus spat and jumped off in haste and anger. "I--I was just going to tell you about Lawford," Louise said in a small voice. "Oh, yes! A little thing like your having a lover slipped your mind, I suppose?" demanded her father. "And a young man of most excellent character," put in the surprising Mrs. Conroth. "Perhaps his family is not all that might be desired; but I. Tapp is e-_nor_-mously wealthy and I understand he will settle a good income upon Ford. Besides, the young man has some sort of interest in the manufacturing of candies." Trust the Lady from Poughkeepsie to put the best foot forward when it became necessary to do so. The professor was gazing quizzically at the flushed face of his daughter. "So that is what you have been doing this summer, is it?" he said. "That--and looking after Cap'n Abe," confessed Louise. "I'll have to look into this further." "Isn't it terrible?" interrupted Mrs. Conroth. "They say the two brothers are out on that wreck and they cannot be reached until the gale subsides. And then it will be too late to save them. Well, Louise, that old sailor was certainly a brave man. I am really sorry I spoke so harshly about him. They tell me it was he who put your father in the boat. I hope there is some way you can fittingly show your appreciation, Ernest." "I hope so," said Professor Grayling grimly. Lawford came to the store before bedtime--very white and serious-looking. He had tried with the patrol crew to launch the boat again and go to the rescue of the two old men supposed to be upon the wreck. But the effort had been fruitless. Until the gale fell and the tide turned they could not possibly get out to Gull Rocks. "A brave man is Cap'n Amazon," Lawford Tapp said. "And if Cap'n Abe was in the schooner's crew----Why, Professor Grayling! surely you must remember him? Not a big man, but with heavy gray beard and mustache--and very bald. Mild blue eyes and very gentle-spoken. Don't you remember him in the crew of the _Curlew_?" "It would seem quite probable that he was aboard," Professor Grayling returned, "minding his p's and q's," as Louise had warned him. "But you see, Mr. Tapp, being only a passenger, I had really little association with the men forward. You know how it is aboard ship--strict discipline, and all that." "Yes, sir; I see. And, after all, Cap'n Abe was a man that could easily be overlooked. Not assertive at all. Not like Cap'n Amazon. Quite timid and retiring by nature. Don't you say so, Louise?" "Oh, absolutely!" agreed the girl. "And yet, when you come to think of it, Uncle Abram is a wonderful man." "I don't see how you can say so," the young man said. "It's Cap'n Amazon who is wonderful. There were other men down on the beach better able to handle an oar than he. But he took the empty seat in the lifeboat when he was called without saying 'yes or no'! And he pulled with the best of us." "He is no coward, of that I am sure," said Professor Grayling. "He gave me his place in the boat. We can but pray that the lifeboat will get to him in the morning." That hope was universal. All night driftwood fires burned on the sands and the people watched and waited for the dawn and another sight of the schooner on the reef. The tide brought in much wreckage; but it was mostly smashed top gear and deck lumber. Therefore they had reason to hope that the hull of the wreck held together. It was just at daybreak that the wind subsided and the tide was so that the lifeboat could be launched again. Wellriver station owned no motor-driven craft at this time, or Cap'n Jim Trainor and his men would have been able to reach the wreck at the height of the gale. It was no easy matter even now to bring the lifeboat under the lee of the battered schooner. Her masts and shrouds were overside, anchoring her to the reef. Not a sign of life appeared anywhere upon her. One of the crew of the lifeboat leaped for the rail and clambered aboard. Down in the scuppers, in the wash of each wave that climbed aboard the wreck, he spied a huddled bundle. "Here's one of 'em, sure 'nough!" he sang out. Making his way precariously down the slanting deck, he reached in a minute the spot where the unfortunate lay. The man had washed back and forth in the sea water so long that he was all but parboiled. The rescuer seized him by the shoulders and drew him out of this wash. He was a very bald man with gray hair, a stubble of beard on his cheeks, and a straggling gray mustache. "Why, by golly!" yelled the surfman. "This here's Cap'n Abe Silt!" "Ain't his brother Am'zon there?" "No, I don't see his brother nowhere." "Take a good look." "Trust me to do that," answered the surfman. But the search was useless. Nobody ever saw Cap'n Amazon again. He had gone, as he had come--suddenly and in a way to shock the placid thoughts of Cardhaven people. A stone in the First Church graveyard is all the visible reminder there remains of Cap'n Amazon Silt, who for one summer amazed the frequenters of the store on the Shell Road. The life-savers brought Cap'n Abe, the storekeeper, back from the wreck, the last survivor of the _Curlew's_ crew. He was in rather bad shape, for his night's experience on the wreck had been serious indeed. They put him to bed, and Louise and Betty Gallup took turns in nursing him, while Cap'n Joab Beecher puttered about the store, trying to wait on customers and keep things straight. At first, as he lay in his "cabin," Cap'n Abe did not have much to say--not even to Louise. But after a couple of days, on an occasion when she was feeding him broth, he suddenly sputtered and put away the spoon with a vexed gesture. "What's the matter, Uncle Abram?" she asked him. "Isn't it good?" "The soup's all right, Niece Louise. 'Tain't so fillin' as chowder, I cal'late, but it'll keep a feller on deck for a spell. That ain't it. I was just a-thinkin'." "Of what?" "Hi-mighty! It's all over, ain't it?" he said in desperation. "Can't never bring forward Cap'n Am'zon again, can I? I _got_ to be Cap'n Abe hereafter, whether I want to be or not. It's a turrible dis'pointment, Louise--turrible! "I ain't sorry I went out there in that boat. No. For I got your father off, an' he'd been carried overboard if he'd been let stay in them shrouds. "But land sakes! I _did_ fancy bein' Cap'n Am'zon 'stead o' myself. And the worst of it is, Niece Louise, I can't have nothin' new to tell 'bout Cap'n Am'zon's adventures. He's drowned, an' he can't never go rovin' no more." "But think of what you've done, Cap'n Abe," Louise urged. "You feared the sea--and you overcame that fear. All your life you shrank from venturing on the water; yet you went out in that lifeboat and played the hero. Oh, I think it is fine, Cap'n Abe! It's wonderful!" "Wonderful?" repeated Cap'n Abe. "P'r'aps 'tis. Mebbe I've been too timid all my life. P'r'aps I could ha' been a sailor and cruised in foreign seas if I'd just _had_ to. "But mother allus was opposed. She kept talkin' against it when I was a boy--and later, too. She told how scar't she was when Cap'n Josh and the _Bravo_ went down in sight of her windows. And mebbe I ketched it more from her talkin' than aught else. "But I never realized that stress of circumstances could push me into it an' make a man of me. I had a feelin' that I'd swoon away an' fall right down in my tracks if I undertook to face such a sea as that was t'other day. "And see! Nothing of the kind happened! I knew I'd got to make good Cap'n Am'zon's character, or not hold up my head in Cardhaven again. I don't dispute I've been a hi-mighty liar, Niece Louise. But--but it's sort o' made a man o' me for once, don't ye think? "I dunno. Good comes out o' bad sometimes. Bitter from the sweet as well. And when a man's got a repertation to maintain----There was that feller Hanks, on the _Lunette_, out o' Nantucket. I've heard Cap'n Am'zon tell it----" "Cap'n Abe!" gasped Louise. "Hi-mighty! There I go again," said the storekeeper mournfully. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks--nor break him of them he's l'arned!" Louise and her father remained at the store on the Shell Road until Cap'n Abe was up and about again. Then they could safely leave him to the ministrations of Betty Gallup. "Somehow," confessed that able seaman, "he don't seem just like he used to. He speaks quicker and sharper--more like that old pirate, Am'zon Silt, though I shouldn't be sayin' nothin' harsh of the dead, I s'pose. I don't dispute that Cap'n Am'zon was muchly of a man, when ye come to think on't. "But Cap'n Abe's more to my taste. Now the place seems right again with him in the house. Cap'n Abe's as easy as an old shoe. And, land sakes! I ain't locked out o' _his_ bedroom when I want to clean! "One thing puzzles me, Miss Lou. I thought Cap'n Abe would take on c'nsiderable about Jerry. But when I told him the canary was dead he up and said that mebbe 'twas better so, seem' the old bird couldn't see no more. Now, who would ha' told him Jerry was blind?" There were a few other things about the returned Cap'n Abe that might have amazed his neighbors. He seemed to possess an almost uncanny knowledge of what had happened during the summer. Besides, he seemed to have achieved Cap'n Amazon's manner of "looking down" a too inquisitive inquirer into personal affairs and refusing to answer. Because of this, perhaps, nobody was ever known to ask the storekeeper why he had filled his sea chest with bricks and useless dunnage when he shipped it to Boston. That mystery was never explained. Before Louise and her father were ready to leave Cardhaven most of the summer residents along The Beaches, including Aunt Euphemia, had gone. And the moving picture company had also flown. With the latter went Gusty Durgin, bravely refusing to have her artistic soul trammeled any longer by the claims of hungry boarders at the Cardhaven Inn. "I don't never expect to be one of these stars on the screen," she confided to Louise. "But I can make a good livin', an' ma's childern by her second husband, Mr. Vleet, has got to be eddicated. "I'm goin' to make me up a fancy name and make a repertation. They ain't goin' to call me 'Dusty Gudgeon' no more. Miss Louder tells me I can 'bant'--whatever that is--to take down my flesh, and mebbe you'll see me some day, Miss Lou, in a re'l ladylike part. An' I can always cry. Even Mr. Bane says I'm wuth my wages when it comes to the tearful parts." The Tapps were flitting to Boston, Mrs. Tapp and the girls sure of "getting in" with the proper set at last. Their summer's campaign, thanks to Louise, had been successful to that end. Louise and Lawford walked along the strand below the cottages. The candy cutting machine had proved a success and Lawford was giving his attention to a new "mechanical wrapper" for salt water taffy that would do away with much hand labor. On the most prominent outlook of Tapp Point were piles of building material and men at work. The pudgy figure of I. Tapp was visible walking about, importantly directing the workmen. "It's going to be a most, wonderful house, Louise dear," sighed Lawford. "Do you suppose you can stand it? The front elevation looks like a French chateau of the Middle Ages, and there ought to be a moat and a portcullis to make it look right." "Never mind," she responded cheerfully. "We won't have to live in it--much. See. We have all this to live in," with a wide gesture. "The sea and the shore. Cape Cod forever! I shall never be discontented here, Lawford." They wandered back to the store on the Shell Road. There was a chill in the fall air and Cap'n Abe had built a small fire in the rusty stove. About it were gathered the usual idlers. A huge fishfly droned on the window pane. "It's been breedin' a change of weather for a week," said Cap'n Joab. "Right ye air, sir," agreed Washy Gallup, wagging his head. "I 'member hearin' Cap'n Am'zon tell 'bout a dry spell like this," began Cap'n Abe, leaning his hairy fists upon the counter. "Twas when he was ashore once at Teneriffe----" "Don't I hear Mandy a-callin' me?" Milt Baker suddenly demanded, making for the door. "I gotter git over home myself," said Cap'n Joab apologetically. "Me, too," said Washy, rising. "'Tis chore time." Cap'n Abe clamped his jaws shut for a minute and his eyes blazed. Only the mild and inoffensive Amiel was left of his audience. "Huh!" he growled. "Ain't goin' to waste my breath on _you_, Amiel Perdue. Go git me a scuttle of coal." Then, when the young fellow had departed, the storekeeper grinned ruefully and whispered in his niece's ear: "Hi-mighty! Cap'n Amazon's cut the sand out from under my feet. They think he told them yarns so much better'n I do that they won't even stay to hear me. Hard lines. Niece Louise, hard lines. But mebbe I deserve it!" 
43773	----	After days of fog Stanley Heath, a stranger whose power-boat runs aground on the treacherous Cape Cod shoals, stumbles into the Homestead and into the life of Marcia Howe, a young widow with whom half the men in the village are already in love. Out of his clothing falls a leather case crammed with gems and the enigma of this puzzling possession provides the pivot around which the story revolves. Marcia's blind, intuitive belief in the man's innocence brings its own reward. The hamlets of Wilton and Belleport, already so well known to Miss Bassett's readers, are again the setting of this new novel. A sparkling love story of Cape Cod. Shifting Sands Other Books by SARA WARE BASSETT The Harbor Road The Green Dolphin Bayberry Lane Twin Lights SHIFTING SANDS SARA WARE BASSETT THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY · PHILADELPHIA COPYRIGHT 1933 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY Shifting Sands Manufactured in the United States of America _Our lives are like the ever shifting sands Which ocean currents whirl in the ebb and flow Of their unresisting tides_ Chapter I _The Widder_ lived on the spit of sand jutting out into Crocker's Cove. Just why she should have been singled out by this significant sobriquet was a subtle psychological problem. There were other women in Belleport and in Wilton, too, who had lost husbands. Maria Eldridge was a widow and so was Susan Ann Beals. Indeed death had claimed the head of many a household in the community, for to follow the sea was a treacherous business. Nevertheless, despite the various homes in which solitary women reigned, none of their owners was designated by the appellation allotted to Marcia Howe. Moreover, there seemed in the name the hamlet had elected to bestow upon her a ring of satisfaction, even of rejoicing, rather than the note of condolence commonly echoing in the term. Persons rolled it on their tongues as if flaunting it triumphantly on the breeze. "Marcia ought never to have married Jason Howe, anyway," asserted Abbie Brewster when one day she reminiscently gossiped with her friend, Rebecca Gill. "She was head an' shoulders above him. Whatever coaxed her into it I never could understand. She could have had her pick of half a dozen husbands. Why take up with a rollin' stone like him?" "She was nothin' but a slip of a thing when she married. Mebbe she had the notion she could reform him," Rebecca suggested. "Mebbe," agreed Abbie. "Still, young as she was, she might 'a' known she couldn't. Ten years ago he was the same, unsteady, drinkin' idler he proved himself to be up to the last minute of his life. He hadn't changed a hair. Such men seldom do, unless they set out to; an' Jason Howe never set out to do, or be, anything. He was too selfish an' too lazy. Grit an' determination was qualities left out of him. Well, he's gone, an' Marcia's well rid of him. For 'most three years now, she's been her own mistress an' the feelin' that she is must be highly enjoyable." "Poor Marcia," sighed Rebecca. "Poor Marcia?" Abbie repeated. "Lucky Marcia, I say. 'Most likely she'd say so herself was she to speak the truth. She never would, though. Since the day she married, she's been close-mouthed as an oyster. What she thought of Jason, or didn't think of him, she's certainly kept to herself. Nobody in this village has ever heard her bewail her lot. She made her bargain an' poor as 'twas she stuck to it." "S'pose she'll always go on livin' there on that deserted strip of sand?" speculated Rebecca. "Why, it's 'most an island. In fact, it is an island at high tide." "So 'tis. An' Zenas Henry says it's gettin' to be more an' more so every minute," Abbie replied. "The tide runs through that channel swift as a race horse an' each day it cuts a wider path 'twixt Marcia an' the shore. Before long, she's goin' to be as completely cut off from the mainland at low water as at high." "It must be a terrible lonely place." "I wouldn't want to live there," shrugged the sociable Abbie. "But there's folks that don't seem to mind solitude, an' Marcia Howe's one of 'em. Mebbe, after the life she led with Jason, she kinder relishes bein' alone. 'Twould be no marvel if she did. Furthermore, dynamite couldn't blast her out of that old Daniels Homestead. Her father an' her grandfather were born there, an' the house is the apple of her eye. It is a fine old place if only it stood somewheres else. Of course, when it was built the ocean hadn't et away the beach, an' instead of bein' narrow, the Point was a wide, sightly piece of land. Who'd 'a' foreseen the tides would wash 'round it 'til they'd whittled it down to little more'n a sand bar, an' as good as detached it from the coast altogether?" "Who'd 'a' foreseen lots of pranks the sea's played? The Cape's a-swirl with shiftin' sands. They drift out here, they pile up there. What's terra firma today is swallered up tomorrow. Why, even Wilton Harbor's fillin' in so fast that 'fore we know it there won't be a channel deep enough to float a dory left us. We'll be land-locked." "Well, say what you will against the sea an' the sand, they did a good turn for Marcia all them years of her married life. At least they helped her keep track of Jason. Once she got him on the Point with the tide runnin' strong 'twixt him and the village, she'd padlock the skiff an' there he'd be! She had him safe an' sound," Abbie chuckled. "Yes," acquiesced Rebecca. "But the scheme worked both ways. Let Jason walk over to town across the flats an' then let the tide rise an' there he be, too! Without a boat there was no earthly way of his gettin' home. Marcia might fidget 'til she was black in the face. He had the best of excuses for loiterin' an' carousin' ashore." "Well, he don't loiter and carouse here no longer. Marcia knows where he is now," declared Abbie with spirit. "I reckon she's slept more durin' these last three years than ever she slept in the ten that went before 'em. She certainly looks it. All her worries seem to have fallen away from her, leavin' her lookin' like a girl of twenty. She's pretty as a picture." "She must be thirty-five if she's a day," Rebecca reflected. "She ain't. She's scarce over thirty. I can tell you 'xactly when she was born," disputed the other woman. "But thirty or even more, she don't look her age." "S'pose she'll marry again?" ventured Rebecca, leaning forward and dropping her voice. "Marry? There you go, 'Becca, romancin' as usual." "I ain't romancin'. I was just wonderin'. An' I ain't the only person in town askin' the question, neither," retorted Mrs. Gill with a sniff. "There's scores of others. In fact, I figger the thought is the uppermost one in the minds of 'most everybody." Abbie laughed. "Mebbe. In fact, I reckon 'tis," conceded she. "It's the thought that come to everyone quick as Jason was buried. 'Course, 'twouldn't be decent to own it--an' yet I don't know why. Folks 'round about here are fond of Marcia an' feel she's been cheated out of what was her rightful due. They want her to begin anew an' have what she'd oughter have had years ago--a good husband an' half a dozen children. There's nothin' to be ashamed of in a wish like that. I ain't denyin' there are certain persons who are more self-seekin'. I ain't blind to the fact that once Jason was under the sod, 'bout every widower in town sorter spruced up an' began to take notice; an' before a week was out every bachelor had bought a new necktie. Eben Snow told me so an' he'd oughter know bein' the one that sells 'em." "Abbie!" "It's true. An' why, pray, shouldn't the men cast sheep's eyes at Marcia? Can you blame 'em? She'd be one wife in a hundred could a body win her. There ain't a thing she can't do from shinglin' a barn down to trimmin' a hat. She's the match of any old salt at sailin' a boat an' can pull an oar strong as the best of 'em. Along with that she can sew, cook, an' mend; plow an' plant; paper a room. An' all the time, whatever she's doin', she'd bewitch you with her smile an' her pretty ways. It's a marvel to me how she's kept out of matrimony long's this with so many men millerin' 'round her." "She certainly's takin' her time. She don't 'pear to be in no hurry to get a husband," smiled Rebecca. "Why should she be? Her parents left her with money in the bank an' the Homestead to boot, an' Marcia was smart enough not to let Jason make ducks and drakes of her property. She dealt out to him what she thought he better have an' held fast to the rest. As a result, she's uncommon well-off." "All men mightn't fancy havin' a wife hold the tiller, though." Rebecca Gill pursed her lips. "Any man Marcia Howe married would have to put up with it," Abbie asserted, biting off a needleful of thread with a snap of her fine white teeth. "Marcia's always been captain of the ship an' she always will be." Gathering up her mending, Rebecca rose. "Well, I can't stay here settlin' Marcia's future," she laughed. "I've got to be goin' home. Lemmy'll be wantin' his supper. He can't, though, accuse me of fritterin' the afternoon away. I've darned every pair of stockin's in this bag an' there was scores of 'em. You turn off such things quicker when you're in good company." A scuffling on the steps and the sound of men's voices interrupted the words. The kitchen door swung open and Zenas Henry's lanky form appeared on the threshold. Behind him, like a foreshortened shadow, tagged his crony, Lemuel Gill. "Well, well, 'Becca, if here ain't Lemmy come to fetch you!" Abbie cried. "'Fraid your wife had deserted you, Lemmy? She ain't. She was just this minute settin' out for home." "I warn't worryin' none," grinned Lemuel. "What you two been doin'?" Abbie inquired of her husband. "Oh, nothin' much," answered the big, loose-jointed fellow, shuffling into the room. "We've been settin' out, drinkin' in the air." The carelessness of the reply was a trifle overdone, and instantly aroused the keen-eyed Abbie's suspicions. She glanced into his face. "Guess we're goin' to have rain," he ventured. "I wouldn't wonder," rejoined Lemuel Gill. Humming to prove he was entirely at his ease, Zenas Henry ambled to the window and looked out. "Where you been settin'?" demanded Abbie. "Settin'? Oh, Lemmy an' me took sort of a little jaunt along the shore. Grand day to be abroad. I never saw a finer. The sea's blue as a corn-flower, an' the waves are rollin' in, an' rollin' in, an'--" "They generally are," Abbie interrupted dryly. "Just where'd you particularly notice 'em?" Lemuel Gill stepped into the breach. "'Twas this way," began he. "Zenas Henry an' me thought we'd take a bit of a meander. We'd been to the postoffice an' was standin' in the doorway when we spied Charlie Eldridge goin' by with a fish-pole--" "Charlie Eldridge--the bank cashier?" Rebecca echoed. "But he ain't no fisherman. What on earth was he doin' with a fish-pole?" "That's what we wondered," said Lemuel. "Charlie Eldridge with a fish-pole," repeated Abbie. "Mercy! Where do you s'pose he was goin'?" "I never in all my life knew of Charlie Eldridge goin' a-fishin'," Rebecca rejoined. "Not that he ain't got a perfect right to fish if he wants to outside bankin' hours. But--" "But Charlie fishin'!" interrupted Abbie, cutting her friend short. "Why, he'd no more dirty his lily-white hands puttin' a squirmin' worm on a fish-hook than he'd cut off his head. In fact, I don't believe he'd know how. You didn't, likely, see where he went." "Wal--er--yes. We did." Zenas Henry wheeled about. Clearing his throat, he darted a glance at Lemuel. "Havin' completed the business that took us to the store--" he began. "Havin', in short, asked for the mail an' found there warn't none," laughed Abbie, mischievously. Zenas Henry ignored the comment. "We walked along in Charlie's wake," he continued. "Followed him?" "Wal--somethin' of the sort. You might, I s'pose, call it follerin'," Zenas Henry admitted shamefacedly. "Anyhow, Lemmy an' me trudged along behind him at what we considered a suitable distance." "Where'd he go?" Rebecca urged, her face alight with curiosity. "Wal, Charlie swung along, kinder whistlin' to himself, an' ketchin' his pole in the trees and brushes 'til he come to the fork of the road. Then he made for the shore." "So he was really goin' fishin'," mused Abbie, a suggestion of disappointment in her voice. "He certainly was. Oh, Charlie was goin' fishin' right 'nough. He was aimed for deep water," grinned Zenas Henry. "He wouldn't ketch no fish in Wilton Harbor," sniffed Rebecca contemptuously. "Wouldn't you think he'd 'a' known that?" "He warn't," observed Zenas Henry mildly, "figgerin' to. In fact, 'twarn't to Wilton Harbor he was goin'." With a simultaneous start, both women looked up. "No-siree. Bank cashier or not, Charlie warn't that much of a numskull. He was primed to fish in more propitious waters." "Zenas Henry, do stop beatin' round the bush an' say what you have to say. If you're goin' to tell us where Charlie Eldridge went, out with it. If not, stop talkin' about it," burst out his wife sharply. "Ain't I tellin' you fast as I can? Why get so het up? If you must know an' can't wait another minute, Charlie went fishin' in Crocker's Cove." "Crocker's Cove!" cried two feminine voices. Zenas Henry's only reply was a deliberate nod. "Crocker's Cove?" gasped Abbie. "Crocker's Cove?" echoed Rebecca. "Crocker's Cove," nodded Zenas Henry. "Mercy on us! Why--! Why, he--he must 'a' been goin'"--began Abbie. "--to see _The Widder_," Rebecca interrupted, completing the sentence. "I'd no notion he was tendin' up to her," Abbie said. "Wal, he warn't 'xactly tendin' up to her--least-way, not today. Not what you could really call tendin' up," contradicted Zenas Henry, a twinkle in his eye. "Rather, I'd say 'twas t'other way round. Wouldn't you, Lemmy? Wouldn't you say that instead 'twas she who tended up to him?" Sagaciously, Lemuel bowed. The tapping of Abbie's foot precipitated the remainder of the story. "You see," drawled on Zenas Henry, "no sooner had Charlie got into the boat an' pulled out into the channel than he had the usual beginner's luck an' hooked a stragglin' bluefish--one of the pert kind that ain't fer bein' hauled in. Law! You'd oughter seen that critter pull! He 'most had Charlie out of the boat. "I shouted to him to hang on an' so did Lemmy. We couldn't help it. The idiot had no more notion what to do than the man in the moon. "In our excitement, we must 'a' bellered louder'n we meant to, 'cause in no time _The Widder_ popped outer the house. She took one look at Charlie strugglin' in the boat, raced down to the landin' an' put out to him just about at the minute he was waverin' as to whether he'd chuck pole, line, an' sinker overboard, or go overboard himself. "Quicker'n scat she had the fish-pole, an' while we looked on, Charlie dropped down kinder limp on the seat of the boat an' begun tyin' up his hand in a spandy clean pocket handkerchief while _The Widder_ gaffed the fish an' hauled it in." "My soul!" exploded Abbie Brewster. "My soul an' body!" "Later on," continued Zenas Henry, "Charlie overtook us. He'd stowed away his fish-pole somewheres. Leastway, he didn't have it with him. When Lemmy an' me asked him where his fish was, he looked blacker'n thunder an' snapped out: 'Hang the fish!' "Seein' he warn't in no mood for neighborly conversation, we left him an' come along home." Chapter II In the meantime, Marcia Howe, the heroine of this escapade, comfortably ensconced in her island homestead, paid scant heed to the fact that she and her affairs were continually on the tongues of the outlying community. She was not ignorant of it for, although too modest to think herself of any great concern to others, her intuitive sixth sense made her well aware her goings and comings were watched. This knowledge, however, far from nettling her, as it might have done had she been a woman blessed with less sense of humor, afforded her infinite amusement. She liked people and because of her habit of looking for the best in them she usually found it. Their spying, she realized, came from motives of interest. She had never known it to be put to malicious use. Hence, she never let it annoy her. She loved her home; valued her kindly, if inquisitive, neighbors at their true worth; and met the world with a smile singularly free from hardness or cynicism. Bitter though her experience had been, it had neither taken from, nor, miraculously, had it dimmed her faith in her particular star. On the contrary there still glowed in her grey eyes that sparkle of anticipation one sees in the eyes of one who stands a-tiptoe on the threshold of adventure. Apparently she had in her nature an unquenchable spirit of hope that nothing could destroy. No doubt youth had aided her to retain this vision for she was still young and the highway of life, alluring in rosy mists, beckoned her along its mysterious path with persuasive hand. Who could tell what its hidden vistas might contain? Her start, she confessed, had been an unpropitious one. But starts sometimes were like that; and did not the old adage affirm that a bad beginning made for a fair ending? Furthermore, the error had been her own. She had been free to choose and she had chosen unwisely. Why whine about it? One must be a sport and play the game. She was older now and better fitted to look after herself than she had been at seventeen. Only a fool made the same blunder twice, and if experience had been a pitiless teacher, it had also been a helpful and convincing one. Marcia did not begrudge her lesson. Unquestionably, it had taken from her its toll; but on the other hand it had left as compensation something she would not have exchanged for gold. The past with its griefs, its humiliations, its heartbreak, its failure lay behind--the future all before her. It was hers--hers! She would be wary what she did with it and never again would she squander it for dross. Precisely what she wished or intended to make of that future she did not know. There were times when a wave of longing for something she could not put into words surged up within her with a force not to be denied. Was it loneliness? She was not so lonely that she did not find joy in her home and its daily routine of domestic duties. On the contrary, she attacked these pursuits with tireless zeal. She liked sweeping, dusting, polishing brasses, and making her house as fresh as the sea breezes that blew through it. She liked to brew and bake; to sniff browning pie crust and the warm spiciness of ginger cookies. Keen pleasure came to her when she surveyed spotless beds, square at the corners and covered with immaculate counterpanes. She found peace and refreshment in softened lights, flowers, the glow of driftwood fires. As for the more strenuous tasks connected with homemaking, they served as natural and pleasurable vents for her surplus energy. She revelled in painting, papering, shingling; and the solution of the balking enigmas presented by plumbing, chimneys, drains and furnaces. If there lingered deep within her heart vague, unsatisfied yearnings, Marcia resolutely held over these filmy imaginings a tight rein. To be busy--that was her gospel. She never allowed herself to remain idle for any great length of time. To prescribe the remedy and faithfully apply it was no hardship to one whose active physique and abounding vigor demanded an abundance of exercise. Like an athlete set to run a race, she gloried in her physical strength. When she tramped the shore, the wind blowing her hair and the rich blood pulsing in her cheeks; when her muscles stretched taut beneath an oar or shot out against the resistance of the tide, a feeling of unity with a power greater than herself caught her up, thrilling every fibre of her being. She was never unsatisfied then. She felt herself to be part of a force mighty and infinite--a happy, throbbing part. Today, as she moved swiftly about the house and her deft hands made tidy the rooms, she had that sense of being in step with the world. The morning, crisp with an easterly breeze, had stirred the sea into a swell that rose rhythmically in measureless, breathing immensity far away to its clear-cut, sapphire horizon. The sands had never glistened more white; the surf never curled at her doorway in a prettier, more feathery line. On the ocean side, where winter's lashing storms had thrown up a protecting phalanx of dunes, the coarse grasses she had sown to hold them tossed in the wind, while from the Point, where her snowy domains dipped into more turbulent waters, she could hear the grating roar of pebbles mingle with the crash of heavier breakers. It all spoke to her of home--home as she had known it from childhood--as her father and her father's father had known it. Boats, nets, the screaming of gulls, piping winds, and the sting of spray on her face were bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. The salt of deep buried caverns was in her veins; the chant of the ocean echoed the beating of her own heart. Lonely? If she needed anything it was a companion to whom to cry: "Isn't it glorious to be alive?" and she already had such a one. Never was there such a comrade as Prince Hal! Human beings often proved themselves incapable of grasping one another's moods--but he? Never! He knew when to speak and when to be silent; when to be in evidence and when to absent himself. His understanding was infinite; his fidelity as unchanging as the stars. Moreover, he was an honorable dog, a thoroughbred, a gentleman. That was why she had bestowed upon him an aristocratic name. He demanded it. She would never want for a welcome while he had strength to wag his white plume of tail; nor lack affection so long as he was able to race up the beach and race back again to hurl himself upon her with his sharp, staccato yelp of joy. When easterly gales rocked the rafters and the wind howled with eerie moanings down the broad chimney; when line after line of foaming breakers steadily advanced, crashing up on the shore with a fury that threatened to invade the house, then it was comforting to have near-by a companion unashamed to draw closer to her and confess himself humbled in the presence of the sea's majesty. Oh, she was worlds better off with Prince Hal than if she were linked up with someone of her own genus who could not understand. Besides, she was not going to be alone. She had decided to try an experiment. Jason had had an orphaned niece out in the middle west--his sister's child--a girl in her early twenties, and Marcia had invited her to the island for a visit. In fact, Sylvia was expected today. That was why a bowl of pansies stood upon the table in the big bedroom at the head of the stairs, and why its fireplace was heaped with driftwood ready for lighting. That was also the reason Marcia now stood critically surveying her preparations. The house did look welcoming. With justifiable pride, she confessed to herself that Heaven had bestowed upon her a gift for that sort of thing. She knew where to place a chair, a table, a lamp, a book, a flower. She was especially desirous the old home should look its best today, for the outside world had contributed a richness of setting that left her much to live up to. Sylvia had never seen the ocean. She must love it. But would she? That was to be the test. If the girl came hither with eyes that saw not; if the splendor stretched out before her was wasted then undeterred, she might go back to her wheat fields, her flat inland air, her school teaching. If, on the other hand, Wilton's beauty opened to her a new heaven and a new earth, if she proved herself a good comrade--well, who could say what might come of it? There was room, money, affection enough for two beneath the Homestead roof and Sylvia was alone in the world. Moreover, Marcia felt an odd sense of obligation toward Jason. At the price of his life he had given her back her freedom. It was a royal gift and she owed him something in return. She was too honest to pretend she had loved him or mourned his loss. Soon after the beginning of their life together, she had discovered he was not at all the person she had supposed him. The gay recklessness which had so completely bewitched her and which she had thought to be manliness had been mere bombast and bravado. At bottom he was a braggart--small, cowardly, purposeless--a ship without a rudder. Endowed with good looks and a devil-may-care charm, he had called her his star and pleaded his need of her, and she had mistaken pity for love and believed that to help guide his foundering craft into port was a heaven-sent mission. Alas, she had over-estimated both her own power and his sincerity. Jason had no real desire to alter his conduct. He lacked not only the inclination but the moral stamina to do so. Instead, day by day he slipped lower and lower and, unable to aid him or prevent disaster, she had been forced to look on. Her love for him was dead, and her self-conceit was dealt a humiliating blow. She was to have been his anchor in time of stress, the planet by which when he married her he boasted that he intended to steer his course. But she had been forced to stand impotent at his side and see self-respect, honor, and every essential of manhood go down and he shrivel to a fawning, deceitful, ambitionless wreck. Sometimes she reproached herself for the tragedy and, scrutinizing the past, wondered whether she might not have prevented it. Had she done her full part; been as patient, sympathetic, understanding as she ought to have been? Did his defeat lay at her door? With the honesty characteristic of her, she could not see that it did. She might, no doubt, have played her role better. One always could if given a second chance. Nevertheless she had tried, tried with every ounce of strength in her--tried and failed! Well, it was too late for regrets now. Such reflections belonged to the past and she must put them behind her as useless, morbid abstractions. Her back was set against the twilight; she was facing the dawn--the dawn with its promise of happier things. Surely that magic, unlived future touched with hope and dim with the prophecy of the unknown could not be so unfriendly as the past had been. It might bring pain; but she had suffered pain and no longer feared it. Moreover, no pain could ever be as poignant as that which she had already endured. And why anticipate pain? Life held joy as well--countless untried experiences that radiated happiness. Were there not a balance between sunshine and shadow this world would be a wretched place in which to live, and its Maker an unjust dealer. No, she believed not only in a fair-minded but in a generous God and she had faith that he was in his Heaven. She had paid for her folly--if indeed folly it had been. Now with optimism and courage she looked fearlessly forward. That was why, as she caught up her hat, a smile curled her lips. The house did look pretty, the day was glorious. She was a-tingle with eagerness to see what it might bring. Calling Prince Hal, she stood before him. "Take good care of the house, old man," she admonished, as she patted his silky head. "I'll be home soon." He followed her to the piazza and stopped. His eyes pleaded to go, but he understood his orders and obeying them lay down with paws extended, the keeper of the Homestead. Chapter III The train was ten minutes late, and while she paced the platform at Sawyer Falls, the nearest station, Marcia fidgeted. She had never seen any of Jason's family. At first a desultory correspondence had taken place between him and his sister, Margaret; then gradually it had died a natural death--the result, no doubt, of his indolence and neglect. When the letters ceased coming, Marcia had let matters take their course. Was it not kinder to allow the few who still loved him to remain ignorant of what he had become and to remember instead only as the dashing lad who in his teens had left the farm and gone to seek his fortune in the great world? She had written Margaret a short note after his death and had received a reply expressing such genuine grief it had more than ever convinced her that her course had been the wise and generous one. What troubled her most in the letter had been its outpouring of sympathy for herself. She detested subterfuge and as she read sentence after sentence, which should have meant so much and in reality meant so little, the knowledge that she had not been entirely frank had brought with it an uncomfortable sense of guilt. It was not what she had said but what she had withheld that accused her. Marcia Howe was no masquerader, and until this moment the hypocrisy she had practiced had demanded no sustained acting. Little by little, moreover, the pricking of her conscience had ceased and, fading into the past, the incident had been forgotten. Miles of distance, years of silence separated her from Jason's relatives and it had been easy to allow the deceit, if deceit it had been, to stand. But now those barriers were to be broken down and she suddenly realized that to keep up the fraud so artlessly begun was going to be exceedingly difficult. She was not a clever dissembler. Moreover, any insincerity between herself and Sylvia would strike at the very core of the sincere, earnest companionship she hoped would spring up between them. Even should she be a more skillful fraud than she dared anticipate and succeed in playing her role convincingly, would there not loom ever before her the danger of betrayal from outside sources? Everyone in the outlying district had known Jason for what he was. There had been no possibility of screening the sordid melodrama from the public. Times without number one fisherman and then another had come bringing the recreant back home across the channel, and had aided in getting him into the house and to bed. His shame had been one of the blots on the upright, self-respecting community. As a result, her private life had perforce become common property and all its wretchedness and degradation, stripped of concealment, had been spread stark beneath the glare of the sunlight. It was because the villagers had helped her so loyally to shoulder a burden she never could have borne alone that Marcia felt toward them this abiding affection and gratitude. They might discuss her affairs if they chose; ingenuously build up romances where none existed; they might even gossip about her clothes, her friends, her expenditures. Their chatter did not trouble her. She had tried them out, and in the face of larger issues had found their virtues so admirable that their vices became, by contrast, mere trivialities. Moreover, having watched her romance begin, flourish, and crumble; and having shared in the joy and sorrow of it, it was not only natural, but to some degree legitimate they should feel they had the right to interest themselves in her future. Not all their watchfulness was prompted by curiosity. Some of it emanated from an impulse of guardianship--a desire to shield her from further misery and mishap. She was alone in the world, and in the eyes of the older inhabitants who had known her parents, she was still a girl--one of the daughters of the town. They did not mean to stand idly by and see her duped a second time. The assurance that she had behind her this support; that she was respected, beloved, held blameless of the past, not only comforted but lent to her solitary existence a sense of background which acted as a sort of anchor. Not that she was without standards or ideals. Nevertheless, human nature is human nature and it did her no harm to realize she was not an isolated being whose actions were of no concern to anyone in the wide world. Separated though she was by the confines of her island home, she was not allowed to let her remoteness from Wilton detach her from it, nor absolve her from her share in its obligations. She had her place and every day of the year a score of lookers-on, familiar with her general schedule, checked up on her fulfillment of it. If, given limited leeway, she did not appear for her mail or for provisions; if she was not at church; if the lights that should have twinkled from her windows were darkened, someone unfailingly put out across the channel to make sure all was well with her. Nay, more, if any emergency befell her, she had only to run up a red lantern on the pole beside her door and aid would come. What wonder then that, in face of such friendliness, Marcia Howe failed to resent the community's grandmotherly solicitude? She had never kept secrets from her neighbors--indeed she never had had secrets to keep. Her nature was too crystalline, her love of truth too intense. If she had followed her usual custom and been open with Jason's sister, the dilemma in which she now found herself would never have arisen. Granted that her motive had been a worthy one had it not been audacious to make of herself a god and withhold from Margaret Hayden facts she had had every right to know, facts that belonged to her? Such burdens were given human beings to bear, not to escape from. Why should she have taken it upon herself to shield, nay prevent Jason's flesh and blood from participating in the sorrow, shame, disappointment she herself had borne? The experience had had immeasurable influence in her own life. Why should it not have had as much in Margaret's? Alas, matters of right and wrong, questions of one's responsibility toward others were gigantic, deeply involved problems. What her duty in this particular case had been she did not and would now never know, nor was it of any great moment that she should. Margaret was beyond the reach of this world's harassing enigmas. If with mistaken kindness she had been guided by a pygmy, short-sighted philosophy, it was too late, reflected Marcia, for her to remedy her error in judgment. But Sylvia--Jason's niece? With her coming, all the arguments Marcia had worn threadbare for and against the exposure of Jason's true character presented themselves afresh. Should she deceive the girl as she had her mother? Or should she tell her the truth? She was still pondering the question when a shrill whistle cut short her reverie. There was a puffing of steam; a grinding of brakes, the spasmodic panting of a weary engine and the train, with its single car, came to a stop beside the platform. Three passengers descended. The first was a young Portuguese woman, dark of face, and carrying a bulging bag from which protruded gay bits of embroidery. Behind her came a slender, blue-eyed girl, burdened not only with her own suit-case but with a basket apparently belonging to a wee, wizened old lady who followed her. "Now we must find Henry," the girl was saying in a clear but gentle voice. "Of course he'll be here. Look! Isn't that he--the man just driving up in a car? I guessed as much from your description. You need not have worried, you see. Yes, the brakeman has your bag and umbrella; and here is the kitten safe and sound, despite her crying. Goodbye, Mrs. Doane. I hope you'll have a lovely visit with your son." The little old lady smiled up at her. "Goodbye, my dear. You've taken care of me like as if you'd been my own daughter. I ain't much used to jauntin' about, an' it frets me. Are your folks here? If not, I'm sure Henry wouldn't mind--" "Oh, somebody'll turn up to meet me, Mrs. Doane. I'll be all right. Goodbye. We did have a pleasant trip down, didn't we? Traveling isn't really so bad after all." Then as Marcia watched, she saw the lithe young creature stoop suddenly and kiss the withered cheek. The next instant she was swinging up the platform. The slim figure in its well-tailored blue suit; the trimly shod feet; the small hat so provokingly tilted over the bright eyes, the wealth of golden curls that escaped from beneath it all shattered Marcia's calculations. She had thought of Sylvia Hayden as farm-bred--the product of an inland, country town--a creature starved for breadth of outlook and social opportunity. It was disconcerting to discover that she was none of these things. In view of her sophistication, Marcia's proposed philanthropy took on an aspect of impertinence. Well, if she herself was chagrined, there was consolation in seeing that the girl was equally discomfited. As she approached Marcia, she accosted her uncertainly with the words: "Pardon me. I am looking for a relative--a Mrs. Howe. You don't happen to know, do you--" "I'm Marcia." "But I thought--I expected--" gasped the girl. "And I thought--I expected--" Marcia mimicked gaily. For a moment they looked searchingly into one another's faces, then laughed. "Fancy having an aunt like you!" exclaimed the incredulous Sylvia, still staring with unconcealed amazement. "And fancy having a niece like you!" "Well, all I can say is I'm glad I came," was the girl's retort. "I wasn't altogether sure I should be when I started East. I said to myself: 'Sylvia you are taking a big chance. You may just be wasting your money.'" "You may still find it's been wasted." "No, I shan't. I know already it has been well spent," announced the girl, a whimsical smile curving her lips. "Wait until you see where you're going." "I am going to Paradise--I'm certain of it. The glimpses I've had of the ocean from the train have convinced me of that. Do you live where you can see it, Aunt Marcia? Will it be nearby?" "I shall not tell you one thing," Marcia replied. "At least only one, and that is that I flatly refuse to be Aunt Marcia to you!" "Don't you like me?" pouted Sylvia, arching her brows. "So much that your aunt-ing me is absurd. It would make me feel like Methuselah. I really haven't that amount of dignity." "Ah, now my last weak, wavering doubt is vanquished. Not only am I glad I came but I wish I'd come before." She saw a shadow flit across her aunt's face. "You weren't asked until now," observed Marcia with cryptic brevity. "That wouldn't have mattered. Had I known what you were like, I should have come without an invitation." In spite of herself, Marcia smiled. "Here's the car," she answered. "What about your trunk?" "I didn't bring one." "You didn't bring a trunk! But you are to make a long visit, child." "I--I wasn't sure that I'd want to," Sylvia replied. "You see, I was a wee bit afraid of you. I thought you'd be a New England prune. I had no idea what you were like. If I'd brought my things, I'd have been obliged to stay." "You're a cautious young person," was Marcia's dry observation. "'Twould serve you right if I sent you home at the end of a fortnight." "Oh, please don't do that," begged Sylvia. "It's in _The Alton City Courier_ that I have gone East to visit relatives for a few weeks. If I should come right back, everybody would decide I'd stolen the family silver or done something disgraceful. Besides--my trunk is all packed, locked, strapped and I've brought the key," added she with disarming frankness. "It can be sent for in case--" "I see!" nodded Marcia, her lips curving into a smile in spite of herself, "I said you were cautious." "Don't you ever watch your own step?" As the myriad pros and cons she had weighed and eliminated before inviting her guest passed in quick review before Marcia's mind, she chuckled: "Sometimes I do," she conceded grimly. Chapter IV The village store, grandiloquently styled by a red sign the Wilton Emporium, was thronged with the usual noontime crowd. It was a still, grey day, murky with fog and the odors of wet oilskins, steaming rubber coats, damp woolens blended with a mixture of tar, coffee and tobacco smoke, made its interior thick and stuffy. Long ago the air-tight stove had consumed such remnants of oxygen as the room contained. The windows reeked with moisture; the floor was gritty with sand. These discomforts, however, failed to be of consequence to the knot of men who, rain or shine, congregated there at mail time. They were accustomed to them. Indeed, a drizzle, far from keeping the habitués away, rendered the meeting place unusually popular. Not but that plenty of work, capable of being performed as well in foul as in fair weather, could not have been found at home. Zenas Henry Brewster's back stairs were at the very moment crying out for paint; the leg was off his hair-cloth sofa; the pantry window stuck; the bolt dangled from his side door and could have been wrenched off with a single pull. Here was an ideal opportunity to make such repairs. Yet, why take today? Nobody really saw the stairs. If the sofa pitched the brick tucked underneath, it at least prevented it from lurching dangerously. The pantry window was as well closed as open, anyway. And as for the side door--if it was not bolted at all, no great harm would result. "Nobody's got in yet," Zenas Henry optimistically philosophized as, despite his wife's protests, he slipped into his sou'wester, "an' I see no cause to think thieves will pitch on today to come. Fur's that goes, Wilton ain't never had a burglary in all its history. We could leave all the bolts off the doors." To this cheery observation he added over his shoulder a jaunty "Goodbye!" and, striding out through the shed, was off to join his cronies. The argument with Abbie had not only delayed him, but had left him a bit irritated, and he was more nettled still to find, when he crossed the threshold of the post-office, that the daily conclave was in full swing. Nevertheless, the session had not become as interesting as it would after those who dropped in simply to call for mail or make purchases had thinned out. He had, to be sure, missed seeing the letters distributed, but the best yet remained. Shuffling over to the counter where his friends were huddled, Zenas Henry unostentatiously joined them. "Yes-siree, there'll be somethin' doin' in Wilton now," Enoch Morton, the fish-man, was saying. "That sand bar's goin' to be the centre of the town, if I don't miss my guess. There'll be more'n Charlie Eldridge fishin' in the channel." A laugh greeted the prediction. "Who's seen her?" Captain Benjamin Todd inquired. "I have," came the piping voice of Lemuel Gill. "Me and 'Becca rowed over from Belleport Saturday. We went a-purpose, takin' some jelly to Marcia as an excuse. The girl's Jason's niece all right, same's folks say, though she looks no more like him than chalk like cheese. A prettier little critter 'twould be hard to find. It 'pears that at the outset Marcia invited her for no more'n a short visit. Inside the week, though, the two of 'em have got so friendly, Sylvia's sent home for her trunk, an' is plannin' to stay all summer. She's head over heels in love with the place. I'm almighty glad she's come, too, for it's goin' to be grand for Marcia, who must be lonely enough out there with only the setter for company." "It's her own fault. She could have other companions was she so minded," declared Captain Phineas Taylor, significantly. "Oh, we all know that, Phineas," agreed the gentle Lemuel Gill. "There's plenty of folks hankerin' to be comrades to Marcia. The only trouble is she doesn't want 'em." "With this girl at her elbow, she'll want 'em even less, I reckon," Asaph Holmes interposed. "Mebbe. Still, I figger that ain't a-goin' to discourage her admirers none. Why, within the week Sylvia's been here, I happen to know Marcia's had four buckets of clams, a catch of flounders, an' a couple of cuts of sword-fish presented to her," Ephraim Wise, the mail carrier announced. "That stray blue-fish of Charlie Eldridge's must 'a' swelled the collection some, too," put in Lemuel. "When I asked Charlie what he done with it, he owned he left it over at the Homestead. He said he never wanted to see another fish long's he lived." "That ain't all the gifts The Widder's had, neither," volunteered Silas Nickerson, the postmaster, who now joined the group. "Not by a long shot. I can see the whole of that spit of sand from my back porch, an' often after I've had my supper an' set out there smokin' an' sorter--" "Sorter keepin' a weather eye out," chuckled a voice. "Smokin' an' takin' the air," repeated Silas, firmly. "I look in that direction, 'cause it's a pleasant direction to look. That's how I come to know more'n one lobster's been sneaked to Marcia after dusk." "I don't so much mind folks makin' Marcia friendly donations," Captain Jonas Baker declared with guilty haste. "In my opinion, it's right an' proper they should. But when it comes to Eleazer Crocker, who's head of the fire department an' undertaker as well, goin' over there for the entire evenin' with the keys to the engine house in his pocket, I think the town oughter take some action 'bout it. S'pose there was to be a fire an' him hemmed in by the tide t'other side the channel? The whole village might burn to the ground 'fore ever he could be fetched home." "That certainly ain't right," Zenas Henry agreed. "Eleazer'd either oughter hang the keys on a bush near the shore or leave 'em with some responsible person when he goes a-courtin'." "When you went courtin', would you 'a' wanted the whole town made aware of it?" queried Enoch Morton. Chagrined, Zenas Henry colored. "Well, anyhow, he's got no business goin' off the mainland. Even if there ain't a fire, somebody might die. He's a mighty important citizen, an' his place is at home." "Oh, I wouldn't go that fur," soothed peace-loving Lemuel Gill. "Fires an' dyin' don't happen every day." "No. But when they do come, they're liable to come sudden," maintained Zenas Henry stoutly. "Not always. Besides, we've got to go a bit easy with Eleazer. Remember from the first he warn't anxious to be undertaker, anyway. He said so over an' over again," put in the gruff voice of Benjamin Todd. "He 'xplained he hadn't a mite of talent for the job an' no leanin's toward it. It was foisted on him 'gainst his will." "Well, somebody had to be undertaker. I didn't hanker to be town sheriff, but I got hauled into bein'," rejoined Elisha Winslow. "In a place small as this honors sometimes go a-beggin' unless folks muster up their public spirit." "I don't see, 'Lish, that the duties of sheriff have been so heavy here in Wilton that they've undermined your health," grinned Captain Phineas Taylor. "You ain't been what one could call over-worked by crime. Was you to need a pair of handcuffs in a hurry, it's my belief you wouldn't be able to find 'em. As for Eleazer--nobody's died for nigh onto a year; an' the only fire that's took place was a brush one that we put out 'most an hour 'fore the key to the engine-house could be found, the door unlocked, an' the chemical coaxed into workin'." "That's true enough," conceded Captain Benjamin. "Still, I'll bet you a nickel was you to come down hard on Eleazer, an' tell him that in future he'd have to choose 'twixt undertakin' an' courtin', he'd pick the courtin'. He's human. You can't press a man too hard. Besides, you've no right to blame that mix-up 'bout the engine-house key on him, Cap'n Phineas. Give the devil his due. Eleazer warn't responsible for that. His sister borrowed the brass polish for her candle-sticks an' afterward slipped the key into her pocket by mistake. Remember that? At the minute the fire broke out she was leadin' a women's missionary meetin' at the church an' was in the act of prayin' for the heathens out in China. It didn't seem decent to interrupt either her or the Lord. Unluckily the prayer turned out to be an uncommon long one an' in consequence the chemical got delayed." "Well, anyhow, I'm glad this niece of Marcia's come," broke in Lemuel Gill, shifting the subject. "She's a pleasant little critter an' will kinder stir things up." "Oh, there's no danger but she'll do that all right, Lemmy," Zenas Henry drawled. "You can generally depend on a pretty girl to raise a rumpus. Give her a month in town an' she'll most likely have all the male population cuttin' one another's throats." Fortunately both Marcia and Sylvia were at the moment too far out of ear-shot for this menacing prediction to reach them. Cut off by curtains of fog and a tide that foamed through the channel, they were standing in the homestead kitchen. The builder of it would have laughed to scorn the present day apology for an interior so delightful. Here was a room boasting space enough for an old-fashioned brick oven; an oil stove; two sand-scrubbed tables, snow white and smooth as satin; a high-backed rocker cushioned in red calico; braided rugs and shelves for plants. A regal kitchen truly--one that bespoke both comfort and hospitality. The copper tea kettle, singing softly and sending up a genial spiral of steam, gleamed bright as sunshine; and the two big pantries, through which one glimpsed rows of shining tins and papered shelves laden with china, contributed to the general atmosphere of homeliness. Fog might shroud the outer world in its blanket of unreality, but it was powerless to banish from Marcia's kitchen the cheer which perpetually reigned there. Before the fire, stretched upon his side, lay Prince Hal, his body relaxed, his eyes drowsy with sleep; while from her vantage-ground on the rocking-chair above, the tiger kitten, Winkie-Wee, gazed watchfully down upon his slumbers. It was Sylvia, however, who, in a smock of flowered chintz, lent the room its supreme touch of color. She looked as if all the blossoms in all the world had suddenly burst into bloom and twined themselves about her slender body. Out of their midst rose her head, golden with curls and her blue eyes, large and child-like. With her coming, a new world had opened to Marcia. The girl's lightness of touch on life; her irrepressible gaiety; her sense of humor and unique point of view all bespoke a newer generation and one far removed from her aunt's environment. Not that she was without moral standards. She had them, but they were kept far in the background and were not the strained and anxious creeds which the woman of New England ancestry had inherited. To see Sylvia jauntily sweep aside old conventions; to behold the different emphasis she put upon familiar problems; to witness her audacious belittling of issues her elders had been wont to grapple with was an experience that continually shocked, stimulated, challenged and amused. Yet, there was something big and wholesome in it withal; something refreshingly sincere and free from morbidity; a high courage that took things as they came and never anticipated calamity. Marcia found herself half reluctantly admiring this splendidly normal outlook; this mixture of sophistication and naïveté; her niece's novel and definitely formed opinions. For, youthful though Sylvia was, she had personality, character, stratums of wisdom far in advance of her years. A very intriguing companion, Marcia admitted, one of whose many-sidedness she would not soon tire. "Now what shall our menu be, Marcia, dear?" she was asking. "Remember, according to our compact, it is my turn to get the dinner." "Anything but fish!" Marcia answered with a groan. "I'm so tired of salt-water products it seems as if never again could I touch another." "But my dear, if you will have a stag line of nautical admirers, what can you expect? You must pay the penalty. Besides, I think you're ungrateful," Sylvia pouted. "I love clams and other sea foods." "You've not had so many of them in your lifetime as I have. Besides, I suspect you are not telling the truth. Come, confess. Aren't you a wee bit fed up on clams? Clam chowder Monday night, steamed clams Tuesday noon; clam fritters Tuesday night. And then that blue-fish. Why, it was big as a shark! I almost lost my courage when the sword-fish and the flounders came, but fortunately with the aid of Prince Hal and the kitten, we disposed of them fairly well. The lobsters, alas, yet remain. I used to think it would be romantic to be a Lorelei and live deep down beneath the waves; but this avalanche of fish--!" Despairingly she shrugged her shoulders. Sylvia laughed. "I don't feel at all like that. I've had a feast of fish and enjoyed it. But if I were to express a preference it would be for the hard-shelled suitors. Do select one of those for a husband, Marcia," begged she, whimsically. "The others are all very well. Indeed, that blue-fish swain was magnificent in his way, but me for the crustaceans." "Sylvia! You absurd child!" "Just consider the clam character for a moment--so silent, so close-mouthed; never stirring up trouble or wanting to be out nights. In my opinion, he would be an ideal helpmate. Not sensitive, either; nor jealous. Marcia, do marry one of the clams! "I'm not so sure," went on the girl reflectively, "whether he would be affectionate. He seems somewhat undemonstrative. Still, contrast him with the lobster. Oh, I realize the lobster has more style, originality, and is more pretentious in every way. However, say what you will, he is grasping by nature and has a much less gentle disposition. Besides, he is restless and always eager to be on the move. "Yes, all things taken together, I lean strongly toward a nice, peaceable clam husband for you, Marcia. He'd be twice as domestic in his tastes. I acknowledge the blue-fish has more back-bone, but you do not need that. You have plenty yourself. Most women, I suppose, would be carried away by his dash, his daring, his persistence. He has a certain sporty quality that appeals; but he is so outrageously stubborn! He never gives in until he has to. He'd be dreadful to live with." "Sylvia, you are ridiculous!" Marcia protested. "You forget I am your aunt." "My mistake. I did forget it, I'll confess; and what's more I probably always shall. To me you are just a girl I'd be head-over-heels in love with if I were a man. I don't blame all the clams, lobsters, and flounders for flocking over here to make love to you." "Stop talking nonsense." "But it isn't nonsense. It's the truth. Isn't that precisely what they're doing? You certainly are not deluding yourself into thinking these men come gallivanting out here over the flats with the mere philanthropic purpose of seeing you don't starve to death, do you?" Sylvia demanded. "Perhaps they come to see you," hedged Marcia feebly. "Me! Now Marcia, pray do not resort to deceit and attempt to poke this legion of mermen off on me. As a relative, I insist on having a truthful, respectable aunt. Consider my youth. Isn't it your Christian duty to set me a good example? Whether you wed any of these nautical worshippers or not is your own affair. But at least honesty compels you to acknowledge they're your property." A shadow, fleet as the rift in a summer cloud, passed over Marcia's face, but transient as it was Sylvia, sensitively attuned and alert to changes of mood in others, noticed it. "What a little beast I am, Marcia," she cried, throwing her arm impulsively about the other woman. "Forgive my thoughtlessness. I wouldn't have hurt you for the world. You know I never saw Uncle Jason. He left home when I was a child and is no reality to me. Even mother remembered him only as he was when a boy. She kept a little picture of him on her bureau, and on his birthdays always placed flowers beside it. She was fond of him, because he was only six when Grandmother died. After that, Mother took care of him and brought him up. She worried a good deal about him, I'm afraid, for it was a great responsibility and she herself was nothing but a girl. However, she did the best she could." Sylvia stole a look at Marcia who had stiffened and now stood with eyes fixed on the misty world outside. "Mother felt sorry, hurt, that Uncle Jason should have left home as he did, and never came back to see her. He was an impulsive, hot-headed boy and she said he resented her watchfulness and authority. But even though he ran away in a moment of anger, one would think years of absence would have smoothed away his resentment. "For a little while he wrote to her; then gradually even his letters stopped. She never knew what sort of a man he became. Once she told me she supposed there must be lots of mothers in the world who merely sowed and never reaped--never saw the results of their care and sacrifice." "Jason--Jason loved your mother," Marcia murmured in a voice scarcely audible. "I am sure of that." "But if he loved her, why didn't he come to see her? I know it was a long journey, but if he could only have come once--just once. It would have meant so much!" "Men are selfish--unfeeling. They forget," replied Marcia, bitterly. "You give your life to them and they toss aside your love and devotion as if it were so much rubbish." The outburst, sharp with pain, burst from her involuntarily, awing Sylvia into silence. What did she know of Jason, that dim heritage of her childhood? Of Marcia? Of their life together, she suddenly asked herself. Dismayed, she stole a glance at her companion. It was as if idly treading a flower-strewn path she had without warning come upon the unplumbed depths of a volcano's crater. To cover the awkwardness of the moment, she bent to caress Prince Hal who had risen and stood, alert and listening beside her. Only an instant passed before Marcia spoke again--this time with visible effort to recapture her customary manner. "Suppose we have lobster Newburg this noon," suggested she. "I'll get the chafing-dish. What's the matter, Hal, old man? You look worried. Don't tell me you hear more fish swimming our way?" Chapter V The nose of the setter quivered and, going to the window, he growled. "He does hear something," asserted Sylvia. "What do you suppose it is?" "Gulls, most likely. They circle above the house in clouds," was Marcia's careless answer. "The Prince regards them as his natural enemies. He delights to chase them up the beach and send them whirling into the air. Apparently he resents their chatter. He seems to think they are talking about him--and they may be for aught I know--talking about all of us." A faint echo of her recent irritation still lingered in the tone and, conscious of it, she laughed to conceal it. Again the dog growled. Almost immediately a hand fumbled with the latch, and as the door swung open, a man staggered blindly into the room. He was hatless, wet to the skin, and shivering with cold, and before Marcia could reach his side, he lurched forward and fell at her feet. "Quick, Sylvia, close the door and heat some broth. The poor fellow is exhausted. He's chilled to the bone." "Who is it?" "No one I know--a stranger. Bring that pillow and help me to slip it under his head. We'll let him rest where he is a moment." Her fingers moved to the bronzed wrist. "He's all right," she whispered. "Just cold and worn out. He'll be himself presently." She swept the matted hair, lightly sprinkled with grey, from the man's forehead and wiped his face. An interesting face it was--intelligent and highbred, with well-cut features and a firm, determined chin. A sweater of blue wool, a blue serge suit, socks of tan and sport shoes to match them clung to the tall, slender figure, and on the hand lying across it sparkled a diamond sunk in a band of wrought gold. It was not the hand of a fisherman, tanned though it was; nor yet that of a sailor. There could be no doubt about that. Rather, it belonged to a scholar, a writer, a painter, or possibly to a physician, for it was strong as well as beautifully formed. Sylvia bent to adjust the pillow, and her eyes and Marcia's met. Who was this man? Whence came he? What disaster had laid him here helpless before them? As if their questions penetrated his consciousness, the stranger slowly opened his eyes. "Sorry to come here like this," he murmured. "The fog was so thick, I lost my bearings and my power-boat ran aground. I've been trying hours to get her off. She's hard and fast on your sand-bar." "Not on the ocean side?" Marcia exclaimed. The man shook his head. "Luckily not. I rounded the point all right, but missed the channel." He struggled to rise and Marcia, kneeling beside him, helped him into an upright position where he sat, leaning against her shoulder. "I seem to have brought in about half the sea with me," he apologized, looking about in vague, half-dazed fashion. "No matter. We're used to salt water here," she answered. "How do you feel? You're not hurt?" "Only a little. Nothing much. I've done something queer to my wrist." Attempting to move it, he winced. "It isn't broken?" "I don't know. I was trying to push the boat off, and something suddenly gave way." Turning his head aside, he bit his lip as if in pain. "We'll telephone Doctor Stetson. The town is fortunate in having a very good physician. Meantime, you mustn't remain in these wet clothes. There is no surer way of catching cold. Do you think you could get upstairs if Sylvia and I guided you?" "I guess so--if it isn't far. I'm absurdly dizzy. I don't know why. I suppose, though, I must shed these wet togs." "You certainly must. Come, Sylvia, lend a hand! We'll help him up." "Oh, I'm not in such a bad way as all that. I can get up alone," he protested. "Only please wait just another minute. The whole place has suddenly begun to pitch again like a ship in midocean. Either I've lost my sea-legs or I'm all sea-legs, and nothing else. Perhaps I may be faint. I haven't eaten anything for a day or two." "Why didn't you tell me? The soup, quick, Sylvia. I only wish I had some brandy. Well, at least this is hot, and will warm you up. I'll feed you." "No, no. I needn't trouble you to do that. I'm sure I can manage with my left hand." "Don't be silly. You'll spill it all over yourself. Goodness knows, you're wet enough as it is. Hand me the cup and spoon, Sylvia." "But I feel like a baby," fretted the stranger. "No matter. We must get something hot inside you right away. Don't fuss about how it's done," said the practical-minded Marcia. "There! You look better already! Later you shall have a real, honest-to-goodness meal. Run and call Doctor Stetson, Sylvia, and open the bed in the room opposite mine. You might light the heater there, too." As the girl sped away, Marcia turned toward her visitor. "Suppose we try to make the rocking-chair now. Shall we? We won't aspire to going upstairs until the doctor comes. You're not quite good for that yet. But at least you needn't sit on the floor. What worries me is your wet clothing. I'm afraid you'll take your death of cold. Let me peel off your shoes and socks. I can do that. And I believe I could get you out of your water-soaked sweater if I were to cut the sleeve. May I try? We needn't mind wrecking it, for I have another I can give you." The man did not answer. Instead, he sat tense and unsmiling, his penetrating brown eyes fixed on Marcia's face. Apparently the scrutiny crystalized in him some swift resolution, for after letting his glance travel about the room to convince himself that no one was within hearing, he leaned forward: "There is something else I'd rather you did for me first," he whispered, dropping his voice until it became almost inaudible. "I've a package here I wish you'd take charge of. It's inside my shirt. But for this infernal wrist, I could reach it." "I'll get it." "I'd rather you didn't talk about it," continued he, hurriedly. "Just put it in a safe place. Will you, please?" "Certainly." Puzzled, but unquestioning, Marcia thrust her hand beneath his sodden clothing and drew forth a small, flat box, wrapped in a bedraggled handkerchief. "If you'll look out for it, I'll be tremendously obliged." "Of course I will," smiled Marcia. "Is it valuable?" The question, prompted by a desire to perform faithfully the service entrusted to her, rather than by curiosity, produced a disconcerting result. The man's eyes fell. "I shouldn't like to--to lose it," he stammered. "I'll be careful. You yourself shall see where it is put. Look! Here is my pet hiding-place. This brick in the hearth is loose and under it is plenty of space for this small box. I'll tuck it in there. Just hold it a second until I pry the brick up. There we are! Now give it to me." She reached hurriedly for the package, but as their hands met, the moist, clinging handkerchief became entangled in their fingers and slipping from its coverings a leather jewel-case dropped to the floor. Out of it rolled a flashing necklace and a confusion of smaller gems. Marcia stifled an involuntary cry. Nevertheless, she neither looked up nor delayed. "Sorry to be so clumsy," she muttered, as she swiftly scooped up the jewels. It was well she had made haste, for no sooner was the clasp on the box snapped and the treasure concealed beneath the floor than Sylvia returned, and a moment later came both Doctor Jared Stetson and Elisha Winslow. "Mornin', Marcia," nodded the doctor. "'Lish happened to be in the office when your niece called up, an' hearin' you had a man patient, he thought mebbe he might be of use. What 'pears to be the trouble, sir?" "I've done something to my right wrist." "H--m--m! Keepin' your diagnosis private, I see. That's wise. A wrist can be broken, fractured, dislocated, or just plain sprained an' still pain like the deuce." With skilled hand, he pushed back the dripping sleeve. "You're a mite water-logged, I notice," observed he. "Been overboard?" "Something of the sort," returned the man with the flicker of a smile. "Mr.--" for the fraction of a second, Marcia hesitated; then continued in an even tone, "--Mr. Carlton grounded his boat and had to swim ashore." "You don't say! Well, I ain't surprised. 'Tain't no day to be afloat. You couldn't cut this fog with a carvin'-knife. But for knowin' the channel well's I do, I might 'a' been aground myself. How come you to take your boat out in such weather?" the doctor demanded. "I was--was cruising." "Oh, an' the fog shut down on you. I see. That's different. Fog has a trick of doin' that, unless one keeps an eye out for fog symptoms. Now, what I'd recommend for you first of all, Mr. Carlton, is a warm bed. You look clean beat out. Had an anxious, tiresome trip, I'll wager." "Yes." "I 'magined as much. Well, you can rest here. There'll be nothin' to disturb your slumbers. We sell quiet by the square yard in Wilton." A kindly chuckle accompanied the words. "Better let 'Lish an' me help you upstairs, an' out of your wet things, 'cause with a wrist such as yours, I figger you won't be very handy at buttons. Not that 'Lish is a professional lady's maid. That ain't exactly his callin'. Still, in spite of bein' town sheriff, he can turn his hand to other things. It's lucky he can, too, for he don't get much sheriffin' down this way. Wilton doesn't go in for crime. In fact, we was laughin' 'bout that very thing this noon at the post-office. 'Pears there's been a robbery at one of the Long Island estates. Quantities of jewelry taken, an' no trace of the thief. The alarm was sent out over the radio early yesterday an' listenin' in 'Lish, here, got quite het up an' not a little envious. He said he 'most wished the burglary had took place in our town, excitement bein' at a pretty low ebb now." "Zenas Henry suggested mebbe we might hire an up-to-date robber, was we to advertise," put in the sheriff, "but on thinkin' it over, we decided the scheme wouldn't work, 'cause of there bein' nothin' in the village worth stealin'." He laughed. Marcia, standing by the stove, spun about. "Now, Elisha, don't you run down Wilton. Why, I have twenty-five dollars in my purse this minute," she asserted, taking a worn pocket-book from her dress and slapping it with challenging candor down upon the table. "I keep it in that china box above the stove." "That might serve as a starter," remarked the stranger, regarding her quizzically. She faced him, chin drawn in, and head high and defiant. "Besides that, in my top bureau drawer is a string of gold beads that belonged to my great-grandmother," she continued, daring laughter curling her lips. "They are very old and are really quite valuable." "We'll make a note of those, too," nodded the man, his eyes on hers. "I'm afraid that's all I can offer in the way of burglary inducements." "That bein' the case, s'pose you an' me start gettin' the patient upstairs, 'Lish," broke in Doctor Stetson. "If we don't, next we know he'll be havin' pneumonia as well as a bad wrist. Besides, I want to get a good look at that wrist. Mebbe 'tain't goin' to be bad as it 'pears." The stranger's admiring glance fixed itself on Marcia's. "What is my next move?" he inquired. "I told you before--you must take off your wet things and rest," she repeated. "You still prescribe that treatment?" "I still prescribe it." "In spite of the--the symptoms?" "Why not?" was her quick answer. "Very well. I am ready, gentlemen." Erect, even with a hint of defiance in his mocking smile, the man rose to his full height. "Before we go, however, I must correct a slight error. You misunderstood my name. It is not Carlton. It is Heath--Stanley Heath." Chapter VI "And yet you told me, Marcia, this was a quiet, adventureless place!" burst out Sylvia, the instant the door had closed. "Isn't it?" "It doesn't seem so to me. When shipwrecked mariners fall into your arms entirely without warning, I call it thrilling. Who do you suppose he is?" "He told us his name." "Of course--Heath. Stanley Heath. It's quite a romantic name, too. But I didn't mean that. I mean where did he come from and why? Didn't he tell you?" "Not a word." Obviously the girl was disappointed. "I thought perhaps he might have while I was upstairs. I was gone long enough for him to pour out to you his entire history. At least it seemed so to me. I ransacked every closet and drawer in sight trying to find something for him to put on. It wasn't until I struck that old sea-chest in the hall that I discovered pajamas and underwear. I hope you don't mind my taking them." A shiver passed over Marcia. "No. They were Jason's. I ought to have told you they were there. I kept them because I thought they might sometime be useful." "Well, they certainly are," replied Sylvia. "They will exactly fit Mr. Heath. He must be lots like Uncle Jason." "He isn't," contradicted Marcia sharply. "He isn't at all like him." "In size, I mean," amended Sylvia, timidly. "Oh, in size. Possibly. I haven't thought about it," came tersely from Marcia. "Let me see! We planned to have lobster this noon, didn't we? But that won't do for him. He will need something more substantial." "There are chops," suggested Sylvia, following to the door. "So there are!" Marcia brightened. "I'd forgotten that. We have had such a confusing morning--" absently she reached for the plates. "Shall I put some potatoes in the oven?" "What?" "Potatoes. Shall I put some in the oven? For him, I mean." "Oh, yes--yes. Of course. Chops and--" regarding the girl vaguely, Marcia fingered the dishes in her hand. "And baked potatoes," Sylvia repeated, a trifle sharply. "Yes. Chops and baked potatoes," echoed Marcia, dragging her mind with an effort from the thoughts she was pursuing. "That will do nicely. And hot tea." "Won't tea keep him awake?" "I don't believe anything could keep him awake." Marcia was herself now and smiled. "Where do you suppose he came from? And how long has he been knocking about in that boat, I wonder," ventured Sylvia, her curiosity once again flaring up. "How do I know, dear?" Marcia sighed, as if determined to control her patience. "You know as much about him as I do. I mean," she corrected, honesty forcing her to amend the assertion, "almost as much. I did, to be sure, talk with him a little while waiting for the doctor, but he did not tell me anything about himself." "One would never suspect you were such a matter-of-fact, unimaginative person, Marcia," laughed Sylvia, "Now I am much more romantic. I am curious--just plain, commonplace curious--and I don't mind admitting it." Again Marcia's conscience triumphed. "I am curious, too," she confessed. "Only perhaps in a different way." The moving of chairs overhead and the sound of feet creaking down the stairway heralded the return of Jared Stetson and Elisha. She went to meet them. "'Tain't a broken wrist, Marcia," was the doctor's greeting on entering the kitchen. "Leastways, I don't think it is. I've bandaged it an' 'Lish an' me have your friend snug an' warm in bed. Tomorrow I'll look in again. Mebbe with daylight, I'll decide to whisk him down to the Hyannis Hospital for an X-ray just to make sure everything's O.K. There's no use takin' chances with a thing so useful to a feller as his wrist. But for tonight, the bandage will do. A hot water-bottle mightn't be amiss. Nor a square meal, neither. Beyond them two things, there ain't much you can do at present, but let him sleep." "We were starting to broil some chops." "Fine!" Doctor Stetson rubbed his hands. "Nothin' better. He was a mite fretted 'bout the boat; but I told him some of us men would ease her up 'fore dark an' see she was anchored good an' firm. There's a chance she'll float at high tide, I wouldn't wonder--that is if she ain't stuck too firm. The Life-Savin' crew will lend us a hand, I reckon. Cap'n Austin an' the boys have been itchin' for a job. Anyhow, I told Mr. Heath to quit troublin' 'bout his ship an' go to sleep, an' he promised he would. Seems a nice sort of feller. Known him long?" "Not so very long." "Why, Marcia--" broke in Sylvia. "One sometimes comes to know a person rather well, though, even in a short time," went on the older woman, ignoring the interruption. "S'pose 'twas a-comin' to see you that brought him down this way," Elisha volunteered. "Somehow I don't recall meetin' him before." "He hasn't been here before," was the measured response. "Oh, so he's new to Wilton waters, eh? That prob'ly accounts for his runnin' aground. I was certain I'd 'a' remembered his face had I seen it. I'm kinder good at faces," declared the sheriff. "Fine lookin' chap. Has quite an air to him. Nothin' cheap 'bout his clothes, neither. They was A1 quality clear through to his skin. Silk, with monograms on 'em. Must be a man of means." Silence greeted the observation. "Likely he is--havin' a power-boat an' leisure to cruise round in her," persisted the undaunted Elisha. "I really couldn't say." "Well, apparently he ain't one that boasts of his possessions, an' that's to his credit," interposed Jared Stetson good-humoredly. Elisha's interest in the stranger was not, however, to be so easily diverted. "Seen the boat?" he inquired. "No." "Oh, you ain't! I forgot to ask Heath the name of her. I'm sort of a crank on the names of boats. It always riles me to have a foolish name given a boat. No matter how small she is, her plankin' is all that divides her owner from fathoms of water, an' in view of the fact he'd oughter regard her soberly an' give her a decent name." Elisha stroked his chin, rough with the stubble of a reddish beard. "Years ago," he continued, "folks stood in awe of ships an' understood better what they owed 'em. In them days there warn't no wireless, nor no big ocean liners an' a man that sailed the deep warn't so hail-feller-well-met with the sea. It put the fear of God into him. When he started out on a cruise across the Atlantic or round the Horn, there warn't no slappin' his ship on the back. He respected her an' named her accordin'ly. _The Flyin' Cloud!_ Can you beat that? Or _Sovereign of the Seas_? Them names meant somethin'. They made you want to lift your hat to the lady. But now--! Why, last season a feller come into the harbor with as pretty a knockabout as you'd want to see. Small though she was, every line of her was of the quality. A reg'lar little queen she was. An' what do you s'pose that smart aleck had christened her? The _Ah-there_! Thought himself funny, no doubt. 'Twould 'a' served him right had she capsized under him some day when he was well out of sight of land an' left him to swim ashore. Yes-siree, it would. If a man has no more regard for the keel that's under him an' the floorin' that's 'twixt him an' forty fathoms of water than that he deserves to drown an' I wouldn't care the flip of a cod's tail if he did," Elisha blustered. "Oh, come now, 'Lish--you know you wouldn't stand by an' see no feller drown, no matter what kind of a fool he was," laughed the doctor. "Yes, I would," Elisha insisted, tugging on his coat. "Well, all I can say is I hope the name of Mr. Heath's boat will meet with your approval," ventured Sylvia archly. "I hope 'twill," was the glum retort, as the sheriff followed Doctor Stetson through the doorway. The moment the door banged behind them, Sylvia turned toward Marcia. "Forgive my butting in, dear," apologized she. "But I was so surprised. You did say you didn't know Mr. Heath, didn't you?" "Yes." "But--but--" "Sometimes it's just as well not to tell all you know--especially in a place like this," was the evasive response. Was the reply a rebuke or merely a caution? Sylvia did not know. And what was the meaning of the rose color that flooded the elder woman's cheek? Had Marcia really meant to give the impression that she knew Stanley Heath? And if so, why? Sylvia wracked her brain for answers to these questions. Why, only an hour before, she and Marcia had been on the frankest footing imaginable. Now, like a sea-turn, had come a swift, inexplicable change whose cause she was at a loss to understand and which had rendered her aunt as remote as the farthest star. Sylvia would have been interested indeed had she known that while she wrestled with the enigma, Marcia, to all appearances busy preparing the tray for the invalid upstairs, was searching her heart for answers to the same questions. Why had she sought to shield this stranger? Why had she evaded Doctor Stetson's inquiries and deliberately tried to mislead him into thinking she and Stanley Heath were friends? What had prompted the deception? The man was nothing to her. Of his past she had not the slightest knowledge, indeed he might be the greatest villain in the world. In fact, circumstances proclaimed him a thief. Nevertheless, she did not, could not, believe it. There was something too fine in his face; his eyes. True, he had made no attempt either to defend himself or to explain away the suspicions he must have known would arise in her mind. On the contrary, with a devil-may-care audacity that fascinated her, he actually appeared to have tried to deepen in her mind the impression of his guilt. Still she refused to believe. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence she clung to her unreasoning faith in him. Suppose he had stolen the gems and fled with them from Long Island? Suppose he had lost his bearings in the fog; tossed aimlessly on the sea for a day and a night; and then run aground at her doorstep? It was possible, quite possible, even probable. Yet was it? Not for a man like Stanley Heath. Marcia stubbornly insisted. So deep was the conviction, she shrank lest he should feel called upon to justify or defend himself. Far from demanding explanations, she resolved she would give him no chance to make them. Therefore, when his meal was ready and every last inviting touch had been given the tray, she said casually to Sylvia: "Suppose you take it up, dear?" "I?" "Yes. Why not? Do you mind?" "Not at all. I just thought perhaps you'd rather." Marcia shook her head. "I want to stir the Newburg and see it doesn't catch," she explained, avoiding the girl's eyes. "We are too hungry to risk having our dinner spoiled. You might just wait and cut the chops for Mr. Heath and fix his potato. Find out, too, if there is anything more he wants. You needn't hurry back. I'll keep things hot." The task suggested did not, apparently, displease Sylvia. She dimpled and sauntering to the mirror, she glanced in giving her mass of golden curls a feminine poke. She even slipped a vanity-case from her pocket and powdered her wee, up-tilted nose. "We may as well look our best," laughed she over her shoulder. "Certainly." "Perhaps I might take off my smock and go up in my dark dress." "I wouldn't. The smock is gay and suits you. Invalids need cheering up." "So they do," agreed Sylvia demurely, now quite self-possessed. A flutter of anticipation had put a sparkle into her eyes and faint color into her cheeks. She looked bewilderingly pretty. "Here goes Red-Ridinghood," she murmured, taking up the tray. "All is, if I don't come back, you'll know the wolf has eaten me." In spite of herself, Marcia smiled. She opened the door and stood watching while the girl ascended the stairs, for the hall was unlighted and the tray heavy. "I'm safe," called a merry voice from the topmost stair. Marcia came back into the kitchen. She finished preparing the lobster, straightened the silver on the table, let in Prince Hal who came bounding to her side, picked a few dead blossoms from the geraniums, and sat down to wait. Ten minutes passed! Fifteen! Half an hour went by. She fidgeted and stooped to pat the setter. Then she went to the window. Slowly the fog was lifting. It hung like a filmy curtain, its frayed edges receding from a dull steel-blue sea and through it she could discern the irregular sweep of the channel and the shore opposite where dimly outlined stood the spired church and the huddle of houses clustered like wraiths about the curving margin of the bay. Yes, it was clearing. The tide had turned and a breeze sprung up. By afternoon the weather would be fine--just the right sort to get the boat off. She would go up the beach and watch the men while they worked. The house was close. She longed for air and the big reaches of the out-of-doors. A jingle of glass and silver! It was Sylvia returning with the tray. Her eyes were shining. "He ate every bit!" she cried. "You should have seen him, Marcia. It would have done your heart good. The poor lamb was almost starved. He asked for you the first thing. I don't think he altogether liked your not carrying up the tray, although of course, he was too polite to say so." "You explained I was busy?" "Yes. But at first he didn't seem satisfied with the excuse. However, he soon forgot about it and became gay as a lark. Didn't you hear us laughing? The potato would fall off the fork. I'm not as good a nurse as you. My hands weren't so steady. I'm going back again for his wet clothes. We can dry them here by the fire, can't we?" "Yes, indeed." "It's a pity there isn't a tailor at hand. His suit ought to be pressed." "I can do it," Marcia declared with eagerness. "I'm quite used to pressing men's clothes. I always pressed Jason's." This time the name dropped unnoticed from her lips. Indeed she was not conscious she had uttered it. She was not thinking of Jason. Chapter VII It was late afternoon and, alone in the kitchen, Sylvia yawned. Since noontime she had sat reading and straining her ears for a sound in the room overhead, but there had been none. He was sleeping after his hearty dinner and that was encouraging. Doctor Stetson had hoped the wrist would not be painful enough to interfere with the rest the patient so obviously needed, and apparently this hope was being realized. Sylvia was glad he was asleep--very glad indeed. She did not begrudge him a moment of his slumber. But what a delightful person he was when awake! His eyes were wonderful--so dark and penetrating. They bored right through you. And then he listened with such intentness, watching every curve of your lips as if fearing to lose a word. Such attention was distinctly flattering. Even though your chatter was trivial, he dignified it and transformed it into something of importance. How interested, for example, he had been in Marcia; in learning she had been married and now lived a widow in the old Daniels Homestead! And what a host of inquiries he had made about Jason--the sort of man he was and how long ago he had died! Sylvia had not been able to answer all his questions, but of course she had asserted that Marcia had adored her husband because--well, not so much because she actually knew it, as because widows always did. Certainly Marcia had declared she loved the Homestead so deeply she never intended to leave it, and was not that practically the same thing as saying she loved Jason, too? Anyway, how she had felt toward him was not really a matter of any great importance now because he was dead. The thing that really mattered was Mr. Heath's interest in her--Sylvia; in her trip East and her description of Alton City, the little mid-western town which was her home. How he had laughed at her rebellion at being a school-teacher, and how insidiously he had hinted she might not always be one! And when she had tossed her curls at him as she often tossed them at Billie Sparks, the soda fountain clerk, how cleverly he had remarked that sunlight was especially welcome on a grey day. Oh, he knew what to say--knew much better than Billie Sparks or even Horatio Fuller, the acknowledged beau of the town. In fact he made both of them seem quite commonplace--even Hortie. Fancy it! Probably that was because he had traveled. Apparently he had been almost everywhere--except to Alton City. Odd he should never have been there when he had visited just about every other corner, both of America and of Europe. Not that he had deliberately said so. He was far too modest for that. It was while trying to find out where his home was that she had stumbled upon the information. And come to think of it, she did not know now where he lived, she suddenly remembered. At the time she thought he had named the place; but she realized on reviewing the conversation that he had not. In fact, he had not told her much of anything about himself. It had all been about surfboating in the Pacific; skiing at Lake Placid and St. Moritz; climbing the Alps; motoring in Brittany. She actually did not know whether he had a father or a mother; a brother or a sister. At Alton City you would have found out all those things within the first ten minutes. Perhaps that was the reason he piqued her interest--because he was not like Alton City--not like it at all. Why, were Stanley Heath to stroll up Maple Avenue on a fine, sunny afternoon everybody--even the boys that loafed in front of Bailey's cigar store and the men who loitered on the post-office steps--would turn to look at him. He would be so different from everybody else he would seem a being from another planet. It would be fun, she mused, to walk with him through this main street while those on both sides of it craned their necks and asked one another who he was. More fun yet to dash through its shaded arch of trees in a smart little car, talking and laughing with him all the way, and pretending to be unconscious of the staring spectators, although of course she would be seeing them all perfectly well out of the corner of her eye. She had done this sometimes with Hortie Fuller, simply because she knew every girl in Alton City envied her his devotion. But what was Hortie compared with Mr. Stanley Heath? Sylvia tilted her small up-tilted nose even higher. So occupied was she with these dramatic fancies she had not thought once of Prince Hal. In fact she had supposed that he had gone up the beach with Marcia. Now she suddenly became aware that he stood sniffing about the hearth, scratching at its surface as if he scented something beneath. He must not do that, and she told him so in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, in spite of the rebuke, he continued to poke away at the spot, whining faintly, until his persistence aroused her curiosity and she went to see what disturbed him. One brick projected ever so slightly from the others, and it was at this the setter was clawing. "What is it, Prince? What's the matter?" whispered she. Delighted to have gained her attention, the dog barked. "Oh, you mustn't bark, darling," she cautioned, muzzling his nose with her hand. "You'll wake Mr. Heath. Tell Missy what the trouble is. Do you smell a mousie under there?" For answer the dog wagged his tail. "I don't believe it," Sylvia demurred. "You're only bluffing. Between you and Winkie-Wee there isn't a mouse about the place. Still, you seem terribly sure something is wrong. Well, to convince you, I'll take up the brick." Fetching from the pantry a steel fork, she inserted the prongs in the crack and pried the offending brick out of its hole. Instantly the dog snatched from the space beneath a handkerchief containing a small, hard object. Sylvia chased after him. "Bring it here, Hal! That's a good dog! Bring it to Missy." The setter came fawning to her side and unwillingly dropped his prize at her feet. As it fell to the ground, out rolled such a glory of jewels the girl could scarcely believe her eyes. There was a string of diamonds, dazzling as giant dewdrops; a pearl and sapphire pendant; several beautiful rings; and an oval brooch, its emerald centre surrounded by tier after tier of brilliants. Sylvia panted, breathless. She had never seen such gems, much less held them in her hands. How she longed to slip the rings upon her fingers and try the effect of the diamonds about her slender throat! Prudence, however, overmastered the impulse. Marcia might return and surprise her at any moment. Before that the treasure must be returned to the place from which it had been taken. Gathering the rainbow heap together, she reluctantly thrust it into its blue leather case, snapped the catch, and placed it once more under the brick. Then with relief she stood up and wiped the perspiration from her forehead. It was not until she was again in her chair, book in hand, and struggling to quiet her quick breathing that she discovered she still held in her hand the handkerchief that had been wrapped about the jewel-case. How stupid of her! How insufferably careless! Well, she dared not attempt to replace it now. There was no time. Instead, she smoothed it out and inspected it. It was a man's handkerchief of finest linen and one corner bore the embroidered initials S. C. H. She had known it all the time! There was no need to be told the jewels were his. What puzzled her was when he had found time to hide them. He had not, so far as she knew, been left alone a moment and yet here was his booty safe beneath the floor. She rated it as booty, because there could be no doubt he had stolen it. He had stolen it from that Long Island estate, escaped in his speed boat and here he was--here, under this very roof! A robber--that was what he was! A robber--a bandit, such as one saw in the movies! That explained why he was so well-dressed, so handsome, had such fascinating manners. He was a gentleman burglar. All up-to-date villains in these days were gentlemen. Not that she had ever encountered a villain in the flesh. Still, she had read romances about them and was there not one in every moving-picture? They were not difficult to recognize. Now here she was, actually in the same house with one! How thrilling! Here was an adventure worthy of the name. She was not in the least frightened. On the contrary, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet she tingled with excitement. She could feel the hot, pulsing blood throb in her throat and wrists. It was exhilarating--wonderful! Of course Marcia must not know. She, with her Puritan ideas, would unquestionably be shocked to discover that the man she was sheltering was a thief. She would probably feel it her Christian duty to surrender him to Elisha Winslow. How unsuspecting she had been! How naïvely she had clapped her purse down on the table and proclaimed exactly where her gold beads were kept! A thief in the room overhead! Think of it! The very thief for whom all the police in the countryside were searching! He was no small, cheap type of criminal. He did things on a big scale--so big that radio announcements had been broadcast about him and no doubt at this instant detectives and crime inspectors were chasing up and down the highways; dashing through cities; and keeping telephone wires hot in wild search for the gentleman asleep upstairs! Sylvia stifled her laughter. The whole thing was ironic. Why, that very morning had not Elisha Winslow, the Wilton sheriff, who had frankly admitted he yearned for excitement, helped undress the wretch and put him comfortably to bed? The humor of the situation almost overcame her. It seemed as if she must have someone to share the joke. But no one should. No! Nobody should be the wiser because of her. The poor, hunted fellow should have his chance. He was an under-dog and she had always been romantically sorry for under-dogs. It was a little venturesome and risky, she admitted, to obstruct justice and should she be found out she would, without doubt, be clapped into jail. Still she resolved to take a chance. After all, who could prove she had known Stanley Heath to be what he was? Nobody. She would not even let him suspect it. The important thing was to await an opportunity and soon--before he was able to be about--return the handkerchief she held in her hand to its place beneath the brick. Then all would be well. This should not be difficult. It would be quite easy to get Marcia to take up Mr. Heath's supper. In the meantime, the situation was intensely amusing. Its danger appealed to her. She had always enjoyed hair-breadth escapades. Anything but dullness. That had been the trouble with Alton City--it had been dull--deadly dull. But Wilton was not dull. In spite of the fact that only this morning Elisha Winslow had complained the town was in need of a stirring up, it seethed with electricity. If she chose, she could hurl a bomb-shell into its midst this very minute. But she did not choose. Instead she intended to play her own quiet game and keep what she knew to herself. She wondered why. Perhaps she was falling in love with this adventurer. Yes, that must be it. She was in love with him--in love with a bandit! How scandalized Alton City would be! How the whole town would hold up its hands in horror if it knew! Horatio Fuller--dubbed Hortie because of his high-hat manners and because his father owned the largest store in town--picture his dismay if he guessed her guilty secret! Perhaps he would shoot the fellow--or the fellow shoot him. That was what usually happened in moving-pictures, somebody always shot somebody else. She wouldn't want Hortie to be shot. The thought of it sobered her. After all, Hortie was a dear, she liked him--liked him very much. On the other hand, she would not want Stanley Heath shot either. Perhaps it would be just as well to leave out all this shooting, why heap horror upon horror? To be married to a bandit was adventure enough without being the wife of a murderer. Sylvia's imagination had traveled so swiftly and so far that it came to earth with a crash when Marcia opened the door. Her hair, tossed by the wind, clustered about her face in small, moist ringlets; her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes shone. It was not alone the buffeting of the salt breeze nor the exhilaration of walking against it that had transformed her into something radiantly lovely. From within glowed a strange fire that made her another creature altogether. "Why--why--Marcia!" breathed Sylvia, bewildered. "I've had such a glorious walk, dear!" cried Marcia. "The fog has lifted and the sky is a sheet of amethyst and gold." "Did the men get the boat off?" "Yes. She is floating tranquilly as a dove." "What is her name?" "_My Unknown Lady._" "Mercy on us! That ought to satisfy even Elisha." "It did," said Marcia. Chapter VIII Sylvia's plans, so well laid and apparently so easy of execution did not, to her chagrin, work out, for instead of awaking and demanding supper Stanley Heath slept without a break until morning. Had not Marcia insisted on leaving her door ajar lest the invalid call, the girl might have slipped down stairs in the darkness and returned the handkerchief. As it was, fate forced her to put it into her bureau drawer and await more favorable opportunity. This, alas, did not come. Sun was tinting the lavender sands to rose and gilding the water with its first flecks of gold when she saw Marcia standing at the foot of her bed. "Mr. Heath has a high fever and can scarcely speak aloud," explained she. "I'm afraid he is quite ill. I wish you'd call up Doctor Stetson." "Mercy on us!" The girl, drowsy and heavy-eyed, sprang out of bed. "I'll be down in just a minute," she exclaimed. "How do you happen to be up so early?" "I've been up off and on all night," answered Marcia. "Mr. Heath was restless and thirsty. About midnight I heard him tossing about, and thinking he might be hungry, I heated some broth and took it to him." "I didn't hear you. I must have been dead to the world. Why didn't you speak?" "There was no need of it. You were tired." "No more than you." "I was wakeful, anyway. I don't know why. Perhaps I had him on my mind. If so, it is fortunate, for he did not call." "I'm dreadfully sorry he feels so miserable." "He won't admit it. He declares he is going back to New York today." "But he can't--he mustn't." "He is determined to. He says he has something very important to attend to. Of course I have no authority over him but perhaps Doctor Stetson can exert some. That is why I am anxious to reach him before he goes out," explained Marcia, moving toward the door. "I will call him right away." "I'll go down and start breakfast, then. Mr. Heath is dozing. He has promised not to get up for at least an hour. We must have the doctor here within that time." "I'll tell him to hurry." Marcia tiptoed down the stairs. The freshness of early morning was upon the day. Through the kitchen window pale shafts of light shot across the floor, brightening the colored rugs and making brass and copper glisten. Starting the fire, she threw open the door to let in the salt breeze. The dampness and chill of the night had disappeared and the air was mild with the breath of coming spring. Mingling with the gulls' cries she could hear the twitter of sparrows and the occasional chirp of a robin. The village, still hazy in mist, was taking on sharper outlines and from the bay the voices of fishermen and the chug of a motor-boat drifted distinctly across the water. Prince came bounding into the house from some distant pilgrimage of his own, almost knocking her down in his eagerness for breakfast. She glanced far up the shore and saw, serenely rocking with the tide, _My Unknown Lady_. As she whispered the name, she was conscious of hot blood rushing to her cheeks. How ridiculous! Stanley Heath was simply a stranger of a night, he was nothing to her. Well indeed was it, too, that he was not! During her hours of sleeplessness the ardor of her faith in him had, to a degree, cooled. True, she still maintained her belief in his innocence; but that belief, she now realized, was only a blind unfounded intuition. Both the circumstances and sober second thought failed to back it up. The man's impatience to be gone, his complete silence with regard to the jewels, although perfectly justifiable, did not strengthen it. Marcia conceded he had every right to keep his affairs to himself. She was close-mouthed and therefore sympathetic with the quality in others. But such an unusual happening! What more natural than that one should offer some explanation? Last night, transported by emotion to a mood superheroic, she had wished none; nay, more, she had deliberately placed herself beyond the reach of it. Today she toppled from her pedestal and became human, shifting from goddess to woman. Had Stanley Heath started to confide his secret to her, she would even now have held up her hand to stay him. It was the fact that through the dim hours of the night, while she sat at his elbow trying to make the discomforts he suffered more bearable, he talked of almost everything else but the thing uppermost in both their minds. That was what hurt. She did not want to know. She wanted to be trusted; to help; to feel his dependence upon her. Instead he held her at arm's length. Oh, he voiced his gratitude for what she had done. He did that over and over again, apologizing at having caused her so much trouble. As if she minded! Why, she was glad, glad to be troubled! He spoke with almost an equal measure of appreciation of the crew who had dragged his boat off the sand-bar, appearing to consider them also tremendously kind--as undoubtedly they were! Still, they had not begun to come into the close contact with him that she had. Marcia caught herself up with a round turn. Here she was being sensitive, womanish. How detestable! Why should Stanley Heath pour out his soul to her? She had never laid eyes on him until yesterday. In a day or two he would be gone never again to come into her life. She was glad of it. It was better so. She had just reached a state of complete tranquillity and happiness. Why have her serenity stirred into turmoil and she herself transformed once more from a free woman to a slave? Her mind should dwell no more on this man or his affairs. If he decided to go back to New York today, ill as he was, she would not attempt to deter him. His business was his own and he must manage it as he thought best. This decision reached, she drew in her chin, lifted her head a wee bit and began to get the breakfast. Even Doctor Stetson's arrival and his subsequent verdict that the patient had bronchitis and would take his life in his hands should he leave his bed, afforded her only scant satisfaction. So she was to keep Stanley Heath under her roof after all--but against his will. It was not a very flattering situation. She sent Sylvia up with his coffee and toast, and began her usual round of morning duties. And then just as they were finished and the clock was striking eleven, he called. She went up, cheerful but with her head still held high, and paused on the threshold. Glancing at her he smiled. "You look like a bird about to take flight. Won't you sit down?" She went nearer. Nevertheless she did not take the chair he indicated. "I see you are busy," he said. "I thought perhaps your housework might be done by this time and you might have a moment to spare. Well, I mustn't interrupt. Forgive me for calling." "I'm not busy." "You seem hurried." "I'm not. I haven't a thing in the world to do," Marcia burst out. "Good! Then you can stay a little while," he coaxed. "Now answer this question truthfully, please. You heard what Doctor Stetson said about my returning to New York today. I don't want to be pig-headed and take a risk if it is imprudent; that is neither fair to others nor to myself. Still, it is important that I go and I am anxious to. What is your advice?" "I think you are too ill." A frown of annoyance wrinkled his forehead. "If you will consent to stay where you are a few days, you will then be all right to go," she added. Obviously the suggestion did not please him. However, he answered more mildly: "Perhaps you're right. Yet for all that I am disappointed. I want very much to go. It is necessary." "Can't anything be done from here?" queried she. "Such as--?" "Letters, telegrams--whatever you wish. I can telephone or telegraph anywhere. Or I can write." Surprise stole over his face, then deepened to admiration. "You would do that for me--blindfolded?" "Why not?" "You know why." "I simply want to help. I always like to help when I can," she explained hurriedly. "Even when you do not understand?" Piercingly his eyes rested on her face. "I--I--do not need to understand," was her proud retort. For the fraction of a second, their glances met. Then she turned away and a pause, broken only by the crash of the surf on the outer beach, fell between them. When at last he spoke his voice was low--imperative. "Marcia--come here!" She went--she knew not why. "Give me your hand." Again, half-trembling, half reluctant, she obeyed. He took it in his and bending, kissed it. "I will stay and you shall telegraph," was all he said. She sprang to fetch paper and pencil, as if welcoming this break in the tension. "I'm afraid I cannot write plainly enough with my left hand," he said. "Will you take down the message?" "Certainly." "_Mrs. S. C. Heath_" Her pencil, so firm only an instant before, quivered. "Have you that?" "Yes." "_The Biltmore, New York City._" "Yes." "_Everything safe with me. Do not worry. Marooned on Cape Cod with cold. Nothing serious. Home soon. Love. Stanley._" "Got that?" "Yes." Had something gone out of her voice? The monosyllable was flat, colorless. Heath looked at her. Even her expression was different--or did he merely imagine it? "Perhaps I would better just glance over the message before you send it--simply to make sure it's right." "Let me copy it first," she objected. "Copy it? Nonsense! What for? Nobody's going to see it." He reached for the paper. Still she withheld it. "What's the trouble?" "It isn't written well enough. I'd rather copy it." "Why?" "It's wobbly. I--I--perhaps my hands were cold." "You're not chilly?" "No--oh, no." "If the room is cool you mustn't stay here." "It isn't. I'm not cold at all." "Will you let me take the telegram?" She placed it in his hand. "It is shaky. However, that's of no consequence, since you are to 'phone Western Union. Now, if you truly are not cold, I'd like to dictate a second wire." "All right." "This one is for Currier. _Mr. James Currier, The Biltmore, New York City. Safe on Cape with My Lady. Shall return with her later. Motor here at once, bringing whatever I need for indefinite stay._ _Stanley C. Heath_ "Got that?" "O.K.," nodded Marcia. This time, without hesitation, she passed him the paper. "This, I see, is your normal hand-writing," he commented as he placed the messages side by side. "I must admit it is an improvement on the other." Taking up the sheets, he studied them with interest. "Hadn't I better go and get off the messages?" suggested Marcia, rising nervously. "What's your hurry?" "You said they were important." "So I did. Nevertheless they can wait a few minutes." "The station might be closed. Often it is at noontime." "It doesn't matter if they don't go until afternoon." "But there might be some slip." He glanced at her with his keen eyes. "What's the matter?" "Matter?" "Yes, with you? All of a sudden you've turned easterly." "Have I?" Lightly, she laughed. "I probably have caught the habit from the sea. Environment does influence character, psychologists say." "Nevertheless, you are not fickle." "How do you know? Even if I were, to change one's mind is no crime," she went on in the same jesting tone. "The wind bloweth whither it listeth, and the good God does not condemn it for doing so." "But you are not the wind." "Perhaps I am," she flashed teasingly. "Or I may have inherited qualities from the sands that gave me birth. They are forever shifting." "You haven't." "You know an amazing amount about me, seems to me, considering the length of our acquaintance," she observed with a tantalizing smile. "I do," was the grim retort. "I know more than you think--more, perhaps than you know yourself. Shall I hold the betraying mirror up before you?" "The mirror of truth? God forbid! Who of us would dare face it?" she protested, still smiling but with genuine alarm. "Now do let me run along and send off the messages. I must not loiter here talking. You are forgetting that you're ill. The next you know your temperature will go up and Doctor Stetson will blame me." "My temperature has gone up," growled Stanley Heath, turning his back on her and burying his face in the pillow with the touchiness of a small boy. Chapter IX Sylvia, meanwhile, had heard Stanley Heath call Marcia and hailed her aunt's departure from the kitchen as the opportunity for which she had so anxiously been waiting. No sooner was the elder woman upstairs and out of earshot than she tiptoed from her room, the monogrammed handkerchief in her pocket. She had pried out the brick and had the jewel-case in her hand, wrapped and ready for its return when conversation overhead suddenly ceased and she heard Marcia pass through the hall and start down stairs. Sylvia gasped. She must not be found here. Yet what was she to do? There was no chance now to put the package back and replace the brick which fitted so tightly that its adjustment was a process requiring patience, care, and time. Flustered, frightened, she jammed the jewel-case into her dress and frantically restoring the brick to the yawning hole in the hearth as best she could, she fled up the back stairs at the same moment Marcia descended the front ones. Once in her room, she closed and locked the door and sank panting into a chair to recover her breath. Well, at least she had not been caught and in the meantime the jewels were quite safe. Mr. Heath was too ill to be up and about for several days and until he was able to leave his room there was not the slightest danger their absence would be discovered. Long before that time, Marcia would doubtless go to walk or to the village for mail and leave her ample opportunity to put the loot back where Mr. Heath had hidden it. She took the case stealthily from her pocket. Now that the gems were in her possession, it certainly could do no harm for her to look at them--even try them on, as she had been tempted to do when she first discovered them. Probably never again in all her life would she hold in her hand so much wealth and beauty. No one, not Heath himself, could begrudge her a peep at the trinkets. Accordingly she unwound the handkerchief and opened the box. There lay the glistening heap of treasure, resplendent in the sunshine, a far more gorgeous spectacle than she had realized. Going to the bureau, Sylvia took out the jewels, one by one. She clasped the diamonds about her neck; fastened the emerald brooch in place; put on the sapphire pendant; then added the rings and looked at herself in the gold-framed mirror. What she saw reflected dazzled her. Who would have believed jewels could make such a difference in one's appearance? They set off her blonde beauty so that she was suddenly transformed into a princess. No wonder Stanley Heath had risked his life and his freedom for spoils such as these! If she could have only one of the jewels she would be satisfied--the string of diamonds, the brooch, a ring--which would she choose? Of course she never could own anything so gorgeous or so valuable. Notwithstanding the certainty, however, it was fun to imagine she might. Slowly, and with conscious coquetry, like a preening bird, she turned her head this way and that, delighting in the creaminess of the neck the gems encircled, and in the fairness of her golden curls. She really ought to have jewels. She was born for them and could carry them off. There were myriad women in the world on whom such adornment would be wasted--good and worthy women, too. Fancy Maria Eldridge or Susan Ann Bearse, for instance, arrayed in pomp like this! But Marcia would be magnificent, with her rich complexion, her finely poised head, her splendid shoulders, her lovely neck. Marcia dressed in all this wealth would be well worth looking at. Then a voice interrupted her reverie. It was Stanley Heath calling. She heard Marcia reply and come hurrying upstairs. Guiltily Sylvia took off her sparkling regalia; tumbled it unceremoniously into its case; and slipped it into the drawer underneath a pile of nightdresses. Then she softly unlocked the door and sauntered out. It was none too soon, for Marcia was speaking to her. "Sylvia?" "Yes." "How would you feel about going over to the village for the mail and to do some errands? The tide is out and you could walk. Prince needs a run." "I'd love to go." "That's fine. Here is a list of things we need at the store. Just be sure not to dally too long and get marooned over in town." "I'll watch out." "You're sure you don't mind going?" "No, indeed. I shall enjoy being out." Then suddenly Sylvia had an inspiration which she instantly acted upon. "Why don't you go?" she inquired. "You didn't sleep much last night, and a walk might do you good." "Oh, I couldn't," objected Marcia with haste. "I've a hundred and one things to do." "Tell me what they are and I'll do them for you." "I couldn't. They are things I must do myself. Thanks just the same." "Well, you know your own business best. Is this the list?" "Yes. There are quite a few items, but they won't be heavy. Here is the basket. Prince will carry it. That is his job and very proud he is of doing it. Goodbye, dear." "She's dreadfully anxious to get us out of the way, isn't she, Prince?" commented young Sylvia as she and the setter started out over the sand. "Now what do you suppose she has on her mind? She's up to something. Marcia isn't a bit of an actress. She's too genuine." Marcia, standing at the window watching the girl in her blue sweater and matching beret swing along over the flats mirrored with tiny pools of water, would have been astonished enough had she heard this astute observation. She did want Sylvia out of the way. The girl had read her correctly. She must telephone the messages to the station-master at Sawyer Falls, the adjoining town where the railroad ended and the nearest telegraph station was. She got the line and had no sooner dictated the telegrams than she heard Heath's voice. During the interval that had elapsed since she had left him, both of them had experienced a reaction and each was eager to make amends. Marcia regretted her flippancy. It had been childish of her to give way to pique and punish Heath simply because it was proved he had a wife. Why should he not be married? No doubt the absent Mrs. Stanley Heath was a dashing, sophisticated beauty, too, who lived in luxury at the great city hotel to which the first wire had been sent. Heath had been quite frank about the message and its destination. On thinking matters over, it occurred to Marcia he might have considered this the easiest way to inform her of things he found it embarrassing to put into words. She had been made aware in delicate fashion that he was rich, married and moved in a circle far removed from the humble one she herself occupied. No doubt he felt she should realize this. It regulated their relationship and prevented any possible misunderstandings. And she? Instead of appreciating his honesty, chivalry, gentlemanly conduct as she should have done, and receiving it graciously, surprise had betrayed her into displaying resentment. She was heartily ashamed of herself. No matter how much it humbled her pride, she must put things right. Fortunately it was not too late to do so. Therefore, a very different Marcia Howe responded to Stanley Heath's summons. She was now all gentleness, friendliness, and shyly penitent. If her former coquetry had been bewitching, this new artless self of hers was a hundredfold more alluring. Stanley, again master of himself, welcomed her with amazement. Could man ever fathom a woman's moods, he asked himself? Why this chastened and distractingly adorable Marcia? It was he who had been in the wrong and given way to temper, yet instead of demanding the apology which trembled on his tongue, here she was taking the blame and passing over his irritability with the charity of a mother humoring a fretful child. Well, if he could not fathom her, he at least was grateful for her understanding. Nevertheless he did mentally observe he had not dreamed her to be so many-sided or credited her with a tithe the fascinations he had so unexpectedly discovered her to possess. "Here I am, Mr. Heath. What can I do for you?" was her greeting. This time she did not hesitate, but went directly to the chair beside his bed and sat down. He smiled and, meeting his eyes, she smiled back. This was better. Heath sighed a sigh of relief. "I've been thinking, since you went down stairs, about Currier. He ought to arrive late tonight or early tomorrow morning. He will start the moment he gets my wire. Although he will not know in which house I am quartered, he will have the wit to inquire, for he has more than the ordinary quota of brains. I don't know what I should do without him. He has been with me for years and is an Admirable Crichton and a good man Friday rolled into one. I shall have him leave the car in the village and after he has delivered over the clothing he is to bring, he can take the noon train back to New York, carrying the jewels with him." "I see," nodded Marcia. She did not see. She did not understand any of the snarl of events in which so unwittingly she found herself entangled. Nevertheless she heartily welcomed the intelligence that the jewels with their damning evidence, if evidence it was, were to be removed from the house. The sooner they were out of the way the better. If they were not damning evidence they at least were a great responsibility. Suppose something were to happen to them? Suppose somebody suspected they were in the house? The thought had occurred to her more than once. "So," continued Stanley Heath, "I think sometime today when you have a good opportunity you'd better get the case and bring it up here. I shall then have it here in my room and I can hand it over to Currier without any trouble." "I'll go and fetch it now. Sylvia has gone to the village and this is a splendid chance," cried Marcia. "Fine!" "I'll be right back." He heard her speed down the stairs and listened to her step in the room below. Then there was silence. A few moments later she came racing back, white and breathless. "They're gone!" she cried. "The place is empty! The jewels are not there!" Her terror and the fear lest her pallor foreshadowed collapse produced in Heath that artificial calm one sometimes sees when a strong nature reins itself in and calls upon its reserve control. Marcia had fallen to her knees beside the bed and buried her face, trembling with agitation. The man thought only of how to quiet her. Reaching out, he touched her hair. "Hush, Marcia. The jewels will be found. Don't give way like this. I cannot bear to see you. The whole lot of them are not worth your tears." "But you left them in my care. It was I who suggested where to hide them," she moaned. "I know. And it was a splendid idea, too. Besides, we had no time to hunt hiding-places. We were forced to act right away. I could not let that sheriff of yours peel off my clothes and find the diamonds on me. He isn't a man of sufficient imagination--or perhaps he is one of far too much. I am not blaming you,--not in the least. We did the best we could in the emergency. If things have gone wrong, it is no fault of yours." "But you trusted me. I ought to have watched. I should not have left the kitchen day or night," declared Marcia, lifting her tear-stained face to his. "You have been there most of the time, haven't you?" "I went to see them get the boat off yesterday." "Still, someone was here. Sylvia was in the house." "Yes, but she knew nothing about the jewels and therefore may not have realized the importance of staying on deck. How could she, unless she had been warned? All I asked her to do was to remain within call. She may have gone upstairs, or into another room." "When she comes back, you can ask her." It was he who now soothed and cheered, his caressing hand moving from her shoulder down her arm until her fingers lay in his. Convulsively she caught and clung to them. "Now we must pull ourselves together, dear," went on Stanley gently. "It is important that we do not give ourselves away. Sylvia may know nothing and if she does not, we must not let her suspect. The fewer people there are mixed up in this dilemma the better." "Yes." She rose but he still held her hand, a common misery routing every thought of conventionality. The firmness and magnetism of his touch brought strength. It was a new experience, for during her life with Jason, Marcia had been the oak--the one who consoled, sustained. For a few delicious moments, she let herself rest, weary and unresisting, within the shelter of Stanley Heath's grasp. Then she drew away and, passing her hand across her forehead as if awaking from a dream murmured: "I'd better go down. Sylvia will be coming." "Very well. Now keep a stiff upper lip. Remember, I depend on you to see the apple-cart does not upset." "I will--I'll do my best." Even as she spoke the outer door opened, then closed with a bang. "There's Sylvia now. I must go." The girl came in, aglow from her walk. "I'm awfully sorry I banged the door," she apologized. "A gust of wind took it. I do hope I didn't wake up Mr. Heath. Here's the marketing. I thought I should never get out of that store. Everybody in the whole town was there for mail and I had to stop and tell each one all about Mr. Heath and his shipwreck, his boat and his health. I must have answered a million questions. People are dreadfully curious about him. "And Marcia, what do you suppose? I had a letter from Hortie Fuller--that fellow back home that I've told you about. He's sent me a five-pound box of candy and he wants to come to Wilton and spend his summer vacation." The girl's eyes were shining and she breathed quickly. "Of course I don't care a button for Hortie. Still, it would be rather good fun to see him. He always dropped in every day when I was at home. It seems ages since I've laid eyes on him. You know how it is--you get used to a person who is always under foot. You have to think about him if only to avoid stepping on him. And after all, Hortie isn't so bad. Thinking him over from a distance, he really is rather nice. Come and sample the candy. It's wonderful. He must have blown himself and sent to Chicago for it, poor dear! I suppose Eben Snow read the address, because he called out 'Guess you've got a beau out West, Miss Sylvia.' Everybody heard him and I thought I should go through the floor. He looked the letter all over, too. I'll let you see the letter, all except the part which is too frightfully silly. You wouldn't care about that. I don't myself." Sylvia shrugged her shoulders. Alas, this was no moment to talk with her, and artfully draw from her the happenings of the previous day. Inwardly distraught but outwardly calm, Marcia took the letter and tried valiantly to focus her attention upon it. To her surprise, it was a manly, intelligent letter, filled with town gossip, to be sure, yet written in delightfully interesting fashion. "Your Mr. Fuller sounds charming," she said as she gave it back. "Oh, Hortie is all right--in some ways." Patronizingly slipping the letter into her pocket, Sylvia shifted the subject. Nevertheless, a betraying flush colored her cheeks. "Now we must start dinner, mustn't we? See, it's noon already. I had no idea it was so late." She tossed her hat into a chair. "Don't you want to ask Mr. Heath which way he prefers his eggs--poached or boiled? I suppose with a temperature, he isn't going to be allowed anything but simple food. And Marcia, while you're there, do put a pair of fresh pillow-slips on his pillows. The ones he has are frightfully tumbled. I meant to do it this morning." As the door closed behind the elder woman, artful young Sylvia smiled. "There! That will keep her busy for a few moments at least. I know those pillow-cases. They fit like a snake's skin and are terribly hard to get off and on." She crept into the hall and listened. Yes, Marcia and Stanley Heath were talking. She could hear her aunt's gentle insistence and the man's protests. That was all she wished to know. The pillow-cases were in process of being taken off. Up the stairs flew Sylvia, to return a second later, the jewel-case swathed in its loose wrappings. "If I can only scramble it in there before she comes," whispered she. "I shall draw the first long breath I've taken since last night. I wouldn't own those things if they were given me. They would worry me into my grave." An anxious interval elapsed before the brick was pried out and the case slipped beneath it. Nevertheless the feat was accomplished and triumphant, relieved, happy Sylvia set about preparing dinner. She even ventured to hum softly that when Marcia returned she might find her entirely serene. "Mr. Heath, alas, will never know how becoming his jewelry was to me," she mused. "Had a Hollywood producer seen me, he would have snapped me up for a movie star within ten minutes. I certainly looked the part." What a long while Marcia was staying upstairs! Why, one could change a dozen pillow-slips in this time. "I guess they are tighter than I remembered them. I needn't have rushed as I did," pouted Sylvia. "What can she be doing?" When at last Marcia returned, something evidently was wrong. "What's the matter?" demanded Sylvia. "Is Mr. Heath worse?" "Worse? No indeed. What made you think so?" "You look fussed." "Do I? You'd be fussed had you wrestled with those pillow-slips as I have," was the reply. "Either the pillows have swelled or the cases have shrunk frightfully. Well, they are on now, anyway." "Come and get dinner then. I'm starved. My walk has made me hungry as a bear. You must go out this afternoon, Marcia. It is a glorious day and you need to be pepped up. I know what staying in the house means. Didn't I sit in this kitchen all yesterday afternoon until I got so dopey I could scarcely keep my eyes open? Not that I wasn't glad to," she added hastily. "I never mind staying in when there is a reason for doing it, and of course I want to do my bit toward taking care of Mr. Heath. Still, indoors isn't the same as outdoors. We all need exercise. I've had my quota for the day. You must have yours." To her surprise, Marcia demurred. "Thank you, dear, but I think I won't go out today." "Why not?" "I don't feel like it. I'd rather sit here and read." "Nonsense, Marcia! You're getting middle-aged and lazy. You'll lose your nice slim, hipless figure if you don't watch out." "I guess I shan't lose it today. Soon Mr. Heath will be gone and we can both go." "But I can play nurse for the afternoon." "I'm too tired to go out." "The air would rest you." "Not today, dear," Marcia said with finality. "I have some mending to do and lots of other little things that I have been saving up for a long time. Since I prefer to stay, why don't you tramp up the shore and see _My Unknown Lady_? She is beautiful and you haven't seen her yet." "I'd love to--if I cannot coax you to go out." "You can't. I'm adamant on not stirring out of this room." "Well, if your mind is made up to that extent, I suppose there is no use in my trying to change it. I would like to see the boat." "I'm sure you would. Stay as long as you like. There will be nothing to do here. Somebody ought to enjoy the sunshine and blue sky. Mr. Heath will probably sleep and in the meantime I shall get my sewing done." As Marcia spoke the words, her mind was busy. So Sylvia had not stirred from the kitchen on the previous afternoon! The theft of the jewels must, then, have taken place during the night. Nevertheless, she was puzzled, for she had no memory of finding anything awry when she came down at sunrise to lay the fire. Moreover, she now recalled she had been in the kitchen several times during the night, heating soup and getting water for Stanley Heath. There had been nothing wrong then, at least she had noticed nothing. When had the gems been taken, and who had taken them? No wonder she craved solitude to ponder the conundrum! This, however, was not the paramount reason she desired to be alone. Despite the enigma of the jewels; despite the mystery surrounding Stanley Heath, deep in her heart something that would not be stilled was singing--singing! Chapter X In the meantime, the throng of neighbors Sylvia had precipitately left in the village post office had received their mail and reached that anticipated interval for gossip which never failed to be stimulating. Clustered about the counter loitered the standbys. Zenas Henry was speaking: "A mighty fine little girl--that Sylvia," commented he. "A high stepper! We'd oughter tie her down to Wilton so'st she won't go back West. She's too pretty to be spared from the Cape." "I figger you'd have trouble keepin' her here," rejoined Silas Nickerson, the postmaster, sauntering out from his wicker cage. "She's got a beau in her home town. Had a letter an' a box of candy from him today. Same writin' an' same postmark on both of 'em, I noticed. She blushed red as a peony when I passed 'em out to her." "Didn't by any chance see the name, did you, Silas?" Eleazer Crocker inquired. "Wal, come to think of it, it did catch my eye. You know how such things will. Fuller, he's called. Horatio Fuller." "Horatio Fuller, eh?" Eleazer repeated. "Kinder high soundin'. Wonder who he is? From Alton City, you say." Silas nodded. "That was the address." "Never heard of the place," Captain Benjamin Todd put in. "That don't in no way prevent its existin', Ben," answered Zenas Henry with his customary drawl. "If we had a map handy we might look it up," suggested Captain Phineas Taylor. "I'd like to see just where it's located." "I tried doin' that," the postmaster admitted. "I got out my map, but the place warn't on it." "No wonder I never heard of it!" blustered Benjamin Todd. "That don't prove nothin', Benjamin," his friend Phineas Taylor expostulated. "Silas's map was drawed before the flood. Even Wilton ain't on it." "It ain't?" A simultaneous gasp rose from the assembly. "Then all I can say is it's a darn poor map," Enoch Morton sniffed. "A map that ain't got Wilton on it might as well be burned. 'Tain't worth botherin' with." "It's all the map I've got," Silas apologized. "You'd oughter ask the government for another. Why don't you write to Washington, explainin' that neither Wilton nor Alton City are on this one an' ask 'em for a better one?" "'Fore you start complainin', you might make sure Belleport's down," suggested Lemuel Gill, a resident of the adjoining village. "Last I knew, that warn't on this map, neither." "'Twarn't?" "Who makes these maps, I wonder?" bristled Zenas Henry. "Some numskull who ain't traveled none, I'll bet a hat. Why don't he go round an' see what places there is 'fore he starts map-makin'? Why, any one of us knows more 'bout the job already than he does. We know there's Belleport, an' Wilton, an' Alton City." "Bet you couldn't tell what state Alton City is in, though, Zenas Henry," Silas challenged. "Alton City? Let me think! Alton City!" Thoughtfully he stroked his chin. "'Tain't my business to know where 'tis," he presently sputtered. "If everybody knew where all the blasted places in the country were, what use would they have for maps? 'Twould put the map-makin' folks clean out of business." "If map-makers don't know where Wilton an' Belleport are they'd better be out of business, in my opinion," countered Benjamin Todd. "Say, Ephraim," he exclaimed, inspired by a bright idea, "you're the mail carrier. You'd oughter be primed on the location of places. Where's Alton City?" "Alton City? Hanged if I know. To hear you talk, anybody'd think 'twas my job to tote round the country deliverin' letters in person at the doors of every house in the United States." "But you must have some notion 'bout geography. Ain't you got no pocket atlas nor nothin'?" "I may have a small map somewheres; I carry most everything," Ephraim grinned. With deliberation, he began to disgorge upon the counter the contents of his many pockets. There was a tangle of pink string; two stumpy pencils without points; a fragment of fish-line; a soiled scrap of court-plaster; a box of matches; a plug of tobacco; a red bandanna handkerchief; three cough-drops, moist and sticky; several screws; a worn tube of paste; a jack-knife. "My soul, Eph!" ejaculated Zenas Henry. "You're a reg'lar travelin' junk shop, ain't you?" "I have to have things by me." "Was you Robinson Crusoe, you'd never have call for any such mess of truck as this. Where's the map?" "Must be in my breast pocket," replied the mail-carrier, thrusting his hand inside his pea-coat. "My eye! If I ain't forgot that telegram!" he abruptly exclaimed. "The station-master at Sawyer Falls gave it to me when he handed out the mail. It clean went out of my mind." "A telegram!" came in chorus from his audience. "Who for?" "It's for that chap Heath who's stayin' over at The Widder's." "Hadn't you been wool-gatherin' you might 'a' given it to Sylvia to take back with her. She was here only a little while ago," Silas Nickerson said. "I know it." "S'pose I was to take it over," Elisha Winslow suggested eagerly. "I'm willin' to." "Fur's that goes, I can carry it," Captain Phineas Taylor piped. "Give it to me, Eph, an' I'll see it's landed there within half an hour," proposed Benjamin Todd, elbowing his way forward. "Now there's no use in all you fellers volunteerin'," Eleazer Crocker asserted. "I'm goin' straight over to Marcia's, as it happens, soon's I've et my dinner, an' I'll take the telegram." With an air of authority, he held out his hand. The crowd fell back. Yet notwithstanding their acquiescence, Zenas Henry, not to be awed into subjection, had the temerity to add: "Remember, though, Eleazer, you ain't to go off the mainland without leavin' the key to the engine-house where we can get it. We've no hankerin' to be burnt alive while you're philanderin' at The Widder's." "Hang it on the peg inside Benjamin Todd's fish shanty as you go by," called another voice. "I'll do that," Eleazer agreed as he pocketed the telegram. * * * * * Early afternoon found Marcia alone in the Homestead sitting-room. A driftwood fire flickered upon the hearth, for although spring was on the way, the large, high-studded rooms were not yet entirely free of winter's chill and dampness. Sylvia had gone up the beach. Stanley Heath was asleep; and at last the delicious interval of solitude which the woman coveted was here. The basket at her elbow overflowed with mending, but she had not yet taken up her needle. Instead she sat motionless before the blaze, dreamily watching the vivid blues and greens as they flared up into the glow of the flame there to blend with its splendor, and afterwards melt into embers of scarlet and orange. She could not work. Try as she would, her mind wandered off into by-ways too fascinating to be resisted--by-ways which no matter how remote their windings, invariably led her back to Stanley Heath. In retrospect she lived over again every incident, every word, every look that had passed between them until she came to the barrier of the unknown which her fancy bridged with intricate rainbow-hued imaginings. While the fire crackled and flashes of sapphire and emerald shot up and died away, she twisted possible explanations this way and that and would contentedly have continued the pastime had not Eleazer Crocker knocked at the door. Eleazer could not have chosen a more inopportune moment to drag her back to earth. With a frown and a deep sigh, Marcia went reluctantly to let him in. "Wal, now ain't it nice to find you by yourself!" was his greeting. "The kitchen looks cozy as can be. Spring may be comin' but for all that cool weather still hangs on. Where was you settin'?" "I was in the front room, but perhaps we better drop down here so I can listen in case Mr. Heath should call." "Anywhere you say. Wherever you are suits me." "I'll just run in and put the screen round the fire and get my mending," Marcia replied a trifle uneasily. "Let me go." "No, indeed. You wait here. I'll be right back." Left to himself, Eleazer smiled a smile of satisfaction. The kitchen was warm, Marcia was alone and apparently not busy. Could circumstances be more propitious? Fortune certainly was with him. Today, this very afternoon, he would take his future in his hands and put to her the question he had so often determined to put. Times without number he had mentally rehearsed what he meant to say. In fact he habitually fell into this intriguing dialogue whenever he had nothing else to occupy him. It commenced with a few preliminary observations concerning the weather, the springtime, the birds--the birds who would soon be mating. That was the keynote--mating. The rest followed very naturally. It was, Eleazer felt, a neat, in fact quite a poetic proposal. He cleared his throat in preparation. When Marcia came back, he was primed and ready to begin his declaration. "Weather's been fine, ain't it?" he started out. Marcia took up her sewing. "Do you think so?" questioned she, raising her brows. "Seems to me we've had lots of rain and fog." "Wal, yes, now you mention it I do recall a few thick days. Still, spring is comin'." "I'd like to shingle the south ell this spring," announced Marcia, giving a disconcertingly practical twist to the conversation. "How many shingles do you suppose it would take?" Eleazer frowned. The dialogue was not proceeding along the lines he had mapped out. Determined to fetter it and bring it back into the prescribed channels, he answered: "I'd have to reckon that out. It's a good notion, though, to make the ell tight. That's what the birds are doin'." Astonished, Marcia glanced up from her work. "I mean," floundered on Eleazer, "they're gettin' their nests built an' kinder pickin' out their mates. Pickin' the right mate's quite a job for some folks." He saw Marcia turn scarlet. Mercy! What a slip! She thought he was twitting her about Jason. "What I set out to say was that when you get the wrong mate you know it," he countered hastily. No sooner, however, were the words out of his mouth than he saw they were no better. Perhaps it would be well to abandon the mating question and start on a new tack. He had tried the spring. Suppose he took summer as his theme? "Summer's a nice season, ain't it?" ventured he. "Yes, although I never enjoy it as much as the other months. I don't like the heat and I detest the summer boarders." Eleazer swallowed hard. He would better have clung to the spring. He saw that now. He would retrace his steps. "Spring is nice," he agreed. "With the birds a-buildin' their nests, an'--" At last he was back on familiar ground. "I did not realize you were so much interested in birds, Eleazer," Marcia exclaimed. "I have a fine bird book I must lend you. It's in the other room. I'll fetch it." Springing up, she disappeared. "Drat it!" murmured Eleazer. "Could anything be more exasperatin'? An' me neither knowin' nor carin' a hang whether a bird's a robin or a sparrow. Just when I was gettin' the way paved so nice, too." He wandered to the window. "Oh, heavens, who's this comin'? If it ain't 'Lish Winslow! Now what in thunder does he want, buttin' in? He's walkin' like as if the evil one was at his heels." Eleazer threw open the door. Before he could speak, however, Elisha puffing and out of breath bawled: "Where in the name of goodness did you put the engine-house key, Eleazer? Whipple's hen house is afire an' we've hunted high an' low for it." Eleazer purpled. "My soul an' body," he gasped. "I clean forgot to leave it. Must be here in my pocket." Wildly he began to search. "You're a fine head of the fire department, you are!" roared Elisha. "If you'd put your mind on town business 'stead of on Marcia Howe, we'd all be better off. Traipsing over here to see her in the middle of the day, palmin' off that telegram as an excuse--" If Eleazer had been purple before, he was livid now. "Well, you better go straight back to the village fast as you can leg it an' carry the key with you," went on the accuser. "Don't wait for nothin'. I'll explain matters to Marcia." "But I've got to see her. I've got to speak to her private," protested the wretched official. "Private? Ain't you been talkin' to her private an' hour or more? What else have you got to say to her?" "I want to give her somethin'." "Give it to me. I'll hand it to her." Elisha's extended palm was not to be ignored. "This--this--telegram," quavered Eleazer. "I ain't had a chance to--" "Do you mean to say you ain't given her that telegram yet?" "I was intendin' to. I was just about to when--" "Wal, of all the--" words failed Elisha. "Here, give it to me," he commanded. "I can be depended on to deliver messages if you can't. I'll see she has it. In the meantime, the best thing you can do is to hoof it to town quick's ever you can. If the whole place ain't burned to the ground an' if they don't tar an' feather you when you put in your appearance, you'll be lucky." "Ain't you comin'?" "I? No. Fire's ain't in my line. Long's Marcia's here by herself an' ain't busy, I'm goin' to pay her a call," Elisha grinned. "I've got to deliver the telegram." "Still, you don't need to stay," pleaded Eleazer, facing his triumphant rival. "Mebbe I do," was Elisha's hectoring retort. "Mebbe this is the very time for me to linger behind. The coast's clear. Why shouldn't I stay?" "You might be needed at the fire." "I shan't be," was the calm reply. "Not unless there's somethin' criminal about it." "It might be arson." "I'll take a chance on it startin' from Dan Whipple's cigarette. In fact he owned as much. Dan's terrible careless with his cigarettes. Now, hop along, Eleazer, else the whole conflagration will be out 'fore you get there." The unlucky fire-chief had no choice. "Drat it!" raged he, as he strode off across the sand. "Drat it! Ain't that just my luck!" Chapter XI Either the book for which Marcia searched was not to be found or she was in no haste to return to her awaiting suitor. Whatever the explanation, her absence lengthened from a few moments into a quarter of an hour. In the meantime Elisha, like his predecessor, was formulating his mode of attack. Eleazer, apparently, had not been successful. Might not this be his own golden opportunity? Before another snatched the prize from him; before Heath with his yacht and his monogrammed silken garments recovered his strength, he would put his fate to the test. Women were unaccountable creatures. You never could predict what they might do. Smoothing a man's pillow and feeding broth to him sometimes brought about surprising results. Furthermore, thus far no one had been able to find out how well Marcia really knew this Stanley Heath. Perhaps a romance of long standing, of which the village was ignorant, existed between them. Who could tell? In any case, it behooved an aspirant for the hand of this matchless creature to put in his claim without delay. Elisha wandered about the empty kitchen, mentally summing up the situation. He had a small deposit in the bank which, added to Marcia's larger fortune, would provide sumptuously for his old age. In addition, if she became his wife she would, of course, do the cooking and housework and he could dismiss May Ellen Howard, his housekeeper, thereby saving her salary. As to a house, he could not quite decide whether it would be wiser to take up residence in the Homestead or continue to live in his own smaller abode in Wilton. The Homestead undoubtedly was finer and more pretentious, but it was large and probably expensive to heat. Furthermore, its location was breezy and draughts always aggravated his rheumatism. If it could be sold, it should net a neat sum. Well, he need not decide these questions now. There would be time enough to smooth out all such trivial details after the wedding. He strolled up to the stove and, standing on the hearth with his back to the fire, rocked back and forth on his heels reflectively. As he did so, a brick beneath his feet rocked with him. Elisha looked down. He saw it was quite loose. "That thing's goin' to trip up somebody some fine day," commented he. "It oughter be cemented." He stooped to investigate. It was then he noticed for the first time an edge of linen projecting above the masonry. "Marcia must 'a' stuffed a rag in there to keep the thing from wobblin'," he mused. "Ain't that like a woman? She ain't helped matters none, neither. It wobbles just the same. I can fix it better'n that." Producing his knife, Elisha pried the brick from its place. As he lifted it out, a handkerchief came with it disgorging at his feet a flat, blue leather case. If the sheriff's eyes bulged when he caught sight of it, they all but popped from his head when, egged on by curiosity, he pressed the catch on the box. Quick as a flash the whole situation clarified in his mind. These were the widely heralded Long Island jewels; and the thief who had stolen them was here beneath this roof! It was plain as a pikestaff. Hidden by fog he had escaped in his boat and inadvertently run aground at the mouth of Wilton Harbor. Of course Marcia did not know. Even though a friendship existed between herself and Heath, she was unquestionably ignorant of the nefarious means by which he earned his living. Far from cherishing anger or resentment toward the person who exposed his villainy and prevented her from sacrificing herself to such an unprincipled adventurer, would she not regard her rescuer with deepest gratitude? Elisha's head whirled. Nevertheless, confused though he was, it was clear to him he must not make a misstep and neglect to perform his official duty with dignity. Heath was ill. There would be no danger of his leaving the Homestead at present, especially as he had no suspicion the jewels had been discovered. The best plan was for him to return to the mainland; get his badge and handcuffs; find out what formalities such a momentous event as an arrest demanded; and return later and round up the criminal. He did not dally. Carefully putting the gems back where he had found them, he placed the telegram upon the table and went out, softly closing the door behind him. It flashed into his mind that as the tide was coming in it might be well to borrow Marcia's boat and row back to shore. This would serve two purposes. He would reach home sooner; and Heath, cut off by the sweep of the channel, would in the meantime be unable to escape. Elisha rubbed his hands. He was pretty farsighted--pretty cute. In fact, his management of this affair was going to put a big feather in his cap. He could see now his name emblazoned on the front pages of the papers: _Elisha Winslow, Wilton sheriff, makes daring arrest! Cape official rounds up gem thief!_ All over the country people would read that it was he who had tracked down this notorious criminal. And the police--those brass-buttoned city men who rated themselves so high and looked down on village constables and sheriffs as if they were the dirt beneath their feet--they would be given a lesson they would remember! They would be pretty sore about it, too, when they found the glory of making this capture going to a small-town deputy. Never had Elisha rowed as he rowed that day! The dory fairly leaped through the water. Reaching shore, he sprang from it and dragged it up on the sand. Then, trembling with excitement, he set out for home. Everything must be done in ship-shape fashion. There must be no bungling--no slips that would detract from the dignity of the event. He was almost at his gate when to his consternation he saw Eleazer puffing after him. "You didn't make much of a stop at The Widder's, I see," jeered he. "No. Had other business," came crisply from Elisha. "You don't say! I can't imagine your havin' business important enough to cut short a call on Marcia Howe. Mebbe she didn't urge you to loiter." "I didn't see Marcia. I come away 'fore she got back," snapped the sheriff. Unbelievingly, Eleazer scanned his countenance. "You 'pear to be kinder stirred up, 'Lish," he commented. "What's the matter?" Elisha determined upon a sudden and bold move. "Say, Eleazer," began he cautiously, "was you ever at an arrest?" "An arrest!" "Yes. Did you ever see a man arrested?" "Wal, I dunno as I ever did--not really. I've seen it done, though, in the movies." "That oughter be up-to-date an' proper. Just how was the proceedin' put through?" Thoughtfully Eleazer regarded the toes of his boots. "Wal, near's I can recollect, the policeman went up to the criminal an' grabbin' him by the arm says: 'You villain! I've got you now. Scram!' I ain't exactly positive he says Scram at that precise minute, but in all such scenes, somebody always says Scram to somebody else 'fore the mix-up is through. That, in the main, is what happens." "I s'pose the policeman wore a badge an' carried handcuffs." "Oh, law, yes. But what's the game? What do you want to know for?" Furtively Elisha glanced up and down the empty road and after peering over his shoulder, he dropped his voice to a confidential whisper and hissed: "'Cause I'm goin' to make an arrest--a big arrest! I've tracked down the thief that committed the Long Island burglary. Moreover, I know this very second where the jewels are." Eleazer's jaw dropped. "I'm goin' to 'phone the New York police I've got their man," he concluded, drawing himself to his full height and expanding his chest until the buttons on his coat threatened to burst off. "You be? My soul an' body!" "Yes, I'm goin' to call long distance straight away." Eleazer's cunning mind worked quickly. "I don't know, 'Lish, as I'd do that," he cautioned. "Why not?" "Wal, in the first place, you might be mistook in your calculations an' not only get yourself into hot water but make the town a laughin' stock. Furthermore, was you wrong, you might get sued for defamin' the accused's character." "I ain't wrong. I'm right." "Wal, even so, I'd move careful," urged his companion. "Most likely there's a reward out for this criminal. Why split it with a host of others? Why don't you an' me divide it? I'll help you land your man, since you're a bit--" Eleazer, fearing to offend, hesitated, "--a bit out of practice 'bout arrestin'." The advice was good. Elisha, shrewd in his dealings, instantly saw the advantages of the plan proposed. "Wal, mebbe 'twould be better if I didn't let too many ignorant city chaps in on a big thing like this," he conceded pompously. "You an' me know what we're about. I figger we could handle it." "Sure we could. We can put it through in first-class shape. First you must change your ole clothes for your Sunday ones. A black frock coat's what you really oughter wear. I wish we dared borrow the minister's. Still, I reckon your Sunday suit'll do. Then you must pin your sheriff's badge on your chest where it'll show good an' plain. Be sure to bring along your handcuffs, 'cause you're certain to need 'em with an experienced criminal such as this. He won't have no mind to be took up. He'll have a gun an' put up a fight." "Have a gun?" "Sure he'll have a gun! In fact he'll prob'ly have several of 'em." Elisha paled and a tremor twitched his lips. "That needn't concern you none, though. All you'll have to do will be to steal up behind him, put your pistol 'twixt his shoulder-blades an' shout: 'Stick 'em up!'" "Stick 'em up?" "Yes." "Stick what up?" "His hands, man--his hands," explained Eleazer impatiently. "I ain't got no pistol." "For the land's sake! You ain't got a pistol? You--a sheriff?" "Somehow I never got round to purchasin' a pistol," Elisha apologized. "I ain't fond of fire-arms. In fact, I don't know's I ever shot off a revolver in my life." "Wal, I have. I've shot dozens of skunks." "You might lend me yours." "I s'pose I might. It ain't, though, workin' very well right now. It's kinder rusty. Furthermore, I'm out of ammunition." "That wouldn't matter. I ain't calculatin' to fire it." "But you'll have to." Elisha's mounting disapproval changed to consternation. Turning, he faced Eleazer. "Say, Eleazer," he faltered, "s'pose we was to make a deal on this thing. S'pose, for the time bein' I was to take over your job an' you was to take over mine. S'pose you did the arrestin'? This affair's a big one an' oughter be given all the frills a city policeman would give it. That's due the town. Now you seem to know a sight more 'bout how to manage it than I do." "You put on the badge; you tell the thief to stick 'em up; you put the pistol 'twixt his shoulders, or wherever you think 'twill do the most good; an' you snap the handcuffs on him. I'll see you get full credit for it. Meanwhile, if there's a fire or an undertakin' job, I'll manage 'em somehow." Eleazer shook his head. "That wouldn't do, 'Lish, no way in the world," he objected. "We can't go swappin' offices voted us by the town. Folks wouldn't like it. Was I, a common citizen, to shoot the criminal, I'd likely be hauled up for murder. I'm willin' to stand by you to the extent of goin' along an' keepin' you company; but you must be the one that bears the brunt of the job." "I could resign my office." "When?" "Right now. In fact, I've had a notion to do so, off an' on, for some time. You see, I never did want to be sheriff. The office was foisted on me. I'm findin' it pretty wearin'." "Man alive! Bein' sheriff in Wilton can't be wearin'." "U--m. Wal, mebbe it don't 'pear to be to an onlooker. Still, it's an almighty big responsibility for all that," Elisha insisted. "Besides, 'twas kinder understood when I took the office there'd be no arrestin' nor shootin'. Jewel robberies warn't in the contract." "But man alive, you ain't been burdened with jewel robberies. 'Tain't as if they come every day in the week." "They're wearin' when they do come," Elisha persisted. "Everything's wearin' when it comes--fires an' all such things. Did they happen seven days in the week, we'd all be wore to the bone. But they don't." "N--o." "Wal, then, what you wailin' about? I should think you'd kinder welcome a break in the monotony instead of groanin' over it. 'Twill give you a chance to show folks what you can do. The feller can't do more'n shoot you an' should you be shot at the post of duty, why the town would give you a big funeral an' I myself would lay you out in just the style you'd hanker to be laid out in." "But--but--I don't hanker to be laid out," whimpered Elisha in an aggrieved tone. "I don't s'pose you do. None of us does. Still, you might display a measure of gratitude for the offer." "Oh, I appreciate your kindness," amended the wretched sheriff, fearful of losing his solitary prop. "I appreciate it very much indeed." Eleazer appeared mollified. "You ain't told me yet none of the details of this business," he suddenly remarked. "If I'm goin' to help you, I'd oughter be told everything about it. Who is the criminal? An' where is he? An' how'd you come to get track of him?" Alas, the questions were the very ones Elisha had hoped to escape answering. He had no mind to lay his cards on the table. Nevertheless, he knew of no way to evade his confederate's curiosity. Eleazer was touchy. It would not do to risk offending him a second time. Reluctantly, cautiously, Elisha poured out his story and was rewarded to see the other town official gape at him, open-mouthed. "Bless my soul," he reiterated. "Bless my soul! Who would 'a' drempt it?" he burst out when he could contain himself no longer. "Wal, I never did like that feller Heath. I suspected from the first there was somethin' wrong about him. Prob'ly he has queer eyes. You can always spot a criminal by his eye. Kinder shifty an' fishy." "I didn't notice he had fishy eyes," mildly rejoined Elisha. "You ain't seen as much of the world as I have, 'Lish," was the patronizing retort. "I don't know why," bristled the sheriff. "You ain't never been twenty miles beyond Wilton." "Possibly I ain't. Possibly I ain't," grudgingly confessed Eleazer. "Travelin' ain't all there is to life, though. I'm observin', I am. I understand human nature. This Heath feller, now. I understand him." "Then p'raps you can foretell what he's likely to do when I arrest him," put in Elisha eagerly. "I can," Eleazer nodded. "I can prophesy just about what he'll do." "What?" "It's better I shouldn't tell you. 'Twouldn't be wise. We must do our duty no matter what comes of it." Again Elisha's knees weakened beneath him. "Seems to me," went on Eleazer, "that 'stead of loiterin' here discussin' the calamities of the future you'd better be gettin' on to your house. You've got to put on your other clothes. The press, most likely, will want to photograph you. Then you must hunt up your badge, your handcuffs an' all your paraphernalia. I'd better cut across the field, meantime, an' oil up my pistol. Mebbe I can fix it so'st it'll go off. I'll try an' find you some cartridges, too. I wouldn't want to stand by an' see you struck down without your havin' some slight defense, poor as 'tis." With this dubious farewell, Eleazer bustled off across the dingle and was lost to sight. Chapter XII Left alone, Elisha gloomily pursued his way to his own cottage and entering it by the side door passed through the back hall and upstairs. From the shed he could hear May Ellen, his housekeeper, singing lustily as she mopped the floor to the refrain of _Smile, Smile, Smile_. The sentiment jarred on him. He could not smile. Going to the closet, he took out his Sunday suit, shook it, and with the air of one making ready his shroud, spread it upon the bed. It exhaled a pungent, funereal mustiness, particularly disagreeable at the moment. Next he produced a boiled shirt, a collar, and a black tie. It took him some time to assemble these infrequently used accessories, and he was dismayed to find no collar-button. Nervously he searched the drawers, tossing their contents upside down in fruitless quest for this indispensable article. A collar-button was the corner-stone of his toilet--the object on which everything else depended. Should it fail to be forthcoming, the game was up. He could not administer the law without it. Perhaps, viewing the matter from every angle, its disappearance was a fortunate, rather than an unfortunate, omen. Now that he had had time for sober reflection, the enterprise on which he had embarked appeared a foolhardy--almost mad undertaking. To grapple with an experienced criminal was suicidal. It was bad enough to do so if forced into the dilemma by chance. But to seek out such an issue deliberately! He wondered what he had been thinking of. Excitement had swept him off his feet and put to rout both his caution and his common sense. He wished with all his heart he had never mentioned the matter to Eleazer. But for that, he could pull out of it and no one would be the wiser. Suppose the criminal did escape? Were not lawbreakers doing so every day? One more at large could make little difference in the general moral tone of society. Anyway, no criminal--no matter what a rascal he might be, was worth the sacrifice of a man's life--particularly his life, argued Elisha. But, alas, there was Eleazer to whom he had precipitately confided the entire story! No, there was no possibility of his backing out of the affair now and washing his hands of it. He must go through with it. Nevertheless, he would postpone the moment for action as long as he was able. Therefore, instead of donning his official garb, he went down stairs to hunt up his badge and handcuffs. These he kept in the drawer of the tall secretary in the sitting-room and although he had not seen them for months, he felt certain they would still be there. In order to make no noise and arouse May Ellen's phenomenal curiosity, he took off his shoes. To his consternation, the drawer was empty! And not only was it empty but it had been left open as if a marauder possessed of sticky hands had hastily abandoned it. Elisha paused, confounded. Who could have taken these symbols of the law? Who would wish to take them? Certainly not May Ellen. Even if her inquiring mind had prompted her to ransack his property, she was far too honest a person to make off with it. Furthermore, what use could a peaceable woman have for a sheriff's badge and a pair of handcuffs? Unwilling to believe the articles were gone, Elisha peered feverishly into every corner the piece of furniture contained. He even hauled out the books and ran his hand along the grimy shelves behind them. But beyond a thick coating of dust, nothing rewarded his search. At length, as a last resort, he reluctantly shouted for May Ellen. She came, a drab woman--thin-haired, hollow-chested with a wiry, hipless figure and protruding teeth. "Wal, sir?" "May Ellen, who's been explorin' this secretary of mine? Some of the things that oughter be in it, ain't," blustered he. "What things?" The woman's eye was faded, but it held a quality that warned the sheriff she was not, perhaps, as spiritless as she looked. "Oh--oh, just some little things I was huntin' for," he amended, adopting a more conciliatory tone. "If I knew what they was, I could tell you better where they might be lurkin'." Alas, there was no help for it! "I'm lookin' for my handcuffs an' sheriff's badge," answered Elisha. "There ain't been a crime? You ain't goin' to arrest somebody?" "I ain't at liberty to answer that question just now," replied Elisha with importance. "Mercy on us! You don't tell me a crime's been committed in Wilton! I guess it's the first time in all the town's history. Won't folks be agog? It'll stir up the whole community." The sentiment held for Elisha a vaguely familiar ring. As he speculated why, he recalled with dismay that it was he himself who, not a week ago, had brazenly willed the very calamity that had now befallen the village. To be sure, he spoke in jest. Still it behooved a man to be careful what he wished for. Providence sometimes took folks at their word and answered prayers--even idle ones. "You mustn't peep about this outside, May Ellen," he cautioned. "Was you to, no end of harm might be done. The criminal, you see, is still at large an' we want to trap him 'fore he suspects we're after him." "I see," replied the woman with an understanding nod. "I won't breathe a breath of it to a soul. But while we're mentionin' it, I would dearly like to know who the wretch is." "That's a secret of the law. I ain't free to publish it. You shall be told it, though, soon's the arrest is made. Now 'bout the badge an' handcuffs. You see how important 'tis I should have 'em. They was in the drawer an' they'd oughter be there now. Instead, the whole place is messed up an' sticky as if some person who had no business meddlin' had overhauled it." He saw May Ellen's faded eyes dilate with sudden terror. "It's that miserable Tommy Cahoon!" interrupted she. "His mother left him an' Willie here with me a week ago when she went to Sawyer Falls shoppin'. I saw 'em playin' policeman out in the back yard, an' noticed one of 'em was wearin' a badge, but I thought nothin' of it, supposin' they'd brought it with 'em. The little monkeys must 'a' sneaked indoors when I wasn't lookin' an' took that an' the handcuffs. I'm dretful sorry. Still, boys will be boys, I reckon," concluded she with a deprecatory smile and a shrug of her angular shoulders. "But--but--good Heavens--" sputtered Elisha. "I'm sure we can find the missin' articles, unless the children took 'em home--which I doubt," went on the woman serenely. "Last I saw of the imps they was out yonder under the apple trees. S'pose we have a look there." Almost beside himself with an indignation he dared not voice, Elisha followed May Ellen out of doors. Yes, trampled into the sodden ground lay the badge--its gleaming metal surface defaced by mud, and its fastening broken. There, too, lay the handcuffs, tightly snapped together and without a trace of a key to unlock them. Elisha, livid with rage, opened his lips prepared to consign to the lower regions not only Tommy and Willie Cahoon, but their mother and May Ellen as well. Before he could get the words out of his mouth, however, the suave voice of his housekeeper fell gently on his ear. "'Course you can't lay this mishap up against me, Elisha," she was saying. "I ain't no more responsible for the children's thievin' than you are for the crime of the criminal you're preparin' to arrest. The actions of others are beyond our control. All we can do is to live moral lives ourselves." "But--but--" "If you do feel I'm to blame, you'll just have to get somebody else to do your work. I wouldn't stay in no situation an' be regarded as--" "I ain't blamin' you a mite, May Ellen," Elisha hurriedly broke in, panic-stricken lest his domestic tranquillity trembling so delicately on the brink of cataclysm topple into the void and be swallowed up. "As you say, the doin's of others are somethin' we can't take on our shoulders. Thank you for helpin' me hunt up these things." As he spoke, he dubiously eyed the muddy objects in his hand. Well, at least, thought he, everything was not lost. He had gained time. To wear his badge until a new pin was soddered to it was out of the question. In addition, the handcuffs were of no use at all unless a key could be found to unlock them. He felt like a doomed man who had been granted an unlooked-for reprieve. Eleazer would be nettled. When he came steaming back with the revolver he would storm and rage like a bluefish in a net. Nevertheless, accidents were unavoidable and in the meantime, while the emblems of the law were being repaired, who could tell what might happen? Stanley Heath might escape and take the jewels with him--escape to some other part of the world and pass on to a larger and more competent party of criminal investigators the unenviable task of arresting him. Elisha was quite willing to forego the honor. No longer did he desire to see his picture emblazoned on the front pages of the papers or behold his name in print. If he could shrink back into being merely a humble, insignificant citizen of Cape Cod, it was all he asked. As he turned to reënter the house, Eleazer hailed him. "I've had the devil of a time with this revolver," announced he, puffing into the yard and jauntily flourishing the weapon. "Take care, Eleazer! Don't you go pointin' that thing at me!" Elisha yelled. "I ain't pointin' it at you. Even if I was, there'd be no chance of it hurtin' you. 'Tain't loaded." "That's the kind that always goes off," the sheriff insisted. "For Heaven's sake, wheel it the other way, can't you? Or else aim it at the ground." "Wal, since you're so 'fraid of it, I will. But for all that, there ain't an atom of danger." Then regarding his comrade's greenish countenance, he remarked abruptly, "Say, what's the matter with you, 'Lish? You ain't got on your other suit, nor your badge, nor nothin'. What in thunder have you been doin' all this time? I've been gone 'most an hour." Elisha told his story. "Wal, if that ain't the ole Harry!" fumed Eleazer. "That's goin' to ball us all up. There's no use doin' this thing if it ain't done in bang-up style. We don't want a lot of city cops jeerin' at us. We got to get that badge soddered an' them handcuffs unlocked 'fore another move can be made. I s'pose mebbe Nate Harlow over to Belleport could help us out." "An' go blabbin' all over town the predicament the Wilton sheriff was in? No--sir--ee! Not if I know it. I wouldn't turn to a Belleport man for aid was the criminal to rush from hidin' an' go free. The only thing to do is to motor to Sawyer Falls an' hunt up Pete McGrath, the blacksmith. He's a wizard with tools. I never knew no job to stump him yet. He'll know what to do. The notion of goin' over there ain't such a bad one, neither, 'cause Artie Nickerson, the station-master's, got a relation on the Chicago police force an' had oughter be able to give us a few pointers 'bout how folks is arrested." Accordingly the two men set forth on their errand. As the shabby Ford rattled over the sandy thoroughfare, Elisha's strained countenance began gradually to relax. "Nice day for a ride," remarked he glancing toward the sea. "Fine weather's certainly on the way. Air's mild as summer. 'Fore long we'll be havin' days worth noticin'." "So we will. April's 'bout over an' May'll be on us 'fore we know it. Then June'll come--the month of brides an' roses." The allusion was an unfortunate one. Elisha stiffened in his seat. Amid the whirlwind happenings of the day, he had forgotten that the man at his elbow was his rival. "You plannin' to wed in June, Eleazer?" asked he disagreeably. "That's my present intention." "It's mine, too," said Elisha. "Humph! Expectin' to live at the Homestead?" Elisha nodded. "So'm I," grinned Eleazer. "Hope you'll invite me over, now and then," Elisha drawled sarcastically. "Hope you'll do the same," came from Eleazer. For an interval they rode on in uncomfortable silence. "Them boats is pretty heavy loaded," Eleazer presently volunteered, gazing off towards the horizon where a string of dull red coal barges trailed along in the wake of a blackened tug. "Makin' for New York, I reckon," Elisha responded, thawing a little. "Wouldn't be s'prised if that Heath chap came from New York," ruminated Eleazer. "Confound Heath! I wish I'd never laid eyes on him!" exploded Elisha. "Oh, I dunno as I'd go so fur as to say that," came mildly from his companion. "Ain't Heath's comin' goin' to put Wilton on the map? Bad's he is, we've got him to thank for that. With him safely handed over to the authorities, our fortune's made. What you plannin' to do with your half of the reward?" Here was a delightful topic for conversation! Elisha's eyes brightened. "I ain't decided yet," smiled he. "Wonder how much 'twill be? Oughter come to quite a sum, considerin' the risk one takes to get it." Elisha's newly captured good-humor vanished. Lapsing into moody silence, he did not speak again until the white spire of the Sawyer Falls church appeared and, rounding the bend of the road, the car rolled into the town. Compared to the villages of Wilton or Belleport, this railroad terminus was quite a metropolis. It boasted two dry-goods stores, an A & P, a drug store, a coal office, a hardware shop, and a grain shed. Around its shabby station clustered a group of motor cars, a truck or two, and the usual knot of loitering men and boys. In spite of his depression, Elisha's spirits took another upward turn. It was interesting to see something different, something more bustling and novel than his home town. "S'pose we drop in an' get a moxie," he suggested. "'Twould go kinder good. I want to buy a roll of lozengers, too, an' some cough drops now I'm here." "Come ahead." "Don't you s'pose we'd oughter go to the smithy first an' leave the badge? It may take some little time to get it mended," Eleazer said. The badge! Would the man never cease dangling before his vision the wretched memories Elisha was struggling so valiantly to forget? With an ungracious, wordless grunt, he grudgingly turned the nose of the car toward the railroad. The small shed where the forge stood was close by the tracks and as he pulled up before it, he espied through its doorway not only Peter McGrath, the blacksmith, but also the rotund figure of Artie Nickerson, the Sawyer Falls station agent. "Art's inside! Ain't that luck?" he remarked, clambering out of the car. "The station must be closed an' he's come across the road to neighbor with Pete." They went in and after the usual greetings, Elisha stated his errand. McGrath took the handcuffs and badge to the light and examined them. "Humph! Looks as if you'd been in some sort of a scrimmage," he commented. "I ain't. Things get weared out in time. The pin on that badge warn't never right. 'Twouldn't clasp. As for the handcuffs, I reckon they're O.K. 'cept for the key bein' gone. Think you can make me one?" "Sure. That ain't no trick at all. I can hammer you out a skeleton key which, though 'twon't take no prize as to beauty, will do what you want it to. I can sodder some sort of a pin an' catch on the badge, too. S'pose you ain't in no 'special hurry for 'em. There don't 'pear to be a cryin' need round here for such articles," he concluded with a chuckle. "Nevertheless, I would like 'em," Elisha demurred. "You see I'm plannin' to take 'em back with me. I don't often get over here an' you never can tell these days when such things may be wanted." "Just as you say. I'll start on 'em straight away. I ain't busy on nothin' that can't be put aside." Elisha strolled over to a box and sat down to wait. "How are you, Art?" he inquired. "Tol'able. Havin' some rheumatism, though. Reckon we've all got to expect aches an' pains at our age." "That's right. Speakin' of handcuffs an' badges, didn't you have a nephew or a cousin 'sociated with a police force somewheres?" "Bennie, you mean? Oh, yes. He's a policeman out in Chicago." "How's he gettin' on?" "Fine! Fine! Just now he's laid up in the hospital, but he 'spects to be out again 'fore long. Got shot through the arm a couple of weeks ago." "You don't say? Huntin'?" Elisha queried pleasantly. "Huntin'? Mercy, no! He got winged by a stray bullet while chasin' up a guy that had broke into a store. The shrimp hit him. Luckily he didn't kill him. Ben thought he got off pretty easy." Elisha's smile faded. "These fellers that's at large now don't give a hang who they murder," went on the station agent affably. "They're a desperate crew. They'd as soon kill you as not. Bennie landed his man, though, 'spite of bein' hurt. 'Twill, most likely, mean a promotion for him. He'd oughter be promoted, too, for he's done great work on the force. Been shot three or four times while on duty. 'Tain't a callin' I myself would choose, but he seems to get a big kick out of it." Elisha, pale to the lips, suddenly decided he had heard enough of Bennie and shifted the subject. "S'pose you're still goin' round in the same ole treadmill over at the station, Art," he observed. "Yep. Same ole rut. Two trains a day as usual. I've had, though, a bit more telegraphin' to do of late than formerly. It's all come from your part of the world, too. Know a feller over to Wilton named Heath? He's sent off several wires." Both Elisha, perched on the box, and Eleazer astride a keg straightened up. "Heath? Yes, indeed. He's stoppin' in town for a while." "So I gathered. Lives in New York at one of them big hotels." "Who told you that?" Eleazer demanded. "He sent a wire to his wife. Leastways, I figger 'twas his wife. He signed himself _Lovingly, Stanley_, an' addressed it to Mrs. Stanley Heath." "You don't say! That's news to me," Elisha cried. He darted a glance at Eleazer. Artie, gratified at seeing he had created a sensation, beamed broadly. "'Course I ain't permitted to divulge messages that go through my hands. They're confidential. But for that I could tell you somethin' that would make your eyes pop outer their sockets." "Somethin' about Heath?" "Somethin' he said in a telegram." "You might give us a hint," Eleazer suggested. "I couldn't. Was I to, I might lose my job." "Oh, I ain't askin' you to repeat no private wire." "I couldn't even if you did." Emphatically Artie shook his head. Then Elisha had an inspiration. "S'pose I was to ask you officially?" he suggested. "S'pose it's important for me to know what was in that message? S'pose I demanded you tell me in the name of the law?" "Shucks, 'Lish. You don't get round me that way," the station agent laughed. "I ain't attemptin' to get round you. I'm askin' you seriously as sheriff of the town of Wilton." "Are you in earnest? What do you want to know for?" Artie asked. "Never you mind. That's my business. I've a right to the information." "Oh, that's different. Still, I reckon it's as well I shouldn't repeat what Heath said word for word. 'Twouldn't interest you, anyhow. The wire was just sent to a friend. The part that astonished me was its beginnin'. It ran somethin' like this: "'_Safe on Cape with my lady. Shall return with her later._'" Simultaneously Elisha shot up from the box on which he was sitting and Eleazer sprang from the keg of nails. "What interested me," droned on Artie, "was who this lady could be. Heath, apparently, is a married man. What business has he taggin' after some Wilton woman an' totin' her back to New York with him when he goes?" "He ain't got no business doin' it," Eleazer shouted. "He's a blackguard--that's what he is! But don't you worry, Artie. He ain't goin' to put no such scurvy trick over on any Wilton woman. Me an' 'Lish'll see to that. We're onto him an' his doin's, we are. How much more tinkerin' have you got to do on them trinkets, Pete? The sheriff an' me is in a hurry to get home." "You'll have to give me a good half hour more." "The deuce we will!" "Can't do it in less." "That'll mean we won't fetch up at Wilton 'til after dark," Eleazer fretted. "Sorry. I'm workin' at top speed. I can't go no faster. You've set me quite a chore." "There's no use goin' up in the air an' rilin' Pete all up, Eleazer," Elisha intervened. "We'll just have to be patient an' put off what we was plannin' to do until tomorrow. I reckon mornin'll be a better time, anyway. Certainly 'twill do just as well." "Mebbe," Eleazer grumbled. "Still, I'm disappointed. Wal, that bein' the case, s'pose you an' me step over to the drug store while we're hangin' round an' do them errands we mentioned." Elisha agreed. A faint flush had crept back into his cheeks and his eyes had regained their light of hope. Chance was on his side. He had wrested from Fate another twelve hours of life, and life was sweet. Chapter XIII Dawn was breaking over Wilton and the first shafts of sunlight transforming its pearly sands into sparkling splendor and its sea into spangled gold, when a trim motor car, bearing a New York number plate, slipped quietly into the village and drew up at the town garage. From it stepped a man, small and somewhat bent, with rosy cheeks, kindly brown eyes, a countenance schooled to stolidity rather than naturally so, and hair touched with grey. "May I leave my car here?" he inquired of the lad who was sweeping out the building. "Sure!" "Fill her up for me, please. And you might clean her a bit. Some of the roads were pretty soft." "They always are at this season of the year, sir. You are astir early. I thought I was, but I reckon you've beaten me. Come far?" "New York." "Been riding all night?" The stranger nodded. "I like traveling at night," he volunteered. "Less traffic. Can you tell me where a Mr. Heath is staying?" "Heath? The chap who ran aground on the Crocker Cove sand bar?" "He came in a boat," replied the other cautiously. "Then he's your party. He's over to The Widder's." "The Widow's?" "U--h--aah." "Where's that?" "New round here, ain't you? If you warn't, you wouldn't be askin' that question. The Widder lives out yonder at the Homestead." "How does one get there?" "Wal, there are several ways. When the tide's low, folks walk. It's even possible to motor round by the shore if you've a light car. The quickest way, though, an' the only way to reach the house when the tide's full, as 'tis now, is to row." Although the keen eyes of his listener narrowed, they expressed no surprise. Apparently he was accustomed to obstacles, and the surmounting of them was all in the day's work. "Where'll I find a boat?" "That I couldn't say. The Widder keeps hers t'other side of the channel. Mebbe, though, if you was to go down to the beach some fisherman would give you a lift across. 'Most any of 'em would admire to if you're a friend of Marcia Howe's." The stranger bowed but offered no comment. If curiosity stirred within him concerning the information the lad vouchsafed, at least he gave no sign. "Thank you," he replied briefly. "You'll see the car is put in good shape?" "The very best." "Much obliged. Will this road take me to the beach?" "Straight as an arrow. Pity you have to tote that suit-case." "I'm used to carrying luggage. It never bothers me. Good morning." Without wasting additional words or time, the stranger nodded and started off briskly in the direction indicated. Nevertheless, swiftly as he moved, his eyes missed none of the panorama stretched before him. The swelling expanse of sea, rising and falling to the rhythm of its own whispered music, caught his ear; he noted the circling gulls that dipped to the crests of the incoming waves or drifted in snowy serenity upon the tide; saw the opalescent flash of the mica-studded sands. Twice he stopped to fill his lungs with the fresh morning air, breathing deeply as if such crystalline draughts were an infrequent and appreciated luxury. When he reached the beach he halted, glancing up and down its solitary crescent and scanning eagerly the silvered house beyond the channel. Discovering no one in sight, he dragged from the shore a yellow dory, clambered into it, and catching up the oars began to row toward the dwelling silhouetted against the water and the glory of the morning sky. * * * * * In the meantime, both Marcia and Sylvia had wakened early and were astir. The kitchen fire was already snapping merrily in the stove, however, and the table was spread before the latter made her appearance. She came in, sweater and beret in hand, and carrying a thick envelope with its dashingly scrawled address still wet. "Why, Sylvia, how you startled me!" Marcia exclaimed. "I did not hear you come down stairs. Why are you up so early?" "I'm going to town to catch the morning mail." "The mail? But, my dear child, why such haste?" Sylvia colored. "I have to get off this letter." "Have to?" "Yes--to Hortie. You see, if I didn't answer promptly he might think the candy had gone astray," explained the girl stepping to the mirror and arranging a curl that rippled distractingly above her forehead. "Oh, of course, you must thank him for the candy," Marcia agreed. "Still, is it necessary to do so in such a rush--to walk to the village this morning?" "I mean to row over." "I'm afraid you can't, dear. I discovered last night the boat was gone. Eleazer Crocker must have appropriated it when he was here yesterday." "How horrid of him! What earthly right had he to take it?" "None at all." "Didn't he ask if he might?" "No. To tell the truth, I went to find a book for him and was gone so long he apparently became either peeved or impatient at my delay and like a silly small boy went home mad, taking the boat with him--at least that's my version of the story." "Perhaps he did it to punish you." "Perhaps. Anyway, whether he took it as a joke or as a reprisal, I shall give him a good lecture when I see him. It is a serious thing to be left out here with no way of getting to land. We might have needed the dory sorely. In fact, here we are with this tremendously important letter that must be posted immediately--willy-nilly." With eyes brimming with laughter, Marcia shot a mischievous glance at her companion. "It isn't just to thank Hortie for the candy that I'm writing," that young lady replied sedately. "You see, he asked if he might come to Wilton for his summer vacation. He has to know so he can make his plans." "But it is only the last of April, beloved." "Men need to know such things well in advance. They have to adjust their business," returned Sylvia magnificently. "I see," smiled Marcia. "Under such conditions, I suppose the sooner the letter is sent the better." She did not say precisely what conditions were in her mind, but evidently the comment mollified Sylvia who, after wriggling her mop of curls through the neck of her blue sweater, tossed beret and letter into a chair and began, in high spirits, to help with the breakfast. Yet notwithstanding she did so graciously, it was quite obvious her eyes were on the clock and that she was fidgeting to be off; so as soon as the coffee and toast were ready, Marcia begged her not to delay. The girl needed no urging. "The sooner I start, the sooner I shall be back, I suppose," she answered with feigned reluctance. "Men are so unreasonable. It's a perfect nuisance to trot to Wilton with this letter at this hour of the morning, especially if I must go the long way round. Still, there's no other way to get it there. Any errands?" "Not today, thanks. Just the mail." "I'll wait for it." The eagerness betrayed by the reply left not the slightest doubt that Sylvia would wait, and gladly. As the door closed behind her, Marcia smiled whimsically. She continued to smile, even to hum softly to herself while she prepared Heath's breakfast tray, and she was just about to take it upstairs when there was a gentle knock at the kitchen door. A stranger stood upon the threshold. "Is Mr. Stanley Heath staying here?" inquired he. "Yes." "I am Currier. Mr. Heath sent for me." "Of course! Come in, won't you? Mr. Heath is expecting you. I'll tell him you are here." "You needn't do that, madam. Mr. Heath is quite accustomed to my coming to his room at all hours. If you will just show me where he is--" "At the head of the stairs." "Very good. Thank you, madam. I will go up." "Tell him I am bringing his breakfast very soon." "I will, madam." "Have you breakfasted yourself?" "I? No, madam. But I beg you will not--" "I'll bring coffee and toast enough for both of you." "Please--" "It is no trouble." "I will come back and fetch Mr. Heath's breakfast, madam. Afterward, if I may have a snack here in the kitchen, I shall be grateful." "Any way that you prefer." Marcia saw rather than heard the stranger mount the staircase. His step was like velvet. So noiseless was it, it made not a sound either on the broad creaking staircase, or on the floor overhead. Nevertheless, he must have entered Stanley Heath's room, for soon she detected the invalid's voice, imperative and eager, each sentence ending with an interrogation. The lapses of silence which intervened and which at first she took to be pauses, she presently decided represented the inaudible and subdued replies of Currier. To judge from the sounds, Heath was pouring out an avalanche of questions. Sometimes he choked as if words came faster than he could utter them; and once he broke into peals of hearty laughter, followed by a paroxysm of coughing. Still, Currier failed to return for the waiting tray. "He has forgotten all about it," murmured Marcia. "The coffee will be stone cold and the toast ruined. I'll carry them up myself." She mounted the stairs softly that her coming might break in as little as possible upon the conversation of her two guests. "She was alone in the library when I went in," Heath was saying, "and turned so white I feared she might faint or scream. Luckily she did neither. Steadying herself against the table, she faced me. "'You know what I'm after,' I said--'the jewels.' "She hedged a moment. "'What makes you think I have them?' "'I know. Come, hand them over.' "At that, she began to cry. "'Quickly,' I repeated. 'Someone may come.' "With that, she fumbled under her skirt and produced the jewel-case, pouring out a torrent of explanations. "I stopped no longer than I had to, I assure you. With the jewels in my hand, I slipped through the French window and made for the landing where I had left the boat. In no time I had made my get-away. Every detail of my plan would have gone smoothly but for the fog. I lost my bearings completely. Imagine my amazement at finding myself here." Marcia waited to hear no more. Her knees trembled beneath her. So Heath really had taken the jewels--taken them from the resisting woman who owned them--taken them against her will and made off with them! He owned it! Nay, more! Far from regretting what he had done, in his tone rang a note of satisfaction in his accomplishment. She had never believed him guilty. Even with the gems spread out before her and every evidence of crime apparent, she had not believed it. Not until she heard the bitter, irrevocable confession from his own lips did she waver, and even then she battled against the truth, refusing to be convinced. There must be some explanation, she told herself. Nevertheless, the shock of what she had learned was overwhelming. It seemed as if every ounce of strength left her body. Her head swam. Her heart beat wildly. "I must not give way!" she reiterated to herself. "I must put on a brave front. He must not suspect I know." It took a few moments for her to regain her grip on herself, to quiet her throbbing heart, to drag back her ebbing strength. Then she knocked at the door. "Here is your coffee, Mr. Heath," she called. She hoped his friend would open the door and relieve her of the tray that she might immediately withdraw, but instead, Heath himself responded: "Come in, Mrs. Howe. I'm afraid we've delayed you. I had entirely forgotten about breakfast and so, I'll be bound, had Currier. You met my right-hand man down stairs, I take it. By traveling all night, he made very good time." "He must be tired after his trip!" "Oh, Currier is used to traveling at all hours. Night or day are both alike to him," laughed Heath. "You found the house without trouble?" Marcia inquired, making an effort to address the newcomer in a natural, off-hand manner. "Yes, Mrs. Howe. A young man at the garage directed me to the beach and there I discovered a yellow dory which I appropriated. I don't know as I should have taken it, but as I needed a boat, I pressed it into service." "The boat happens to be mine." "Indeed. Then perhaps you will pardon my using it." "Certainly. In fact, I am glad you did. It was left on the mainland by mistake." As Marcia turned to go, her unfailing courtesy prompted her to add: "Mr. Currier is welcome to stay if he wishes to, Mr. Heath. We can put him up perfectly well." "Oh, no. He is returning directly. It seems wiser for him to go back in the boat and leave the car for me to use here. Nevertheless, I greatly appreciate your kindness." "Mrs. Heath is anxious," put in Currier. "She begged me to come home as soon as possible that she might know how Mr. Heath was. Naturally she has been much worried." "There, there, Currier--that will do," broke in Stanley Heath, flushing. "And now, since Mrs. Howe is here and is in our secret, I may as well break to you something I have not yet had the chance to tell you. Part of the mission on which you came cannot be accomplished. You cannot take the gems back with you to New York. A calamity has befallen them." "A calamity, sir?" The small, grey-haired man looked from Stanley Heath to Marcia, and for the first time, his imperturbable countenance betrayed mingled amazement and distress. Presently, however, he had it under control and as if he had donned a mask, it became as expressionless as the sphinx while he waited for the rest of the story. "Mrs. Howe helped me conceal the jewels downstairs in a hiding-place under the kitchen floor," continued Stanley Heath. "When she went to get them, they were gone." "You don't tell me so, sir!" "It is all very mysterious," broke in Marcia, taking up the tale. "I cannot in any way account for their disappearance and am much distressed." "Naturally so, madam--naturally so," responded Currier politely. "And you have searched the place carefully? Sometimes such things get misplaced." "I've looked everywhere. They are not there." "Have you any theory as to who could have taken them?" inquired Currier with more animation than he had up to the moment displayed. "Absolutely none. I cannot even see how anybody had the chance to take them. No one knew they were there." "Would you be willing to show me where they were hidden and allow me to investigate?" "Certainly. I fear, however, search will be useless." "Still I should like to look." "I'll take you downstairs then, while we have the opportunity. You must have something to eat, too, for you must be hungry after your long ride." "I could do with a cup of coffee, if convenient." "You shall have more than that--a hearty breakfast. I am sure you need it. When do you start back?" "That is for Mr. Heath to decide." "Right off. As soon as you can get under way," Stanley Heath said decisively. "It is a fine day and you had better make the most of the tide." "That certainly would be wise, sir." "Go down now with Mrs. Howe, since she is so gracious, and have your breakfast. Examine, too, the place where we concealed the jewel-case. You may discover a clue she has missed." "That is extremely unlikely, I fear, sir," was the man's modest answer. "Still, I will look." "I am sick at heart about all this," Marcia murmured as the two descended the stairs. "You see, it was I who suggested to Mr. Heath where to hide the gems. We were hurried and had no time to think up a place. I had used this hide-out before and as it had always proved safe, I thought it would be so now. I feel responsible--as if this loss was my fault." "It is a great pity," was Currier's ambiguous reply. Preceding him into the kitchen, Marcia went straight to the hearth and pointed to the brick at her feet. "It was here we put the jewel-case," she said. "I think, with your permission, I will take up the brick," the little man at her elbow quietly announced. "Certainly," acquiesced Marcia wearily. "There might be some crevice, some opening--" "I fear there isn't. Still you can try." Taking out his knife, Currier knelt and soon had the brick out of its hole. Beneath it lay the jewel-case, wrapped as before in Stanley Heath's monogrammed handkerchief. Marcia could not believe her eyes. "But--but--it wasn't there when I looked. I could swear it wasn't." "Who could have taken it out? And if someone did why return anything so valuable?" Currier inquired. "I don't know. I do not understand it at all," the woman replied, passing a hand across her forehead in complete bewilderment. "There is something uncanny about the whole affair." "Well, at any rate, the gems are here now," said Currier in a matter-of-fact tone. "Mr. Heath will be much relieved. Their loss must, I am sure, have distressed him deeply. Shall I go up and--" "I'll go," Marcia cried. "It won't take me a minute. I'll be right back." "As you prefer, madam." Off flew Marcia. Her haste, the radiance of her face must have suggested to the stranger a thought that had not occurred to him before, for after she had gone, he stood immovable in the middle of the floor looking after her. Then a slow, shadowy smile passed across his features. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he took two or three meditative strides up and down the room. "So--ho!" he muttered. "So--ho!" It happened he had quite an opportunity for thought before his hostess returned and he employed it to the utmost. He was still absorbed in reverie when Marcia, breathless and flushed, rejoined him. She made no apology for her absence. Perhaps she did not realize the length of time she had been gone. "Well," queried she, "what conclusion have you arrived at?" "A very interesting one," Currier returned promptly. "Really? What is it?" The man appeared taken aback. "I misunderstood your question," he faltered. "I had something else in mind." "I don't see how you could have. I can think of nothing but the jewels and their recovery. I am so happy I had completely forgotten your breakfast. Forgive me. You shall have it right away." "If you would allow me, I can prepare it myself. I am accustomed to doing such things." "No, indeed. Scrambled eggs take only a few moments; and bacon. You might run up to see Mr. Heath while I am getting them ready." "I will do that. I shall be leaving at once and he may have final orders for me, or perhaps a letter for Mrs. Heath." "Mrs. Heath!" Marcia repeated, as if the name suddenly brought before her consciousness something hitherto forgotten. "Yes, yes! Of course!" Then turning her head aside, she inquired with studied carelessness: "How long, I wonder, does Mr. Heath plan to remain in Wilton?" "I could not say, madam." "I think," hurried on the woman, "that as soon as he is able to make the journey he would better go home. This climate is--is--damp and he will, perhaps, pick up faster away from the sea. If you have any influence with him, won't you please advise it?" The man's small, grey eyes narrowed. "I have no influence with Mr. Heath," replied he. "Mrs. Heath has, however. Shall I tell her?" "I wish you would." * * * * * An hour later _My Unknown Lady_ weighed anchor and on the breast of the high tide, rounded the Point and disappeared out to sea, carrying with her Currier and the jewels. Marcia watched until the last snowy ripple foaming in her wake had disappeared. When the infinitesimal, bobbing craft was no longer visible, she sank into a chair and brushed her hand across her eyes. The lips which but a short time before had curled into smiles were now set and determined. "And that's the end of that foolishness!" she muttered. "The end!" Chapter XIV In spite of Elisha's indignation toward Stanley Heath, and his resolve to go to the Homestead with the break of dawn, it was noon before he and Eleazer got under way. In the first place, the two men disagreed as to the proper method of arresting the alleged criminal. "You can't take him on no warrant, 'Lish," Eleazer objected, "'cause you ain't actually got proof he's guilty." "Proof? Ain't I got a clear case? Ain't I roundin' him up with the loot on him?" blustered Elisha. "Mebbe. Still, it's my opinion you can't do more'n take him on suspicion." "Suspicion!" Elisha repeated scornfully. "Suspicion! Would you call a fistful of diamonds suspicion? I wouldn't." "P'raps--p'raps you didn't really see the jewels," Eleazer quavered. "Sometimes folks get to imaginin' things--seein' what ain't there. Are you plumb certain you saw them things?" "Certain?" "Come, come! Don't go up in the air, 'Lish. I ain't doubtin' your word. Nothin' of the sort. I just want to make sure we don't take no missteps an' make jackasses of ourselves," Eleazer explained. "This is a big affair. We've got to move careful." "Humph! You're shifty as the sands. You didn't talk like this yesterday." "No, I didn't. But after sleepin' on the matter, I've thought more 'bout it." "Sleepin' on it! You were lucky if you could sleep on it. I didn't. I never closed my eyes from the time I went to bed 'till mornin'. Heard the clock strike every hour. You can't 'cuse me of not thinkin'. I'll bet I've done full as much thinkin' as you--mebbe more. Had you the prospect of bein' shot ahead of you, you'd think--think pretty hard, I figger," Elisha growled. "No doubt I would," conceded Eleazer mildly. "Wal, 'long's we've both chewed the matter over, I reckon there's nothin' more to be done now but go ahead." "Take Heath on suspicion, you mean? Humph! Seems an awful cheap sort of way to do it, in my opinion. Kinder meechin'. There ain't no dignity to it." "What's the use of standin' here bickerin' half the mornin', 'Lish?" Eleazer said fretfully. "Let's get started. Next we know Heath may get wind of what we're up to an' light out." "No danger of that with the Homestead dory on this side of the channel," Elisha sniffed. "For all that, no purpose is served by puttin' off the evil hour. I say we get under way," Eleazer urged. "Have you got everythin'?" "I--I--guess so," Elisha said weakly. "Pete fixed up your badge in great shape, didn't he?" was Eleazer's cheerful comment. "It's bright as a new dollar. Anybody could see it a mile away." Elisha offered no reply. "An' the handcuffs, too--they look grand. Why don't you kinder dangle 'em so'st they show? Why stuff 'em in your pocket? Was I in your place, I'd stalk into the Homestead with the handcuffs in one hand an' the pistol in the other." "You ain't in my place!" Elisha snapped. "I wish to heaven you were." "No, I ain't," his confederate returned promptly. "I'm only playin' second fiddle on this job. The whole responsibility's yours." "Don't I know it? Why rub it in?" "I ain't rubbin' it in. I'm just sorter cautionin' myself. You see when I'm mixed up in a job, I get so interested I'm liable to forget an' go ahead as if the whole enterprise was my own." "You're welcome to shoulder this one if you want to. I give you permission," Elisha said eagerly. "Oh, I wouldn't think of doin' that, 'Lish. I wouldn't want to steal the glory from you. You're the big shot on this occasion," cajoled Eleazer. "Wal, what do you say to our settin' out?" Elisha did not move. "Don't it 'most seem as if we'd oughter eat somethin' 'fore we go? I might turn faint doin' arrestin' on an empty stomach." "But man alive, you et your breakfast, didn't you?" "That was some little while ago," argued Elisha. "I'm feelin' a wee mite gone a'ready. I'd oughter have a lunch or somethin'." "Wal, since you mention it, I could do with a couple of doughnuts an' slab of cheese myself," Eleazer confessed. This information delighted Elisha. "We might put off goin' 'til after dinner," he suggested. "Then we'd be primed by a good square meal an' be braced for it." "Oh, we can't wait that long," his comrade immediately objected. "N--o, I s'pose we can't. Wal, anyhow, I'll go hunt up a snack of somethin'." "Don't bring nothin' but doughnuts an' cheese," Eleazer bellowed after him. "We can munch on them while walkin' to the beach." The stroll to Crocker's Cove was not a hilarious one, even May Ellen's twisted crullers failing to stimulate Elisha's rapidly ebbing strength. With each successive step his spirits dropped lower and lower. "You walk like as if you was chief mourner at your own funeral, 'Lish," Eleazer fretted. "We'll never make the Cove if you don't brace up." "My shoes kinder pinch me." "Walk on your toes." "It's my toes that hurt." "Walk on your heels then. Walk anywhere that's most comfortable, only come along." "I am comin'." "At a snail's pace," Eleazer retorted. "Soon folks will be comin' from the noon mail an' what we're doin' will get noised abroad." Reluctantly Elisha quickened his steps. At last they came within sight of the bay. "Where'd you leave the boat?" Eleazer questioned. "I pulled her up opposite the fish-shanty." "She ain't here." "Ain't here!" "No. Look for yourself." "My soul an' body!" "I told you you hadn't oughter dally. What's to be done now?" "I reckon we'll just have to give it all up," the sheriff responded with a sickly grin. "Call it off." "Call it off? But you can't call it off. Officers of the law have got to do their duty no matter what." "Yes--yes! Of course. I only meant we'd call it off for the present--for today, p'raps." "An' let the thief escape? No sir--ee! We've got to go through with this thing now we've started if it takes a leg. We'll walk round by the shore." "It's too far. My feet would never carry me that distance." "They've got to. Come along." "I can't walk in all these clothes. This collar is murderin' me." "Oh, shut up, 'Lish. Quit whinin'." "I ain't whinin'. Can't a man make a remark without your snappin' him up, I'd like to know? Who's sheriff anyhow--me or you?" Eleazer vouchsafed no reply. In high dudgeon the two men plodded through the sand, its grit seeping into their shoes with every step. It was not until they came within sight of the Homestead that the silence between them was broken. "Wal, here we are!" Eleazer announced more genially. "Yes--here--here we are!" his comrade panted. "S'pose we set down a minute an' ketch our breath. My soul an' body--what a tramp! There's blisters on both my heels. I can hardly rest 'em on the ground." "You do look sorter winded." "I'm worse'n winded. I'm near dead! It's this infernal collar. It's most sawed the head off me," groaned Elisha. "I don't see how it could. Every mite of starch is out of it. It's limp as a pocket handkerchief." "Mebbe. Still, for all that, it's sand-papered my skin down to the raw. Collars are the devil's own invention. Nobody oughter wear 'em. Nobody oughter be made to wear 'em," raged Elisha. "Had I known when I was made sheriff I'd got to wear a collar, I'd never have took the job--never. 'Twarn't fair play not to tell me. In fact, there was nothin' fair 'bout any of it. This arrestin', now! I warn't justly warned 'bout that." "Mebbe not," Eleazer agreed. "Still, I don't see's there's anything to be done 'bout all that now. You're sheriff an' your duty lies straight ahead of you. You've got to do it. Come along." "Wait a minute, Eleazer. Just hold on a second. Let's take 'count of stock an' decide how we're goin' to proceed. We've got to make a plan," pleaded Elisha. "But we've made a plan a'ready." "No, we ain't--not a real plan. We've got to decide 'xactly how we'll go 'bout the affair," contradicted his companion. "After you've knocked at the door an' gone in--" "I knocked an' gone in?" "Yes, yes," Elisha repeated. "After that, you'll sorter state the case to Marcia, 'xplainin' why we've come an' everythin'--" "An' what'll you be doin' meantime?" Eleazer inquired, wheeling sharply. "Me? Why, I'll be waitin' outside, kinder loiterin' 'til it's time for me to go in--don't you see?" "I don't. The time for you to go in is straight after the door is opened. It's you that'll enter first an' you who'll do the explainin'." "But--but--s'pose Heath was to put up a fight an' rush past me?" "Then I'll be outside to stop him," Eleazer cut in. "That's where I'm goin' to be--outside." "You promised you'd stand by me," reproached Elisha with an injured air. "Wal, ain't I? If I stay outside ready to trip up the criminal should he make a dash for freedom, ain't that standin' by you? What more do you want?" "I think 'twould be better was you to go ahead an' pave the way for me. That's how it's done in plays. Some kinder unimportant person goes first an' afterward the hero comes in." "So you consider yourself the hero of this show, do you?" commented Eleazer sarcastically. "Ain't I?" "Wal, you don't 'pear to me to be. Where'd you 'a' got that pistol but for me? Who egged you on an' marched you here--answer me that? You'd 'a' given up beat hadn't I took you by the scruff of the neck an' hauled you here," Eleazer burst out indignantly. "If you ain't the most ungrateful cuss alive! I've a big half mind to go back home an' leave you to do your arrestin' alone." "There, there, Eleazer, don't misunderstand me," Elisha implored. "I was only jokin'. 'Course it's you an' not me that's the hero of the day. Don't I know it? That's why I was sayin' 'twas you should go into the house first. In that way you'll get all the attention an'--" "An' all the bullets!" supplemented Eleazer grimly. "No--sir--ee! You don't pull the wool over my eyes that way, 'Lish Winslow. You're goin' to be the first one inside that door an' the last one out. See? You're to do the arrestin'. If there's undertakin' to be done afterwards, I 'tend to do it. You get that clear in your head. Otherwise, I go home." "Don't do that, Eleazer, don't do that!" Elisha begged. "Don't go home an' leave me--now--at the last minute." "You'll do the knockin' at the door? The announcin' of our errand?" "Yes. Yes. I swear I will." "Very well," Eleazer agreed magnificently. "Then I'll remain an' give you my moral support." "I hope you'll do more'n that," urged Elisha timidly. "I may. I'll see how matters work out," Eleazer returned pompously. With lagging feet, the sheriff approached the door of the big grey house. "There's the dory," observed Eleazer, pointing in the direction of the float. "Somebody's rowed it over." "I wonder who?" "P'raps an accomplice has arrived to aid Heath. What's the matter? You ain't sick, are you?" "I dunno. I feel kinder--kinder queer." "Indigestion! Them doughnuts most likely. You et 'em in a hurry," was Eleazer's tranquil reply. "Want a soda mint? I most generally carry some in my pocket." "No. I--I--I think it's my heart." "Heart--nothin'. It's just plain indigestion--that's what it is. I often have it. Don't think 'bout it an' 'twill go away. Put your mind on somethin' pleasanter--the arrestin' of Heath." "That ain't pleasanter." "Wal, think of somethin' that is then. Anything. An' while you're thinkin', be walkin' towards the house. You can think as well walkin' as settin' still, I reckon." "I don't believe I can." "Wal, try it, anyhow." Eleazer had a compelling personality. Under the force of his will, Elisha found his own weaker one yielding. He got up and, dragging one foot after the other, moved toward the house. "Now knock," commanded the dictator. Twice the sheriff reached forth his hand, wavered and withdrew it. "Why don't you knock, man?" Eleazer demanded. "I'm goin' to." Tremulously he tapped on the door. No answer came. "Knock, I tell you! That ain't knockin'. Give the door a good smart thump so'st folks'll hear it an' be made aware somethin' important's goin' on. I'll show you." Eleazer gave the door a spirited bang. "Law, Eleazer! A rap like that would wake the dead," Elisha protested. "I want it should--or at any rate wake the livin'," Eleazer frowned. "I hear somebody. Stand by me, Eleazer. Where are you goin'? Come back here, can't you? You promised--" "I didn't promise to go in first, remember. We had that out an' settled it for good an' all. You was to do that," Eleazer called from his vantage ground round the corner. "But--but--" Elisha whimpered. There was no more time for argument. The door swung open and Marcia stood upon the sill. Chapter XV "Why, Elisha!" exclaimed Marcia. "How you startled me. Come in. You're all dressed up, aren't you? Have you been to a funeral?" "No. I--we--" The sheriff cleared his throat. "Me an' Eleazer--" he began. "Eleazer? Did he come with you?" Elisha nodded. "Where is he?" "Outside." "Isn't he coming in?" "Yes--yes. He's comin' presently." "Perhaps he doesn't dare," Marcia remarked with spirit. "I don't wonder he hesitates. He ran off with my dory yesterday." "That warn't Eleazer. That was me." "You? But I didn't know you were here." "I was. I took the boat on official business," Elisha explained. Marcia's laughter, crystalline as a mountain stream, musical as its melody, rippled through the room. "Official business!" she repeated derisively. "Official business indeed! When, I'd like to know, did Wilton ever have any official business? Don't joke, Elisha. This taking my boat is no joking matter. It is a serious thing to leave me here with no way of getting ashore quickly. I didn't like it at all." "I'm sorry," apologized the sheriff uncomfortably. "You see, an emergency arose--" "No emergency is important enough for you to take my boat without asking. Please remember that." "I will," squeaked the offender, coloring under the reprimand like a chastened schoolboy. "I won't do it again, I promise you." "All right. You're forgiven this time. Now sit down and tell me the news." His dignity, his pomposity put to rout Elisha, feeling very small indeed, backed into the nearest chair. Instead of making the rafters of the Homestead quake at his presence; instead of humbling Heath, reducing Marcia to trembling admiration, here he sat cowed and apologetic. It was not at all the sort of entrance he had mapped out. It would not do. He had got a wrong start. Before Eleazer put in an appearance, he must right himself. With a preliminary ahem, he hitched forward in the rocking chair. "You won't mind if I go on with my baking, will you?" Marcia said, bustling toward the stove. "I'm makin' dried apple turnovers. They'll be done in a second and you shall have one." "I thought I smelled pie crust," Elisha murmured vaguely. "You thought right." Kneeling, Marcia opened the door of the oven. "Isn't that a sight for sore eyes?" inquired she as she drew out a pan of spicy brown pastries and placed them, hot and fragrant, on the table. "Now, I'll get you a plate, fork and some cheese." "I don't need no fork," Elisha protested. "I can take it in my fingers." "Oh, you better not do that. It's sticky and you might get a spot on your Sunday clothes." His Sunday clothes! Elisha came to himself. He rose up. "I oughtn't to be eatin', anyhow," he called after Marcia as she retreated into the pantry. "You see, I come here this mornin' to--" "I guess a nice hot apple turnover won't go amiss no matter what you came for," interrupted the woman, returning with the plate, fork and cheese. With deftness she whisked the triangle of flaky pastry onto the plate and extended it toward her guest. Its warm, insidious perfume was too much for Elisha. He sat down with the plate in his lap. He had taken only an introductory mouthful, however, when the door parted a crack and Eleazer crept cautiously through the opening. For a moment he stood transfixed, viewing the scene with amazement; then he burst out in a torrent of reproach. "'Lish Winslow, what on earth are you doin'? Here I've been waitin' outside in the wind, ketchin' my death of cold an' worryin' lest you was dead--hearin' neither word nor sign of you--an' you settin' here by the stove rockin' an' eatin' pie! What do you think you come for, anyhow?" "I know, Eleazer, I know," Elisha stammered, ducking his head before the accusing finger of his colleague. "It may, mebbe, seem queer to you. I just hadn't got round to the business in hand, that's all. I'm comin' to it." "Comin' to it? You don't look as if you was." "I am," protested the sheriff, cramming the turnover into his mouth and drawing his hand hurriedly across his lips. "I'm comin' to it in time. Be patient, Eleazer! Be patient, can't you?" "I've been patient half an hour a'ready an' you ain't, apparently, even made a beginnin'." "Yes I have, Eleazer. I've made a start. The pie's et. That's done an' over." "But you had no right to stop an' eat. You had no business eatin' pie, anyhow. Ain't you got indigestion?" "I--wal, yes. I do recall havin' a qualm or two of dyspepsia," Elisha owned in a conciliatory tone. "That's gone, though. I reckon the fresh air kinder scat it off. I'd clean forgot about it." "Mebbe you'd clean forgot what you come here to do, too," derided Eleazer. "No. Oh, no. I didn't forget that. I was just leadin' up to it in a sorter tactful way." "There ain't no way of bein' tactful when you're arrestin' folks. You've got the thing to do an' you have to go straight to it." A fork clattered from Marcia's shaking hand to the floor. "Arresting folks?" she repeated, looking from one man to the other. "Yes. Since 'Lish is so spineless at his job, I may's well tell you what we come for. He don't 'pear to have no notion of doin' so," Eleazer sneered. "Pretty kind of a sheriff he is! You'd think to see him he was at an afternoon tea." "You better look out, Eleazer Crocker, how you insult an officer of the law," Elisha bawled angrily. "Say a word more an' I'll hail you into court." "If you don't land me there faster'n you do Heath I shan't worry," jeered Eleazer. "Heath? Mr. Heath?" Marcia repeated. "Yes. We come over here this mornin' to place Mr. Stanley Heath under arrest," Eleazer announced. The woman caught at the edge of the table. "Place him under arrest? What for?" So they knew the truth! In some way they had found it out and the net of the law was closing in. Her mind worked rapidly. She must gain time--worm out of them how much they know. "Of what are you accusing Mr. Heath?" she demanded, drawing herself to her full height and unconsciously moving until her back was against the door leading to the stairway. "Of the Long Island robbery," Eleazer answered. "You mean to say you think him a thief?" "We know he's one--leastways Elisha does." "Don't go foistin' it all on me," snarled Elisha. "But you do know, don't you? You said you did." "I--yes! I'm tol'able sure. I have evidence," Elisha replied. "At least I figger I have." "Shucks, 'Lish!" Eleazer cried. "Where's your backbone? You figger you have! Don't you know it? Ain't you beheld the loot with your own eyes?" Elisha nodded. "Then why on earth don't you stand up in your boots an' say so?" The door opened and Sylvia entered then stopped, arrested on the threshold by the sound of angry voices. Inquiringly she looked from Marcia to the men, and back again. No one, however, heeded her presence. Marcia, with whitened lips but with face grave and determined, remained with her back to the stairway door, her arms stretched across its broad panels, her eyes never leaving Elisha Winslow's. There was something in her face Sylvia had never seen there--a light of battle; a fierceness as of a mother fighting for her child; a puzzling quality to which no name could be given. Suddenly, as the girl studied her, recognition of this new characteristic flashed upon her understanding. It was love! Anger, perhaps terror, had forced Marcia into betraying a secret no other power could have dragged from her. Sylvia marveled that the men whose gaze was riveted upon her did not also read her involuntary confession. Apparently they failed to do so. "Ain't I said a'ready I had proof? What more do you want me to do, Eleazer?" Elisha fumed. "What proof have you?" Marcia interposed. Elisha shifted from one foot to the other. "I've seen the jewels," he whispered. "They're here--in this room. Don't think I'm blamin' you, Marcia. 'Course Heath bein' what he is, is nothin' against you," he hurried on breathlessly. "We're all aware you wouldn't shelter no criminal did you know he was a criminal; nor would you furnish a hidin' place for his stolen goods. What I'm sayin' is news to you an' a shock. I can see that. Naturally it's hard to find our friends ain't what we thought 'em. When faced with the evidence, though, you'll see the truth same's Eleazer an' me see it. "Heath, the feller overhead, is the Long Island jewel robber. "The jewels he stole are under that brick. I've seen 'em." With finger pointing dramatically toward the hearth, Elisha strode forward. Sylvia, however, sprang before him, standing 'twixt him and his goal. "What a ridiculous story, Mr. Winslow!" she cried. "What a fantastic yarn! Do you imagine for one moment there could be anything hidden under those bricks and Marcia and I not know it? Why, one or the other of us has been in this room every instant since Mr. Heath arrived. When could he get the chance to hide anything? Didn't you and Doctor Stetson get here almost as soon as he did? Wasn't it you who undressed him? Had he brought jewels with him you would have found them inside his clothing. You took off every rag he wore. Did you discover any such thing?" "N--o." "Well, then, don't you see how absurd such an accusation is? How could the gems get here?" "I don't know how they got here. All I know is they're here," Elisha repeated stubbornly. Sylvia's brain was busy. That Elisha by some means or other had stumbled upon the truth there could be no doubt. How was she to prevent it if he insisted upon searching as it was obvious he intended to do? Not only was Marcia ignorant of Heath's true character but also that the jewels lay concealed close at hand. She would receive an overwhelming shock if the proof of his guilt came upon her in this brutal fashion. Did she not believe in him? Love him? It was for Marcia Sylvia was fighting, not Heath--Marcia whom she adored and whom she was determined to save from Elisha's power at any cost. If after the two meddling officials had gone she could be convinced that the hero on whom her heart was set was unworthy, that was matter for later discussion. All that was of import now was to defend him; shield him from discovery; give him the chance for escape. It was at the moment she reached this decision that Marcia's voice, calm and unwavering, broke upon the stillness: "If you are so certain about the jewels, Elisha, why don't you produce them?" she was saying. "No--no, Marcia!" Sylvia protested. "There is nothing here, Mr. Winslow, truly there is nothing. I swear it." "Nevertheless, let him look, Sylvia." "But Marcia--" begged the girl. "Step aside, dear, and let him look. Let them both look." "Please--please, Marcia--!" Sylvia was upon her knees now on the hearth, and the men, hesitating to remove her by force, halted awkwardly. Her face, drawn with terror, was upturned to Marcia and was pitiful in its pleading. Marcia regarded her first with startled incredulity--then with coldness. So Sylvia loved Heath, too! She was fighting for him--fighting with all her feeble strength. A pang wrenched the older woman's heart. What if Heath had played a double game--made love to Sylvia as he had made love to her? Convinced her of the depths of his affection with an ardor so compelling that against all odds she, too, believed in it? If so--if the man were a mountebank the sooner they both found it out--the sooner all the world knew it, the better. If, on the other hand, he was innocent, he should have his chance. The older woman went to the side of the pleading figure. The surprise of her discovery crisped her voice so that it was short and commanding. "Get up, Sylvia," she said. "The sheriff must search. He must do his duty. We have no right to prevent it." Obedient to the authoritative tone, the girl arose. "Now, gentlemen, you may search," Marcia said. Neither Elisha Winslow nor his companion had cause now to complain of any lack of dignity in the law's fulfillment. As if she were a magistrate seeing justice done, Marcia, magnificent in silence, towered above them while they stooped to perform their task. Her face was pale, her lips tightly set. The brick was lifted out. A smothered cry escaped Sylvia and was echoed by Elisha. "Why--land alive--there's nothin' here!" gasped the sheriff. "I told you there was nothing!" Sylvia taunted, beginning to laugh hysterically. "I told you so--but you would not believe me." Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she wiped them away, strangling a convulsive sob. "Wal, 'Lish, all I can say is you must either 'a' been wool gatherin' or dreamin' when you conceived this yarn," Eleazer jeered. "I warn't," hissed Elisha, stung to the quick. "I warn't dreamin'. Them jewels was there. I saw 'em with my own eyes. I swear to heaven I did." Then as if a new idea flashed into his mind, he confronted Sylvia. "They was there, young lady, warn't they? You know they was. That's why you was so scairt for me to look. You've seen 'em, too." "I?" "Yes, you. Deny it if you dare." "Of course I deny it." "Humph! But Marcia won't. You can lie if you want to to save the skin of that good-for-nothin' critter upstairs--though what purpose is served by your doin' it I can't see. But Marcia won't. She'll speak the truth same's she always has an' always will. No lie will cross her lips. If she says them jewels warn't here I'll believe it. Come now, Marcia. Mebbe you've evidence that'll hist me out of the idiot class. Was there ever diamonds an' things under this brick or warn't there?" "Yes." "You saw 'em?" As if the admission was dragged from her, Marcia formed, but did not utter, the word: "Yes." "They was under this brick, warn't they?" "Yes." "There! Then I ain't gone daffy! What I said was true," Elisha acclaimed, rising in triumph and snapping his finger at Eleazer. "The jewels were Mr. Heath's. He hid them for safe keeping." "He told you that?" "Yes." "A likely story! He stole 'em--that's what he did." "I don't believe it." "I do," leered the sheriff. "Prove it then," challenged Marcia, with sudden spirit, a spot of crimson burning on either cheek. "Prove it?" Elisha was taken aback. "Wal, I can't at the moment do that. I can't prove it. But even if I can't, I can make out a good enough case against him to arrest him on suspicion. That's what I mean to do--that's what I come for an' what I'll do 'fore I leave this house." Marcia swept across the floor. Once again she was poised, back against the door leading to the stairs. "Mr. Heath is sick." "I guess he ain't so sick but what I can go up an' cross-examine him." "I ask you not go to. I forbid it." "Law, Marcia!" "I forbid it," repeated the woman. "Drop this matter for a day or two, Elisha. Mr. Heath shall not leave the house. I promise you that. I will give you my bond. Leave him here in peace until he is well again. When he is able to--to--go with you I will telephone. You can trust me. When have I ever been false to my word?" "Never, Marcia! Never in all the years I've known you." "Then go and leave the affair in my hands." "I don't know--mebbe--I wonder if I'd oughter," ruminated Elisha. "'Tain't legal." "No matter." "I don't see why the mischief you're so crazy to stand 'twixt this Heath chap an' justice, Marcia. The feller's a scoundrel. That's what he is--an out an' out scoundrel. Not only is he a thief but he's a married man who's plottin' behind your back to betray you--boastin' openly in telegrams he is." "What do you mean?" "I wouldn't like to tell you. In fact I couldn't. 'Twould be repeatin' what was told me in confidence," hedged Elisha, frightened by the expression of the woman's face. "You must tell me." "Mebbe--mebbe--there warn't no truth in what I heard." "I must judge of that." "I ain't got no right to tell you. Things are often told me in confidence, 'cause of my bein' sheriff, that it ain't expected I'll pass on." "I have a right to know about the telegram you mention. Will you tell me or shall I call up the Sawyer Falls operator?" "Oh, for heaven's sake don't do that," Elisha pleaded. "Artie Nickerson would be ragin' mad did he find I'd told you. If you must know what the message was, I can repeat it near 'nough, I reckon. It ran somethin' like this: "_Safe on Cape with my lady. Shall return with her later._" "And that was all?" inquired Marcia calmly. "All! Ain't that enough?" Elisha demanded. "There was a word or two more 'bout clothes bein' sent here, but nothin' of any note. The first of the message was the important part," concluded the sheriff. As she vouchsafed no reply and the ticking of the clock beat out an embarrassing silence, he presently continued: "I don't want you should think I told you this, Marcia, with any unfriendly motive. It's only that those of us who've seen you marry one worthless villain don't want you should marry another. Jason was a low down cuss. You know that well's I." The woman raised her hand to check him. "I'm aware 'tain't pleasant to hear me say so out loud, but it's God's truth. Every man an' woman in Wilton knows 'tis. Folks is fond of you, Marcia. We don't want you made miserable a second time." "Marcia!" Sylvia burst out. "Marcia!" "Hush, dear. We'll talk of this later. Elisha, I think I must ask you and Eleazer to go now. I will let you know when Mr. Heath is able to take up this affair with you." "You ain't goin' to tell me where the jewels are?" "I don't know where they are." "Nor nothin' 'bout--'bout the telegram." "Nothing except to thank you for your kind intentions and say you quoted it quite correctly. I sent it for Mr. Heath myself." "But--but--" "_My Lady_, as you have apparently forgotten, is the name of Mr. Heath's boat--the boat you yourself helped pull off the shoals." "My land! So 'tis," faltered Elisha. "I'm almighty sorry, Marcia--I ask your pardon." "Me, too! We come with the best of intentions--" rejoined Eleazer, fumbling for his cap. "Honest we did." "It's all right. Just leave us now, please." As the two men shuffled across the kitchen, a heavy object dropped to the floor, interrupting their jumbled apologies. "Pick up them handcuffs, 'Lish, an' come along double-quick," Eleazer muttered beneath his breath. "You've made a big enough fool of yourself as 'tis. Don't put your foot in any deeper." "And here's your hat," added Sylvia, handing the bewildered sheriff his property with an impish bow. "Take it and scram--both of you." As the door banged behind the discomfited officials, clear as a bell on the quiet air came the twitting voice of Eleazer: "Wal, Scram got said, didn't it, 'Lish, even if 'twarn't you said it? That gal is an up-to-date little piece. She knows what's what. I told you no shindy of this sort was complete unless somebody said: Scram!" Chapter XVI Left alone, Marcia, weary and spent, collapsed into a chair and closed her eyes, appearing to forget the presence of the girl who, with parted lips, hovered impatiently at her elbow. Something in the woman's aloofness not only discouraged speech but rendered any interruption an intrusion. At length, however, she roused herself and sighing deeply looked about, and taking the gesture as permission to break the silence, the torrent of words Sylvia had until now held in check, broke from her: "Was it true, Marcia--what they said about Uncle Jason I mean? Was it true?" "I'm afraid so, dear." "But you never told me; and you never told Mother, either. Of course I see why. You didn't want her to know because it would have broken her heart. So you kept it all to yourself. You did not mean I should find it out, did you?" "Not if I could help it." Sylvia knelt, taking the cold hands in hers. "I hate him!" cried she fiercely. "I hate him for making you unhappy and spoiling your life!" "Hush, child. Jason has not spoiled my life," contradicted Marcia with a grave, sad smile. "But he has scarred it--dashed to pieces all the dreams you started out with--those beautiful dreams a girl has when she is young. I know what they are, for I dream them myself sometimes. They are lovely, delicate things. We never quite expect they will come true; yet for all that we believe in them. I know you had such fancies once, for you are the sort who would. And Jason came and trampled on them--" "He made me see life as it was. Perhaps it was better I should." "We all have to see life as it is sooner or later. But there are plenty of years ahead in which to do it. The man who destroys the world of illusion in which a girl lives destroys something no one can ever give back to her." "I don't know that I should say that," returned Marcia with a faint, shadowy smile as if pursuing some secret, intriguing fancy. "But it's never the same again, I mean--never the same." "No, it's never the same," agreed the woman soberly. "Was Jason as bad as they said, Marcia? Ah, you don't have to answer. There is no need for you to try to reconcile your desire to spare me--spare him--with the truth. He was as bad--probably much worse. Dear, dear Marcia." Impulsively Sylvia bent her lips to the hands so tightly clasped in hers. "I cannot imagine," she rushed on, "why, when one of my family had made you as wretched as he did, you should have wanted another in the house. Had I suffered so I should never have wished to lay eyes on any more Howes as long as I lived." "But Jason had nothing to do with you, Sylvia." "The same blood ran in our veins." "Perhaps that was the reason." "Because you could forgive, you mean?" whispered Sylvia. "You are a better Christian than I, my dear. I could never have forgiven." "I have tried not only to forgive but to forget. I have closed the door on the past and begun a new life." "And now into it has come this Stanley Heath," the girl said. For the fraction of a second Marcia did not reply; then almost inaudibly she murmured: "Yes." Sylvia slipped one of her strong young arms about the bowed shoulders. "It just seems as if I could not bear it," she burst out passionately. "Sylvia, look at me. Tell me the truth. Do you, too, love Stanley Heath?" "I?" "Was that the reason you fought against Elisha's finding the jewels? Tell me. I must know." "No," she answered without hesitation. "At first he did fascinate me. He is a fascinating person. An older man always fascinates a younger girl if he has charm. I changed my mind, though, later on. Not because on acquaintance he became less charming. It wasn't that. If anything, he became more so. I just--just--changed my mind," she repeated, avoiding Marcia's eyes. "As for the jewels, I could not bear to let that little runt of a sheriff win out. You see, I thought the gems were there under the brick and that when you urged him to search, you did not know it. "I had known all along they were in the house, for I stumbled upon them by accident one day when I was here alone; but I had no idea you had. I truly believed Mr. Heath had hidden them beneath the hearth, and I was determined Elisha should not find them." "I knew they weren't there." "You'd moved them? Put them somewhere else?" "No, indeed. Didn't you hear me tell Elisha I did not know where they were?" "Oh, of course. But you'd have said that anyway," smiled Sylvia, dimpling. "Why--why, Sylvia!" "You certainly wouldn't have let those men find them," she added comfortably. "On the contrary, if the jewels had been in the house and I had been compelled to tell what I knew, I should have told the truth." "You would? You would have showed those two miserable blood-hounds where they were?" asked the girl incredulously. "Certainly." "I wouldn't," flashed Sylvia, clinching her small hands. "I would have fought that sheriff tooth and nail. I'd have lied--stooped to any means to prevent him from unearthing the evidence he was after." "But the law, Sylvia--the law." "I wouldn't give a rap for the law. You love Stanley Heath. That's enough for me. Besides, he is being tracked down--trapped. I want him to go free." "You think he took the jewels?" asked Marcia, slowly. "Certainly I do. Don't you?" "No." "But, Marcia, can't you see how plain it all is? I know it is terrible for you, dear. It almost breaks my heart. It is an awful thing to believe of anybody--harder still of a person one loves. Nevertheless, we must face the facts. People do not carry such things about with them--especially men. He came by them in no honest way, you may be sure of that. Hasn't he told you anything?--haven't you asked him?" "I wouldn't think of asking him," Marcia replied with a lift of her chin. "And he has not volunteered any information?" "No." "Most men, if honest and caught in such an odd situation, would explain," continued Sylvia. "The very fact that Mr. Heath has not is suspicious in itself. He is guilty, Marcia--guilty." "I do not believe it," was the stubborn protest. "I realize, dear, it is hard for you to own it," soothed Sylvia. "We hate to admit the faults of those we--we--care for. Still, nothing is to be gained by remaining blind to them." "You speak as if such a sin were a mere trivial flaw of character, Sylvia. Why, it is fundamental--a crime." "How can we measure sins and decide which ones are big and which little? Perhaps Mr. Heath was horribly tempted to commit this one. We do not know. We are not his judges. The thing for us to do is to help him out of the mess he is in." "Help him?" "Get him off. Aid him to escape." "Believing him guilty--you would do that?" "Surely I would." "You mean you would help him to evade the law? The punishment such wrongdoing merits?" Emphatically, Sylvia nodded her curls. "I'd help him to get away from those who are tracking him down just as I'd help a fox to escape from the hunters." "Regardless of right or wrong?" "Yes. To give him a sporting chance, the start of those who are after him. You love Stanley Heath. Don't you want to see him go free?" "Not if he is guilty." "Marcia! You mean you would deliver him over to the law?" "I would have him deliver himself over." "As if he would! As if any criminal would." "A criminal who thought of his soul might." "But criminals don't think of their souls, dear. They think only of their bodies--that's probably why they are criminals." Marcia made no answer. "Well, anyway, nobody is going to round up Mr. Heath if I can prevent it," asserted Sylvia, throwing back her head. "If you won't help him get away, I will. He must go in the boat--now--today." "The boat has gone." "Gone!" "Mr. Currier arrived this morning after you had gone and took the boat back to New York with him." "And the jewels?" "Yes, the jewels, too." "Humph! So that's where they are!" "Yes." "Pretty cute of him to make so neat a get-away!" commented the girl with admiration. "Currier is, of course, the understudy--the accomplice." Marcia started. "What sort of man was he? A gentleman, like Mr. Heath?" The older woman colored. "Well, no. At least he--he--. Oh, he was polite and had a nice manner--a quiet voice--" "But he was different from Mr. Heath--an inferior--one who took orders," interrupted Sylvia. "I hardly know. I saw very little of him," Marcia replied guardedly. "But Mr. Heath did tell him what to do. Currier did as he said." "I suppose so--yes." "In other words, he is the hands and Mr. Heath the brains of the team." "How can you, Sylvia?" Quivering, Marcia shrunk into her chair as if she had been struck. "Because I must, Marcia--because we must both look this affair in the face. Confess the circumstances are suspicious." "They seem to be," she owned with reluctance. "They are suspicious." "That proves nothing." "Perhaps not. Nevertheless it is all we have to go by and we should be fools not to take them at their face value, shouldn't we? We should at least consider them." "Of course we should do that," evaded the woman. "Have you considered them?" Sylvia suddenly inquired. Marcia drew her hand across her forehead. "I--I--yes. I have thought them over." "And what conclusion have you arrived at?" "I don't understand them at all. Nevertheless, I do not believe Stanley Heath is guilty," was the proud retort. "That is because you don't want to--because you won't." "Leave it at that, then, and say I won't," cried Marcia, leaping defiantly to her feet. "You are making a great mistake, if you will pardon me for saying so," Sylvia responded gently. "You are deliberately closing your eyes and mind to facts that later are bound to cause you bitter unhappiness. Let alone the man's guilt. He has a wife. You seem to forget that. As Elisha Winslow remarked, you have already been miserable once. Why be so a second time? Help Stanley Heath to get out of Wilton and forget him." "I cannot do either of those things. In the first place, I have given my word to hand Mr. Heath over to the authorities. As for forgetting him--why ask the impossible?" Sylvia's patience gave way. "Go your own way then," she snapped. "Go your own way and if by and by you regret it--as you surely will--do not blame me. Don't blame me, either, if I do not agree with you. Stanley Heath shall never remain here and be betrayed to the law. I've enough mercy in me to prevent that if you haven't. Stick to your grim old puritanism if you must. I'll beat it by a more charitable creed. I'll help him get away." She started toward the stairway. "Sylvia, come back here!" Marcia cried. "I shall not come back." "I beg you! Insist!" The command fell on deaf ears. Marcia rushed after her, but it was too late. Sylvia was gone. Chapter XVII Stanley Heath was lying with expectant face turned toward the door when Sylvia entered. "What's the rumpus?" he demanded. "You heard?" "Heard? Certainly I heard," he laughed. "I could not hear what was said, of course, but anyone within five miles could have heard those men roaring at one another. What's the trouble?" "The trouble is you," answered the girl. "Me?" "Yes. Didn't you expect trouble sometime?" "We all must expect trouble sooner or later, I suppose," was the enigmatic answer. "To just what particular variety of trouble did you refer?" "I guess you know. There is no use mincing matters or beating about the bush. We haven't the time to waste. The jewels have gone and you must go, too." The man looked dumbfounded. "Don't misunderstand me, please," Sylvia rushed on. "I'm not blaming you--nor judging you. I don't know why you took them. You may have been tempted beyond your strength. You may have needed money sorely. All that is none of my business." "You believe I stole them?" "Certainly I do." "Suppose I didn't?" "I expected you'd say that," was the calm retort. "Let it go that way if you prefer. I don't mind. What I want to do is to help you to get away." "Even if I am guilty." "Yes." "But why?" "Because you're sick and in a trap; because I--I--well--" she faltered, her lips trembling, "I just can't bear to have that mean little sheriff who's after you catch you." "What's that?" Startled, Heath sat up. "That wretched Elisha Winslow who came here this morning with Eleazer Crocker tagging at his heels. In some way they had found out about the jewels and where you had hidden them. Prying into other people's affairs, no doubt, when they would have much better minded their own business. Well, it doesn't matter how they found out. They know the truth, which is the important thing. They even attempted to come upstairs and arrest you post haste; but Marcia wouldn't allow it." "Marcia!" he spoke the name softly. "She heard the story, too?" "Of course." "Poor Marcia!" "You may well say poor Marcia," Sylvia echoed sarcastically. "You have made her most unhappy. Oh, Mr. Heath, Marcia has not had the sort of life that I told you she had. She has been wretched--miserable. Go away before you heap more suffering upon her. She is fighting to make something of her wrecked life. Leave her and let her make it. I'll help you get out of town. I am sure we can devise a plan. I'll row you across to the mainland and contrive somehow to get you safely aboard a train. If we only had a car--" "My car is at the Wilton garage." "Oh, then it will be easy," exclaimed she with evident relief. "Not so easy as it seems." Heath held up his bandaged hand. "I doubt if I could drive any distance with this wrist," he said. "Of course it is on the mend. Nevertheless, it is still stiff from disuse, and pretty clumsy." "Couldn't I drive? I've driven quite a lot. What make is your car?" "A Buick." "I've never driven one of those. I wonder if I'd dare try? How I wish Hortie were here! He could drive it. He can drive anything." "Hortie?" "Horatio Fuller--a man I know out west. If only he wasn't so far away! He'd help us in a minute. He'd do it and ask no questions. That's what we need--someone who'll ask no questions." She frowned, thoughtfully. "Well, no matter. We can find somebody, I am sure--especially if we pay them liberally. I'll see what I can do." "Wait just a moment. What does Marcia say?" "Marcia? Oh, you must not listen to Marcia. She is too much upset to be depended on. She cannot see the case at all as it is. Her advice wouldn't be worth twopence. Trust me in this, please. Trust me, Mr. Heath. I promise you I'll stand by you to the last ditch. I'm not afraid." "I think I'd better talk with Marcia first." "Don't! It will only be a waste of time." "Still, I must hear what she has to say." "You won't like it. Marcia is hard, merciless. Her conscience drives her to extremes. Even should you get her opinion, you would not follow it." "What makes you so sure I wouldn't?" "Because it would be madness, sheer madness. You'll realize that, as I do," insisted Sylvia with an impatient tapping of her foot. "Marcia stubbornly shuts her mind to the truth and will only look on one side. She just repeats the same words over and over again." "What words?" "I shall not tell you." "Then she must tell me herself. Will you ask her to come up, please?" "I'd rather not." "You prefer I should call her?" Baffled, the girl turned away. "No. I'll send her to you--if I must. But remember, I warned you." "I shall not soon forget that, Sylvia, nor the splendid loyalty you've shown today. I shall always remember it. Whatever happens, please realize that I am grateful," Heath said earnestly. Then in less serious vein he added: "I never dreamed you were such a valiant little fighter." His smile, irresistible in brightness, brought a faint, involuntary reflection into Sylvia's clouded countenance. "Oh. I can fight for people--when I care," cried she, impulsively. Did the artless confession, the blush that accompanied it, soften the voice of the man so observantly watching until it unconsciously took on the fond, caressing tone one uses toward a child? "So I see. Run along now, little girl, and fetch Marcia." "I wish I could make you promise not to listen to her," coaxed Sylvia, making one last wistful appeal. "I cannot promise that." "I'm sorry. You'd be wiser if you did." * * * * * It was some moments before Marcia answered the summons and when at last she came, it was with downcast eyes and evident reluctance. "You sent for me?" she said, halting stiffly at the foot of the bed. "Won't you please sit down?" Heath replied. "I've only a few moments. I'd rather stand." "But I cannot say what I wish to say while you flutter there as if poised for flight," urged the man, annoyance discernible in his husky voice. Unwillingly Marcia slipped into the chair beside him. "That's better," he said, smiling. "Now tell me exactly what happened down stairs." "Didn't Sylvia tell you?" "She told me something. I want your version of the story." As if realizing the futility, both of protest and evasion, the woman let her gaze travel to the dim purple line where sea met sky and began to speak. She related the incident tersely; without comment; and in a dull, impersonal manner. Stanley Heath, scrutinizing her with keen, appraising eyes, could not but note the pallor of her cheeks, the unsteadiness of her lips, the nervous clasping and unclasping of her hands. The narrative concluded, her glance dropped to the floor and silence fell between them. "And that is all?" he inquired when convinced she had no intention of speaking further. "That is all." "Thank you. Now what had I better do?" She made no answer. "What do you think it best for me to do?" he repeated. "Best? How do you mean--best? Best for your body or best for your soul?" "For both." "But suppose the two should not coincide?" "Then I must reconcile them or choose between them." "You cannot reconcile them." "Choose between them then--compromise." At the word, he saw her shiver. "Well, you are not advising me," he persisted when she offered no reply. "How can I? You know your own affairs--know the truth and yourself far better than I." "Granting all that, nevertheless, I should like your opinion." "You will not thank me for it," cautioned she, bitterly. "Sylvia says I am quixotic, impractical." "Never mind Sylvia. Tell me what you think." "But how can I give a just opinion? I cannot judge," she burst out as if goaded beyond her patience. "I know none of the facts. To judge the conduct of another, one must know every influence that contributed to the final catastrophe. No person but God Himself can know that." A radiance, swift as the passage of a meteor, flashed across Stanley Heath's face and was gone. "Suppose you yourself had taken these jewels and were placed in this dilemma?" pressed he. "That would be entirely different." "Why?" "The case would not be similar at all." "Why not?" Heath reiterated. "Because--because I should be guilty." "You mean--you think--" "I do not believe you took the jewels," was the quiet answer. "Marcia! Marcia!" He reached for her hand, then sharply checked the gesture. "Why don't you believe I took them?" "It isn't like you." "The evidence is against me--every whit of it." "I cannot help that." "Have I ever told you I did not take them? Ever led you to suppose me innocent?" "You have never told me anything about it." "You have never asked." "As if I should put to you a question like that," she said proudly. "You had the right to inquire." "I did not need to." Once again the man restrained an impulse to imprison her hands in his. "Suppose I did take them?" he went on in an even, coolly modulated voice. "Suppose the case stands exactly as this shrewd-eyed Wilton sheriff suspects it does? What am I to do?" He saw the color drain from her face. "I only know what I should do, were I in your place." "Tell me that." "I should go through with it--clear my soul of guilt." "And afterward?" "Start over again." "That would be very difficult. The stigma of crime clings to a man. Its stamp remains on him, try as he will to shake it off. My life would be ruined were I to pursue such a course." "Not your real life. You would, of course, lose standing among your supposed friends; but you would not lose it among those whose regard went deeper. Even if you did--what would it matter?" "But to be alone, friendless! Who would help me piece together the mangled fragments of such a past--for I should need help; I could not do it alone? Do you imagine that in all the world there would be even one person whose loyalty and affection would survive so acid a test?" "There might be," she murmured, turning away her head. "Even so, would I have the presumption to accept such a service? The right to impose on a devotion so self-effacing?" "The person might be glad, proud to help you--consider it a privilege." "Who would, Marcia? Do you know of anyone?" She leaped to her feet. "Why do you ask me?" she demanded, the gentleness of her voice chilling to curtness. "You have such a helpmate near you--or should have." "I don't understand," pleaded the man, puzzled by her change of mood. "Perhaps we'd better not go into that now," was her response. "It is beside the point." "On the contrary it is the point." "I don't see how. What happens after the penalty has been paid has nothing to do with the paying of it." "In this case it has everything." "I cannot stay," she whispered, frightened by his insistence. "I must go." "Wait just a moment." "I cannot. I must get dinner." "Never mind the dinner!" She looked at him then for the first time. "We have to eat," she declared making an attempt at lightness. "Not always. Sometimes there are things more important." "To think of a man saying that!" The ring of the telephone chimed in with her silvery laughter. "I'll go, Sylvia," she called with a promptness that indicated the interruption was a welcome one. "Yes. Yes, this is Mrs. Howe at Wilton. "It's long distance," she called to Heath. "New York is on the line. "Yes, he is here. He can speak with you himself. "Mrs. Heath wishes to speak with you," she announced formally. "Slip on your bathrobe and come." Heath took the receiver from her hand. "Joan? This certainly is good of you, dear. Yes, I am much better, thank you. Bless your precious heart, you needn't have worried. Currier will be back late tonight or early tomorrow morning and he will tell you how well I am progressing. Yes, he has the jewels. Put them in the safe right away, won't you? "I can't say when I shall be home. Something has come up that may keep me here some time. I cannot explain just now. It is the thing you have always predicted would happen to me sometime. Well, it has happened. Do you get that? Yes, I am caught--hard and fast. It is a bit ironic to have traveled all over the world and then be taken captive in a small Cape Cod village. I guess I believe in Fate, destiny--whatever you call it. "I'm in something of a tangle just at present. I may even have to call on you to help me straighten it out. That's sweet of you, dear. You've never failed me. Oh, I can talk--it doesn't hurt me. You mustn't mind my croak. I'm not so badly off as I sound. I'll let you know the first minute I have anything definite to tell. "Goodbye, dear. Take care of yourself. It's done me a world of good to hear your voice." Heath returned the receiver to its hook and in high spirits strode back into his room. If, however, he hoped there to take up the threads of the conversation so unexpectedly broken off, he was disappointed. Marcia's chair was empty. She was nowhere to be seen. Chapter XVIII The days immediately following were like an armed truce. Marcia watched Sylvia. Sylvia watched Marcia. Heath watched them both. When, however, no further reference to the events of the past week was made, the tension slowly began to lessen, and life at the Howe Homestead took on again its customary aspect. One agency in this return to normal was the physical improvement of the invalid, who as a result of rest, fresh air, sleep, and good nursing now became well enough to come down stairs and join the family group. An additional, and by no means unimportant contributory factor, was the sudden onrush of fine weather. Never had there been such a spring--at least never within the memory of the owner of the house on the Point. The soft breath of the south wind; the radiance of the sunshine; the gentle lapping of the waves on the spangled shore; the stillness; the vivid beauty of the ocean's changing colors--all these blended to make a world that caught the breath and subordinated every mood save one of exuberant joy. Against a heaven gentian blue, snowy gulls wheeled and dipped, and far beyond them, miniature white sails cut the penciled indigo of the horizon. The old grey house with its fan-light and beaded doorway stood out in colonial simplicity from the background of sea and sky like a dim, silvered picture, every angle of it soft in relief against the splendors that flanked it. Marcia sang at her work--sang not so much because there was peace in her heart as because the gladness about her forced her to forget her pain. Sylvia sang, too, or rather whistled in a gay, boyish fashion and in company with Prince Hal raced like a young colt up the beach. Only a day or two more passed before it was possible to get Stanley Heath, warmly wrapped in rugs, out on the sheltered veranda where, like the others, he reveled in the sunshine. His cheeks bronzed, his eyes became clear and bright, laughter curled his lips. If just around the corner the spectre of trouble loitered, its presence was not, apparently, able to put to flight his lightheartedness. Over and over again he declared that every hour spent in this lotus-eaters' country was worth a miser's fortune. Sometimes when he lay motionless in the steamer-chair looking seaward beneath the rim of his soft felt hat, or following the circling gulls with preoccupied gaze Marcia, peeping at him from the window wondered of what he was thinking. That the fancies which intrigued him were pleasant and that he enjoyed his own company there could be no question. No attitude he might have assumed could have been better calculated to dispel awkwardness and force into the background the seriousness of the two women, whose interests were so inextricably entangled with his own, than the merry, bantering one he adopted when with them. Even Marcia, who at first had avoided all tête-à-têtes, quivering with dread whenever she found herself alone with him, gradually, beneath the spell of his new self, gained sufficient confidence to perch hatless on the piazza rail beside him in an unoccupied moment and spar with him, verbally. For he was a brilliant talker--one who gave unexpected, original twists to the conversation--twists that taxed one's power of repartee. The challenge to keep pace with his wit was to her like scouring a long disused rapier and seeing it clash against the deft blade of a master fencer. Here indeed was a hitherto undreamed-of Stanley Heath, a man whose dangerous charms had multiplied a hundredfold and who, if he had captivated her before now riveted her fetters with every word he spoke, every glance he gave her. She struggled to escape from the snare closing in on her, then finding combat useless, ceased to struggle and let herself drift with the tide. After all, why not enjoy the present? Soon, all too soon, its glamorous delights would be gone and she would be back once more in the uneventful past which had satisfied her and kept her happy until Heath had crossed her path, bringing with him the bewildering adventures that had destroyed her tranquillity. Would she ever find that former peace, she frequently asked herself. Would her world ever be the same after this magician who had touched it with the spell of his enchantment had left it? For he would leave it. A time must come, and soon now--when like a scene from a fairy play the mystic lights would fade, the haunting music cease, the glitter of the whole dreamlike pageant give place to reality. It was too beautiful, too ephemeral an idyll to last. In loving this stranger of whom she knew so little, she had set her heart upon a phantom that she knew must vanish. The future, grim with foreboding, was constantly drawing nearer. In her path stood a presence that said: Thou shalt not! There were, alas, but two ways of life--the way of right and the way of wrong, and between them lay no neutral zone. This she acknowledged with her mind. But her rebel heart would play her false, flouting her puritan codes and defying the creeds that conscience dictated. Meantime while she thus wrestled with the angel of her best self, Sylvia accepted the situation with characteristic lightness. Her life in this vast world and wide had been of short duration, but during its brief span she had learned a surprising amount about the earth and the human beings that peopled it. She knew more already about men than did Marcia--much more. Long ago they had ceased to be gods to her. She was accustomed to them and their ways, and was never at a loss to give back to each as good as he sent--frequently better. Her sophistication in the present instance greatly relieved the strain. She jested fearlessly with Heath, speaking a language with which he was familiar and one that amused him no end. Often he would sit watching her furtively, his glance moving from the gold of her hair to the blue of her eyes, the fine poise of her fair white throat, the slender lines of her girlish figure. Often, too, in such moments he would think of the possibilities that lay in the prodigal beauty she so heedlessly ignored. That he took pleasure in being with her and treating her with half playful, half affectionate admiration was incontestable. Yet notwithstanding this, his fondness was nicely restrained and never slipped into familiarity or license. It was the sort of delicately poised relation in which the girl was thoroughly at home and with which she knew well how to cope. Today Heath was taking his first walk and the two had strolled down to the water's edge where deep in a conversation more serious than usual they sat in the sun on the over-turned yellow dory. To Marcia, watching from the porch, they appeared to be arguing--Sylvia pleadingly, Heath with stern resistance. The woman could not but speculate as to the subject that engrossed them. Not that she was spying. She would have scorned to do that. She had merely stepped outside to shake a duster and they had caught her eye. It seemed, too, that she had chosen an inopportune moment for observation, for just at that instant Sylvia placed her hand entreatingly on Heath's arm and though he continued to talk, he caught and held it. The fact that Sylvia neither evinced surprise, nor withdrew it forced her to the disconcerting conclusion that the thing was no unusual happening. Marcia turned aside, jealousy clutching at her heart. When, later in the day, the pair reëntered the house Heath, with a few pleasant words, caught up his overcoat and went out onto the steps to smoke, while Sylvia hurried to her room. Marcia, passing through the hall, could see her golden head bent over the table as intent with pen and paper she dashed off page after page of a closely written letter. It was a pity the elder woman could not have read that letter, for had she been able to, it would not only have astonished but also have enlightened her and perhaps quieted the beating of her troubled heart. It was a letter that astonished Sylvia herself. Nevertheless, much as it surprised her, her amazement in no way approached that of young Horatio Fuller when he read it. So completely did it scatter to the winds of heaven every other thought his youthful head contained that he posted two important business documents--one without a stamp, and the other without an address. After that he decided he was unfit to cope with commercial duties and pleading a headache hastened home to his mother. Now Horatio's mother, far from possessing the appearance of a tower of strength to which one might flee in time of trouble, was a woman of colorless, vaguely defined personality indicative of little guile and still less determination. She listened well and gave the impression she could listen, with her hands passively folded in her lap, forever if necessary. She never interrupted; never offered comment or advice; never promised anything; and yet when she said, as she invariably did, "I'll talk with your father, dear," there was always infinite comfort in the observation. That was what she said today to Horatio Junior. Accordingly that evening after Horatio Senior had dined, and dined well; after he had smoked a good cigar and with no small measure of pride in his own skill put into place all the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle that had defied his prowess the night before--his wife artfully slipping them beneath his nose where he could not fail to find them--then and not until then did Mrs. Horatio take out the pink afghan she had been making and while she knit two and purled two, she gently imparted to Alton City's leading citizen the intelligence that his son, Horatio Junior, wished to go East; that he was in love; that, in short, he wished to marry. Up into the air like a whizzing rocket soared Horatio Senior! He raged; he tramped the floor; he heaped on the head of the absent Horatio Junior every epithet of reproach his wrath could devise, the phrases driveling idiot and audacious puppy appearing to afford him the greatest measure of relief. Continuing his harangue, he threatened to disinherit his son; he smoked four cigarettes in succession; he tipped over the Boston fern. The rest of the things Horatio Senior said and what he did would not only be too gross to write down in the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, but also would be improper to record here. In the meantime, Mrs. Horatio knitted on. At last when breathless and panting Horatio Senior, like an alarm clock ran down and sank exhausted into his chair, Mrs. Horatio began the second row of knit two, purl two and ventured the irrefutable observation that after all Horatio Junior was their only child. As this could not be denied, it passed without challenge and gaining confidence to venture farther, she presently added, quite casually that a wife was a steadying influence in a young man's career. Horatio Senior vouchsafed no reply. Perhaps he had no breath left to demur. At any rate his wife, considering silence a favorable symptom, followed up her previous comments with the declaration that Sylvia Hayden was a nice little thing. This drew fire. Horatio Senior sputtered something about "nothing but a penniless school-teacher--a nobody." Very deliberately then Mrs. Horatio began the fourth row of her knitting and as her needles clicked off the stitches, she murmured pleasantly that if she remembered rightly this had been the very objection Horatio Senior's father had made to their own marriage. At this Horatio Senior flushed scarlet and said promptly that fathers did not know anything about choosing wives for their sons; that his marriage had been ideal; that his Jennie had been the one wife in the world for him; that time had proved it--even to his parents; that she was the only person on earth who really understood him--which latter statement unquestionably demonstrated that all that proceeded out of the mouth of Horatio Senior was not vanity and vexation of spirit. After this nothing was simpler than to complete the pink stripe and discuss just when Horatio Junior had better start East. * * * * * Had Sylvia dreamed when she licked the envelope's flap with her small red tongue and smoothed it down with her pretty white finger she was thus loosing Alton City's thunderbolts, she might, perhaps, have hesitated to send the letter she had penned and perhaps would not have started off so jauntily late that afternoon to post it. As it was, she was ignorant of the future consequences of her act and went skipping across the wee azure pools the tide had left behind as gaily as if she were not making history. And not only did she go swinging off in this carefree fashion, but toward six o'clock she telephoned she was at the Doanes and Henry and his mother--the little old lady she had met on the train the day she arrived--wanted her to stay to supper. He would bring her home early in the evening. There would be a moon--Marcia need not worry. Marcia had not thought of worrying until that minute, but now, in spite of knowing Sylvia was safe and in good hands she began, paradoxically enough, to worry madly. Her heart would palpitate, her hand tremble while she spread the cloth and prepared the supper; and when she could not put off the dreaded and yet anticipated moment any longer, timidly as a girl she summoned Stanley Heath to the small, round table. "Sylvia isn't coming," she explained, all blushes. "She telephoned she was going to stay over in town." They seated themselves. It was the first time they had ever been alone at a meal and the novelty of finding themselves opposite one another awed them into silence. "Would you--do you care for cheese soufflé?" stammered Marcia. "Thank you." "Perhaps you don't like cheese." "I do--very much." "I hope it is done." "It is perfect." "It's hard to get it out of the oven at the right moment. Sometimes it falls." "This one hasn't," beamed Stanley. "I don't know. Perhaps I might have left it in a second or two longer." "It's wonderful!" "I'm glad you like it. Rolls?" "Rather! My, but you are a marvelous cook." "Oh, not really. You're hungry--that's all. Things taste good when you are." "It isn't that. Everything you put your hand to is well done." "Nonsense!" "It isn't nonsense and you know it. You're a marvelous person, Marcia." "There is nothing marvelous about me." "There is--your eyes, for one thing. Don't drop them, dear. I want to look at them." "You are talking foolishness." "Every man talks foolishness once in his life, I suppose. Perhaps I am talking it tonight because our time together is so short. I am leaving here tomorrow morning." "Stanley!" Across the table he caught her hand. "I am well now and have no further excuse for imposing on your hospitality." "As if it were imposing!" "It is. I have accepted every manner of kindness from you--" "Don't call it that," she interrupted. "What else can I call it? I was a stranger and you took me in. It was sweet of you--especially when you knew nothing about me. Now the time has come for me to go. Tomorrow morning I am giving myself up to the Wilton sheriff." "Oh, no--no!" "But you said you wanted me to. It is the only square thing to do, isn't it?" She made no answer. He rose and came to her side, slipping an arm about her. "Marcia. Dearest! I am doing what you wish, am I not?" "I cannot bear it." The words were sharp with pain. "You wanted me to go through with it." She covered her face and he felt a shudder pass over her. "Yes. But that was then," she whispered. At the words, he drew her to her feet and into his arms. "Marcia, beloved! Oh, my dear one, do I need to tell you I love you--love you with all my heart--my soul--all that is in me? You know it--know that every moment we have been together has been heaven. Tell me you love me, dear--for you do love me. Don't deny it--not tonight--our last night together. Say that you love me." "You--know," she faltered, her arms creeping about his neck. He kissed her then--her hair, her eyes, her neck, her lips--long, burning kisses that left her quivering beneath the rush of them. Their passion brought her to herself and she drew away. "What is it, dear?" he asked. "We can't. We must not. I had forgotten." "Forgotten?" "Something stands between us--we have no right. Forgive me." "But my dear--" "We have no right," she repeated. "You are thinking of the past," he challenged. "Marcia, the past is dead. It is the present only in which we live--the present--just us two--who love." "We must not love." "But we do, sweetheart," was his triumphant cry. "We do!" "We must forget." "Can you forget?" he reproached. "I--I--can try." "Ah, your tongue is too honest, Marcia. You cannot forget. Neither can I. Our pledge is given. We belong to one another. I shall not surrender what is mine--never." "Tomorrow--" "Let us not talk of tomorrow." "We must. We shall be parted then." "Only for a little while. I shall come back to you. Our love will hold. Absence, distance, nothing can part us--not really." "No." "Then tell me you love me so I may leave knowing the truth from your own sweet lips." "I love you, Stanley--God help me!" "Ah, now I can go! It will not be for long." "It must be for forever, dear heart. You must not come back. Tonight must be--the end." "Marcia!" "Tonight must be the end," she repeated, turning away. "You mean you cannot face tomorrow--the disgrace--" "I mean tonight must be the end," she reiterated. Through narrowed lids, he looked at her, scanning her averted face. Then she heard him laugh bitterly, discordantly. "So we have come to the Great Divide, have we?" he said. "I have, apparently, expected too much of you. I might have known it would be so. All women are alike. They desert a man when he needs them most. Their affection has no toughness of fibre. It snaps under the first severe strain. The prospect of sharing my shame is more than you can bear." Again he laughed. "Well, tonight shall be the end--tonight--now. Don't think I blame you. It is not your fault. I merely rated you too high, Marcia--believed you a bigger woman than you are, that's all. I have asked more than you were capable of giving. The mistake was mine--not yours." He left her then. Stunned by the torrent of his reproach, she stood motionless, watching while, without a backward glance, he passed into the hall and up the stairs. His receding footsteps grew fainter. Even after he was out of sight, she remained immovable, her frightened eyes riveted on the doorway through which he had disappeared. Prince Hal raised his head and sensing all was not well came uneasily to her side and, thrusting his nose into her inert hand, whined. At his touch, something within her gave way. She swayed, caught at a chair and shrank into it, her body shaking and her breath coming in gasping, hysterical sobs. The clock ticked on, the surf broke in muffled undertone, the light faded; the candles burned lower, flickered and overflowed the old pewter candle sticks; and still she sat there, her tearless, dilated eyes fixed straight before her and the setter crouching unnoticed at her feet. Chapter XIX Sylvia, bubbling over with sociability after her evening at the Doanes', was surprised, on reaching the Homestead, to find a lamp set in the window and the living-room empty. Ten o'clock was not late and yet both occupants of the house had gone upstairs. This was unusual. She wondered at it. Certainly Marcia could not be asleep at so early an hour; nor Heath, either. In fact, beneath the latter's door she could see a streak of light, and could hear him moving about inside. Marcia's room, on the other hand, was still. Once, as she paused listening, wondering whether she dared knock and go in for a bedtime chat, she thought she detected a stifled sound and thus encouraged whispered the woman's name. No response came, however, and deciding she must have been mistaken she tiptoed away. Having, therefore, no inkling of a change in the delightful relations that had for the past week prevailed, the atmosphere that greeted her when she came down the next morning was a shock. Stanley Heath stood at the telephone talking to Elisha Winslow and on the porch outside were grouped his suit-case, overcoat and traveling rug. He himself was civil--nay, courteous--but was plainly ill at ease and had little except the most commonplace remarks to offer in way of conversation. Marcia had not slept, as her pallor and the violet shadows beneath her eyes attested. Sylvia could see that her duties as hostess of the breakfast table taxed her self-control almost to the breaking point and that only her pride and strong will-power prevented her from going to pieces. Although the girl did not understand, she sensed Marcia's need of her and rushed valiantly into the breach--filling every awkward pause with her customary sparkling chatter. Her impulse was to cry out: "What under the sun is the matter with you two?" She might have done so had not a dynamic quality vibrant in the air warned her not to meddle. When at length the meal was cut short by the arrival of Elisha Winslow, all three of the group rose with unconcealed relief. Even Elisha's presence, hateful as it would ordinarily have been, came now as a welcome interruption. "Wal, Mr. Heath, I see you're expectin' me," grinned the sheriff, pointing toward the luggage beside the door. "I am, Mr. Winslow." "I've got my boat. Are you ready to come right along?" "Quite ready." Heath went to Sylvia and took her hand. "Thank you very much," murmured he formally, "for all you've done for me. I appreciate it more than I can say. And you, too, Mrs. Howe. Your kindness has placed me deeply in your debt." "I wish you luck, Mr. Heath," called Sylvia. "Thanks." "And I, too," Marcia rejoined in a voice scarcely audible. To this the man offered no reply. Perhaps he did not hear the words. They followed him to the door. It was then that Marcia sprang forward and caught Elisha's arm. "Where are you taking him, Elisha?" she demanded, a catch in her voice. "Where are you taking him? Remember, Mr. Heath has been ill. You must not risk his getting cold or suffering any discomfort. Promise me you will not." "You need have no worries on that score, Marcia," replied the sheriff kindly, noticing the distress in her face. "You don't, naturally, want all you've done for Mr. Heath thrown away. No more do I. I'll look out for him." "Where is he going?" "To my house for the present," Elisha answered. "You see, the town ain't ever needed to make provision for a criminal. I can't lock him up in the church 'cause he could get out had he the mind; an' out of the school-house, too. Besides, them buildin's are kinder chilly. So after weighin' the matter, I decided to take him 'long home with me. I've a comfortable spare room an' I figger to put him in it 'til I've questioned him an' verified his story. "Meantime, nobody in town will be the wiser. I ain't even tellin' May Ellen why Mr. Heath's at the house. If I choose to harbor comp'ny, that's my business. Not a soul 'cept Eleazer's in on this affair an' he's keepin' mum. When him an' me decide we've got the truth, we'll act--not before." "That relieves my mind very much. Mr. Heath is--you see he--" "He's a friend of yours--I ain't forgettin' that. I shall treat him 'cordin'ly, Marcia." "Thank you, Elisha--thank you a hundred times." There was nothing more to be said. Heath bowed once again and the two men walked down to the float where they clambered with the luggage into Elisha's dory and put out into the channel. Sylvia loitered to wave her hand and watch them row away, but Marcia, as if unable to bear the sight, waited for no further farewell. Even after the girl had followed her indoors and during the interval they washed the breakfast dishes together, Sylvia did not venture to ask any explanations. If Marcia preferred to exclude her from her confidence, she resolved not to intrude. Instead, she began to talk of her evening with the Doanes and although well aware Marcia scarcely listened, her gossip bridged the gulf of silence and gave the elder woman opportunity to recover her poise. By noon Marcia was, to outward appearances, entirely herself. She had not been able, to be sure, to banish her pallor or the traces of sleeplessness; but she had her emotions sufficiently under control to talk pleasantly, if not gaily so that only an understanding, lynx-eyed observer like Sylvia would have suspected she was still keyed to too high a pitch to put heart in what she mechanically said and did. That day and the next passed in much the same strained fashion. That the woman was grateful for her niece's forbearance was evident in a score of trivial ways. That she also sensed Sylvia's solicitude and appreciated her loyalty and impulsive outbursts of affection was also obvious. It was not until the third morning, however, that the barriers between the two collapsed. Marcia had gone into the living-room to write a letter--a duty she especially detested and one which it was her habit to shunt into the future whenever possible. Today, alas, there was no escape. A business communication had come that must be answered. She sat down before the infrequently used desk and started to take up her pen when Sylvia heard her utter a cry. "What's the matter, dear?" called the girl, hurrying into the other room. No answer came. Marcia was sitting fingering a slip of green paper she had taken from a long envelope. With wild, despairing eyes she regarded it. Then, as Sylvia came nearer, she bowed her head upon the desk and began to sob as if her heart would break. "Marcia, dear--Marcia--what is it?" cried Sylvia, rushing to her and clasping the shaking figure in her arms. "Tell me what it is, dear." "Oh, how could he!" moaned the woman. "How could he be so cruel!" "What has happened. Marcia?" "Stanley--he has left a check--money--thrown it in my face! And I did it so gladly--because I loved him. He knew that. Yet he could leave this--pay me--as if I were a common servant. I had rather he struck me--a hundred times rather." The girl took the check. It was filled out in Stanley Heath's clear, strong hand and was for the sum of a hundred dollars. "How detestable of him!" she exclaimed. "Tell me, Marcia--what happened between you and Mr. Heath? You quarreled--of course I know that. But why--why? I have not wanted to ask, but now--" "I'll tell you everything, Sylvia. I'd rather you knew. I thought at first I could keep it to myself, but I cannot. I need you to help me, dear." "If I only could!" murmured Sylvia, drawing her closer. As if quieted by the warmth of her embrace, Marcia wiped her eyes and began to speak, tremulously. She unfolded the story of her blind faith in Stanley Heath; her love for him--a love she could neither resist nor control--a love she had known from the first to be hopeless. She confessed how she had fought against his magnetic power; how she had struggled to conceal her feelings; how he himself had resisted a similar attraction in her; how at last he had discovered her secret and forced her to betray it. Slowly, reluctantly she went on to tell of the final scene between them--his insistence on coming back to her. "Of course I realized we could not go on," she explained bravely. "That we loved one another was calamity enough. All that remained was for him to go away and forget me--return to his wife, his home, and the interests and obligations of his former life. Soon, if he honestly tries, this infatuation will pass and everything will be as before. Men forget more easily than women. Absence, too, will help." "And you, Marcia?" "I am free. There is no law forbidding me to remember. I can go on caring, so long as he does not know. It will do no harm if here, far away, where he will never suspect it, I continue to love him." "Oh, my dear, my dear!" "I cannot give up my love. It is all I have now. Oh, I do not mean to mourn over it, pity myself, make life unhappy. Instead, I shall be glad, thankful. You will see. This experience will make every day of living richer. You need have no fears for me, Sylvia. You warned me, you know," concluded she with a pathetic little smile. "I was a brute! I ought to have shielded you more," the girl cried. "I could have, had I realized. Well, I can yet do something, thank heaven. Give me that check." "What do you mean to do?" "Return it, of course--return it before Stanley Heath leaves town. Isn't that what you want done? Surely you do not wish to keep it." "No! No!" "I'll take it over to Elisha Winslow's now, this minute." "I wonder--yes, probably that will be best. You won't, I suppose, be allowed to see Stanley," speculated she timidly. "I don't suppose so." "If you should--" "Well?" "Don't say anything harsh, Sylvia. Please do not blame him, or--" "I'll wring his neck!" was the emphatic retort. "Oh, please--please dear--for my sake! I can't let you go if you go in that spirit," pleaded Marcia in alarm. "There, there--you need not worry for fear I shall maltreat your Romeo, richly as he deserves it," was the response. "I could kill him--but I won't--because of you. Nevertheless, I warn you that if I get the chance I shall tell him what I think of him. No power on earth can keep me from doing that. He is terribly to blame and ought to realize it. No married man has any business playing round with another woman. He may get by with it in New York, but on Cape Cod or in Alton City," she drew herself up, "it just isn't done and the sooner Stanley Heath understands that, the better. That's that! Now I'll get my hat and go." "I am half afraid to let you, Sylvia." "You don't trust me? Don't you believe I love you?" "I am afraid you love me too much, dear." "I do love you, Marcia. I never dreamed I could care so intensely for anyone I have known for so short a time. What you did for my mother alone would make me love you. But aside from gratitude there are other reasons. I love you for your own splendid self, dear. Please do not fear to trust me. I promise you I will neither be unjust nor bitter. The fact that you care for Stanley Heath shall protect him and make me merciful." "Take the check then and go. I wish I were to see him." "Well, you're not! Rowing across that channel and hurrying to his side after the way he's treated you! Not a bit of it! I'd tie you to your own bedpost first," snapped Sylvia. "Let him do the explaining and apologizing. Let him cross the channel and grovel at your feet. That's what he ought to do!" "You won't tell him that." "I don't know what I shall tell him." "Please, Sylvia! You promised, remember." "Don't fret. Some of the mad will be taken out of me before I see Mr. Heath. The tide is running strong and it will be a pull to get the boat across to the mainland. Kiss me and wish me luck, Marcia. You do believe I will try to be wise, don't you?" "Yes, dear. Yes!" "That's right. You really can trust me, you know. I'm not so bad as I sound." Tucking the check into the wee pocket of her sweater, Sylvia caught up her pert beret and perched it upon her curls. "So long!" she called, looking back over her shoulder as she opened the door. "So long, Marcia! I'll be back as soon as ever I can." The haste with which she disappeared, suddenly precipitated her into the arms of a young man who stood upon the steps preparing to knock. "Hortie Fuller," cried Sylvia breathlessly. "Hortie! Where on earth did you come from?" Her arms closed about his neck and he had kissed her twice before she swiftly withdrew, rearranging her curls and saying coldly: "I cannot imagine what brought you here, Horatio." Chapter XX "I can't imagine," repeated Sylvia, still very rosy and flustered, but with her most magnificent air, "what brought you to Wilton--I really cannot." "Can't you?" grinned Horatio cheerfully. "No, I cannot." From his superior height of six-feet-two, he looked down at her meager five feet, amusement twinkling in his eyes. Sylvia, however, was too intent on patting her curls into place to heed his glance. "You wrote me to come, didn't you?" he presently inquired. "I wrote you to come!" "Well, at least you led me to suppose you'd like it if I were here," persisted Horatio. "Toward the bottom of page two you said: 'I am positively homesick'; and in the middle of the back of page three you wrote: 'It seems years since I've seen you.'" "What if I did?" answered the girl with a disdainful shrug. Nevertheless the dimples showed in her cheeks. "And that isn't all," Horatio went on. "At the end of page five you wrote: 'Would that you were here'!" Sylvia bit her lip. "That was only a figure of speech--what is called poetic license. Writers are always would-ing things: Would I were a bird; would I were a ring upon that hand; would I were--were--well, almost anything. But it doesn't mean at all that they would really like to be those things." "Then you didn't mean it when you said you wished I was here." Horatio was obviously disappointed. "Why, of course I am pleased to see you, Hortie. It is very nice of you to come to the Cape to meet my aunt and--" "Darn your aunt!" he scowled. "I didn't come to see her." "Hush! She's just inside." "I don't care." "But you will when you know her. She's darling." "I am not interested in aunts." "Take care! I happen to be very keen on this aunt of mine. If she didn't like you, you might get sent home. Don't be horrid, Hortie. I truly am glad you've come. You must make allowance for my being surprised. I haven't got over it yet. How in the world did you contrive to get away at this season? And what sort of a trip did you have?" "Swell! I stopped overnight in New York at the Gardeners. Mother wanted me to deliver a birthday cake to Estelle who, you may remember, is the mater's god-daughter. She's a pippin, too. I hadn't seen her since she graduated from Vassar." Sylvia listened. She did not need to be told about the Gardeners. They had visited Horatio's family more than once and rumor had it the elders of both families would be delighted were the young people to make a match of it. "I'm surprised you did not stay longer in New York," Sylvia observed, gazing reflectively at her white shoe. "New York wasn't my objective. I came on business, you see." "Oh!" This was not so flattering. "Yes," continued Horatio, "Dad gave me two months off so I could get married." This time he got the reaction for which he had been waiting. Sylvia jumped. "I was not aware you were engaged," murmured she in a formal, far-away tone. "I'm not," came frankly from Horatio Junior. "But I'm going to be. In fact I chance to have the ring with me this minute. Want to see it?" "I always enjoy looking at jewels," was her cautious retort. Horatio felt of his many pockets. "Where on earth did I put that thing?" he muttered. "Hope I haven't lost it. Oh, here it is." He took out a tiny velvet case and sprang the catch. "Oh, Hortie! Isn't it beautiful!" Sylvia cried. "It fairly takes away my breath." "Like it?" "It is perfectly lovely!" "Try it on." She shook her head. "It wouldn't fit me. My hands are too small." "It's a small ring. Here. Put it on," he urged, holding it toward her. "Well, I suppose I might try it to please you. But I know it will be too large." She slipped it on her finger. "Why, it does fit. How odd!" "Very odd indeed," he answered drily, as she reached her hand out into the sun and turned the diamonds so that they caught the light. "Looks rather well on, doesn't it?" was his comment. "It is a beautiful ring." Horatio, standing behind her, twice extended his arms as if to gather her into them and twice withdrew them, deciding the action to be premature. At length with a determined squaring of his shoulders, he locked his hands behind him and stood looking on while she continued to twist the ring this way and that. "Well," yawned he after an interval, "I suppose I may as well put it back in the box." "Don't you think it would be wiser if I took care of it for you, Hortie?" suggested she demurely. "You are dreadfully careless. Only a moment ago you had no idea where the ring was. If it is on my finger you'll know exactly." "Bully idea! So I shall! Now tell me where you're off to. You were in a frightful hurry when you burst through that door." "So I was," agreed Sylvia. "And here I am loitering and almost forgetting my errand. Come! We must hurry. I've got to go to town. Want to row me over?" "You bet your life!" "It may be quite a pull. The tide is running out and that means you will have to row against it." "Show me the boat." Still she hesitated. "I don't know how nautical you are." She thought she heard him chuckle. Leading the way to the yellow dory, she took her place opposite him and he pushed off. As they sat facing one another, her eyes roamed over his brown suit; his matching tie, handkerchief and socks; his immaculate linen; his general air of careful grooming, and she could not but admit he wore his clothes well. She was so accustomed to seeing him that she never before had stopped to analyze his appearance. Now after weeks of separation she regarded him from a fresh viewpoint and realized with something of a shock how very good-looking he was. He had the appearance of being scrubbed inside and out--of being not only clean but wholesome and upstanding; of knowing what he wanted and going after it. He was not a small town product. Three years in an eastern preparatory school, followed by four years of college life had knocked all that might have been provincial out of Horatio Junior. Nevertheless these reflections, interesting though they were, proved nothing about his knowledge of the water. Then she suddenly became aware that the boat was being guided by a master hand. "Why, Hortie Fuller, I had no idea you could row like this!" exclaimed she with admiration. Horatio deigned no response. "Wherever did you learn to pull such an oar?" "Varsity Crew." "Of course. I had forgotten," she apologized, her eyes following as with each splendid stroke the craft shot forward. Although the oarsman ignored her approbation he was not unmindful of it. "Where do we land?" he asked. "Anywhere." He bent forward and with one final magnificent sweep sent the nose of the dory out of the channel. "Come on," he called, leaping to the beach. "But--but, Hortie--I can't get ashore here. I'll wet my white shoes." "Jump." "It's too far. Pull the boat higher on the sand." "Not on your life. Jump, darling! I'll catch you." She stood up in the bow. "I can't. It's too far." "Nonsense! Where's your sporting blood? Don't be afraid. I'm right here." "Suppose you shouldn't catch me?" "But I shall." He would. She was certain of it. Still she wavered. "I don't want to jump," she pouted. "You'll have to. Come on, Beautiful. You're wasting time." "I think you are perfectly horrid," she flung out as she sprang forward. An instant later she was in his arms and tight in a grip she knew herself powerless to loosen. "Let me go, Hortie! Let me go!" she pleaded. "I shall, sweetheart. All in good time. Before I set you free, though, we must settle one trivial point. Are we engaged or are we not?" She made no answer. "If we're not," he went on, "I intend to duck you in the water. If we are, you shall tell me you love me and go free." "Don't be idiotic, Hortie. Please, please let me go. Somebody may come along and see us." "I don't mind if they do. There are other considerations more important." A swift, shy smile illuminated her face. "I--I--don't want to be ducked, Hortie," she murmured, raising her arms to his neck. "You precious thing! You shan't be. Now the rest of it. Say you love me." "I guess you know that." "But I wish to hear you say it." "I--I--think I do." "That's a half-hearted statement." "I--I--know I do, Hortie." "Ah, that is better. And I love you, Sylvia. Loving you is an old, old story with me--a sort of habit. I shall never change. You are too much a part of me, Sylvia. Now pay the boatman and you shall go. One is too cheap. Two is miserly. The fare is three. I won't take less." "I consider your methods despicable," announced the girl when at last he reluctantly put her down on her feet. "A warrior must study his adversary and plan his attack accordingly." "You blackmailed me." "I know my Sylvia," he countered. "Just the same you had no right to take advantage." "Perhaps you'd rather I trundled back to New York tomorrow and offered the ring to Estelle." "Silly! I was only fooling," she protested quickly, linking her arm in his. "This ring would never fit Estelle, dearest. Her hands are tremendous. Didn't you ever notice them? They are almost as large as a man's. I never saw such hands." "She's an awful nice girl just the same." "I don't doubt that. Come. We must quit fooling now and hurry or we shall never get home. Marcia will be frantic." "Marcia?" "My aunt. I have so much to tell you I hardly know where to begin," sighed Sylvia. "Do listen carefully, for I need your advice." "What about?" "A lot of things. It is a long story. You see Marcia has fallen in love with a robber." "A robber? Your aunt?" "Uh-huh. I know it sounds odd, but you will understand it better after you have heard the details," nodded Sylvia. "This man, a jewel thief, came to our house one day shipwrecked and hurt, so we took him in." "A thief?" Again she nodded. "Yes. We didn't know then, of course, that he was a thief. Afterward, when we did, he was sick and we hadn't the heart to turn him out. In fact we couldn't have done it anyway. He was too fascinating. He was one of the most fascinating men you ever saw." "He must have been," Horatio growled. "Oh, he was. I myself almost lost my heart to him," confessed Sylvia earnestly. "Don't jeer. I am speaking the truth. I did not quite fall in love with him, but I came near it. Marcia did." "Your aunt?" "Yes. Don't look so horrified, Hortie. I realize it seems queer, unconventional; but you'll understand better when you see Marcia. She is no ordinary person." "I shouldn't think she was." Sylvia ignored the comment. "Well, anyway, the robber hid the loot and of course Marcia and I did all we could to protect him." "Why of course?" "I just told you--because he was so fascinating--because Marcia did not or would not believe he had stolen it. I knew better. Still I helped shield him just the same. Then one day the Wilton sheriff heard over the radio there had been a jewel robbery on Long Island, and stumbling upon the hidden gems, arrested Mr. Heath." "Mr. Heath?" "The thief, Hortie! The thief! How can you be so stupid?" ejaculated Sylvia sharply, squeezing his arm. "I get you now. You must admit, though, this is some story to understand." "I know it sounds confused, but in reality it is perfectly simple if you'll just pay attention. Well," the girl hurried on, "I cannot stop to explain all the twists and turns but anyway, the sheriff brought the burglar to Wilton and Marcia is broken-hearted." "Broken-hearted! I should think she'd be thankful to be rid of him." "But you keep forgetting she's in love with him." "Well, do you wonder I do? What kind of a woman is your aunt? What sort of a gang have you got in with anyhow?" "Hush, Hortie! You mustn't talk like that," Sylvia declared. "This affair is too serious. Marcia and the--the--she and Mr. Heath love one another. It is terrible because, you see, he has a wife." "I should call that a stroke of Providence, myself." "Horatio, I think you are being very nasty. You are joking about something that is no joking matter." "I beg your pardon, dear. I wasn't really joking. Don't be angry. But this yarn is unbelievable--preposterous," explained the man, taking her hand and gently caressing it. "I realize it sounds--unusual." "Unusual is mild." "Well--perhaps a little theatrical. Yet, for all that, it isn't. Now do stop interrupting and let me finish. When Mr. Heath went away from the Homestead, he left behind him a hundred dollars in payment for what Marcia had done for him. It almost killed her." "She--she--thought she ought to have had more, you mean?" "Horatio!" "But--a hundred dollars is quite a sum in these days. She would better have grabbed it tight and been thankful. My respect for this bandit chap is rising. I should call him an honest gentleman." "It is useless to talk with you, Horatio--I can see that," Sylvia said, stiffening. "A delicate affair like this is evidently beyond your comprehension. You can't seem to understand it. All you do is to make light of every word I say." "I'm not making light. On the contrary I guess I am taking the situation far more seriously than you are. I don't like the moral tone of this place at all. It looks to me as if you had got into most undesirable surroundings. It is high time I came and took you out of them. Thieves, and jewel-robberies, and sheriffs, and bandits with wives--Heavens! Alton City is a Garden of Eden compared with this town. The sooner you are married to me, young woman, and out of here the better. As for this remarkable aunt of yours--" "Stop, Horatio! Stop right where you are," bridled Sylvia. "One more word against Marcia and back home you go so fast you won't be able to see for dust. I'm in earnest, so watch your step." "The woman has bewitched you," frowned Horatio. "She has. She bewitches everybody. She'll bewitch you." "Not on your life!" "Wait and see. Mr. Heath will bewitch you, too." "The--the--?" "Yes, the burglar, bandit, thief--whatever you choose to call him. You'll admit it when you meet him. We are going there now." "To--to--call?" "To return the check I just told you about. You're the stupidest man I was ever engaged to, Horatio. Why can't you listen?" "I am listening with all my ears." "Then the trouble is with your imagination," Sylvia said in her loftiest tone. They walked on in silence until presently the girl stopped before the gate of a small, weather-beaten cottage. "Well, here we are at Elisha's," she remarked, turning in at the gate. "What's he got to do with it?" "Mercy, Hortie. You'll wear me to a shred. Elisha is the sheriff. I'm going to coax him to let us see the prisoner." "You don't mean the chap is jailed here! My--!" he clapped his hand over his mouth. "Why, any red-blooded man could knock the whole house flat to the ground with a single blow of his fist. I'll bet I could." "There wasn't any other place to put him." "Well, if he stays incarcerated in a detention pen like this, he's a noble-minded convict--that's all I have to say." They walked up the narrow clam-shell path, bordered by iris and thrifty perennials. As they did so, the sound of a radio drifted through the open window. Sylvia peeped in. Elisha, too intent on the music to hear her step, was sitting before the loud speaker, smoking. "I've come to see Mr. Heath," she shouted above the wails of a crooning orchestra. "You can't. 'Tain't allowed." "Nonsense! Prisoners are always permitted to see visitors. Where is he?" "I ain't sure as I'd oughter let you see him," hesitated Elisha. "I'll take the responsibility." "Wal--mebbe on second thought, 'twill do no harm," he drawled. "He's round on the back porch. I'd come with you warn't I waitin' for the news flashes." "That's all right. I can find him." "Say, who you got with you?" called the sheriff over his shoulder. "A friend from my home town." "Don't know 'bout his goin'." "Oh, he won't do any harm. He's nobody--just my fiancé." "Your what?" "The man I am going to marry." "You don't tell me! So you're gettin' married, are you? Good lookin' feller! I heard at the post office you had some chap in the offin'. But to let him see Mr. Heath--I dunno as 'twould be just--" "Where I go Horatio goes," Sylvia retorted. Elisha weakened. "Wal, in that case--" he began. She waited to hear no more. "Come on, Hortie," she called. Leaving Elisha absorbed in a saxophone solo, the two rounded the corner of the cottage and found themselves in the presence of Stanley Heath. Chapter XXI He was looking very fit and comfortable, lying at full length in a Gloucester hammock with cushions beneath his head, a book in his hand, and a package of cigarettes within reach. "Sylvia!" he cried, springing up and advancing toward her with outstretched hand. "Sylvia! What a brick you are to come!" Angry as she was, when face to face with him she could not resist the contagion of his smile. "I'm glad to see you so well," she said. "This is Mr. Horatio Fuller of Alton City." Horatio looked Heath up and down and then stepped forward and gripped his hand with unmistakable cordiality. "Mighty glad to know you, sir," was his greeting. "You seem to have got yourself into a jam. If there is anything I can do--any way I can be of service--" "Horatio, you forget we are not here to make a social call," interrupted Sylvia, who had by this time regained her routed chilliness and indignation. "On the contrary, Mr. Heath, we have come on a very painful errand. We are returning this check to you." She extended it toward him, gingerly holding its corner in the tips of her fingers as if it were too foul a thing to touch. "It was outrageous of you, insulting to leave a thing of this sort for Marcia--to attempt to pay in cash--kindness such as hers." "I'm--sorry," Heath stammered. "Sorry! You couldn't have been very sorry, or you would have sensed such an act would hurt her terribly." Horatio Fuller fumbled nervously with his tie. "You deserve," swept on young Sylvia with rising spirit, "to be thrashed. Hortie and I both think so--don't we, Hortie?" Horatio Junior turned crimson. "Oh, I say, Sylvia, go easy!" he protested. "Don't drag me into this. I don't know one darn thing about it." "But I've explained everything to you." "You've tried to. Nevertheless, the whole affair is beyond me. I can't make head or tail out of it," shrugged Horatio. "Suppose I just step inside and listen to the news flashes while you and Mr. Heath transact your business. It will be less awkward all round. If you want me you can speak." Nodding courteously in Heath's direction, Horatio Junior disappeared. "Your Mr. Fuller is a man of nice feeling," Stanley Heath declared looking after him. "I congratulate you." "Thank you." "Everything is settled then?" She nodded. "I hope you will be very happy." She did not reply at once. When she did, it was to say with a humility new and appealing: "I shall be. I never appreciated Hortie until now. I was too silly." "Perhaps you were merely young." "It wasn't that. I was vain--feather-headed. I have realized it since knowing Marcia." "We all want to be different after we have seen Marcia," Stanley Heath said gently. "We don't just want to be--we set about it," was the girl's grave reply. "Sit down, Sylvia, and let us talk of Marcia," ventured Heath after a pause. "I am deeply sorry if I have wounded her--indeed I am." The girl searched his face. "I cannot understand you, Mr. Heath," she said. "What has Marcia done that you should have left her as you did? Hasn't she believed in you through thick and thin? Stood up for you against everybody--going it blind at that? Few women would have had such faith in a stranger." "I realize that. You do not need to tell me," he answered. "It is precisely because she has gone so far I believed her capable of going farther yet--the whole way." "What do you mean by the whole way?" "To the end." "Well, hasn't she?" He shook his head. "No. She has fallen short--disappointed me cruelly. When it came to the final test, her affection collapsed. Oh, she has been wonderful," he added quickly. "Do not think I fail to appreciate that. She has far out-distanced every other woman I ever have known. I simply expected too much of her, doubtless the impossible. Human nature is frail--a woman's heart the frailest thing of all. I have always said so." "You wrong Marcia," cried Sylvia hotly. "Her heart is not frail. Neither is she the weak sort of person you have pictured. In all the world you could not match her loyalty or the depth of her affection. I owe Marcia a great debt. I could tell you things she has done that would make you thoroughly ashamed of your superficial rating of her. But why go into that? If after the experience we three have lived through together you have not discovered what she is, it is futile for me to attempt to show you. "You came into our lives like a meteor--entirely detached from everything. We knew nothing about you and in the face of damaging evidence you offered neither Marcia nor me one word of explanation. Marcia asked none. Without rhyme or reason she believed in you. I had not her faith. I freely confess I thought you guilty. Oh, I liked you sufficiently well to be ready to help you save your skin. But Marcia cared enough for you to want you to save your soul. "There is a difference in that sort of caring, Mr. Heath--a big difference. When you were taken ill, we both nursed you--I willingly, she devotedly. Here lay another difference had you been able to detect it. What happened as a result of this enforced intimacy? You know--know far better than I." "I fell in love with Marcia," replied the man without an instant's hesitation. "You fell in love!" Sylvia repeated, her lip curling. "You call it love--the poor thing you offered her! Why, Marcia would have gone to the world's end with you, Stanley Heath, had she the right. She would have faced any humiliation for your sake. If prison doors closed upon you, she would have remained faithful until they swung open and afterward followed you to any corner of the earth in which you chose to begin a new life." "That's where you're wrong, Sylvia," contradicted Heath. "Marcia was not ready to do that. I tried her out and she refused. When I told her I should return to her, and asked her in so many words whether she was willing to face shame and public scorn for my sake she turned her back on me. She could not go to that length." "Are you sure she understood?" asked Sylvia, stepping nearer and looking fearlessly into his eyes. "There is a shame Marcia never in this world would face for any man; but it is not the shame you have just described. "It is the shame of wronging another woman; destroying a home. I know that sounds old-fashioned in days like these. Perhaps Marcia is old-fashioned. Perhaps I am. In the villages where we have been brought up, we do not go in for the new standards sponsored by more up-to-date communities. We believe in marriage as a sacred, enduring sacrament--not a bond to be lightly broken. When you offered Marcia less than that--" "I never offered Marcia any such shameful position, Sylvia," cried Stanley Heath. "I would not so far insult her." "But you are married." "That is a lie. Who told you so?" "The--the wire to Mrs. Stanley Heath--the telephone message. I heard you call her Joan." "But, Sylvia, Mrs. Stanley Heath is not my wife. She is my young step-mother, my father's widow. I always have called her Joan." "Oh! I beg your pardon." "I see it all now," the man exclaimed. "You have entirely misunderstood the situation. I'm a Junior. Since my father's death, however, people have got out of the way of using the term. Sometimes I myself am careless about it. So Marcia thought--" "Of course she did. We both did. So did Elisha Winslow and Eleazer Crocker. So did lots of other people in Wilton." "Heavens!" "Well, how were we to know?" Sylvia demanded. "How, indeed? If an innocent citizen cannot visit a town without being arrested as a criminal within a week of his arrival, why shouldn't he be married without his knowledge? Circumstantial evidence can, apparently, work wonders." Then suddenly he threw back his head and laughed. "Bless you, little Sylvia--bless you for setting me right. I told you you were a brick and you've proved it. Thanks to you, everything is now straightened out." "Not quite everything, I am afraid," the girl protested. "Everything that is of importance," he amended. "The rest will untangle itself in time. I am not worrying about it. Here, give me your hand. How am I to thank you for what you have done? I only hope that young Horatio Fuller of yours realizes what a treasure he is getting." "He does, Mr. Heath--he does," observed that gentleman, strolling at the same instant through the door and encircling his tiny bride-to-be with his arm. "Haven't I traveled half way across this big country of ours to marry her?" "Oh, we're not going to be married yet, Hortie," demurred the girl trying to wrench herself free of the big fellow's hold. "Certainly we are, my dear. Didn't you know that? I'm surprised how many things there are that you don't know," he went on teasingly. "I thought I explained exactly what brought me East. Didn't I tell you this morning I came to get married? I was perfectly serious. Dad gave me two months vacation with that understanding. I must either produce a wife when I get home or lose my job. He'll never give me another furlough if I don't." "Looks to me as if you had Mr. Fuller's future prosperity in your hands, Sylvia," Heath said. "She has. She can make or break me. A big responsibility, eh, little Sylvia?" "I know it, Hortie," retorted the girl seriously. "She is equal to it, Fuller--never fear," Stanley Heath asserted. "I'm not doing any worrying," smiled Horatio. "I--" The sentence was cut short by the radio's loudspeaker: _The much sought Long Island gem thief was captured this morning at his lodgings in Jersey City. Harris Chalmers, alias Jimmie O'Hara, a paroled prisoner, was taken by the police at his room on K-- Street. A quantity of loot, together with firearms and the missing jewels were found concealed in the apartment. The man readily admitted the theft. He has a long prison record._ For a second nobody spoke. Then as if prompted by common impulse, the three on the piazza rushed indoors. Elisha was sitting limply before the radio. "Did you hear that?" he gasped. "Well, rather!" Horatio Fuller shouted with a triumphant wave of his hand. "Ain't it the beateree?" exploded the astonished sheriff. "That sends the whole case up in the air. All that's needed now to make me out the darndest fool on God's earth is for Eleazer's young nephew-lawyer in New York, who's checking up Heath's story, to wire everything there is O.K. If he does, I'll go bury my head. There goes the telephone! That's him! That's Eleazer--I'll bet a hat." "_Hello!--Yes, I heard it.--You ain't surprised? Wal, I am. I'm took off my feet.--Oh, your nephew wired, did he, an' everything's O.K.? That bein' the case, I reckon there's no more to be said. I feel like a shrimp. How do you feel?_----" Elisha hung up the receiver. "Wal, Mr. Heath, the story you told Eleazer an' me is straight as a string in every particular," he announced. "You're free! There ain't nothin' I can say. To tell you I'm sorry ain't in no way adequate. I shan't offer you my hand neither, 'cause I know you wouldn't take it--leastways I wouldn't, was I in your place. There's some insults nothin' can wipe out an' this blunder of mine is one of 'em. You'll just have to set me down as one of them puddin'-headed idiots that was over-ambitious to do his duty. I ain't got no other explanation or excuse to make." "I shall not let it go at that, Mr. Winslow," Stanley Heath acclaimed, stepping to the old man's side and seizing his palm in a strong grip. "We all make errors. Forget it. I'm going to. Besides, you have treated me like a prince since I've been your guest." "You are the prince, sir. Livin' with you has shown me that. Had I knowed you 'fore I arrested you as well as I do now the thing wouldn't 'a' happened. Wal, anyhow, all ain't been lost. At least I've met a thoroughbred an' that ain't none too frequent an occurrence in these days." "What I can't understand, Mr. Winslow, is why you didn't recognize he was a thoroughbred from the beginning," Horatio Fuller remarked. "You've a right to berate me, young man--a perfect right. I ain't goin' to put up no defense. 'Twas the circumstances that blinded me. Besides, I had only a single glimpse of Mr. Heath. Remember that. After he was took sick I never saw him again. Had we got acquainted, as we have now, everything would 'a' been different. Findin' them jewels--" "Great hat, man! I had a diamond ring in my pocket when I came to Wilton, but that didn't prove I'd stolen it." "I know! I know!" acquiesced the sheriff. "Eleazer an' me lost our bearin's entirely. We got completely turned round." "A thief with a Phi Beta Kappa key!" jeered Horatio. "Godfrey!" Then turning to Sylvia, he added in an undertone: "Well, so far as I can see the only person who has kept her head through this affair is our Aunt Marcia." Elisha overheard the final clause. "That's right!" he agreed with cordiality. "You're 'xactly right, Mr. Fuller. The Widder's head-piece can always be relied upon to stay steady." "Whose head-piece?" inquired Stanley Heath, puzzled by the term. "Marcia's. Here in town we call her The Widder." "Well, you'll not have the opportunity to call her that much longer," Heath laughed. "You don't tell me!" Elisha regarded him, open-mouthed. "Humph! So that's how the wind blows, is it? Wal, I can see this mix-up would 'a' ended my chances anyway. Marcia'd never have had me after this. Disappointed as I am, though, there's a sight of comfort in knowin' she won't have Eleazer neither. He don't come out of the shindy a whit better'n me. That's somethin'. In fact it's a heap!" Chapter XXII Intense as was the joy of the three persons, who a little later set out toward the Homestead in the old yellow dory, they were a silent trio. Too much of seriousness had happened during the morning for them to dispel its aftermath lightly. Horatio, pulling at the oars, was unusually earnest, Sylvia turned the ring on her finger reflectively and Stanley Heath looked far out over the water, too deep in thought to be conscious of either of them. When, however, the boat swung into the channel, Sylvia spoke. "Hortie and I are not coming with you, Mr. Heath," she said. "We will stay behind. Only do, please, promise me one thing. Do not tell Marcia the whole story before we have a chance to hear it. There are ever so many connecting links I am curious beyond words to have you supply." "Such as--?" "The jewels in the first place. I can hardly wait to have that mystery solved." Stanley laughed. "The jewels are no mystery at all. I can satisfy your mind about those here and now. They were Joan's--Mrs. Heath's. Her maid, Corinne, took them and disappeared. Soon afterward, purely by accident, I met Paul Latimer, a friend who lives on Long Island, and played squash with him at the club and during the course of our conversation, he asked if I knew of a good man servant, saying that Julien, their butler, had just given notice that he was to be married shortly to Corinne, the new parlor-maid, and return with her to France. "The woman's name instantly caught my attention. "Why shouldn't I do a bit of sleuthing on my own account? "Thus far the detectives Joan and I had hired had made no headway at locating the jewels. "Why shouldn't I have a try at it myself? It chanced I had ordered a power-boat built in Rhode Island and had for some time been awaiting an opportunity to test her out. Why not combine the two errands? "I got the boat and used her a couple of days, and finding her satisfactory cruised along to the Latimers' at whose house I had frequently stayed, and with the habits of whose household I was familiar. My plan was to arrive early in the morning before the family was astir and catch the parlor-maid alone at her work. "Should she prove to be our Corinne, I would boldly confront her with the theft and demand the jewels; if, on the other hand, she turned out to be another person altogether, it would be perfectly easy to explain my presence by falling back on my acquaintance with Paul. "It seemed, on thinking the matter over, that this would be a far more considerate course anyway than to drag in the detectives, not only because I had no real evidence to present to them, but also because of my friendship for the Latimers and for Julien, who had been in their employ many years. I knew they esteemed him very highly and would be dreadfully cut up should they find him involved in an affair as unpleasant as this one. Beside, I felt practically certain he had had nothing to do with the crime. He was too fine--one of the old-fashioned, devoted type of servant. "To shame such a man and throw suspicion on him if he were blameless would be a pity, especially just on the eve of his resigning from service. It might mean that instead of leaving with the gratitude and good-will of his employers, he might be sent away under a cloud. I did not wish that to happen. "Well, my scheme worked to a dot. "I reached the Latimers' unobserved; found Corinne alone straightening up the library; faced her and demanded the jewels. "The instant she saw me she knew the game was up. Nevertheless, she made a pretense of denying the crime until I threatened to send for Julien, at which suggestion she broke down and, without more ado, produced the gems from her pocket, shouldering all the blame. "Julien, she protested, knew nothing of the theft. He was a self-respecting, honest man. Should he be told of what she had done it would end everything between them. She loved him. Indeed it was because of him she had committed the crime. "It proved they had been engaged some time and long before had agreed to save their money and sometime pool it so they might be married and buy a little home in France. "Julien had saved conscientiously; but Corinne had been extravagant and let the major part of her earnings slip through her fingers. He was now asking how much she had laid aside and to her consternation she found she had almost nothing. "She was ashamed to face him. "What could she say? "She did not know what impulse prompted her to take the jewels. She had never stolen before in all her life. The diamonds had been constantly in her care and it had never occurred to her to appropriate them. It had been a sudden, mad temptation created by the need of money and she had yielded to it without thought. Scarcely were the gems in her possession before she regretted her action and longed to undo it. She would have taken them back had she not feared the consequences. She begged Julien should not be told what she had done. If her crime could be concealed from him she was willing to make any restitution I demanded. "Perhaps I was a sentimental fool. Anyway I simply could not see it my duty to hand the unhappy creature over to the authorities; destroy Julien's faith in her; wipe out the future she had set her heart upon. She was young, with life before her. I felt sure if given a chance she would make good. "Promising I would remain silent, I pocketed the gems and came away. "Whether I acted rightly or wrongly I do not know. "I suppose by this time the two are married and on their way to France. I believe Corinne told the truth and that under other influences she will become an excellent wife and mother. At least she has the opportunity. "The other half of my tale--the half I neither foresaw nor planned--is familiar to you. "The fog that drove me out of my course; my subsequent shipwreck and illness; the coming of Currier, our old family servant; the chain of circumstances that brought upon me the calamities from which I have just extricated myself--these are an old story. The only thing that now remains to clear my sky is for me to right myself with Marcia." "That will be easy," smiled Sylvia. "I wish I thought so," was Heath's moody answer. "Marcia is no ordinary woman. Her understanding and love are measureless. Love, Mr. Heath, forgives a great deal." "I know it does. In that lies my only hope." * * * * * She was not in the house when at last Stanley Heath overtook her, but far up the beach tossing driftwood into the surf for Prince Hal to retrieve. The man paused, watching them. Hatless, her splendid body aglow with exercise, Marcia had the freedom and wholesomeness of a young athlete. She threw the sticks with the overhand swing of a boy pitching a ball. Yet with all her strength and muscular ease, there was a grace unmistakably feminine in her every movement. Feminine, too, and very beautiful was her finely poised head, her blowing hair, her glorious color, and her sparkling eyes. When she turned and saw him, she uttered a faint cry, but she did not advance to meet him. Prince Hal did that, racing up the beach, uttering shrill yelps of welcome as he came. A second and the dog was again at Marcia's side, and in this ecstasy of delight he continued to run back and forth until Stanley Heath had covered the sandy curve that intervened and himself stood beside her. "Marcia--dearest--I have come back--come to ask your forgiveness. I misjudged you cruelly the night we parted and in anger spoke words I had no right to speak. Forgive me, dear! Forgive me! Can you?" "I forgave you long ago--before you asked," she whispered. "Forgave without understanding--how like you! But you must not do that. You have more to forgive in me than you know, Marcia. I have been proud, unbelieving, unworthy of a love like yours. I have made you suffer--suffer needlessly. Listen to what I have to tell and then see if you can still forgive." Turning, they walked slowly along the shore. "I could have told you about the jewels and how I came by them at the outset had I not suddenly conceived the idea of teasing you. The plan to conceal my story came to me as a form of sport--a subtle, psychological game. Here I was pitched without ceremony into a strange environment among persons who knew nothing of my background. What would they make of me? How rate me when cut off from my real setting? I resolved to try out the experiment. Women are said to be inquisitive, particularly those living in isolation. My advent could not but stimulate questions. I thought it would be an amusing adventure to circumvent not only your curiosity but also that of the village. "I placed scant dependence on feminine discernment and constancy. "When I went to the war, I left behind a girl who pledged herself to love and wait for me. When I came back it was to find her married to my best friend. The discovery shook my confidence in human nature, and especially in women, to its foundations. I derided love, vowing I never would marry and be made a puppet of a second time. "The remainder of the story you know. "I stumbled, a stranger, into your home and instantly you set at naught all my preconceived theories of womanhood by believing in me with an unreasoning faith. You asked no questions. You did not even exhibit a legitimate curiosity in the peculiar network of circumstances that entangled me. You were a new type of being and I regarded you with wonder. "Still, I was not satisfied. I felt sure that if pressed too far your trust in me would crumble and, therefore, I tried deliberately to break it down by throwing obstacles in its pathway. When suspicion closed in upon me I put you to further tests by withholding the explanations I could easily have made. It was a contemptible piece of egoism--selfish and cruel--and dearly have I paid for it. But at least remember that if I caused you suffering I have suffered also. "For, Marcia, through it all I loved you. I recognized from the moment I first looked into your eyes that a force mightier than ourselves drew us together--a force not to be denied. Nevertheless, so bitter had been my experience I dared not yield to this strange new power. Instead I opposed it with all my strength, giving my love reluctantly, fighting inch by inch the surrender I sensed to be inevitable. "You, on the other hand, had like myself known betrayal, but you had taken the larger view and not allowed it to warp or mar your outlook on life. When love came knocking a second time, you were neither too proud nor too cowardly to answer it, but freely gave your affection with the gladness and sincerity so characteristic of you. "I do not deserve such a love. "Beside the largeness of your nature my own shows itself childish--a small, poor thing for which I blush. "Help me to erase the past. "I love you with my whole soul, dear. Everything in me loves you. My life is worth nothing unless you share it. "Will you? "Ah, you need not fear, Marcia. Sylvia has told me everything. Beloved, there is not and never has been a barrier to our marriage. We have misunderstood one another. Let us do so no longer. "I am a free man--acquitted. "I also am free of any claim that would hinder our wedding. Come to me and let us begin life afresh." She came then, swiftly. As he held her in his arms, the last shadow that separated them melted away. * * * * * Under the glow of the noonday sun, they walked back toward the Homestead, hand in hand. Sylvia came running to meet them and, throwing her arms about Marcia, kissed her. "Everything is all right--I can see that," she cried. "Oh, I am so glad--so glad for both of you! I believe I just could not stand it if you were not happy, because I am so happy myself. Hortie is here, you know. Didn't Stanley tell you? Why, Stanley Heath, aren't you ashamed to forget all about Hortie and me? Yes, Hortie came this morning. We're engaged. See my ring!" "Ring!" repeated Heath. "Mercy on us, Marcia, you must have a ring. I cannot allow this young sprite of a niece to outdo you. I am afraid I was not as foresighted as Mr. Fuller, however. Still, I can produce a ring, such as it is. Here, dear, you shall wear this until I can get something better." He slipped from his little finger the wrought-gold ring with its beautifully cut diamond. "I picked this up in India," he said. "I am sure it will fit. Try it, Marcia." "I--I--do not need a ring," murmured she, drawing back and putting her hands nervously behind her. "Of course you do," interposed Sylvia. "How absurd! A ring is part of being engaged." "A very, very small part," Marcia answered. "Nevertheless, it is a part," the girl insisted. "Come, don't be silly. Let Stanley put it on." Playfully she caught Marcia's hands and imprisoning them, drew them forward. On the left one glistened a narrow gold band. "Jason's!" cried Sylvia. "Jason's! Take it off and give it to me. You owe nothing to Jason. Even I, a Howe, would not have you preserve longer that worn out allegiance, neither would my mother. The past is dead. You have closed the door upon it. You said so yourself. Never think of it again. You belong to Stanley now--to Stanley and to no one else." As she spoke, Sylvia took the ring from the older woman's hand and held it high in the air. "The past is dead," she repeated, "and the last reminder of it--is--gone." There was a gleam as the golden band spun aloft and catching an instant the sunlight's glory, disappeared beneath the foam that marked the line of incoming breakers. "Now, Stanley, put your ring upon her finger. It is a symbol of a new life, of hope, of happier things. Isn't it so, Marcia?" "Yes! Yes!" Sylvia drew a long breath. "There! Now we'll not be serious a minute longer. This is the greatest day of our four lives. There must not be even a shadow in our heaven. Kiss me, Marcia, and come and meet Hortie. Poor dear! He is paralyzed with fright at the thought of appearing into your presence. I left him hiding behind the door. I could not coax him out of the house." "How ridiculous! You must have made me out an ogre." "On the contrary, I made you out an enchantress. I told him you would bewitch him. That's why he became panic-stricken. Do be nice to him--for my sake. He really is a lamb." Sylvia stepped to the piazza. "Horatio," called she imperiously. "Come out here right away and meet your Aunt Marcia. And please, Stanley, forgive me for mistaking you for a bandit. I'm dreadfully mortified. Still, you must admit circumstantial evidence was strong against you. All of which proves on what shifting sands rest our moral characters!" "Say rather our reputations, dear child," Heath corrected. Transcriber's note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Inconsistent hyphenation is as in the original. The following is a list of changes made to the original. Page 19: ensconsed changed to ensconced Page 70: s-pose changed to s'pose Page 72 & 84: villian changed to villain Page 153: housekeper changed to housekeeper 
14563	----	Proofreading Team SHEILA OF BIG WRECK COVE _A Story of Cape Cod_ By JAMES A. COOPER AUTHOR OF _"Tobias o' the Light," "Cap'n Jonah's Fortune" "Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper," etc._ WITH FRONTISPIECE BY R. EMMETT OWEN A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by arrangement with George Sully & Company Printed in U.S.A. COPYRIGHT, 1921 (AS A SERIAL) COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY [Frontispiece: "Come here and look at this craft, Prudence." Page 11 (_Sheila of Big Wreck Cove._)] CONTENTS CHAPTER I. CAP'N IRA AND PRUE II. THE CAPTAIN OF THE SEAMEW III. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA IV. AT THE LATHAM HOUSE V. LOOKING FOR IDA MAY VI. AN UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW VII. AT THE RESTAURANT VIII. SHEILA IX. A GIRL'S STORY X. THE PLOT XI. AT BIG WRECK COVE XII. A NEW HAND AT THE HELM XIII. SOME YOUNG MEN APPEAR XIV. THE HARVEST HOME FESTIVAL XV. AN INVITATION ACCEPTED XVI. MEMORIES--AND TUNIS XVII. AUNT LUCRETIA XVIII. IDA MAY THINKS IT OVER XIX. THE ARRIVAL XX. THE LIE XXI. AT SWORDS' POINTS XXII. A WAY OUT XXIII. A CALL UNANNOUNCED XXIV. EUNEZ PARETA XXV. TO LOVE AND BE LOVED XXVI. ELDER MINNETT HAS HIS SAY XXVII. CAP'N IRA SPEAKS OUT XXVIII. GONE XXIX. ON THE TRAIL XXX. THE STORM XXXI. BITTER WATERS XXXII. A GIRL TO THE RESCUE XXXIII. A HAVEN OF REST CHAPTER I CAP'N IRA AND PRUE Seated on this sunshiny morning in his old armchair of bent hickory, between his knees a cane on the head of which his gnarled hands rested, Captain Ira Ball was the true retired mariner of the old school. His ruddy face was freshly shaven, his scant, silvery hair well smoothed; everything was neat and trig about him, including his glazed, narrow-brimmed hat, his blue pilot-cloth coat, pleated shirt front as white as snow, heavy silver watch chain festooned upon his waist-coat, and blue-yarn socks showing between the bottom of his full, gray trouser legs and his well-blacked low shoes. For Cap'n Ira had commanded passenger-carrying craft in his day, and was a bit of a dandy still. The niceties of maritime full dress were as important to his mind now that he had retired from the sea to spend his remaining days in the Ball homestead on Wreckers' Head as when he had trod the quarter-deck of the old _Susan Gatskill_, or had occupied the chief seat at her saloon table. "I don't know what's to become of us," repeated Cap'n Ira, wagging a thoughtful head, his gaze, as that of old people often is, fixed upon a point too distant for youthful eyes to see. "I can't see into the future, Ira, any clearer than you can," rejoined his wife, glancing at his sagging, blue-coated shoulders with some gentle apprehension. She was a frail, little, old woman, one of those women who, after a robust middle age, seem gradually to shrivel to the figure of what they were in their youth, but with no charm of girlish lines remaining. Her face was wrinkled like a russet apple in February, and it had the colorings of that grateful fruit. She sat on the stone slab which served for a back door stoop peeling potatoes. "I swan, Prue, you cut me in two places this mornin' when you shaved me," said Cap'n Ira suddenly and in some slight exasperation. "And I can't handle that dratted razor myself." "Maybe you could get John-Ed Williams to come over and shave you, Ira." "John-Ed's got his work to do. Then again, how're we going to pay him for such jobs? I swan! I can't afford a vally, Prue. Besides, you need help about the house more than I need a steward. I can get along without being shaved so frequent, I s'pose, but there's times when you can't scurce lift a pot of potatoes off the stove." "Oh, now, Ira, I ain't so bad as all that!" declared his wife mildly. "Yes, you be. I am always expecting you to fall down, or hurt yourself some way. And as for looking out for the Queen of Sheby--" "Now, Ira, Queenie ain't no trouble scurcely." "Huh! She's more trouble than all our money, that's sure. And she's eating her head off." "Now, don't say that," urged his wife in that soothing tone which often irritated Cap'n Ira more than it mollified him. He tapped the metal top of the huge knob of his cane and the spring cover flew open. Ira took a pinch of snuff, inhaled it, closed the cover of the box, delicately brushed a few flecks of the pungent powder from his coat lapel and shirt front, and then, burying his nose in a large silk handkerchief, vented a prodigious: "_A-choon!_" Prudence uttered a surprised squeak, like a mouse being stepped on, jerked herself to a half-standing posture, and the potatoes rolled to every point of the compass. "Goodness gracious gallop!" she ejaculated, quite shaken out of her usual calm. "I should think, Ira, as many times as I've told you that scares me most into a conniption, that you'd signal me when you're going to take snuff. I--I'm all of a shake, I be." "I swan! I'm sorry, Prue. I oughter fire a gun, I allow, before speakin' the ship." "Fire a gun!" repeated the old woman, panting as she scrambled for the potatoes. "That's what I object to, Ira. You want to speak _this_ ship 'fore you shoot that awful noise. I never can get used to it." "There, there!" he said, trying to poke the more distant potatoes toward her with his cane. He could not himself stoop; or, if he did, he could only sit erect again after the method of a ratchet wheel. "I won't do so again, Prudence. I be an onthoughtful critter, if ever there was one." Prudence had recovered the last potato. She stopped to pat his ruddy cheek, nor was it much wrinkled, before she returned to peeling the potatoes. "I know you don't mean to, Iry," she crooned. Married couples like the Balls, where the man has been at home only for brief visits between voyages, if they really love each other, never grow weary of the little frills on connubial bliss usually worn shabby by other people before the honeymoon is past. "I know you don't mean to. But when you sneeze I think it's the crack o' doom." "I'm sorry about them potatoes," repeated Cap'n Ira. "I make you a lot of extry work, Prue. Sometimes I feel, fixed as I be in health, I oughter be in the Sailors' Snug Harbor over to Paulmouth. I do, for a fact." "And what would become of me?" cried the old woman, appalled. "Well," returned Cap'n Ira, "you couldn't be no worse off than you be. We'd miss each other a heap, I know." "Ira!" cried his wife. "Ira, I'd just _die_ without you now that I've got you to myself at last. Those long years you were away so much, and us not being blessed with children--" Ira Ball made a sudden clucking sound with his tongue. That was a sore topic of conversation, and he always tried to dodge it. "It did seem sometimes," pursued Prudence, wiping her eyes with a bit of a handkerchief that she took from her bosom, "as though I wasn't an honestly married woman. I know that sounds awful"--and she shook her head--"but it was so, you only getting home as you did between voyages. But I was always looking forward to the time when you would be home for good." "Don't you s'pose I looked forward to casting anchor?" he demanded warmly. "Seemed like the time never would come. I was always trying to speculate a little so as to make something besides my skipper's pay and share. That--that's why I got bit in that Sea-Gold proposition. That feller's prospectus did read mighty reasonable, Prudence." "I know it did, Ira," she agreed cordially. "I believed in it just as strong as you did. You warn't none to blame." "Well, I dunno. It's mighty nice of you to say so, Prue. But they told me afterward that I might have knowed that a feller couldn't extract ten dollars' wuth of gold from the whole Atlantic Ocean, not if he bailed it dry!" "We've got enough left to keep us, Ira." "Just about. Just about. That is just it. When I was taken down with this rheumatiz and the hospital doctors in New York told me I could never think of pacing my own quarter no more, we had just enough left invested in good securities for us to live on the int'rest." "And the old place, here, Ira," added his wife cheerfully. "Which ain't much more than a shelter," he rejoined rather bitterly. "And just as I say, it isn't fit for two old folks like us to live alone in. Why, we can't even raise our own potatoes no more. And I never yet heard of pollack swimmin' ashore and begging to be split and dried against winter. No, sir!" "The Lord's been good to us, Ira. We ain't never suffered yet," she told him softly. "I know that. We ain't suffering for food and shelter. But, I swan, Prue, we be suffering for some young person about the house. Now, hold on! 'Twarn't for us to have children. That warn't meant. We've been all through that, and it's settled. But that don't change the fact that we need somebody to live with us if we're going to live comfortable." "Oh, dear, if my niece Sarah had lived! She used to stay with me when she was a gal and you was away," sighed Prudence. "But she married and had a gal of her own. She brought her here that time I was home after my first v'y'ge on the _Susan Gatskill_. A pretty baby if ever there was one." "Ida May Bostwick! Bostwick was Sarah's married name. I heard something about Ida May only the other day." "You did?" exclaimed Cap'n Ira, much interested. "Yes, Ira. Annabell Coffin, she who was a Cuttle, was visiting his folks in Boston, and she learned that Sarah Bostwick's daughter was working behind the counter in some store there. She has to work for her livin', poor child." "I swan!" ejaculated the captain. Much as he had been about the world, Cap'n Ira looked upon most mundane affairs with the eyes of the true Cape man. Independence is bred in the bone of his tribe. A tradesman or storekeeper is, after all, not of the shipmaster caste. And a clerk, working "behind the counter" of any store, is much like a man before the mast. "It does seem too bad," sighed Prudence. "She was a pretty baby, as you say, Ira." "Sarah was nice as she could be to you," was the old man's thoughtful comment. "Yes. But her husband, Bostwick, was only a mechanic. Of course, he left nothing. Them city folks are so improvident," said Prudence. "I wish't we was able to do something for little Ida May, Ira. Think of her workin' behind a counter!" "I am a-thinkin'," growled the old captain. "See here, Prue. What's to hinder us doin' something for her?" Prudence looked at him, startled. "Why, Iry, you say yourself we can scurce help ourselves." "It's a mighty ill wind that don't blow fair for some craft," declared the ancient mariner, nodding. "We do need help right here, Prudence, and that gal of Sarah Bostwick's could certainly fill the bill. On the other hand, she'd be a sight better off here on the Cape, living with us, getting rosy and healthy, and having this old place and what we've got left when we die, than she would be slavin' behind a counter in any city store. What d'you think?" "Ira!" exclaimed his wife, clasping her hands, potato knife and all. "Ira! I think that's a most wonderful idea. It takes you to think up things. You're just wonderful!" Cap'n Ira preened himself like the proud old gander he was. He heaved himself out of the chair by the aid of his cane, a present from one grateful group of passengers that had sailed in his charge, on the _Susan Gatskill_. "Well, well!" he said. "Let's think of it. Let's see, where's my glass? Here 'tis." He seized the old-fashioned collapsible spyglass, which he favored rather than the newer binoculars, and started off to "pace the quarter," as he called the path from the back door to the grassy cart track which joined the road at the lower corner of the Ball premises. This highway wandered down from the Head into the fishing village along the inner beach of Big Wreck Cove. Prudence watched Ira with fond but comprehending eyes. She saw how broken he was, how stumbling his feet when he first started off, and the swaying locomotion that betrayed that feebleness of both brain and body that can never be denied. Somewhere on the Head in the old days the wreckers had kept their outlook for ships in distress. Those harpies of the coast had fattened on the bones of storm-racked craft. It was one of those battered freighters that, nearly two centuries before, had been driven into the cove itself, to become embalmed in Cape history as "the big wreck." The Balls and the Lathams, the Honeys and the Coffins of that ancient day had "wracked" the stranded craft most thoroughly. But they had not overlooked the salvation of her ship's company of foreigners. She had been a Portuguese vessel, and although the Cape Codder, then, as now, was opposed to "foreigners," refuge was extended to the people saved from the big wreck. Near the straggling settlement at the cove a group of shacks had sprung up to shelter the "Portygees" from the stranded-vessel. As her bones were slowly engulfed in the marching sands, through the decades that passed, the people who had come ashore from the big wreck had waxed well to do, bred families of strong, handsome, brown men and black-eyed, glossy-haired women who flashed their white teeth in smiles that were almost startling. Now one end of "the port," as the village of Big Wreck Cove was usually called by the natives, was known as Portygee Town. Wreckers' Head boasted of several homes of retired shipmasters and owners of Cap'n Ira's ilk. These ancient sea dogs, on such a day as this, were unfailingly found "walking the poop" of their front yards, or wherever they could take their diurnal exercise, binoculars or spyglass in hand, their vision more often fixed seaward than on the land. Cap'n Ira had scarcely put the glass to his eye for a first squint at his "position" when he exclaimed: "I swan! That's a master-pretty sight. I ain't seen a prettier in many a day. Come here and look at this craft, Prudence." She hurried to join him. Her motions when she was on her feet were birdlike, yet there was the same unsteadiness in her walk as in Cap'n Ira's. Only, at the moment, he did not see it, for his eye was glued to the telescope. "What do you see, Ira?" she asked. "Clap this glass to your eye," said her husband. He steadied the telescope, having pointed it for her. "See that suit of sails? Ain't they grand? And the taper of them masts? She's a bird!" "Why, what schooner is it?" asked Prudence. "I never saw her before, did I? She's bearing in for the cove." "I cal'late she is," agreed Cap'n Ira. "And I cal'late by the newness of that suit of sails and her lines and all that she's Tunis Latham's new craft that he went up to Marblehead last week to bring down here and put into commission." "The _Seamew!_" cried Prudence, in a pleased voice. "Isn't she a pretty sight?" "She's a sightly craft. Looks more like a racing yacht than a cargo boat. Still and all, Tunis has got judgment. And he's put nigh every cent he's got, all Peke Latham left him, into this schooner. And she not new." "I hope Tunis has made no mistake," sighed Prudence, releasing the glass for Ira to look through once more. "There has been trouble enough over Peleg Latham's money." "More trouble than the money amounted to. Split the family wide open. 'Rion Latham was saying to me he believed Peke never meant the money should go all one way. The Medway Lathams, them 'Rion belongs to, is all as sore as carbuncles about Tunis getting it. But I tell Tunis as long as the court says the money should be his, let 'Rion and all them yap like the hungry dogs they be. Tunis has got the marrer bone." "Does seem a pity," the old woman said, still watching the white splotch against the background of gray and blue. "Families ought to be at peace." "Peace! I swan!" snorted Cap'n Ira. "'Rion Latham is about as much given to peace as a wild tagger. But he knows which half of his biscuit's buttered. He'll sail with Tunis as long as Tunis pays him wages." The captain continued to study the approaching schooner while Prudence went back to her household tasks. CHAPTER II THE CAPTAIN OF THE SEAMEW Tunis Latham's _Seamew_, tacking for the channel into Big Wreck Cove, wings full-spread, skimming the heaving blue of the summer sea, looked like a huge member of the tern family. From Wreckers' Head and the other sand bluffs guarding this roadstead from the heave of the Atlantic rollers, the schooner with her yachtlike lines was truly a picture to please the most exacting mariner. On her deck paced the young captain whose personal affairs had been a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair; his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his eyes were like blue-steel points, but with humorous wrinkles at the outer corners of them, matched by a faint smile that almost always wreathed his lips. Altogether he was a man that a woman would be sure to look at twice. The revelation of the lighter traits of his character counteracted the otherwise sober look of Tunis Latham. His sternness and fitness to command were revealed at first glance; his softer attributes dawned upon one later. As he swayed back and forth across the deck of the flying _Seamew_, rolling easily in sailor gait to the pitching of the schooner, his sharp glance cast alow and then aloft betrayed the keen perception and attentive mind of the master mariner, while his surface appearance merely suggested a young man pridefully enjoying the novelty of pacing the deck of his first command. For this was the maiden trip of the _Seamew_ under this name and commanded by this master. She was not a new vessel, but neither was she old. At least, her decks were not marred, her rails were ungashed with the wear of lines, and even her fenders were almost shop-new. Of course, any craft may have a fresh suit of sails; and new paint and gilding on the figurehead or a new name board under the stern do not bespeak a craft just off the builder's ways. Yet there was an appearance about the schooner-yacht which would assure any able seaman at first glance that she was still to be sea-tried. She was like a maiden at her first dance, just venturing out upon the floor. An old salt hung to the _Seamew's_ wheel as the bonny craft sped channelward. Horace Newbegin was a veritable sea dog. He had sailed every navigable sea in all this watery world, and sailed in almost every conceivable sort of craft. And he had sailed many voyages under Tunis Latham's father, who had owned and commanded the four-master _Ada May_, which, ill-freighted and ill-fated at last, had struck and sunk on the outer Hebrides, carrying to the bottom most of the hands as well as the commander of the partially insured ship. This misfortune had kept Tunis Latham out of a command of his own until he was thirty; for Cape Cod boys that come of masters' families and are born navigators usually tread their own decks years before the age at which Tunis was pacing that of the _Seamew_ on this summer day. "How does she handle now, Horry?" asked the skipper, wheeling suddenly to face the old steersman. "Thar's still that tug to sta'bo'd, Captain Tunis," growled the old man. "But you keep her full on her course." "Spite o' that? In course. But I can feel her tuggin' like a big bluefish trying to bolt with hook and sinker. Never did feel that same tug to sta'bo'd but once before on any craft. I told you that." Tunis Latham nodded. The old man's keen eyes tried to read the skipper's face. He could scan the signs in sea and sky at a glance, but he confessed that the captain of the _Seamew_ revealed no more of his inner thoughts than had the mahogany countenance of the older Captain Latham with whom Horry Newbegin had so long sailed. "Well," the steersman said finally, "I've told ye all I can tell ye. That other schooner that had a tug to sta'bo'd like this, the _Marlin B._, got a bad name from the Georges to Monomoy P'int. You know that." "Cat's foot!" ejaculated Tunis cheerfully. "The _Marlin B._ was sold for a pleasure yacht and taken half around the world. A Chilean guano millionaire bought her the year after the Sutro Brothers took her off the Banks." "Ye-as. That's what Sutro Brothers says," and the old man wagged his head doubtfully. "But there's just as much difference in ships, as there is in men. Ain't never been two men just per_zact_-ly alike. No two craft ever sailed or steered same as same, Captain Tunis. I steered the _Martin B._ out o' Salem on her second trip, without knowing what she'd been through, you can believe, on her first." "Well, well!" Tunis broke in sharply. "Just keep your mind on what you are doing now, Horry. You're supposed to be steering the _Seamew_ into Big Wreck Cove. Don't undertake to shave a piece off the Lighthouse Point reef." The steersman did not answer. From long experience with these Lathams, Horace Newbegin knew just how much interference or advice they would stand. "And, by gum, that ain't much!" he growled to himself. He took the beautifully sailing schooner in through the channel in a masterly manner. He knew that more ancient skippers than Cap'n Ira Ball, up there on Wreckers' Head, would be watching the _Seamew_ make the cove, and old Horry Newbegin wanted them to say it was well done. Half an hour later the anchor was dropped fifty yards off Portygee Town. Captain Tunis ordered the gig lowered to take him ashore and, after giving the mate some instructions regarding stowage and the men's shore leave, he was rowed over to Luiz Wharf. 'Rion Latham, a red-headed, pimply faced young man, sidled up to Horace Newbegin. "Well, what do you think of the hoodoo ship, Horrors?" he hoarsely whispered. Newbegin stared at him unwaveringly, and the red-haired one repeated the question. The old salt finally batted one eye, slowly and impressively. "D'you know what answer the little boy got that asked the quahog the time o' day?" he drawled. "Not a word. Not a derned word, 'Rion." Landing at the fish wharf, Tunis Latham walked up the straggling street of the district inhabited for the most part by smiling brown men and women. Fayal and Cape Cod are strangely analogous, especially upon a summer's day. The houses he passed had one room; they were little more than shacks. But there were gay colors everywhere in the dress of both men and women. It was believed that these Portygee fishermen would have their seines dyed red and yellow if the fish would swim into them. A young woman sitting upon a doorstep, nursing a little, bald, brown-headed baby, dropped a gay handkerchief over her bared bosom but nodded and smiled at the captain of the _Seamew_ with right good fellowship. He knew all these people, and most of them, the young women at least, admired Tunis; but he was too self-centered and busied with his own thoughts and affairs to comprehend this. At the corner of one of the houses a girl stood--a tall, lean-flanked, but deep-bosomed creature, as graceful as a well-grown sapling. Her calico frock clung to the lines of her matured figure as though she had just stepped up out of the sea itself. Around her head she had banded a crimson bandanna, but it allowed the escape of glossy black hair that waved prettily. Her lips were as red as poppies, full, voluptuous; her eyes were sloe-black and as soft as a cow's. Fortunately for the languishing girl's peace of mind--she had placed herself there at the corner of the house to wait for Tunis since the moment the _Seamew_ had dropped anchor--she did not know that the young captain had noticed her only as "that cow" as he swung by on his way to the road that wound up the slope of Wreckers' Head. Neither Eunez Pareta--nor any other girl of the port, Portygee or Yankee--had ever made Tunis Latham's heart flutter. He was not impervious to the blandishments of all feminine beauty. As Cap'n Ira Ball would have said, Tunis was "a general admirer of the sect." And as the young man passed the languishing Eunez with a cheerful nod and smile there flashed into his memory an entirely different picture, but one of a girl nevertheless. Somehow the memory of that girl in Scollay Square kept coming back to his mind. He had gone up by train for the _Seamew_ and her crew, and naturally he had spent one night in Boston. Coming up out of the North End after a late supper, he had stopped upon one side of the square to watch the passing throng, some hurrying home from work, some hurrying to theaters and other places of amusement, but all hurrying. Nowhere did he see the slow, but carrying, stride of a man used to open spaces. And the narrow-skirted girls could scarcely hobble. A narrow skirt, however, had not led Tunis Latham to give particular note to one certain girl in the throng. She had stepped through the door of a cheap but garish restaurant. Somebody had thrown a peeling on the sidewalk, and she had slipped on it. Tunis had leaped and caught her before she measured her length. She looked up into his face with startled, violet eyes that seemed, in that one moment, to hold in them a fascination and power that the Cape man had never dreamed a woman's eyes could possess. "You're all right, ma'am," he said, confused, setting her firmly on her feet. "My skirt!" She almost whispered it. There seemed to be not a shyness, but a terrified timidity in her voice and manner. Tunis saw that the shabby skirt was torn widely at the hem. "Let's go somewhere and get that fixed," he suggested awkwardly. "Thank you, sir. I will go back into the restaurant. I work there. I can get a pin or two." He had to let her go, of course. Nor could he follow her. He lacked the boldness that might have led another man to enter the restaurant and order something to eat for the sake of seeing what became of the girl with the violet eyes and colorless velvet cheeks. There had been an appeal in her countenance that called Tunis more and more as he dreamed about her. And standing there on Scollay Square dreaming about her had done the young captain of the _Seamew_ positively no good! She did not come out again, although he stood there for fully an hour. At the end of that time he strolled up an alley and discovered that there was a side door to the restaurant for the use of employees, and he judged that the girl, seeing him lingering in front, had gone out by this way. It made him flush to his ears when he thought of it. Of course, he had been rude. Marching up the winding road by the Ball homestead, Tunis Latham revisioned this adventure--and the violet-eyed girl. Well, he probably would never see her again. And in any case she was not the sort of girl that he would ever take home to Aunt Lucretia. He was headed toward home now, to the old brown house in the saucer-like valley some distance beyond Cap'n Ira's. As he came within hail of the old homestead in which the Balls had been born and had died--if they were not lost at sea--for many generations, the captain of the _Seamew_ became suddenly aware that something was particularly wrong there. He heard somebody shouting. Was it for help? He hastened his stride. Quite unexpectedly the hobbling figure of Cap'n Ira appeared in the open barn door. He saw Tunis. He waved his cane in one hand and beckoned wildly with the other. Then he disappeared. The young captain vaulted the fence and ran across the ill-tended garden adjoining the Balls' side yard. Again he heard Cap'n Ira's hail. "Come on in here, Tunis!" "What's the matter, Cap'n Ira?" "That dratted Queen of Sheby! I knowed she'd be the death of one of us some day. I swan! Tunis Latham, come here! I can't get her out, and you know derned well Prudence can't stand on her head that a way without strangling. Lend us a hand, boy. This is something awful! Something awful!" Tunis Latham, much disturbed by the old man's words and excited manner, pushed into the dimly lit interior of the barn. CHAPTER III THE QUEEN OF SHEBA The barn was a roomy place, as well built as the Ball house itself, and quite as old. The wagon floor had a wide door, front and rear. The stables were on either side of this floor and the mows were above. In one mow was a small quantity of hay and some corn fodder, but the upper reaches were filled only with a brown dusk. The pale face of a gray mare was visible at the opening over one of the mangers. She was the sole recognized occupant of the stable. In a dark corner Tunis Latham saw a huge grain box, for once the Ball farm had supported several span of oxen and a considerable dairy herd, its cover raised and its maw gaping wide. There was something moving there in the murk, something fluttering. "Come here, boy!" gasped Cap'n Ira, hurrying across the barn door. "I'm so crippled I can't git her up, and she's dove clean to the lower hold, tryin' to scrape out a capful o' oats for that dratted Queen of Sheby." "Aunt Prue!" shouted Tunis, reverting to the title he had addressed her by in his boyhood. "It's never her?" A muffled voice stammered: "Get me out! Get me out!" "Heave hard, Tunis! All together now!" gasped Cap'n Ira, as the younger man reached over the old woman's struggling heels and seized her around the waist. "Up she comes!" continued the excited old man, as though he were bossing a capstan crew starting one of the _Susan Gatskill's_ anchors. Tunis Latham set Prudence Ball on her feet, but the old woman was forced to lean against the stalwart young man for a minute. She addressed her husband in some heat. "Goodness gracious gallop! Why don't you sing a chantey over me, I want to know? You'd think I was a bale of jute being snaked out of a ship's hold. Good land!" "There, there, Prudence!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "You're safe, after all! It--it was something awful!" "I cal'late it was," rejoined the old woman rather bitterly. "And I didn't get them oats, after all." "I'll 'tend to all that, Aunt Prue," said Tunis. "If it hadn't been for that dratted Queen of Sheby"--Cap'n Ira glared malevolently at the rather surprised-looking countenance of the gray mare in her box--"you wouldn't have got into that jam." "If it hadn't been for you taking that dose of snuff when I was expecting nothing of the kind, I wouldn't have dove into that feed box, Ira, and you know it very well." "I swan!" admitted her husband in a feeble voice. "I forgot again, didn't I?" "I don't know as you forgot, but I know you mighty near sneezed your head off. You'll be the death of me some day, Ira, blowin' up that way. I wonder I didn't jump clean through the bottom of that feed box when I was just reaching down to get a measure of oats." "Aunt Prue," Tunis interposed, "why do you keep the little tad of feed you have to buy for Queenie in this big old chest?" "There!" Cap'n Ira hastened to rejoin, glad likewise to turn the trend of conversation. "That's all that dratted boy's doings, little John-Ed Williams. Who else would have ever thought of dumping a two-bushel bag of oats into a twenty-bushel bin? We always put feed in that covered can yonder, so as to keep shet of the rats. But that boy, when he brought the oats, dumped 'em into the box before I could stop him. He's got less sense than his father; and you know, Tunis, John-Ed himself ain't got much more wit than the law allows." "But if you hadn't sneezed--" began Prudence again. "You take her into the house, Cap'n Ira," said Tunis. "I'll feed Queenie. What do you give her--this measure full of oats? And a hank of that hay?" "And a bunch of fodder. Might as well give her a dinner while you're about it," grumbled the old man, leading his tottering wife toward the door. "As I say, that old critter is eatin' her head off." "Well, she long ago earned her keep in her old age," Tunis said, laughing. He could remember when the Queen of Sheba had come to the Ball barn as a colt. Many a clandestine bareback ride had he enjoyed. He fed the mare and petted her as if she were his own. Then he scraped the oats out of the bin and poured them into the galvanized-iron can, so that Cap'n Ira could more easily get at the mare's feed. He went to the house afterward to see if there was any other little chore he could do for the old couple before going on to his own home. "You can't do much for us, Tunis, unless you can furnish me a new pair of legs," said Cap'n Ira. "I might as well have timber ones as these I've got. What Prue and me needs is what you've got but can't give away--youth." "You ought to have somebody living with you to help, Cap'n Ira," said the young man. "I cal'late," said the other dryly, "that we've already made that discovery, Tunis. Trouble is, we ain't fixed right to increase the pay roll. I'd like to know who you'd think would want to sign up on this craft that even the rats have deserted?" "Never mind, Ira. Don't be downhearted," Prudence said, now recovered from her excitement. "Perhaps the Lord has something good in store for us." Cap'n Ira pursed his lips. "I ain't doubting the Lord's stores is plentiful," he returned rather irreverently. "The trouble is for us poor mortals to get at 'em. Well, Tunis, I certainly am obliged to you." The flurry of excitement was over. But Ira Ball was a determined man. It was in his mind that the trouble of taking care of the old mare was too great for Prudence, and he could not do the barn chores himself. They really had no use for the gray mare, for nowadays the neighbors did all their errands in town for them, and the few remaining acres of the old farm lay fallow. Nor, had he desired to sell the mare, would anybody be willing to pay much for the twenty-two-year-old Queenie. In truth, Ira Ball was too tender-hearted to think of giving the Queen of Sheba over to a new owner and so sentence her to painful toil. "She'd be a sight better off in the horse heaven, wherever that is," he decided. But he was careful to say nothing like this in his wife's hearing. "Women are funny that way," he considered. "She'd rather let the decrepit old critter hang around eatin' her head off, like I say, than mercifully put her out of her misery." Stern times call for stern methods. Cap'n Ira Ball had seen the tragic moment when he was forced to separate a bridegroom from his bride with a sinking deck all but awash under his feet. What had to be done had to be done! Prudence could no longer be endangered by the stable tasks connected with the old mare. He could not relieve her. They could scarcely afford a hired hand merely to take care of Queenie. He remained rather silent that evening, and even forgot to praise Prue's hot biscuit, of which he ate a good many with his creamed pollack. The sweet-tempered old woman chatted as she knitted on his blue-wool hose, but she scarcely expected more than his occasional grunted acknowledgment that he was listening. She always said it was "a joy to have somebody besides the cat around to talk to." The loneliness of shipmasters who sail the seven seas is often mentioned in song and in story; the loneliness of their wives at home is not usually marked. They went to bed. Old men do not usually sleep much after second cock-crow, and it was not far from three in the morning when Cap'n Ira awoke. Like most mariners, he was wide awake when he opened his eyes. He lay quietly for several moments in the broad bed he occupied alone. The half-sobbing breathing of the old woman sounded from her room, through the open door. "It's got to be done," Cap'n Ira almost audibly repeated. He got out of the bed with care. It was both a difficult and a painful task to dress. When he had on all but his boots and hat he tiptoed to a green sea chest in the corner, unlocked it, and from beneath certain tarpaulins and other sea rubbish drew out something which he examined carefully in the semidarkness of the chamber. He finally tucked this into an inner pocket of the double-breasted pilot coat he wore. It sagged the coat a good deal on that side. He crept out of the chamber, crossed the sitting room, and went into the ell-kitchen with his shoes in his hand. When he opened the back door he faced the west, but even the sky at that point of the compass showed the glow of the false dawn. Down in the cove the night mist wrapped the shipping about in an almost opaque veil. Only the lofty tops of craft like the _Seamew_ were visible, black streaks against the mother-of-pearl sky line. The captain closed the kitchen door softly behind him. He sat down on a bench and painfully pulled on his shoes and laced them. When he tried to straighten up it was by a method which he termed, "easy, by jerks." He sat and recovered his breath after the effort. Then, taking his cane, he hobbled off to the barn. The big doors were open, for it had been a warm night. The pungent odor from Queenie's stall made his nostrils wrinkle. He stumbled in, and the pale face of the old mare appeared at the opening above her manger. She snorted her surprise. "You'll snort more'n that afore I'm done with you," Cap'n Ira said, trying to seem embittered. But when he unknotted the halter and backed her out of the stable, quite involuntarily he ran a tender hand down her sleek neck. He sighed as he led her out of the rear door. The old mare hung back, stretching first one hind leg and then the other as old horses do when first they come from the stall in the morning. "Come on, you old nuisance!" exploded Cap'n Ira under his breath, giving an impatient tug at the rope. He did not look around at her, but set his face sternly toward the distant lot which had once been known as the east meadow. It was no longer in grass. Wild carrots sprang from its acidulous soil. The herbage would scarcely have nourished sheep. There were patches of that gray moss which blossoms with a tiny red flower, and there was mullein and sour grass. Altogether the run-down condition of the soil could not be mistaken by even the casual eye. The hobbling old man and the hobbling old mare, making their way across the bare lot, made as drab a picture in the early morning as a Millet. At a distance their moving shapes would have seemed like shadows only. There was no other sign of life upon Wreckers' Head. A light but keen and salty breath blew in from the sea. Cap'n Ira faced this breeze with twitching nostrils. The old mare's lower lip hung down in depression. She groaned. She did not care to be led out of her comfortable stall at this unconscionably early hour. "Grunt, you old nuisance!" muttered Cap'n Ira bitterly. "You don't even know what a dratted, useless thing you be, I swan!" There was a depression in the field. When the heavy spring and fall rains came the water ran down into this sink and stood, sometimes a foot or two deep over several acres. In some past time of heavy flood the water had washed out to the edge of the highland overlooking the ocean beach. There it had crumbled the brink of the Head away, the water gullying year after year a deeper and broader channel, until now the slanting gutter began a hundred yards back from the brink. The recurrent downpours, aided by occasional landslips, had made a slanting trough to the beach itself, which was all of two hundred feet below the brink of Wreckers' Head. Many such water-worn gullies are to be found along the face of the Cape headlands, up which the fishermen and seaweed gatherers freight their cargoes from the shore. There was no wheel track here; merely a trough of sliding sand, treacherous under foot and almost continuously in motion. As the gully progressed seaward, the banks on either hand became more than forty feet high, the trough itself being scarcely half as wide. Determinedly Cap'n Ira led the old mare into and down the slope of this gully. It was steep. He went ahead haltingly, trying to steady his footsteps with the cane, which sank deeply into the sand, making orifices which, in the pale light of the dawn, seemed to startle the mare. She held back, scuffling and snorting. "Come on, drat ye!" adjured the captain. "You needn't blow your nose. You ain't been taking snuff." The sand was so light and dry that it seemed to be on the move all about them. There was a stealthy sound to the whispering particles, too, as though they breathed. "Hush.' Hush-sh-sh!" The old man was made nervous by it. He began to glance back over his shoulder at the faintly objecting mare. When Queenie slipped a little and scrambled in the unstable sand he uttered such an exclamation as might have been wrung from him at time of stress upon his quarter-deck. "I swan! I'd rather be keelhauled than do this," burst from his lips finally. But they were well into the gully now. The walls on either hand towered far above their heads. He halted, and the mare stood still, again blowing softly through her nostrils. The old man, with shaking hands, took from under his coat the heavy article that had sagged his pocket. It was a black, old-fashioned, seven-chambered revolver, well oiled and as grim-looking as a rifled cannon on a battleship. He produced three greased cartridges, broke the weapon, inserted the cartridges, then closed it and spun the cylinder. It was not an unfamiliar weapon, this. Its mere grim appearance, stuck into Cap'n Ira's waistband, had once quelled mutiny aboard the _Susan Gatskill_. While he was thus engaged he had not even glanced around at the old mare. Suddenly he felt a touch upon his shoulder, then upon the sleeve of his coat. He felt a creepy chill the length of his spine. It seemed as if the hand of Prudence had been laid softly upon him. "I swan!" he gulped, shaking himself. "I'm as flighty as a gal. What th'--" He looked back. Queenie was nuzzling his arm questioningly. Her ears were cocked forward; her surprised face was almost ridiculously human in its expression. Cap'n Ira groaned again. He shuddered. But his gnarled hand gripped the hard-rubber butt of the revolver with the desperation of the deed he had screwed his courage to do. Better the old mare should be put out of the way than that she should fall into hands that would misuse her. And he feared what other accident might happen if Prudence continued to take care of the animal. "I swan! It's a wrench," admitted Cap'n Ira, swerving to point the muzzle of the revolver at the gray mare. He looked all about again. Yes, the position was right. If she fell here, a man with a shovel could easily pry down tons of sand from either bank upon her in a few minutes. The burial might be done by himself without any other soul knowing what had become of Queenie. He cocked the old revolver. Suddenly the Queen of Sheba gave a snort of alarm. She looked back over her withers. The light in the cut between the sand banks was dim. Was somebody coming? To tell the truth, Cap'n Ira had a vision of Prudence, having missed him, getting out of her bed and traveling down through the lots after him and the old mare. The idea shook him to his marrow, or was it the weight of the heavy weapon that made his hand so unsteady? "I swan!" His oft-repeated ejaculation was almost a prayer. At the moment he felt the sand giving under his feet. The old mare uttered again her terrified snort. He saw dimly the path behind them moving--a swift, serpentlike slide. Heavy as the mare was, she felt the landslip, too. Cap'n Ira was not a man who easily lost his self-possession. He had been through too much to show the white flag when danger menaced. He realized that peril threatened now. He turned squarely about and, cocked pistol in one hand and huge-knobbed cane in the other, he started away from the spot at a cripple's gallop. The whole trough of the gully of sand seemed to be in motion. Behind him the old mare scrambled and whistled with fear, quite as unable to keep her feet as was the captain. For, before he had gone far, Cap'n Ira found himself seated on the moving plane of sand. He glanced fearfully behind him. The Queen of Sheba was seated on her tail, her forefeet braced against nothing more stable than the avalanche itself, and she was sailing down the slope behind him like a winged Pegasus! "My soul and body!" ejaculated Cap'n Ira. "We're certainly on our way." CHAPTER IV AT THE LATHAM HOUSE The Latham house stood in the middle of the shallow valley behind Wreckers' Head. The fields surrounding it were arable and well kept. The house was not as old as the Ball house and was of an entirely different style of architecture. Whereas the Ball house was low-roofed and sprawling, squatting like a huge and ugly toad on the gale-swept Head, the house Tunis Latham's grandfather had built was three-story, including the mansard roof, painted a tobacco brown, and it was surrounded by wry-limbed cedars which could grow here because they were sheltered from the gales. It was a gloomy-looking house even in midsummer, standing like a grim figure menaced by the tortured limbs of the trees surrounding it, stark and alone. No other human habitation was in view from its site. The Latham who had built the twelve-room house had built on hope. He desired and expected to fill the great house with a breed of Lathams that would do honor to the Cape on sea and on land. But his young wife had died the next year, after giving birth to her second child. Tunis Latham's father, Randall Latham, had been the elder Latham's sole hope of perpetuating the family name and filling the big, ugly brown house behind Wreckers' Head with tow-headed little Lathams, for the other child was a girl. It was said that Medford Latham had seldom spoken to or of his daughter, Lucretia. She must have led a very lonely and repressed life while she was a little girl. Medford Latham did not go to sea, for he had business that kept him on shore. Medford Latham lived long enough to see Randall grow up, walk his own quarter-deck, and marry a maiden from the port who promised to be able to fulfill his hopes of a flourishing houseful of children. She bore Tunis while young Captain Randall Latham was away, and he came back in time to christen the boy with the name of the most colorful city he had touched on the trip, not an uncommon practice of seagoing fathers on the Cape. But Mrs. Randall Latham, watching her husband's ship bear off to seaward in the face of a keen gale, caught a severe cold, and when Captain Randall returned the next time he came not to a cradle in the great living room of the big, brown house, but to an already-sodden grave in the family plot on the west side of the saucerlike valley. Lucretia Latham had grown to be a tall, large-boned, silent, and quick-stepping woman--a woman of understanding and infinite tenderness, although this tenderness was exhibited in deeds, not words. The big, quiet-faced woman, who had never had a lover and on whom no man had ever looked with admiration, seemed to the casual observer cold and uncompromising. She might speak to the dog, call the fowls to their meals, but she never otherwise spoke unless she was forced to. When he was little, Tunis had found in her arms and against her breast a refuge from all hurt and fear, but it was a wordless comfort Aunt Lucretia gave him. When he walked over from the cove that afternoon, after seeing the anchor of the _Seamew_ over-side for the first time in this roadstead, Tunis found his Aunt Lucretia much as usual. She watched him approach from the side porch, a warm smile of greeting on her rather gaunt face. He knew that she must have watched the _Seamew_ skim by, making for the channel into the cove; for he had written her when to expect him. But she would say nothing about it unless he forced the gates of her silence by some direct question which demanded more than a "yes" or a "no." Lucretia folded him in her arms, however, and patted his broad shoulder with little love pats as he put his arms about her. Her kiss for him was as warm on his lips as a girl's. They understood each other pretty well, these two; for Tunis had caught something of her muteness, living so long alone with her. He went to wash and change his shirt. Then he sat down in one of the huge porch chairs and rocked quietly, waiting for supper. He could see into the kitchen, which was the family dining room as well, and when he saw his Aunt Lucretia take the coffee-pot from the stove and put it on the square Dutch tile by her own place, Tunis knew it was the only call to supper there would be. He rose and went in, taking his place at the head of the table. His aunt's head was bowed and her lips moved soundlessly. He respected her whispered grace and always felt that he could add nothing to it in thankfulness or reverence if he uttered an orison himself. During the cheerful and plentiful meal the young captain of the _Seamew_ related certain matters he thought would interest the woman regarding his purchase of the schooner and the voyage down to the Cape. He told her he was sure the _Seamew_ was fast enough for a Boston market boat. "Speed is what is wanted now to compete with the Old Colony," Tunis declared. "We've got fish and clams and cranberries in season, and some vegetables, that have to be shaken up and jounced together and squashed on those jolting steam trains. I'll lay down a crate of lobsters at the T-wharf without a hair being ruffled. I know how to stow a cargo." She nodded both her understanding and her belief that Tunis was right. The legacy he had received from the estate of Peleg Latham, Medford Latham's brother, had enabled Tunis to buy this beautiful schooner. Undoubtedly an eye for the beauty of the craft had more than a little drawn the young man into her purchase. Yet there was a foundation of solid sense under his streak of romance. In this day a man must serve a long apprenticeship before he gets a command unless he owns the craft on which he is skipper. To own a schooner of the size of the _Seamew_ is not enough. One must be a good merchant as well as a good skipper. The coast trade from port to port along the North Atlantic shore must be fostered and coaxed like a stumbling baby. The tentacles of the hated railroad reach to many of the Cape ports. Yet everybody knows that a cargo properly stowed in a seaworthy craft reaches market in much the better condition than by rail, though perhaps it is some hours longer on the way. There were docks, too, at which Tunis Latham could pick up well-paying freights which would have to be carted over bad roads to the nearest railway station. And there were always full or part cargoes to be had at Boston for certain single consignees along the Cape, which would pay a fair profit on the upkeep of the schooner. Medford Latham had lost almost all his fortune before he died so unhappily, leaving only the homestead and small farm to his son. The son, Captain Randall Latham, had lost the ship _Ada May_ and every cent he possessed. Tunis had only his great uncle's legacy to begin on, and he had waited for that until he was thirty. In the morning the young man arose early, for the tide was then low, and started forth with basket and clam hoe on his arm. Aunt Lucretia had promised him, by a smiling nod, a mess of fritters for dinner if he would supply the necessary clams. Alongshore the soft clam is the only clam used for fritters; the tough, long-keeping quahog is shipped to the less-enlightened "city trade." It was not yet sunrise, but as Tunis walked down through one of those cuts in the edge of the headland, following a well-defined cart track, he saw the rose-glow of the sun's round face staining the mist on the eastern horizon. He came down upon the hard sand of the beach and walked toward a tiny cove into which the mud flats extended and on which he knew the clams were plentiful and ripe. Glistening pools of black water, showing where other diggers had raided the flat, were interspersed with trembling patches of black sand. When Tunis began to cross the flat the sand before his boots became alive with tiny, shooting geysers of clean water. He set to work. And while he was thus engaged he heard suddenly a shrill outcry and a most mysterious sound up in one of the gullies toward the summit of Wreckers' Head. Here thousands of tons of sand had run out of the cut in the steep bank and formed a dykelike way to the beach itself. More and more sand was slipping down this way all the time. A strong man could scarcely make his way up the incline, the sand was so unstable. Tunis stood and stared up the slope. There shot into view, carried rapidly upon the forefront of the avalanche, a white-haired old man who waved a stick in one hand and a cocked pistol in the other, while from his mouth came shrill cries of excitement, if not of alarm. But it was what followed Cap'n Ira Ball--whom Tunis immediately recognized--that caused the captain of the _Seamew_ such utter surprise. Sitting on her rump, pawing at the sliding sand with her front hoofs, and whistling her terror and amazement, the Queen of Sheba appeared flying after the harassed old man. It was a scene to surprise more than to entertain the beholder. The avalanche promised disaster to the participants in it. Tons upon tons of sand, undulating and sinuous in appearance, traveled faster and yet faster behind the old gray mare and the gray old sea captain. The smoke of the slide hid all that lay behind them, and these wreaths of sand dust threatened a higher wave that might, at any moment, entirely overwhelm both the equine and the human victim of the catastrophe. Tunis dropped his clam hoe and started for the dyke of sand on the crest of which the old man and the old mare were sliding like naughty children down a woodshed roof. "Hey, Tunis! Tunis!" bawled the captain. "Take her off'n me! She'll be afoul my hawser in another second, I do believe." It was evident that he spoke of the Queen of Sheba, but Tunis could not see how the mare was intentionally threatening Cap'n Ira's peace of mind or safety of body. She was, however, "close aboard" Cap'n Ira as he tobogganed down the sandy way. "Stern all!" shouted the old man, throwing another startled, backward glance at the Queen of Sheba. "Drat the derned old critter! Don't she know nothin' at all? Tunis! Do you see what's goin' to happen?" While the young man had been running toward the ridge of sand, the avalanche bearing Cap'n Ira and the Queen of Sheba on its bosom swept down the slope of the huge windrow, but not altogether along its spine. The mass slid over one pitch of the ridge, and suddenly, following on the heels of Cap'n Ira's final question, the old man was shot to the beach, several tons of loose sand and the snorting mare almost on top of him. In fact, he would have been overwhelmed, and perhaps seriously hurt, had not Tunis Latham arrived at the spot at just the time Cap'n Ira did, and suddenly pulled out the old man. "What are you doing? Trying to run a race with Queenie?" demanded the captain of the _Seamew_. The mare had come down right side up, more by good luck than by good management. She stood deep in the sand, her naturally surprised expression vastly enhanced. In all her twenty-two years Queenie had never before gone through such an experience. "I swan!" ejaculated Cap'n Ira. "Ain't this the beatenest you ever heard of, Tunis?" Tunis stared from the old mare to the old mariner, especially at the cocked revolver in the captain's hand. He pointed at the tightly gripped weapon. "What's that for, Cap'n Ira?" he asked. "I--I--well, I swan!" stammered Cap'n Ira, now looking, himself, at the old seven-chambered revolver as though he had never seen it before. "I cal'late it does look sort o' funny to you, Tunis, to see me come sailing down this way, armed like a pirate." "I wouldn't call it exactly funny. But it is surprising," admitted Tunis. "And Queenie looks as surprised as anybody." "Yes, she does, for a fact," agreed Cap'n Ira, squinting across the heap of loose sand at the gray mare. "I kind o' wonder what she's thinking about." "I'm wondering hard enough myself," put in Tunis pointedly. "I swan!" murmured Cap'n Ira reflectively. He carefully lowered the hammer of the pistol, his cane stuck upright in the sand before him. Then he put the weapon back in the inside pocket of his coat. He tapped the knob of his cane for a pinch of snuff before he said another word. His mighty "A-choon!" startled the Queen of Sheba almost as it startled Prudence. "Avast!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "Did you ever see such a scary old lubber, Tunis?" "But what's it all about?" again demanded the younger man, seizing the rope halter and aiding the mare to flounder out upon the firmer sand below high-water mark. "What are you doing up so early? And what were you going to do with Queenie?" "I swan!" groaned Cap'n Ira again. "I don't wonder that you ask me that. It don't really seem reasonable that a sane man would get in such a jam, does it? Me and the Queen of Sheby sailin' down that sand pile. Tunis! We'll never be able to get up it in this world." "No. You must come along to our road, and get up that way," his young friend told him. "It is longer, but easier. But tell me how you came down that gully, you and Queenie?" "I'm sort of ashamed to tell you, Tunis, and that's a fact," the old captain said, wagging his head. "And don't you ever tell Prudence." "I'll not say a word to Aunt Prue," promised the captain of the _Seamew_. "Yet," grumbled the old man, "that dratted Queen of Sheby is too much for Prudence. You see yourself only yesterday how she is like to come to her death because of the mare." "I know that you should have somebody living with you, Cap'n Ira," urged Tunis. "But what does _this_ mean?" "I--I can't scurcely tell you, Tunis. I swan! I was goin' to murder the old critter." "What do you mean?" gasped Tunis in apparent horror. "Not Aunt Prue?" "What's the matter with you?" snapped Cap'n Ira. "I mean that old mare. I was going to murder her in cold blood, only the sand slide wrecked my plans." "If you had killed her, Aunt Prue would have had hard work to forgive you. Come on now. I'll lead Queenie up to our barn. Let her stay there for a spell. I tell you, Cap'n Ira, you and Aunt Prue must have somebody to live with you." "Who?" "Get a girl from the port." "Huh! One o' them Portygees? They're as dirty and useless in the kitchen as their men folks are aboard ship." "Oh, they are not all like that!" objected the captain of the _Seamew_. "I've got a good crew of 'em aboard my schooner." "You think so. Wait till you get in a jam. And the men ain't so bad as the gals. All hussies." "I don't know, then, what you'll do." "I do," interrupted the old man, hobbling along the hard sand beside Tunis and the horse. "It's just like I told Prudence yesterday. I know just what we've got to do whether you or Prue or anybody else knows," and he was very emphatic. "Let's hear your plan, Cap'n," said Tunis. "It's like this," went on Cap'n Ira. "Prudence ain't got but one living relative, a grandniece, that's kin to her. That Ida May Bostwick we must have come and live with us, and that's all there is about it." Tunis stared. He said: "Never heard of her. She doesn't live anywhere around here, does she?" "No, no! Lives to Boston." "Boston!" Why was it Tunis Latham felt that his heart skipped a beat? Memory of that pale, violet-eyed girl who worked in the restaurant on Scollay Square flashed across his mind like a shooting star. Indeed, he was so confused that he heard only a little at first of Cap'n Ira's rambling explanation. Then he caught: "And if you will go to that address--Prue's got the street and number--and see Ida May Bostwick and tell her about us, you'd be doing us a kindness, Tunis." "Me?" exclaimed the startled captain of the _Seamew_. "Yes, you. The gal won't bite you. You're going to Boston next week, you say. Will you do it?" "Sure I will, Cap'n Ira," said the young man heartily. "It's a good move, and I'll say all I can to get the girl to come down here." "That's the boy! You're going on an errand of mercy; that's as sure as sure. Prue and me need that gal. And maybe she needs us. I don't know what sort of a place she works at, but no city job for a gal can be the equal of living down here on the Cape, with her own folks, as you might say. Yes, Tunis, you'll be doing an errand of mercy mebbe both ways." CHAPTER V LOOKING FOR IDA MAY The _Seamew_ was put in commission in a very few days. Tunis Latham had many friends in and about Big Wreck Cove, and he had little difficulty in picking up a cargo, which was loaded right at the port. As for the schooner's crew, Tunis could have filled every billet four times over had he so desired. But he had already picked his crew with some care. Mason Chapin was mate, a perfectly capable navigator who might have used his ticket to get a berth on a much larger craft than the _Seamew_. But he had an invalid wife and wished only to leave home on brief voyages. Johnny Lark was shipped as cook, with a Portygee boy, Tony, to help him. Forward, Horace Newbegin served as boatswain and Orion Latham was a sort of supercargo and general handy man. He was Tunis' cousin, several times removed. There were four Portygees to make up the company, a full crew for a sailing vessel of the tonnage of the _Seamew_. Yet every man was needed in handling her lofty canvas and in loading and unloading freight. With a well-stowed cargo below deck the schooner sailed even better than she had in ballast. She slipped out of the cove through the rather tortuous channel like an eel through the meshes of a broken trap. In the dawn, and with a fresh outside breeze just ruffling the sea into whitecaps, they broke out her upper sails and caught the very last breath of the gale the canvas would draw. Cap'n Ira, and even Prudence, had got up before daybreak to see the schooner pass. They watched her, turn and turn about at the spyglass, till she was blotted out by the distant fog bank. "I swan," said the old man, "when she heaves into view again I hope she'll have Ida May Bostwick aboard! That is what _I_ hope." "The dear girl!" breathed Prudence. It never crossed their simple minds that Ida May Bostwick might see this chance they offered her in a different light from that in which they looked at it. The old couple made their innocent plans for the welcoming of the "grandniece," positive that a happy future was in store for both Ida May and themselves. In Tunis Latham's mind there was more uncertainty regarding the mysterious Ida May Bostwick than there was in the minds of Cap'n Ira and Prudence. Whenever he considered his "errand of mercy" the captain of the _Seamew_ had a flash of that girl with the violet eyes who worked in the restaurant on Scollay Square. The Balls did not know where Ida May worked. Prudence only had obtained the lodging-house address of her young relative from Annabell Coffin, "she who was a Cuttle." Of course, it was merely a faint and tenuous possibility that Ida May was a waitress. Still fainter was the chance that she would prove to be the girl with the violet eyes that Tunis Latham remembered so distinctly. The Balls knew that she worked in a store, and all stores were the same to them. There might be a few hundred thousand other girls in Boston besides that particular girl whom he had saved from falling on the square. Nevertheless, when the _Seamew_ had unloaded and been warped to a berth in an outer tier of small craft to await her turn to load barrels and box shooks for a concern at Paulmouth, Captain Tunis started up into the city. He knew his way about Boston as well as any one not a native, and his first objective point was that restaurant on Scollay Square. It was the dogwatch when Tunis Latham entered the eating place, but the dogwatch here was not at the same time of day as aboard ship. The captain's first startled glance about the room assured him that there was not a girl employee in sight, not even at the cashier's desk, and very few customers. He ordered a late but hearty breakfast of the unshaven waiter in half-spoiled apron and coat who lounged over his table. "I thought they used to have girl waiters in this place?" the captain said when the man brought the tableware and glass of water. "On from 'leven till eight. You're too early if you got a jane in your eye, bo," was the ribald reply. "The boss is a good guy." He sneered in the direction of the black-haired, coarse-looking man in the cashier's cage. "He hires them girls for five dollars less a week than he'd have to pay union waiters, and he asks no questions." He closed his recital with a wink so full of meaning that Tunis' palm itched to slap him. But the guest's wind-bitten face betrayed no confusion nor further interest. The waiter judged he had mistaken his man, after all, and sheered off until the ordered viands were ready at the slide. He hesitated to question that coarse man, even to mention Ida May Bostwick's name to him. The waiter had misinterpreted his first remark about the waitresses. The proprietor might hold any question he asked regarding Ida May against the record of the violet-eyed girl, if by any wild possibility that should be her name. There was time still, he thought, to find her at her lodgings before she started for the restaurant, if she worked here. So Tunis paid his check and strode forth. The lodging of Ida May Bostwick was not in this neighborhood, of course, not even in the West End. In fact, it was in the South End, in one of those streets running more or less parallel to lower Shawmut Avenue. He took a car in the subway and got off near the address Prudence Ball had given him. To the mind of the Cape man, used as he was to the open spaces of both sea and land, these dingy blocks of brick houses, three and four stories in height, all quite alike in smoke and squalor and even in the pattern of the net curtains at their parlor windows, made as dreary a picture as he had ever imagined. He thought of that pale, slender, violet-eyed girl coming back to this ugly block at night, after long hours at the restaurant, having to look forward to nothing more beautiful, in all probability, inside the house where she lodged. Who would not be glad, overjoyed, indeed, to get away from such an environment? He found the number. The house was no worse and no better than its neighbors. By stains on the blistered bricks beside the door frame he gathered that scraps of paper advertising empty rooms had often been pasted there. He rang the bell at the top of the rail-guarded steps. After a time he rang again. He could hear the bell jangle somewhere in a distant part of the house. Nobody came in answer to his summons, not even after his third ring. At length the creaking, iron-barred gate in the area warned him that the main door at which he rang was not in use at that hour of the day. A woman in a house dress as ugly as the street itself, and with untidy gray hair and a bar of smut on her cheek, craned her neck from this opening to look up at him. "There's no use your ringing. I ain't got an empty room, young man," she announced. He descended spryly into the area before she could close the gate. Her near-sighted scowl misjudged him again, for she added: "Nor I don't want to buy anything." "One moment, ma'am," he cried. "I have nothing for sale. I'd like to see somebody who lodges here." "Who?" asked the woman, peering at him curiously. "Miss Bostwick." "You'll have to come this evening." "Oh! She has--has gone to work already?" "My stars! Do you know what time it is, young man?" demanded the lodging-house keeper. "It's after ten o'clock." Already Tunis Latham's hopes began to sink. "Then--then she goes to work early?" "Lemme tell you, them that works for Hoskin & Marl have to show up by eight or they lose their jobs." "And she will not be in until evening?" he repeated. "'Bout seven. She gets her supper before she comes home. I don't give meals." "Where is this place she works at?" asked the captain of the _Seamew_, with a suppressed sigh. "Guess you are a stranger in town, aren't you?" said the curious landlady. "I thought everybody knew Hoskin & Marl's. It's on Tremont Street. The big department store." "Oh! Miss Bostwick works there?" "In the laces. You can't know her very well, young man." "I come from her folks down on the Cape," he thought it his duty to explain. "I've a message for her." "On the Cape? My stars! I never knowed she had any country relatives. Are they rich? They ain't died and left her a fortune, have they?" were the eager questions. "The ones I speak of are still alive," Tunis said gravely, backing up the steps to the sidewalk. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll go to that store and speak to her there. Thank you." Before she could evolve another question, Tunis had escaped. He walked smartly away, not only to outdistance the lodging-house keeper's voice, but because he was confused and disappointed. Ida May Bostwick could not work in a department store and in an eating house as well. Of course not! And now that this point was an established fact in his mind, he admitted that he had been utterly foolish to imagine for a moment that he had already met her, that she was the violet-eyed girl in whom he had taken an interest. Right at the start he had known that a girl working in an eating house like that was not the sort of person he could introduce to Aunt Lucretia. And so why had he imagined that she would prove to be the great-niece of Prudence Ball? It was ridiculous! Of course, this Ida May came of good Cape stock. At least, on one side of her family. The Honeys were as good as the Lathams or the Balls. Thus condemning his foolish fancies he strode downtown again. He knew where Hoskin & Marl's was. He had been in the place. When he reached the department store he marched straight in, meaning to have an immediate interview with the girl at the lace counter. CHAPTER VI AN UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW Tunis Latham suffered all the timidity of the average man when he got into the maze of that department store. There is a psychological reason for the haberdashery goods, the line for the mere male, being placed always within sight of a principal exit. The catacombs of Rome would be no more terrifying in prospect for a man than a venture into the farther intricacies of Hoskin & Marl's. The captain of the _Seamew_ could box the compass with the next seafarer, but he lost all idea of the points on the card before he had been three minutes in the store, and he had to hail a floor-walker to get his bearings. "Lace counter? Right this way, sir. Yes, sir. Just over there. Our--er--Miss Bostwick will serve you, sir. Forward!" The wind and sun had heightened Tunis Latham's naturally florid complexion to about as deep a red as can easily be imagined, but he felt the back of his neck and his ears burning as he approached the counter to which he was directed. A girl had detached herself from a group at the farther end, and now came toward him. All that he first saw clearly, however, was a pair of eyes staring at him from behind the counter. They were not violet eyes. The girl who owned those twinkling, needle-sharp eyes was nothing like that girl he had been thinking of so much since his previous visit to Boston. She was rather small, dressed in the extreme mode in a cheap way, wearing a tawdry gilt chain, several rings, and a wrist watch. There was something about her which reminded Tunis very strongly of the girls of Portygee Town, although she was a pronounced blonde. Her hair was really her only attractive possession. Those sharp brown eyes did not please Tunis Latham at all. And there was a certain smart boldness in her manner, too, which caused him a distinct feeling of repugnance. He plunged into his errand with all the boldness that a bashful man usually displays when he finally gets his courage to the sticking point. "You are Miss Bostwick?" he asked. "What kind of lace--goodness! Who are you?" asked the girl, her stilted, saleslady manner changing to amazement with surprising suddenness. "I live at Big Wreck Cove. I guess you've heard of it," said Tunis. "Big Wreck Cove? Do tell!" Her eyes danced. "You're from down on the Cape, then. I guess you want some lace for your wife. What kind did she send you for?" Tunis brushed this aside bluntly. "I don't want any lace," he told her. "I come from your aunt, Mrs. Ira Ball." "My aunt? Fancy!" "She has heard about you," went on Tunis. "I guess she thought a heap of your mother. She--she'd like to see you, Mrs. Ball would." The girl patted her hair into place with a languid hand. Her lips parted in a teasing smile. This "hick" really amused her. "Just to think! Would she?" she drawled. "Is she in town?" "Who? Mrs. Ball? I should say not. She's down at Big Wreck Cove, I tell you." "Oh, really? I thought by the way you spoke she was outside--in her car." She tossed her head with that same tantalizing smile, almost a grimace. "What did you want to tell me?" Tunis realized that he could not talk to her here, after all. The idle girls at the end of the counter were already whispering, and their smiles were poignant javelins of ridicule. The captain of the _Seamew_ knew that he was far beyond his depth. "Where can I talk to you?" he asked. "I get away for my lunch hour in a few minutes. I could talk to you then. But us girls ain't supposed to entertain our friends at the counter." She flashed him another amused and quite comprehending glance. "I've a message for you from Aunt Prue and the captain. Captain Ira Ball. He's her husband," explained Tunis jerkily. "Oh, really? Mr. Judson is coming this way." She flirted open a card of cheap lace lying on the counter. "Won't this do, sir?" "Cat's foot! I don't want any lace," growled the captain of the _Seamew_. "And I don't want to lose my job," rejoined the girl sharply. "Where'll I meet you so we can talk?" "At twelve forty-five," hissed the girl out of the corner of her mouth, beginning to wind up the lace again. "Back entrance to the store." Then, aloud: "Sorry, sir. We haven't any cheaper quality in that pattern." He knew she was ridiculing him. He was cognizant, however, of the department head's hard stare and the amused glances of the other saleswomen. He strode out of the store, and on the sidewalk halted to mop his face and neck with a blue-bordered handkerchief. "She's as sassy as a chipmunk. I declare! What would Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue do with a girl like her around the house? And the way she's dressed!" In his mind the idea germinated that he would be doing a far better thing if he did not go around to the employees' door and wait for Ida May Bostwick. What sort of life would she lead the two old people down there on Wreckers' Head? He actually shrank from being a party to such an arrangement. Not for a moment did he think that Miss Bostwick might not jump at the chance to change her place of residence from a South End lodging house to the Ball homestead overlooking Big Wreck Cove and the sea. He had seen that she was afraid of her boss in the store. The rules there must be very strict. He had noted that everything about the girl, her apparel and her ornaments, was cheap and tawdry. She must be both poor and unhappy. Why should she not jump at the chance of bettering herself? What would Cap'n Ira say when he caught his first glimpse of that painted and powdered face? How could good Aunt Prue take to her heart the bold, jeering shopgirl, evidently born and bred as far from the old standards of Cape Cod breeding as could be imagined? No matter how fine a girl Sarah Honey was, her daughter was of a cheap city type. But Tunis Latham did not stand in the position of a judge. He had not been told to use his powers of observation before placing the Balls' offer before Ida May Bostwick. He had no discretion in the matter at all. So he went around to the street behind Hoskin & Marl's at the required time and spent five or ten minutes backed up against a blank wall under the sharp scrutiny of every girl who hurried out of the big store on her way to lunch. Ida May came, at last. Tunis Latham in his go-ashore uniform and cap was no unsightly figure. A stern tranquillity of countenance lent him dignity. He attracted a certain respect wherever he went, but, as has been said, there was nothing harsh in his appearance. The girl gave him an appraising scrutiny as she walked toward him. While covering those few yards she made up her mind about Tunis on several points. One was that she would not lunch this noon at any cafeteria or automat! "Really," she said, with downcast glance, as the man got into step beside her, "I don't feel that I know you well enough to talk to you at all, Mister--Mister--" "My name's Tunis Latham. I'm owner and skipper of the schooner _Seamew_. I live right handy to your uncle and aunt." "Goodness! You don't mean I've got an uncle and aunt down there on the Cape? I never heard of them." "They are your great-uncle and great-aunt. Aunt Prue must have been your mother's own aunt." "So you are my Cousin--er--Tunis?" His face flamed and he did not look at her. "That doesn't follow," he said. "Aunt Prue is my aunt only in a manner of speaking. But she is your blood relation." "Yes? I suppose she's a dear old soul?" "They are mighty nice folks," Tunis replied stoutly. "As nice as any in all Barnstable County." "But--er--sort of simple?" The girl asked it with a perfectly innocent countenance. Tunis flashed her a look that showed comprehension. "Just about as simple as I am," he said. "Oh!" "Where'll we go to eat?" he asked cheerfully, considering that he had the best of it so far. They came out upon Tremont Street and now started downtown. He desired to get no nearer to that eating house on Scollay Square. At least, not with his present companion. "There's the Barquette," said Miss Bostwick, with the air of one used daily to the grandeur of such hostelries. But Tunis had seen her lodgings! However, her airs amused him, and Tunis Latham was no penny-squeezer. He headed straight in for the dining room, where a gloriously appareled negro head waiter appraised him as being "all right," and Ida May got by, without knowing it, upon the captain's substantial appearance. While the waiter was away, Tunis bluntly put his errand before her. He felt it his duty to make the offer as attractive as possible. But he did not make small the fact that the Balls were old and needed her services. "Goodness! What do they want me for--a nurse?" she demanded tartly. The question put Tunis on his mettle. He explained that Cap'n Ira and his wife were comfortably "fixed," as Cape people considered comfort, with a home free and clear of all encumbrances, and investments that yielded a sufficient support. Ida May, as he understood it, would share their home and their means. "And you want I should go down to that place and live on pollack and potatoes till them folks die, for the sake of just a _home_?" she demanded, her brown eyes snapping. "_I_ don't want you to do anything," he pointed out coolly enough. "I am merely repeating their offer. They are your folks." "And I know all about what it is down there," the girl said quickly. "My mother came from there. She was glad enough to get away, too, I warrant. Why should I give up a good job and the city to live in such a dead-and-alive hole?" "That is for you to decide," Tunis replied, not without secret relief. He could not understand her attitude. He remembered that South End lodging house with secret horror. But evidently Ida May Bostwick was wedded to the tawdry conveniences and gayeties of city life. Tunis could not wholly understand why any sane person should assume this attitude; in fact, he suspected a good deal of it was put on. How could a girl, even one as inconsequential and flighty as Ida May evidently was, hold in contempt the offer he had brought her from Cap'n Ira and his wife? But he had done all that could be expected of him. All, indeed, that he thought wise. Disappointed as the old couple would be by Ida May's refusal, Tunis felt that to urge her to reconsider the matter would not be in the best interests of her elderly relatives. They needed a young companion there on Wreckers' Head, needed one very sorely, but not such a person as Ida May Bostwick. "Then, that will be your final answer, Miss Bostwick?" he said slowly, as Ida May played with her ice. "Say! I wouldn't go down to that hole for a million," scoffed the girl. "I guess you wouldn't stand it yourself, only you're off on your ship most of the time." "I like the Cape," he said briefly. "Never lived in the city, did you?" "I never did." "Then you don't know any better," she told him confidently. "And you don't really look like such a dead one, at that." "Thank you." She smiled saucily into his rather grim face. Then she opened her bag and deliberately powdered her nose before rising from the table. "Thanks for a pleasant hour," she drawled. "You tell Auntie and Uncle Josh to get a girl from the poor farm or somewhere to do their chores and tuck 'em in nights. _Me_, I don't mean to live out of sight of movie signs and electric lights. I'd like to see myself!" She was both rude and common. Tunis was glad to get out of the dining room. Ida May attracted altogether too much attention. And she had quite openly eyed his well-lined wallet when he paid the waiter. To a girl like Ida May, all was fish that swam into her net. Crude as she considered him, Tunis Latham was a man with some money. And he evidently knew how to spend it. "When you're in town I'd be glad to see you any time, Mr. Latham. Or do I say captain?" She smiled up at the big, broad-shouldered fellow bravely as she trotted along in the skirt that made her hobble like a cripple. The captain of the _Seamew_ did not respond very cordially, and quite overlooked her personal question. "I don't expect to spend much time in Boston," he said. "Thank you. Then I shall report to Aunt Prue and Cap'n Ira that you will not consider their offer at all?" "I should say not!" She laughed lightly. "You don't know, I guess, what we girls expect nowadays, if we give up our independence." "Independence!" snorted Tunis. "That's what I said," rejoined Ida May tartly. "When the store closes my time's my own. I can do as I please. And I've got nobody to please but myself. Oh, you don't understand at all, Captain Latham!" He said no more. Nor did he escort her farther than the corner. There he lifted his cap and took her offered hand. Although it was beringed and the nails were stained and polished, Tunis could not help noticing that Ida May's hand was not altogether clean. "Well, au revoir, captain!" she said lightly. "I hope I see you again." He bowed silently and watched her depart. The sunshine glinted gloriously upon her fluffy hair. "Fool's gold," he muttered. CHAPTER VII AT THE RESTAURANT The captain of the _Seamew_ found himself facing an unpleasant problem. How could he make the Balls, either Cap'n Ira or Prudence, understand the kind of girl Ida May was? How could he even bring them to understand that nothing he could have said would have ever made Ida May Bostwick see the situation in its true light? Why, the old couple could never be made to believe that a girl in her sane senses would turn down cold such a proposition as they had made. They would suspect that he had failed to put it to her in the proper light. His "errand of mercy," as Cap'n Ira had called it, had seemed so reasonable for both sides! Tunis realized that he had not overurged the matter to the girl. But there was a reason for that. The difficulty would be in explaining to the Balls just how unsuitable Ida May was. They would never believe that the daughter of Sarah Honey could be such a cheap and inconsequential person as she had actually proved to be. "It's going to hit 'em 'twixt wind and water, and hit 'em hard," muttered the captain of the _Seamew_. "One thing that girl said was right, I guess. They'd better get somebody from the poor farm, rather than take her into their house. Such a creature would be happier with the Balls, and make them happier. But it's pretty tough when those of your own blood go back on you." The experience had left a bad taste in Tunis Latham's mouth. He hoped heartily that he would never see Ida May Bostwick again. He never intended to if he could help it. To take his mind off the fiasco entirely, he hopped on to a car and rode out to the art museum and spent the afternoon in the quiet galleries where the masters, little and great, are hung. He came downtown at nightfall, threading the paths of the public gardens and the common malls of Charles and Beacon Streets, with a feeling of immense calm in his soul. Tunis Latham possessed keenly contrasting attributes of character. On the one hand he was of a rather practical mind and thought; on the other, his love of beauty and appreciation of nature's greater forces might have made of him an artist under more liberal conditions of birth and breeding. Ida May Bostwick had rasped all the finer feelings of the captain of the _Seamew_. He was happy to be able to get her out of his mind. In fact, he had put aside thought of any girl. Romance no longer enmeshed his cogitations. He was utterly calm, unruffled, serene, as he descended by the twists and turns of certain streets beyond the State House and came out finally upon the now lighted and bustling square. He halted, like a pointer dog, before the eating place where he had had breakfast. Tunis Latham felt a certain shock. That girl with the violet eyes had been farthest from his thought at the moment, and for some hours now. He had lumped together the whole girl question and had relegated it to the back of his mind. And perhaps he was cured. He looked at it more sensibly after the first moment. It was not thought of the girl that had brought him here. Habit is strong in most of us. The urge of a healthy appetite was more likely what had caused him to halt before the restaurant door. It was after seven. Following his walk from the Back Bay it was little wonder that he was hungry. But should he enter this place? There were several other restaurants in sight of about the same standard. Tunis Latham did not make a practice of patronizing places similar to the Barquette when he ate alone. To pass on and enter another restaurant would be to confess weakness. He really cared nothing about that girl with the violet eyes. She very probably was no better and no worse than Ida May Bostwick. All these city shopgirls were about of a pattern. He had allowed sentiment to sway him for a few hours. But sentiment had received a jolt during his interview with the girl from the lace department of Hoskin & Marl's. "Cat's foot!" ejaculated the captain of the _Seamew_. "I guess I'm not afraid to take another look at that girl, if she's in here. Probably two looks will be about all I want," and he grinned rather wryly as he approached the door. The place was well patronized at this hour; and the "lady help" was much in evidence, flying back and forth from tables to slide and "dealing 'em off the arm" with a rapidity and dexterity that was most amazing, Tunis thought. There was even a girl in the cashier's cage, while the black-haired man he had paid his check to that forenoon was walking about with a sharp eye for everything that went on. The Cape man started down the room for an empty seat. Somebody was ahead of him and he backed away. A soft voice, a voice that thrilled Tunis Latham before he saw the speaker at all, said just behind him: "There is a seat here, sir." He knew it was she of the violet eyes before he turned about. It seemed to the seaman the voice matched the beautiful eyes of which he had thought so often during the past few days. They must belong together! He turned to look at her. She was gathering up the soiled dishes from a table at which was an empty seat. First of all, Tunis secured it. Then he glanced keenly at the girl. Would she remember him? Had his face and appearance been photographed upon her memory as her face had been printed on his? She did not look at him then. She was busy clearing the enameled top of the table and wiping off the coffee stains and the wet rings made by the water glass. She had black hair and a great deal of it, deep black, glossy, fine of texture, and very well brushed. Black hair and those velvety violet eyes, the long, black lashes of which were a most delicate fringe! The brows were boldly dashed on against her smooth, almost colorless, but perfect skin. Tunis had never before seen any feminine loveliness the equal of this girl, this waitress in a cheap restaurant! Yet a casual glance would scarcely have discovered much attractive about the girl. Had he not looked so deep into her violet eyes at the instant of their first meeting, perhaps the captain of the _Seamew_ would never have given her the second glance. There was a timidity about her, a shrinking in her very attitude, that would naturally displease even an observant person. Her nose, mouth, and chin, were only ordinarily well formed. Nothing remarkable at all about them. But the texture of her skin, it seemed to the man, was the finest he had ever beheld. Her figure was slight, but supple. Every line, accentuated by the common black dress she wore, was graceful. Her throat was bare and she wore no ornament. His sharp gaze flashed to her left hand. It was guiltless of any band. He had begun to flush at the thought which prompted this last observation, and grabbed at a stained bill of fare to cover his sudden confusion. She moved away with the piled-up dishes. His gaze followed her covertly. Even her walk was graceful, not at all the hobble or the jerky pace or the slouch of the other waitresses. By and by she came back. She brought tableware and a glass of water. She placed them meticulously before him. Then, for the first time it seemed, she looked at Tunis Latham. She halted, her hand still upon the water glass. She quivered all over. The water slopped upon the table. "Oh, is it you, sir?" she said in that timid, breathless whisper he so well remembered. "Good evening," Tunis rejoined. "I hope you are well?" "Oh, yes, sir! Quite well. What will you have, sir?" She no longer looked at him. Her gaze was roving about her tables, but more often fixed upon the broad, alpaca-coated shoulders of the restaurant proprietor at the front of the room. Tunis ordered almost at random. She repeated the viands named. There was a tiny tendril of her hair that curled low upon her neck at one side, caressing the pale satin sheen of the skin. He felt an overpowering desire to lean forward and press his lips to the tiny curl! As though she comprehended his secret wish, a wave of color stained her throat and cheeks from the line of her frock to her hair. It poured up under the pallor of the skin, transfiguring her expression ravishingly. Instead of her countenance being rather wan and weary looking, in a moment it became as vivid as a freshly opened flower. She turned swiftly, departing with his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer. "A pip, I'll tell the world," was the neighbor's comment. "Whadjer s'pose brought her into this dump?" "The necessity for earning her living," replied Tunis, without looking again at the man. "With a face like that?" suggested the man, and fell wordless again, but not silent, as he attacked his soup. If there was an opportunity to speak to the girl again, Tunis could scarcely do so, he thought, for her own sake. It would attract the attention not only of the fellow beside him, but of others. He felt an overpowering desire, however, to talk with her. His recently born determination to have nothing more to do with any girl had melted like snow in July. That feeling, which had come through his experience with Ida May Bostwick, seemed a sacrilege when he considered this girl. The man beside him, noisily finishing his soup, ordered apple-meringue pie when the waitress returned with Tunis' order. The latter noted that her fingers still trembled when she placed his food before him. When she brought the pie she reached for the man's check and punched another hole in it. Tunis was careful not to raise his own eyes to her face. But all the time he was trying to invent some way by which he might further his acquaintance with her. He must be back at the _Seamew_ that night. Tomorrow the cargo would come aboard and, wind and tide being ordinarily favorable, the schooner would put to sea as soon as the hatches were battened down. He could not continue to come here to the restaurant for his meals and so grasp the frail chance of bolstering his acquaintance with the girl. Indeed, he felt that such an obvious course would utterly wreck any chance he might naturally have of knowing her better. The timidity she evinced was nothing put on. It was real. Its cause he could not fathom, but to Tunis Latham it seemed that this girl with the violet eyes was a gentle girl, if not gently bred, and that she shrank from contact with the rougher elements of life. How she came to be working in this place was not of moment to him. It would not have mattered to Tunis Latham where he had met her or under what circumstances; he only knew that there was a mysterious charm about her which attracted and held his heart captive. "Will you have anything more, sir?" The low, yet penetrating voice was in his ear. She hovered over his chair and her near presence thrilled him. He had not much more than played with the food. Now he replied briefly, without thinking: "Apple-meringue." "Yes, sir." His neighbor pushed back his chair and got up noisily. He picked up his check, glanced at it, and snorted. "Hey!" he said to the girl returning with Tunis' pie. "What's this for?" "Yes, sir?" "You've rung me up an extry nickel. What's the idea?" "Fifteen cents for meringue, sir." "Huh? Who had meringue? I had apple pie, plain apple pie. It's ten cents. This feller"--indicating Tunis--"ordered apple-meringue; not me." He held out the check for correction belligerently. "You ordered apple-meringue, sir, and I brought it. You ate it. The check is correct." Low and timid as the voice was, gently as the words were spoken, Tunis sensed an undercurrent of firmness and determination in the girl's character that he had not before suspected. "Say, you don't put nothing like that over on me!" exclaimed the man loudly. Tunis moved in his chair. He saw the black-haired man at the front of the restaurant swing about to face down the room. He had heard this unseemly disturbance. "I will call the manager." "And so will I--I'll call him good!" sneered the patron. "He knows that you crooks in here over-charge. He puts you up to it. That's why he hires jailbirds and--" Tunis had got up, pushed back his chair with his foot, and as the girl uttered a horrified gasp at the rough speech, he seized the man. His grip on the back of the fellow's coat between his shoulders brought a startled grunt from lips parted to continue his blackguardism. "Hey! What d'ye mean?" roared the fellow, as Tunis twisted him into the aisle. "You dog!" said the captain of the _Seamew_ in a low voice. "Down on your knees and ask the lady's pardon for that speech!" The black-haired man started toward them. His coarse face had a smile on it as vicious as the snarl of a tiger. He put up his hand in a gesture of command. "Beg her pardon!" repeated Tunis, and by the great weight of his hand crushed the squalling patron of the restaurant to his knees before the terrified girl. "Stop that! What do you mean?" cried the manager of the restaurant, still several yards away. The patrons of the place had been thinning out for the last few minutes. Most of those remaining were near the front. Some of the waitresses were already seated at a table next to the kitchen slide, eating their suppers. "Take him off me!" roared the man squirming on the floor under Tunis Latham's hand. "That thief of a girl set him on me. This is a nice thing, be overcharged and then assaulted!" He was talking for the benefit of the black-haired man. The latter swooped down upon them. His face was purple with wrath and his fat jowls trembled. "Let him up! Do you hear me?" he exclaimed. "He insulted this lady," said Tunis, indicating the waitress. "You just heard him repeat it. He'll beg her pardon or I'll wring his neck." "What do you mean?" cried the restaurant man. "What's the girl to you? One of her friends, are you? Well, you are doing her no good with me, I assure you." The captain of the _Seamew_ flung the little man face down upon the floor and held him there with his foot while he reached with both hands for the proprietor. He got him. The latter uttered a squeak like a captured rat. "You're another of the same breed, are you?" Tunis demanded. "You'll beg her pardon, too, or I'll crack the heads of the two of you together! Come!" He stood the man on his feet before the waitress with such force that his teeth rattled. He stooped and yanked the other to an upright posture likewise. The shrinking girl, Tunis noticed, was not weeping. She looked at all he did as though she approved. The other girls were shrieking. The cashier had run to the door and cried into the street for the police. But that violet-eyed girl, timid as she naturally was, did not open her lips. "She's a plucky little lady," thought Tunis Latham. "But somebody's got to stand up for her." CHAPTER VIII SHEILA The captain of the _Seamew_ held the two struggling, cursing men as though they were small boys. His eyes flamed a question at the girl. She understood and nodded, if ever so faintly. "I ought to send both of you to the hospital," said Tunis in a grim voice. "But I'm satisfied if you beg her pardon and let her go." This to the restaurant proprietor. The man opened his lips to emit something besides an apology, although the smaller man was already quelled. But the look in Tunis Latham's face made the black-haired man pause. "Well, she can't cause a disturbance here. But I meant no offense." The smaller man hastened to add: "So help me! I was that mad I didn't know what I said. I didn't mean nothing." Tunis nodded solemnly. "Get your coat and hat, miss," he said. "I guess it won't be a pleasant place for you to work in after this." She slipped away. Tunis let the men go. They both stepped away from him, panting, relaxing their shoulders, eyeing the young captain with as much curiosity as apprehension. Suddenly there was an added commotion at the front door. Tunis saw a policeman enter. The coarse-featured proprietor of the restaurant instantly recovered all his courage. "This way, officer! This way!" he cried. "Here's the man." At that moment Tunis felt a tug at his coat. He flashed a glance over his shoulder. It was the girl. She wore a little hat pulled down over all that black hair, and she was buttoning a shabby jacket. There was a way out by the alley; he well knew it. Nor was he anxious of appearing before either a police lieutenant or a magistrate for creating a disturbance in the place. "Run along. I'll be right behind you," he whispered. The policeman was some distance, and several tables away. Tunis looked to see if all was clear. The girl was just passing through the swinging door into the kitchen. Tunis stepped back, turned suddenly, while the restaurant proprietor was making ready to address the policeman, and leaped for the rear exit. "There he goes!" squealed the patron who had been the cause of the trouble. But nobody stopped Tunis Latham. At a flash, when he got into the kitchen, he saw the girl opening the outer door. The way was clear. He crossed the room in several quick strides and caught up with her. The startled chef and his assistants merely stared. The alley was empty, but they walked swiftly away from the square. The arc lamp on the corner which they approached sputtered continuously, like soda water bubbling out of a bottle. He looked down at her curiously in the flickering illumination from this lamp and found the girl looking up at him just as curiously. "That was an unwise thing to do. You might have been arrested," she said, ever so gently. Then she added: "And it has cost me my job." "That is the only thing that worries me," he rejoined promptly. "You need not mind, sir. I really am not sorry. I could not have stood it much longer. And Mr. Sellers paid yesterday." "So they don't owe you much on account, then," Tunis said soberly. "I came away without paying for my dinner. I'll pay the worth of my check to you; that'll help some." For the first time she laughed. Once he had sat all afternoon in a gully back of Big Wreck Cove in the pine woods and listened to the cheerful gurgle of a spring bubbling from under a stone. That silvery chuckle was repeated in this girl's laugh With all her timidity and shyness, she was naturally a cheerful body. That laugh was quite involuntary. "I think I may be able to get along," she said, with that quiet tone of finality which Tunis felt would keep the boldest man at a distance. "It is difficult, however, to get a position without references." "I'll go back and wring one out of him--when the cop has gone," grinned Tunis. "I don't think a reference from Mr. Sellers would do me much good," she sighed. "But at the time I took the place I was quite desperate." The captain of the _Seamew_ made no comment. They were walking up the hill through a quiet street. Of course, there was no pursuit. But the young man began to feel that he might have done the girl more harm than good by espousing her cause in the restaurant. Perhaps he had been too impulsive. "You--you can find other and more pleasant work, I am sure," he said with hesitation. "I hope you will forgive me for thrusting myself into your concerns, but I really could not stand for that man backing up your customer instead of you. He did order meringue pie. I heard him." She smiled, and he caught the faint flicker of it as it curved her lips and made her eyes shine for an instant. Minute following minute, she was becoming more attractive. His voice trembled when he spoke again: "I--I hope you will forgive me." "You did just what I should have expected my brother to do, if I had a brother," she replied frankly. "But few girls who work at Sellers' have brothers." "No?" Something in her voice, rather than in the words, startled Tunis. "Let me put it differently," she said, still with that gentle cadence which ameliorated the bitterness of her tone. "Girls who have brothers seldom fall into Sellers' clutches. You see, he is a last resort. He does not demand references, and he poses as a philanthropist." Tunis felt confused, in a maze. He could not imagine where the girl was tacking. He was keenly aware, however, that there was a mystery about her being employed at all in Sellers' restaurant. They came out at last upon the brow of the hill overlooking the Common. The lamps glimmered along Tremont Street through an opalescent haze which was stealing over the city from the bay. Without question they went down the steps side by side. There was a bench in a shadow and, without touching her, Tunis steered the girl's steps toward it. She sat down with an involuntary sigh of weariness. She had been on her feet most of the time since eleven o'clock. She relaxed in contact with the back of the bench, and he could see the contour of her throat and chin thrown up in relief against the background of shadow. The whole relaxed attitude of her slim body betrayed exhaustion. "I hope you will not blame me too severely," Tunis stammered. "I don't blame you." "I fear you will after you have taken time to think it over. But--but perhaps there may be some way in which I can repair the damage I have done." She looked at him levelly, curiously. "You are a seaman, are you not?" "I'm Tunis Latham. I own the schooner _Seamew_, and command her. We are going to run back and forth from Boston to the Cape--Cape Cod." "Oh! I could scarcely fill a position on your schooner, Captain Latham." She smiled again. It was a weary smile, however, not like the former flash of amusement she had shown. Her head drooped as her mind sank into unhappy retrospection. Tunis looked aside at her with a great hunger in his heart to take all her trouble--no matter what it was--upon his own mind and give her the freedom she needed. What or who the girl was did not matter. Even what she had done, or what she had not done meant little to Tunis Latham. She was the one girl in all this world who had ever interested him beyond a passing moment, and he was convinced that she alone would ever interest him. The cheap environment of their meeting meant nothing. If she was free, her own mistress, and he could get her, he meant to make this girl his wife. "You didn't tell me your name," he said directly. "Won't you? I have been frank with you." "Why, so you have," said the girl. There might have been a strata of laughter underlying the words; yet her face was sober enough. "If you really wish to know, Captain Latham, my name is Macklin." "_Miss_ Macklin?" he asked, a positive tremor in his voice. "Certainly. Sheila Macklin, spinster." Tunis drew a long breath. That was enough! He would take his chance in the game with any other man as long as she was not promised. But there was no use in spoiling everything by being too precipitate. The captain of the _Seamew_ might be simple, but he was not the man to ruin a thing through impulsiveness. That exhibition in the restaurant was hooked up with wrath. There had been an undercurrent of thought in his mind ever since he had met this girl for the second time, and it was quite a natural thought, comparing her with Ida May Bostwick. If Sheila Macklin had only been Ida May, after all! It was a ridiculous idea. Not a feature or betrayed trait of character was like any that the disappointing great-niece of Prudence Ball possessed. This girl sitting beside Tunis on the bench and Ida May Bostwick were as little alike as though they were inhabitants of two different worlds. He had begun to imagine, too, how well this girl beside him would fit into the needs of the old couple living there alone on Wreckers' Head. It was an idle thought, of course. He had no plan, or scheme, or definite suggestion in his mind. It was only a wish, a keen longing for an impossible conjunction of circumstances which would have enabled him to present Sheila Macklin to Cap'n Ira and Prudence and say: "This is the girl you sent me for." "Just what will you do now that you have lost that job, Miss Macklin?" Tunis asked abruptly. "Oh, after I am rested, I will go home!" He had a sudden flash of the memory of that stark lodging house where Ida May Bostwick lived, and he felt assured this girl's home could be no better. But he did not mention this thought. "I did not mean it just that way," he told her, smiling. "First you and I will go and get supper somewhere. I did not half finish mine, and you have had none at all." "I don't know about that," she interposed. "It is generous of you. But ought I to accept?" "You need not question that. We are going to be friends, Miss Macklin. Is it necessary for me to bring you references?" "It may be necessary for me to obtain a sponsor," she said, quite seriously. "You do not know a thing about me, Captain Latham." "You know nothing about me, except what I have told you." And he laughed. "And what I read in your countenance," she said soberly. He grinned at her, but rather ruefully. "I never knew my thoughts were advertised in my face." "Oh, no! Not that! But your character is. Otherwise I would not be sitting here with you." "I guess that's all right then," he declared with satisfaction. "Well, let's call it a draw. If you take me at face value, I'll take you at the same rating. Anyhow, we can risk going to supper together." "Well, somewhere to a quiet place. Don't take me where you are known, Captain Latham." "No?" He was puzzled again. "But, then, I am not known anywhere in Boston." "All the better. I ought not to lend myself in any way to making you possible future trouble." "I do not understand you, Miss Macklin." He sat up suddenly on the bench to look at her more sharply. There was an underlying, but important, meaning to her speech. "I know you do not understand," she rejoined gently. She sighed. "I must make you clearly see just who I am and the risk you run in associating with me." "The risk I run!" He uttered the words in both amazement and ridicule. "You do not quite understand, Captain Latham," she repeated in the same gentle tone. There was no raillery in her voice now. She was altogether serious. Her eyes, luminous, yet darkly unfathomable, were held full upon his face. He felt rather than saw that she was under a mental strain. The revelation she was about to make throbbed in her voice when she spoke again. "You do not quite understand. Sellers gives girls work in his restaurant who could by no possibility offer proper references, girls from the Protectory, from homes, as they are called; some, even, who have served jail sentences. I had been two years in the St. Andrew's School for Girls when I went to work for Sellers." CHAPTER IX A GIRL'S STORY There was a ringing in Tunis Latham's ears. As you make Paulmouth Harbor coming from seaward, on a thick day you hear the insistent tolling of the bell buoy over Bitter Reef. That was the distant, but incessant sound that the captain of the _Seamew_ seemed to hear as he sat on that bench on Boston Common beside this strange girl. Without being a prig, Tunis Latham was undeniably a good man. Whether he was altogether a wise man was perhaps a subject for argument. At least, his future conduct must settle that point. But for the moment, when Sheila Macklin had made her last statement, it seemed that every atom of thought and all ability to consider matters logically were drained out of the man's mind. That mind was perfectly blank. What the girl had said seemed mere sound, sound without meaning. He could not grasp its significance. And yet he knew it was tragic. It was something that had made the girl what she was. It explained all Tunis had been unable heretofore to understand about Sheila Macklin. That timidity, that whispering shyness, the shrinking from observation and from any attention, were all explained. She had suffered persecution and punishment, harsh and undeserved, that made her recoil from contact with other more fortunate people. She felt herself outcast, ostracized, and was unable to defend herself from malign fortune. Gradually Tunis regained his usual self-control. If Sheila had said anything following the bare statement that she had spent two years in the St. Andrew's Reformatory for Women, he had not comprehended it. Nor could he have told how long he sat silent on the bench getting control of his voice and of his tongue. When he did speak he said quite casually: "And what kind of a place is that--er--school, Miss Macklin?" "You can imagine. It harbors the weak-minded, the vicious, and the unfortunate runaway girls, thieves' consorts, and women of the streets. It is, I think, a little like hell, if there really is such a place, Captain Latham." The poignancy of expression in her voice and words made the man tremble. And yet she did not speak bitterly nor angrily. Her feeling was beyond all passion. It was the expression of a soul that had suffered everything and could no longer feel. That was just it, Tunis told himself. It explained her attitude, even the tone of her voice. She had endured and seen so much misery and heartache that there seemed nothing left for her to experience. "Can you bear to tell me what misfortune took you to that place?" he asked gently, yet fighting down all the time that desire to roar with rage. "Why do you not say 'crime,' Captain Latham?" she asked in that same low, strained voice. "Because I know that crime and you could not be associated, Miss Macklin," he said hoarsely. At that she began suddenly to weep. Not aloud, but with her hands pressed over her eyes and her shoulders, shaking with long, shuddering sobs which betrayed how the horror of past thoughts and experiences controlled her when once she gave way. Tunis Latham could have behaved like a madman. That berserk rage that had seized him in the restaurant welled up in his heart now. He gripped the back of the bench till the slat cracked. But there was no opponent here upon whom he could vent his violence that he longed to express. "Don't cry! For God's sake, don't cry!" he whispered hoarsely. "I know it was all a mistake. It must have been a mistake. How could anybody have been so wicked, so utterly senseless, as to believe you guilty of--of--what did they accuse you of?" "Stealing," whispered the girl. "'Stealing?' What nonsense!" He put a wealth of disdain into the words. She sat up straighter. She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him. Dark as it was on the bench, he could see that her expression was one of wonder. "Do--do you really feel that way about it, Captain Latham?" "It is ridiculous!" he acclaimed heartily. She sighed. Her momentary animation fell and she spoke again: "It did not seem ridiculous to the police or to the magistrate. I worked in a store. A piece of sterling silverware disappeared. Other pieces had previously been stolen. The police traced the last missing piece to a pawnshop. The pawnbroker testified that a girl pawned it. His identification of me was close enough to satisfy the judge." "My God!" "I was what they call a first offender. At least, I had no police record. Ordinarily I might have been let go under suspended sentence or been put on probation. But I had nobody to say a good word for me. I had been in Boston only a year, and I could not let people where I came from know about my trouble. Even if the judge had given me a jail sentence, I could have shortened it by good behavior. He did what he thought was best, I suppose. He considered me a hardened young criminal. He sent me to the St. Andrew's School until I was twenty-one--two years. Two long, long years. "Six months ago I got out and Sellers gave me a job. Now, that is all, Captain Latham. You will readily see my position. I do not want to go anywhere with you to eat where your friends are likely to see you." He uttered a sudden, stinging, harsh sound; then he removed his cap and bent toward her. "But what you have said--Why, were they all crazy? Couldn't they see that such a thing would be impossible for you? Impossible!" She put a hand gently on his arm to quiet his excitement, for others were passing. Her eyes glowed up into his for an instant. Her lips parted in a happier smile than he had seen on them before. "Then you will not get up from this bench, Captain Latham, and excuse yourself? I should not blame you if you did so." "Do you think I'm that kind of a fellow?" he demanded bluntly. "I--I told you I thought I had quite read your character in your face. But that is no reason why I should take advantage of your kindness to do you harm." "Harm? How do you mean, 'harm?'" "Sheila Macklin is a creature from a reformatory. She has been sentenced by a magistrate. She was arrested by the police. She was accused by her employers of theft, and the theft was proved. If any of your friends should see you with me, and I should be identified as the Sheila Macklin who was sentenced for stealing--" "Cat's foot!" ejaculated Tunis with a sudden reversion to his usual cheerful manner. "Are you going through the rest of your life feeling like that?" "Why shouldn't I? I am always expecting somebody to see and recognize me. Even in Sellers' place. That man this evening, when he called me 'jailbird'--" "I wish I had wrung his neck!" exclaimed the captain of the _Seamew_ heartily. "I appreciate your kindness." Her eyes twinkled. For a moment he caught a glimpse of what Sheila Macklin must have been before tragedy had come into her life. "You are a good, kind man, Captain Latham." "You just look on me as though I were your brother," he said sturdily. "You are not going to be alone any more, not really. If you had had friends before, when it happened, somebody to speak for you, I am sure nothing like what did happen to you could have happened." "I come of respectable people," she said quietly. "But they are all dead. I was an orphan before I came to Boston. The friends I had in the little inland town I came from would not have understood. They did not approve of my coming to the city at all. Oh, I wish I had not come!" "And now you ought not to stay here. Should you?" "What can I do? I must support myself. I cannot go back. I could not explain those two years. Yet I am always expecting somebody to make inquiry for Sheila Macklin. And then I cannot conceal my story longer." He nodded thoughtfully. It seemed that, once she had opened the dam of speech, she was glad to talk about herself and her trouble. "I do hate the city. I have been so unhappy here. If I were only a man I would start right out into the country. I would tramp until I found a place to work. You don't know what it means to be a girl, Captain Latham, and be in trouble." "I guess all city girls aren't alike after all," he said with a short laugh. Then he looked at her keenly again. "Do you know what sort of an errand brought me up into the city from T-Wharf to-day?" "What errand? I cannot imagine." "There are two old people down on the Cape that I am much interested in. They live near my home." He told her quietly, yet with earnestness, about Cap'n Ira and Prudence. He described their home and their need of some young person to live with them, somebody who would not only help them, but who would love to help them. Then he related, perhaps rather tartly, his experience with Ida May Bostwick. "What a foolish girl!" she breathed. "And she would not accept a chance like that?" "Lucky for Cap'n Ira and for Aunt Prue that she won't take up with their offer," he said grimly. "But I dread taking back word to them about her. It will be hard to make them understand. And then, they need the help a good girl could give them." "Captain Latham, if I only had a chance like that!" she exclaimed. "I'd work my fingers to the bone for a home like that, for shelter, and kindness, and--and--oh, well, some girls have all the best of it, I guess!" She sighed. It was half a sob. He saw her hands clasp tightly before her in the dusk. The gesture was like a prayer. He knew that her pale face was flushed with earnestness. He cleared his throat. "You have the chance, if you want it, Miss Macklin," he said. CHAPTER X THE PLOT There was a long minute of utter silence following Tunis Latham's last words. Then the girl's whisper, tense, yet shaking like a frightened child's: "You do not know what you are saying." "I know exactly what I am saying," he replied. "They--they would not have me." "They will welcome you--gladly." "Never! I am a stranger. They must be told all about me. They could never welcome Sheila Macklin." He knew that. He knew it only too well. She was just the sort of girl to make Cap'n Ira Ball and Prudence happy, to bring to their latter years the comfort and joy the old couple should have. But the Puritanism which, after all, ingrained their characters would never allow the Balls to welcome a girl with the stain Sheila Macklin bore upon her name. Tunis remembered clearly how scornfully Cap'n Ira had spoken of the possibility of their taking in a girl from the poor farm. Pride of family and of name is inbred in their class of New Englanders. The old people wanted a girl whom they could love and look upon as their own. They would welcome nobody else. They had set their minds and hearts upon Ida May Bostwick. The fact that Ida May failed to come up to their expectations, that she was perfectly worthless and inconsequential, did not open the way for another girl to be substituted for Ida May. Possibly Tunis might be successful in an attempt to interest the Balls in Sheila Macklin's case. But the girl did not want charity, not charity as the word is used in its general and harsher sense. Should she carry with her wherever she went this name which had been so smirched--the identity of Sheila Macklin, the ghost of whose past misfortune might rise to shame her at any time--the girl could never be happy. Did Tunis Latham succeed in getting the Balls to take Sheila in and give her a home, this story that so bowed her down would continually threaten its revelation, like a pirate ship hovering in the offing! And there was, too, a deeper reason why he could not introduce Sheila Macklin to Big Wreck Cove folk. It was no reason he could give the girl at this time. In some ways the captain of the _Seamew_ was wise enough. He felt that this was no time to put forward his personal and particular desires. Enough that she had admitted him to her friendship and had given him her confidence. She had accepted him in all good faith in a brotherly sense. He dared not spoil his influence with her by revealing a deeper interest. "We may as well look at this thing calmly and sensibly," Tunis said, answering her statement of what was indubitably a fact. "It is quite true my old neighbors would not accept you as Sheila Macklin. But they need you; no other kind of a girl would so suit their need. And you could not help loving them; nor they you, once they learned to know you." "I am sure I should love them," breathed Sheila. "Then, as you are just the person they want and their home is just the place you need for shelter, I am going to take you back with me." "Oh, Captain Latham! We--we can't do it. My name--somebody will some time be sure to hear about me, and the dreadful secret will come out." "No, it won't," said Tunis doggedly. "There will be no secret, not such as you mean, to come out." She gazed upon him in open-eyed surprise, her lips parted, her face aglow. "You mean--" "We'll leave Sheila Macklin sitting on this bench, if you will agree. She need never be traced from this point. Let her drop out of the ken of the whole world that knew her. The name can only bring you harm; it has brought you harm. Through it you are threatened with trouble, with disaster. Your whole future is menaced through that name and the stain upon it." She looked at him still, scarcely breathing. Latham did not realize the power he held over this girl at the moment. He was to her a living embodiment of the All Good. Almost any suggestion, no matter how reckless, he might have made, would have found an echo in her heart and the will to do it. To few is vouchsafed that knowledge which makes all clear before the mental vision. Tunis Latham's perspicacity did not compass this thing. He did not grasp the psychological moment, as we moderns call it, and consummate there and then the only reasonable and righteous plan that it was given him to complete. The captain of the _Seamew_ was a young man very much in love. He did not question this fact at all. But in his wildest imaginings he could never have believed that the girl beside him on this bench returned his passion, that she would even listen to his protestations of affection. Not for a long time, at least. Nor had he ever considered marriage as possible in any case when there was not love on both sides. Although he commiserated Sheila Macklin's situation most deeply, he could not dream of those depths of despair into which the girl's heart had sunk before he came upon the scene of action. He did not understand that she was at that bitterly desperate point where she would grasp at any means of rescue which promised respectability. He almost feared to put before her the proposition he did have in his mind. In the dusk, even, those violet eyes seemed to look to the very bottom of his soul. Fortunate for him that its clarity was visible to the girl at that moment. He bent closer. His lips almost brushed her ear. He whispered several swift sentences into it. She listened. Some of that glow of exaltation drained out of her countenance, but it registered no disagreement. They sat for some time thereafter, talking, planning, this desperate young girl and the captain of the _Seamew_. * * * * * "What do you know about this?" Orion Latham growled. "The mate bunkin' in with cooky and the skipper slingin' a hammock in the fo'c's'le while the whole cabin's to be given up to a girl. A woman aboard! Never knew no good to come of that on any craft. What is this schooner, a passenger packet?" "You was sayin' she was already hoodooed," chuckled Horace Newbegin. "I cal'late a gal sailing one trip won't materially harm the _Seamew_ nor her crew." "Who is she? That's what I want to know," said the supercargo, who seemed to consider the matter a personal affront. "Skipper says she's going to live with Cap'n Ira Ball. She's some kin of his wife's. And they need somebody with 'em, up there in that lonesome place," said the ancient seaman reflectively. "That's what the skipper was doin' all day yesterday, lookin' this gal up and making arrangements for her going back to the _Seamew_. He's gone up town to get her now. We'll get away come the turn of the tide, if he's back in time." The taxicab with Tunis and the girl arrived in season for the tide. It was quite dark on the dock to which the _Seamew_ was still moored. The Captain hailed, and two of the hands were sent up for the trunk. Tunis carried the girl's hand bag. Every member of the crew was loitering on deck, even Johnny Lark and Tony, the boy, to get a glimpse of the mysterious passenger. They saw only a slender, graceful, quick-stepping figure, her face veiled, her hands neatly gloved. Just how she was dressed and what she really looked like only daylight would reveal. Tunis went below with her and remained until the men brought down the trunk. It was a small trunk and brand-new, as was the bag. Had one observed, the hat she wore, and even her simple frock, were likewise just out of the shop. At least the girl who was going with the _Seamew_ to Big Wreck Cove seemed to have made certain preparations for a new life. The captain came out on deck and closed the slide. The commercial tug was puffing in toward the _Seamew's_ berth. "Come alive, boys!" said Captain Latham, taking instant command of the deck. "Cast off those lines! Get that tug hawser inboard, Horry. Mr. Chapin, will you see that those lines are coiled down properly? Keep the deck shipshape. Make less work for your watch when we get under canvas. "Lay aft here with your men now, Horry. Tail on to those mainsheets. All together! Get away on her so we can cast loose as soon as possible from that smoky scuttle butt." He referred to the tug. He stepped aft to take the wheel himself. The mainsail was going up smartly. The old boatswain and the Portygees swung upon the lines with vehemence. There was not more than a capful of wind; but once let the canvas fill, and the schooner would get steerageway. "I'd rather take my chance through the channel under sail than depend on that tug," the captain added. "Like a puppy dragging around an old rubber boot. Lively there! Ready to cast off, Mr. Chapin." The schooner was freed of the "puffing abomination," the smoke of which sooted the _Seamew's_ clean sails. The heavy hawser splashed overboard and the schooner staggered away rather drunkenly at first, tacking among the larger craft anchored out there in the harbor. The wind was not a very helpful one and soon after midnight it fell almost calm. There were only light airs to urge the _Seamew_ on. Yet she glided through the starlit murk in a ghostly fashion as though some monstrous submarine hand forced her seaward. The water chuckled and gurgled under her bow, flashing in ripples now and then. There was no phosphorescence, no glitter or sparkle. The schooner moved on as through a tideless sea. Now and then a clutter of spars or a suit of listless sails loomed up in the dark. But even if the other craft likewise was tacking seaward, the _Seamew_ passed it and dropped it behind. Tunis paced the deck--Horry was at the wheel--and quite approved of the feat his schooner was performing. "If she can sail like this on only a breath of wind, what can she do in a gale?" he said buoyantly in the old man's hearing. "That's all right. She sails pretty. But I don't like that tug to sta'bo'd," growled Horry. "It 'minds me too much of the _Marlin B._" Captain Latham gave no heed. The sun stretched red beams from the horizon and took the _Seamew_, all dressed out at sunrise in her full suit of canvas, in his arms. She danced as lightly over the whitecaps that had sprung up with the breeze at dawn as though she had not a ton of ballast in her hold. Yet she was pretty well down to her Plimsoll mark. The girl's first glimpse through the cabin window at sea and sky was a heartening one. If she had sought repose with doubt, uncertainty, and some fear weighing upon her spirit, this beautiful morning was one to revive her courage. She was fully dressed and prepared to go on deck when Tunis tapped at the slide. "Miss Bostwick," he called, "any time you are ready the boy will come in and lay the table for breakfast." She ran to the companionway, pushed back the door, and appeared smiling in the frame of the doorway. "Good morning, captain!" Her cheerfulness was infectious. All night Tunis Latham, even while lying in his hammock in the forecastle, had been ruminating in anything but a cheerful mood. Determined as he was to carry his plan through, and confident as he was of its being a good one and eminently practical, he had been considering many chances which at first blush had not appeared to him. With his first look into her smiling countenance all those anxieties seemed dissipated. He met her smile with one which transfigured his own handsome face. "May I come out on deck, captain?" "We shall be honored by your company up here, Miss Bostwick." She even made him a little face in secret for the formality of his address, as she flashed past him. There was a dancing light in her eye he had not seen before--at least, not in the openness of day. There was something daring about her that was a revelation. He knew at once that he need not fear her attitude when they reached the point where she must carry on her part without his aid. She displayed an innocent boldness that must dissipate suspicion in the mind of the keenest critic. Tunis introduced Mason Chapin to her, who quite evidently liked the girl at once. Orion Latham lounged aft to meet her, his pale eyes betraying surprise as well as admiration. "Hi golly!" said the supercargo. "I guess you come honest by the Honey side of your family tree, Miss Bostwick, though you don't favor them much in looks." "'Rion is given to flattery," said the captain dryly. Horace Newbegin touched his forelock. He had been a naval man in his prime and knew what was expected when a lady trod the deck. The Portygees were all widely asmile. Indeed, the entire company of the _Seamew_ was cheered by the girl's presence. At breakfast time, which was served by Tony to the guest and the mate as well as Captain Latham, her sweet laughter floated out of the cabin and caught the attention of everybody on deck. Horry grinned wryly upon Orion. "How 'bout this schooner being hoodooed?" he rumbled in his deep bass. "Lemme tell you, boy, I'd sail to ary end o' the world with that gal for mascot. This won't be no Jonah ship while she's aboard." "Hi golly! Tunis Latham has all the luck," whined Orion. "Taking her down to live with Cap'n Ball and Prudence! Huh! She won't live with 'em long." "Why not?" demanded the old salt. "Can't you see what he's up to?" sneered Orion. "Aunt 'Cretia will be takin' a back seat 'fore long. 'Latham's Folly' will be getting a new mistress." "Latham's Folly" was a name Medway Latham's big brown house behind Wreckers' Head had gained soon after it was built. Such a huge house for so limited a family had suggested the term to the sharp-tongued Cape Codders. Horry Newbegin turned the idea and his quid over several times, then commented: "Well, the skipper wouldn't be doing so bad at that!" CHAPTER XI AT BIG WRECK COVE The girl had never been to sea before, not even on a pleasure boat down the harbor. The delights of a sail to Nantasket were quite unknown to her. Naturally this voyage out through the bay and into the illimitable ocean was sure to be either a delight or a most unpleasant experience. Happily it was the former. She proved to be a good sailor. "You was born for a sailor's bride, miss," Horry told her. But he said it when nobody else was by to see the blush which stained her cheek. And yet she did not look happy after the old salt's observation. He hastened to interest her in another theme. It was the tail of the afternoon watch. Because of the light and shifting airs the _Seamew_, in spite of her wonderful sailing qualities, had only then raised the northern extremity of the Cape and, turning on her heel, was now running out to sea again on the long leg of a tack into the southeast. Horry hung to the spokes of the wheel while the skipper was helping Orion make up the manifest. The steersman had jettisoned his usual quid of tobacco when the girl approached him, and without that aid to complacency Horry just had to talk. "Did you see the wheel jerk then, miss? That tug to sta'bo'd is the only fault I find with this here schooner. She's a right tidy craft, and Cap'n Tunis is a good judge of sailing ships, as his father was afore him. "But although this _Seamew_ looks like a new craft, she isn't. Sure, he knowed she wasn't new, Cap'n Tunis did, when he bought her up there to Marblehead. Only trouble is, he didn't seem to go quite deep enough into her antecedents, as the feller said. He bought her on the strength of her condition and the way she sailed on a trial trip." "Well, isn't that all right?" asked his listener. "How would one go about buying a ship?" "Huh--ship? Well, a schooner ain't a ship, Miss Bostwick. Howsomever, buying a schooner is like buying a race horse. You want to know _his_ pedigree. They said the _Seamew_ had been brought up from the Gulf to sell. And maybe she was. But she is Yankee built, every timber and rope of her. She warn't built down South none." "Shouldn't that make the bargain all the more satisfactory?" queried the girl, smiling. "Ordinarily, yes, ma'am. But it looks like they was hidin' something. It looks like, too, she was built for sailing and fishing, not to be a cargo boat." "I think she is beautiful." "She is sightly, I grant ye," said Horace. "But there's something to be considered 'sides looks when a man is putting his money into a craft. As I say, her pedigree oughter be looked up. What was the schooner before they changed the slant of them masts, painted her over, and put a new name under her stern?" "I don't understand you at all, Mr. Newbegin," said the girl, staring at him with a strange look dawning in her own countenance. He bent toward her, after casting a knowing glance aloft. His weather-bitten face was preternaturally solemn. "Ye can't help havin' your suspicions 'bout ships or folks that are sailin' under cover. There's got to be some reason for a man changing his name and trying to get by on one that ain't his'n. Same with a schooner like this." "Oh!" "There is such things as hoodooed ships, Miss Bostwick, just like there is hoodooed folks," he said hoarsely, without seeming to notice her shrinking from him and her changed countenance. "Oh! Is there?" she inquired faintly. "Surest thing you know," acclaimed the old seaman with his most impressive manner. "There was a hoodooed schooner sailed out o' Salem some years back, the _Marlin B._ She had the same tug to sta'bo'd that I feel when I'm steerin' of this here schooner." The girl was recovering from her momentary excitement. She saw that Newbegin had no ulterior meaning in his speech. He shook his head and cast a wary glance toward the companionway to see that the skipper was not appearing from below. "Listen here, Miss Bostwick," he said hoarsely. "It's a mighty curious thing. I had just come back from a v'y'ge to New Guinea, and I thinks I'd like a trip to the Banks, not having been fishin' since I was a boy. I went to Sutro Brothers in Salem and got me a berth on the _Marlin B._ I marked that every man aboard her, skipper and all, warn't Salem men, nor yet from Gloucester nor Marblehead. But I didn't suspicion nothing. "Tell you, Miss Bostwick, them that goes down to the sea in ships runs against more than natur's wonders. There's mysteries that ain't to be explained, scurce to be spoke of. I dunno why we shouldn't believe in spirits and ghosts and dead men come alive. The Bible's full of such, ain't it? "Well, then! And what I tell you is as sure, as sure. I took the _Marlin B._ out of that harbor, being at the wheel. It was February, and a nasty snow squall come up and smothered us complete and proper. That schooner was a hummer; she sailed just so pretty as this one. She did for a fact. But I felt that tug to sta'bo'd. Do you know, Miss Bostwick, as I was tellin' Cap'n Tunis, there ain't never two craft just alike, no more than there is two men." "Is that so?" she said. "Ships is almost human. I never did see two so much alike as this _Seamew_ and the _Marlin B._ Well, to continue, as the feller said, we was smothered in that snow squall for 'bout ten minutes. At the wheel there I heard off to windward the rushing sound of another craft. She was a tall ship, too, and she had as much canvas spread as we had. She came down on us like a shot. "I shouted to the mate, but he had heard it too. He yelled for all hands on deck. We both knowed the _Marlin B._ was due to be run under unless a miracle intervened. It was a moment I ain't likely to forget, for we stood there, the whole ship's company, hanging on by backstay and rail, peering out into the smother of the snow, while the amazing rush of that unknown craft deafened us. "Then out of her upper works--I swear I could see the tangle of ropes and slatting canvas--came a voice that rang in my ears for many a day, no matter how the others heard it. It shouted: "We're the spirits of them ye run under! We're the spirits of them ye run under!" "My soul and body, Miss Bostwick, but I was scairt!" confessed the old salt. "That rushing sound and the voices crashed on through our rigging and went down wind in a most amazing style. It was a ghost warning like nothing I'd ever heard before or since. And it struck the whole crew the same way. We begun to question what the _Marlin B._ was. She was a new schooner and had made but one trip to the Banks previous to this one we was on. We began to ask why her original crew had not stayed with her. "You can't fool sailormen, Miss Bostwick," continued the old man, shaking his head with great solemnity. "They sees too much and they knows too much. Sutro Brothers had got rid of the _Marlin B.'s_ first crew and picked up strangers, but murder will out. The story come to us through the night and in the snow squall. We couldn't stand for no murder ship. We made the skipper put back." "Why, wasn't that mutiny?" gasped the girl. "He was glad enough to turn back hisself. Even if he lost his ticket he would have turned back. Then we learned what it meant. On her first trip for fish, returning to Salem, the _Marlin B._ run under a smaller fishing craft and every soul aboard of her was lost. And it stands to reason that every time that murder schooner went out of the harbor and came to the spot where she'd run the other craft down, those uneasy souls would rise up and denounce the _Marlin B._" "Oh!" gasped the girl, startled, for Tunis Latham and Orion stood behind her. "Your tongue's hung in the middle and wags both ends, Horry," growled the young skipper. "You trying to scare Miss Bostwick out of her wits? What you poor, weak-minded, misguided fellows heard that time in the snow squall was a flock of black gulls coming down with the wind. And somebody aboard of the _Marlin B._ was a ventriloquist. Your whole crew weren't ignorant of the accident that happened on her first trip. Somebody had it in for Sutro Brothers, and made much of little, same as usual." "Oh, they _did_?" muttered Horry. "Anyway," said Captain Latham, "that's neither here nor there. We aren't sailing the _Marlin B._, for she's in Chilean waters, owned by a South American millionaire. You can stow that kind of talk, Horry--anyway, while Miss Bostwick is aboard." They were until late in the evening beating into Paulmouth Harbor, but the heavens were starlit and the air as soft as spring. The tolling of the bell buoy over Bitter Reef was mellow and soothing; they heard it for a long time before the _Seamew_ made the short leg of the final tack and went rushing in past the danger mark under the urge of a sudden puff of the fitful breeze. "The old bell is welcoming us, Ida May," Captain Latham said to the girl who reclined in a canvas chair which the cook had raked out of the lazaret for her use. "I've beat my way in here when it hasn't sounded so cheerful." "I am wondering what sort of welcome I shall receive when we get to--Wreckers' Head, do you call it?" she asked softly. "That'll be all right, too," he told her with confidence. "Just wait and see." They dropped anchor near the Main Street dock in order that they should be able to warp the schooner in to unload her cargo in the morning. Tunis allowed shore leave, late as the hour was. But he sat beside the passenger on the _Seamew's_ deck, and they talked. It was surprising how much those two found to talk about! Perhaps a good deal of their inconsequential chatter was to hide the anxiety each felt in secret as to the future. However, that talk was a memorable one for both Tunis Latham and the girl posing as Ida May Bostwick. Two young people can tell a great deal to each other under certain circumstances in the mid-watch of a starlit night. The lap, lap of the wavelets whispering against the schooner's hull, the drone of the surf on a distant bar, and the sounds of insect life from the shore were accompaniments to their long talk. Orion Latham, tumbling over the forward rail from a waterside dinghy, whispered hoarsely in Johnny Lark's ear: "What do you know about that? There they are, billin' and cooin', just where we left 'em when we went ashore. Wouldn't it sicken you?" But Johnny only grinned and chuckled, shaking the tiny gold rings in his ears till they sparkled in the faint light. He had a girl himself in Portygee Town, at Big Wreck Cove. The creaking of the hawsers and the "heave hos" of the crew as they warped the _Seamew_ in to the wharf awoke the girl passenger in the cabin. There was little fancy about the schooner's after house, but it was comfortable. There was a tarry smell about the place that rather pleased the girl. The lamp over the round table vibrated in its gimbals, but did not swing. There were several prints upon the walls of the cabin, prints which showed the rather exceptional taste of the _Seamew's_ master, for they had been tacked up since she had come into Tunis Latham's possession. There was, too, a somewhat faded photograph on a background of purple velvet, boxed in with glass, screwed to the forward stanchion. It was the photograph of an overhealthy-looking young woman, with scallops of hair pasted to her forehead undoubtedly with quince-seed pomatum, her basque wrinkled across her bust because of the high-shouldered cut of it. But it had been in the extreme mode when it was made and worn, in the eighties. The brooch which fastened the lace collar had been painted yellow by the "artist photographer" of that day, and even the earrings she wore had been touched up, or perhaps painted on with the air brush. This was Tunis Latham's mother, the girl who had seemed so promising an addition to the family in the opinion of Medway Latham, the builder of "Latham's Folly." The rather blowzy prettiness of Captain Randall Latham's young wife had been translated into real beauty in her son; for Tunis had got his physique and open, bold physiognomy from his mother. The girl lying in an upper berth, a close cap tied over her neatly braided hair, parted the cretonne curtains to look at these ornaments hung about the cabin. She realized that the photograph, so strangely contrasting with the prints of some of the world's masterpieces, was a sort of shrine to Tunis Latham. He revered the mother whom he had told the girl he could not remember of ever having seen. His love and admiration for that unknown mother had helped make the captain of the _Seamew_ what he was. He was a good man, a safe man for any girl to trust. And yet he was lending himself to a species of masquerade which, if ever it became known, would bring upon his head both derision and scorn. He risked this contumely cheerfully and with a reckless disregard for what might arise through the plans they had made while sitting beside each other on that bench on Boston Common. He would not admit the point of his own risk. He would not consider it when they had talked, only the night before, on the deck of the schooner. He scouted every possibility of any harm coming to him through their attempt to replace the girl in a firm niche in society and give the Cap'n Ira Balls what they needed of companionship and care. The girl sat up in the berth and let her bare legs dangle a moment before dropping to the rug. In her bare feet she padded to the photograph of Captain Randall Latham's young wife. The girl stood before the old photograph, her hands clasped, her gaze raised to the pictured face, as a votary might stand before the Madonna. There were tears in the girl's violet eyes. At that moment she was uplifted, carried out of herself by the wealth of feeling in her heart. Her lips moved. "I promise," she said softly, "I promise you that I will never do anything that will hurt him. I promise you that I will never let him do anything that may harm him. He has given me my chance. I promise before you and God that he shall not be sorry, ever, that he has raised me out of the dust." She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to the glass which covered the photograph. The wind held fair, a quartering offshore blow, and the schooner, having discharged her cargo, just past noon spread her upper sails, caught a gentle breeze of old Boreas, and shot out of the harbor and so to the southward with a following wind which brought her to the mouth of Big Wreck Cove long before nightfall. Upon the bluff of Wreckers' Head was to be dimly seen the sprawling Ball homestead. Tunis pointed it out to the passenger. "That is where you are going to be happy, Ida May," he said to her softly. "I wonder," murmured the girl. He looked down into her rapt face. The violet eyes were fixed upon the old house and the brown-and-green fields immediately surrounding it. Perhaps Cap'n Ira and Prudence were out there now, watching from the front yard the white-winged _Seamew_ threading so saucily the crooked passage into the cove, the sand bars on one hand and the serried teeth of the Lighthouse Point Reef on the other. Inside the cove the schooner's canvas was reduced smartly to merely a topsail and jib, the wind in which carried her close enough to Luiz Wharf for a line to be cast ashore. Tier upon tier of barrels of clams were stored under the open sheds, ready to be packed away in the _Seamew's_ hold. Orion loudly acclaimed against a malign fate. "Hi golly! Ain't we goin' to have no spare time at all? This running in a coasting packet is plain slavery; that's what it is! A man don't have a chance even to go home and change his socks 'tween trips." "Have a clean pair in your duffel bag; then you won't have to go home for 'em, 'Rion," advised Tunis. "We've got to make hay while the sun shines. There'll be loafing enough to cut into the profits by and by when bad weather breaks." Orion grunted pessimistically. Little in this world ever just suited Orion. "She's a hoodooed packet. I said it from the first," he muttered to Horry. "You know well enough what she was before they gave her a lick of paint and a new name. We'll all pay high yet for sailin' in her." "I wouldn't let Cap'n Tunis hear me say that 'nless I was seekin' a new berth," rejoined the old mariner. Tunis left the mate and Horry to carry on while he took the passenger ashore, meaning to spend the night himself at home with Aunt Lucretia. He stopped to get Eunez Pareta's father to harness up his old horse and transfer Miss Bostwick's trunk and bag to the Ball homestead. Eunez was in evidence--as she always was when Tunis came by--a bird of paradise indeed. Her languishing glances at Tunis flashed in their change to suspicious glares at the girl waiting in the roadway. "You have a guest, Tunis Latham?" she asked with a composure which scarcely hid her jealousy and doubt. "I'm taking her up to the Balls'. She's Mrs. Ball's niece, Eunez," Tunis said good-naturedly. He was always friendly with these Portygees. That was why he got along so well with them and they liked to work for him. Many of the Big Wreck Cove folk looked upon them even now as "furriners" who had to be shouted at if one would make them understood. "What does she come for?" asked Eunez sharply. "They need her up there. Mrs. Ball is feeble and so is the captain. She is going to live with them right along." "Ah-ha!" whispered Eunez, as he passed her to step outside the house again. She seized his arm and swung him around to face her, for she was strong. "You think she is pretty, Tunis?" she demanded. "Eh? What's eating on you, Eunez? I never stopped to think whether she was or not?" But he flushed, and she saw it. Eunez smiled in a way which might have puzzled Tunis Latham had he stopped to consider it. But he joined the girl who was waiting for him, and they went on up the road and out of the town without his giving a backward glance or thought to the fiery Portygee girl. When they mounted to the windswept headland the visitor looked about with glowing eyes, breathing deeply. The flush of excitement rose in her cheek. He knew that as far as the physical aspect of the place went, she was more rejoiced than ever she had expected to be. "Beautiful--and free," she whispered. "You've said it, now, Ida May," he agreed. "From up here it looks like the whole world was freer and a whole lot brighter. It is a great outlook." "And is that the house?" the girl asked, for in approaching the Ball homestead from this angle it looked different from its appearance as viewed standing on the deck of the inbound _Seamew_. "That is the Ball house, and Aunt Prue taking in her wash," Tunis replied. "I suppose she had John-Ed Williams' wife over to wash for her, but Myra will have gone home before this to get the supper. Tush! Aunt Prue ought not to try to do that." The fresh wind blowing over the headland filled every garment on the lines like ballooning sails. The frail, little old woman had to stand on tiptoe to get each article unpinned from the line. The wind wickedly sought to drag the linen from her grasp. Cap'n Ira, hobbling around from the front of the house, hailed his wife in some rancor: "I don't see why you have to do that. Don't we pay that woman for washing them clothes? And ain't she supposed to take 'em down off'n the halyards? I swan! You'll be inter that basket headfirst, yet, like ye was inter the grain chist. Look out!" "They wasn't all dry when Myra Williams went home, Ira. And I don't dare leave 'em out all night. Half of 'em would blow over the edge of the bluff. The wind is terrible strong." It was much too strong for her frail arms, that was sure. The captain turned in anger to look for help about the open common. He saw the two figures briskly moving up the road toward the house. "I swan! Who's this here?" he exclaimed. "Tunis Latham, and--and Ida May!" His face broadened into a delighted smile. He had seen the _Seamew_ come in, and had prayerfully hoped her master had brought the girl that he believed would be their salvation. This person with the captain of the _Seamew_ could only be Ida May Bostwick! At the moment Prudence was taking down her own starched, blue house dress from the line. It was hung like a pirate in chains by its sleeves, was blown out as round as a barrel, and was as stiff as a board. Just as the pins came out an extra heavy puff of wind shrieked around the corner of the house, as though it had been lying in wait for just this opportunity. The dress was whipped out of Aunt Prue's hands. She herself, as Cap'n Ira had warned her, was cast, face downward, into the half-filled clothes basket. The blue dress was whirled high in the air, skirt downward. Before the old man was warned by Prudence's muffled scream that something had gone wrong, the starched dress plumped down over his head and shoulders, and he was bound fast and blinded in its folds. "Drat the thing! What did I tell ye?" bawled Cap'n Ira. "Take this here thing off'n me! Want to make me more of an old Betty than I be a'ready--a-dressin' me in women's clothes? I swan!" CHAPTER XII A NEW HAND AT THE HELM Tunis ran to the old man's rescue, but it was the girl who lifted Prudence from out the laundry-basket. "Drat the thing!" ejaculated Cap'n Ira, fighting off the starched dress. "Feel like I was being smothered by a complete suit of sails. That you, Tunis?" "Yes, Cap'n Ira. You're all right now. Hold on! Don't let's mess up Aunt Prue's wrapper more than can be helped. 'Vast there!" "I swan! Don't it beat all what a pickle we get into? We ain't no more fit to be alone, me an' Prue, than a pair o' babies. For the lan's sake, Tunis! Who is that?" He was staring at the girl, who led forward the trembling old woman, her strong, young arms about the thin shoulders. Prudence was tearful but smiling. "This is the girl you sent me for," said the captain of the _Seamew_. The girl was smiling, too. To the delight of the young man there was no suspicion of fear or shyness in her expression. Her eyes were luminous. Her smile he thought would have ravished the heart of a misogynist. "I swan!" murmured Cap'n Ira, almost prayerfully. "Ain't she pretty, Ira?" cried Prudence, almost girlish herself in her new happiness. "Just like Sarah Honey was when she was Ida May's age. And ain't it sweet, her coming to us this way? She's brought her trunk. She's going to stay." "And I know I shall be happy here, Uncle Ira," said the girl, giving him her hand. Cap'n Ira's smile was as ecstatic as that of his wife. He looked sidewise at Tunis, a glance of considerable admiration. "It takes you to do it, Tunis. I couldn't have brought home a nicer lookin' gal myself. I swan!" "Now, you hesh your foolin', Ira," cried his wife, while the younger man's blush admitted unmistakably his feelings. "Don't you mind him, Ida May. Come into the house, now, and you, too, Tunis. We'll have supper in a jiffy." "No," said the captain of the _Seamew_. "I must be getting on. Aunt Lucretia will be expecting me, for, of course, she saw the schooner heading in for the cove. Good night, Ida May." He shook hands with her quietly. "I know you will be happy here, with your own folks." The girl looked deep into the young man's eyes; nor did she free her hand from his clasp immediately. At one side stood the two old people, both smiling, and not a little knowingly and slyly at each other, while the captain of the _Seamew_ and the girl bade each other good night. Cap'n Ira whispered in his wife's ear: "Look at that now! How long d'you think we'll be able to keep Ida May with us? I cal'late we'd better build our boundary fence a great sight higher and shut him out o' walkin' across this farm." But Prudence only struck at him with a gently admonitory hand. Tunis and Ida May had taken down the remainder of the wash and the former carried it into the house before he started on for his own home. The girl, walking behind the old couple into the homelike kitchen, sensed the warming hospitality of the place. It was just as though she had known all this before, as though, in some past time, she had called the Ball homestead _home_. "Lay off your hat and coat, Ida May, on the sitting-room lounge," said Prudence. "We'll have supper before I show you upstairs. Me and Ira sleep down here, but there's a nice, big room up there I've fixed up for you." "Before you were sure I could come?" the girl asked in some wonder. "She's got faith enough to move mountains, Prudence has," broke in Cap'n Ira proudly. "At least, I cal'late she's got enough to move this here Wreckers' Head if she set out to." And he chuckled. "But you believed Ida May would come, too. You said so, Ira," cried his wife. "I swan! I had to say it to keep up with you," he returned. "Otherwise you'd have sailed fathoms ahead of me. However, if you hadn't come, gal, neither of us could have well said to the other them bitterest of all human words: 'I told you so!'" "How could you suppose I would not come?" asked the girl gayly. "Who would refuse such a generous offer?" "I knowed you'd see it that way," said Prudence happily. "But there might have been circumstances we could not foresee," Cap'n Ira said. "You--you didn't have many friends where you was stopping?" "No _real_ friends." "Well, there is a difference, I cal'late. No young man, o' course, like Tunis Latham, for instance?" "Now, Ira!" admonished Prudence. But Ida May only laughed. "Nobody half as nice as Captain Latham," she said with honesty. "Well, I cal'late he would be hard to beat, even here on the Cape," agreed the inquisitive old man. He took a pinch of snuff and prepared to enjoy it. Suddenly remembering his wife's nervousness, he shouted in a high key: "Looker--out--Prue! _A-choon!_" "Good--Well, ye did warn me that time, Ira, for a fact. But if I had a cake in the oven 'stead of biscuit, I guess 'twould have fell flat with that shock. I do wish you could take snuff quiet. Look an' see, will you, Ida May, if those biscuits are burning?" The girl opened the oven door to view briefly the two pans of biscuit. "They are not even brown yet, Aunt Prue. But soon." "The creamed fish is done. I hope you like salt fish, Ida May?" "I adore it!" "Lucky you do," put in Cap'n Ira. "I can't say that I think it is actually 'adorable.' But then, I ain't been eatin' it as a steady shore diet much more'n sixty-five year." "Don't you run down your victuals, Ira," said his wife. "No, I don't cal'late to. But if I may be allowed to express my likes and dislikes, I got to be honest and say that there's victuals I eat that would have suited me better for a steady diet than pollack and potatoes. And now we don't even have the potatoes, 'cause we can't raise 'em no more." "But you have land. I see a garden," said Ida May briskly. "Yes, it's land," said Cap'n Ira, in the same pessimistic way. "But it ain't had a coat of shack fish for three years and this spring not much seaweed. Besides that, after the potatoes are planted, who is to hoe 'em and knock the bugs off?" "Oh!" commented Ida May, with a small shudder. He grinned broadly. "There's a whole lot o' work to farming. I'd rather plow the sea than plow the land, and that's no idle jest! Never could see how a man could be downright honest when he says he likes to putter with a garden. Why, it's working in one place all the time. When he looks up from his job, there's the same old reefs and shoals he's been beatin' about for years. No matter how often he shoots the sun, the computation's bound to be just the same. He's there, or thereabout." "That's the way with most longshoremen, Ida May," said Prudence, sighing. "They make awful poor farmers if they are good seamen. Can't seem to combine the two trades." "I cal'late that's so," agreed Cap'n Ira, his eyes twinkling. "They'd ought to examine all the babies born on the Cape first off, and them that ain't web-footed ought to be sent to agricultural school 'stead of to the fishing. But that ain't why our potato crop's a failure this year. And as far as I see, talking won't cure many fish, either." "Can't I help?" asked Ida May in her gentle voice. "You know, I've come here to work. I don't expect to play lady." "Well, I don't know. It ain't the kind of work you are used to." "I've been used to work all my life, and all kinds of work," interposed the girl bravely. "But you seem so eddicated," Prudence said. "Getting an education did not keep me from learning how to use my hands." "Well, Sarah Honey was a right good housekeeper," granted Prudence. At that the girl fell suddenly silent, as she did whenever Sarah Honey's name was mentioned. And yet she knew she must get used to such references to her presumed mother. Prudence frequently recalled incidents which had happened when Sarah Honey visited the Ball house before she was married. They had supper, a plentiful meal if there was not much variety. Prudence had made a "two-egg cake" and opened a jar of beach-plum preserves to follow the creamed fish and biscuits. "I must learn to make biscuit as good as these," said Ida May. "I expect you are more used to riz bread. City folks are. But on the Cape we don't have that much. Our men folks want hot bread at every meal. We pamper 'em," said Prudence. "I'm pampered 'most to death, that's a fact," grumbled Cap'n Ira. Ida May briskly cleared the table and washed the dishes. She would not allow Prudence even to wipe them. "I'm sitting here like a lady, Ira," said the little old woman. "This child will work herself to death if we let her." "A willin' horse always does get driv' too fast," commented Cap'n Ira. "A new broom sweeps clean," laughed the girl, rinsing out the dishcloths and hanging them on the line behind the stove. They went outside in the gloaming and sat in a sheltered nook where they could watch the lights twinkling all along the coast to the southward, the revolving lantern at Lighthouse Point, the steady beacon on Eagle's Head, and now and then the flash of the great one of Monomoy Point so far away. It was peaceful, quiet, assuring, and, the girl thought, heavenly! She thought for a moment of Sellers' restaurant and the little room she had occupied on Hanover Street. _This_ was contentment. Old Pareta had brought her trunk and bag and carried them up to the big, well-furnished room she was to occupy. By and by Prudence went up with her to see that she was made comfortable there, and to watch her unpack, for the old woman was not without curiosity regarding the "city fashions." One window of the room looked to the north. Through this Ida May saw the steady beam of a lamp shining from a house down in what seemed to be a depression behind the Head. She asked Prudence what that was. "That must be a light at 'Latham's Folly,' Tunis' house, you know," said the little old woman, likewise peering through the window. "Shouldn't be surprised if 'twas right in his room. He sleeps this end of the house. Yes, that's what it is." "So Captain Latham lives just there?" the girl said softly. "When he's ashore. He and his Aunt Lucretia. They are the only Lathams left of their branch of the family." Afterward, when Ida May had come upstairs to go to bed, she looked to the northward again. The light was still there. She knelt by the open window in her nightgown and watched the light for a long time. When it finally was extinguished she crept into bed. She heard the nasal tones of the two old people below, for her door on the stairs was open. She heard, too, the occasional cry of a night fowl and, in the distance, the barking of an uneasy watchdog. But after all, and in spite of the many, many thoughts which shuttled to and fro in her mind, she did not lie awake for long. It was a clear and sparkling night; there were no foghorns to disturb her dreams with their raucous warnings, and the surf along the beaches below the Head merely scuffed its way up and down the strand with a soothing "Hush! Hush-sh!" At dawn, however, there came a noise which roused the newcomer to Wreckers' Head. She awoke with a start. Something had clattered upon her window sill, that window looking toward the north. She sat upright in bed to listen. The clatter was repeated. In the dim, gray light she saw several tiny objects bounding into the room. She scrambled out of the high four-poster and shrugged her feet into slippers. She crept to the window, holding the nightgown close at the neck. She felt one of the tiny objects under the soft sole of her slipper and stooped to secure it. It was a pebble. More pebbles rattled on the window sill. She stepped forward then with considerable bravery, and looked down. What she saw at first startled her. A tall, misty, gray object stood below the window, something quite ghostly in appearance, something which moved in the dim light. "Why, what--" Then the thing stamped and blew a faint whinny. She saw a pale, long face raised and two pointed ears twitching above it. "A horse!" A darker figure rose up suddenly from before the strange animal. "Ida May!" "Why, Captain Latham!" "Cat's foot!" exclaimed the captain of the _Seamew_. "I thought I'd never wake you up without disturbing the old folks. No need to ask _you_ if you rested well." "Oh, gloriously!" whispered the girl, beaming down upon him, but keeping out of the full range of his vision. "Sorry I had to wake you, but I'm due at the wharf right now to see that the hands get those clams stowed aboard. We want to get away on the morning tide. I brought Queenie home and thought I'd better tell you." "Queenie?" "The Queen of Sheba, you know. I was telling you about Cap'n Ira's old mare." "Oh, yes! Wait. I'll dress and be right down." "That's all right," said Tunis. "I'll wait." She scurried into the clothes she had laid out before going to bed. In five minutes she crept down the stairs into the kitchen and out of the back door. Tunis, holding the sleepy mare by her rope bridle, met her between the kitchen ell and the barn. "You look as bright as a new penny," he chuckled. "But it's early yet for you to be astir. I'll put Queenie in her stable and show you where the feed is. Aunt Prue will like to have her back. She sets great store by the old mare. She won't be much bother to you, Ida May." "Nothing will ever be a bother to me here, Captain Latham," said the girl cheerfully. "That's the way to talk," he said, with satisfaction. "Just you keep on that tack, Ida May, and things will go swimmingly, I've no doubt." In ten minutes he was briskly on his way to the town. The girl watched him from the back stoop as long as he was to be seen in the morning mist. Then she went back into the house, made a more careful toilet, and when Cap'n Ira came hobbling into the kitchen an hour later breakfast was in preparation on the glowing stove. "I swan! This is comfort, and no mistake," chuckled the old man, rubbing his chin reflectively. "You're going to be a blessing in this house, Ida May." "I hope you'll always say so, Uncle Ira," returned the girl, smiling at him. "I cal'late. Now I'll get washed, but that derned shavin'." "You sit down in that rocker and I'll shave you," she said briskly. "Oh, I can do it! I shaved my own father when he was sick last--" She stopped, turned away, and fell silent. It was the first time she had spoken of either of her parents, but Cap'n Ira did not notice her sudden confusion. He prepared for the ordeal, making his own lather and opening the razor. "I can't strop it, Ida May," he groaned. "That's one of the things that's beyont my powers." She came to him with a clean towel which she tucked carefully in at the neckband of his shirt. Practically she lathered his face and rubbed the lather into the stubble with brisk hands. He grunted ecstatically, lying back in the chair in solid comfort. He eyed her manipulation of the razor on the strop with approval. For the first time in many a morning he was shaved neatly and with dispatch. When Prudence came feebly into the room, he hailed her delightedly. "You've lost your job, old woman!" he cried. "And ain't there a thing for me to do?" queried Prudence softly, yet smiling. "Just sit down at the table, auntie," said the girl. "The coffee is made. How long do you want your eggs boiled? The water is bubbling." "Eggs!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "I thought them hens of Prue's had give up layin' altogether." "I found some stolen nests in the barn," returned Ida May. "They have been playing tricks on you." It was near noon when Ida May from an upper window saw the _Seamew_ beating out of the cove on her return trip to Boston. She watched the schooner as long as the white sails were visible. But her heart was not wholly with the beautiful schooner. A great content filled her soul. Afterward she bustled about, straightening up the house, her cheerful smile always ready when the old folks spoke. They watched her with such a feeling of thankfulness as they could not openly express. After dinner she started on the ironing and proved herself to be as capable in that line as in everything else. "Maybe she's been a shopgirl, Ira," Prudence observed in private to her husband; "but Sarah Honey didn't neglect teaching her how to keep any man's home neat and proper." "Sh!" admonished Cap'n Ira. "Don't put no such ideas in the gal's head." "What ideas?" the old woman asked wonderingly. His eyes twinkled and he rewarded himself with a generous pinch of snuff before repeating his bon mot: "If you don't tell her she'll make some man a good wife, maybe she won't never know it! Looker out, Prudence! _A-choon!_" CHAPTER XIII SOME YOUNG MEN APPEAR A house plant brought out into the May sunshine and air expands almost immediately under the rejuvenating influences of improved conditions. Its leaves uncurl; its buds develop; it turns at once and gratefully to the business of growing which has been restricted during its incarceration indoors. So with Sheila Macklin--she who now proclaimed herself Ida May Bostwick and who was gladly welcomed as such by the old people at the Ball homestead on Wreckers' Head. After the girl's experiences of more than three years since leaving her home town, the surroundings of the house on the headland seemed an estate in paradise. As for the work which fell to her share, she enjoyed it. She felt that she could not do too much for the old people to repay them for this refuge they had given her. That Cap'n Ira and Prudence had no idea of the terrible predicament in which she had been placed previous to her coming made no difference to the girl's feeling of gratitude toward them. She had been serving a sentence in purgatory, and Tunis Latham's bold plan had opened the door of heaven to her. The timidity which had so marked her voice and manner when Tunis had first met her soon wore away. With Cap'n Ira and Prudence she was never shy, and when the captain of the _Seamew_ came back again he found such a different girl at the old house on Wreckers' Head that he could scarcely believe she was the Sheila Macklin who had told him her history on the bench on Boston Common. "I swan, Tunis," hoarsely announced Cap'n Ira, "you done a deed that deserves a monument equal to that over there to Plymouth. Them Pilgrim fathers--to say nothing of the mothers--never done no more beneficial thing than you did in bringing Ida May down here to stay along o' Prudence and me. And I cal'late Prue and me are more thankful to you than the red Indians was to the Pilgrims for coming ashore in Plymouth County and so puttin' the noses of Provincetown people out o' joint." He chuckled. "She's as sweet as them rose geraniums of Prue's and just as sightly looking. Did you ever notice how that black hair of hers sort of curls about her ears, and them ears like little, tiny seashells ye pick up 'long shore? Them curls just lays against her neck that pretty! I swan! I don't see how the young fellers kept their hands off her where she come from. Do you?" "Why, you old Don Juan!" exclaimed Tunis, grinning. "Ain't you ashamed of yourself?" "Me? Aha! I've come to that point of age and experience, Tunis, where whatever I say about the female sect can't be misconstrued. That's where I have the advantage of you." "Uh-huh!" agreed Tunis, nodding. "Now, if you begun raving about that gal's black hair--An' come to think of it, Tunis, her mother, Sarah Honey's hair was near 'bout red. Funny, ain't it?" "The Bostwicks must have been dark people," said Tunis evenly. But he remembered in a flash the "fool's gold" which had adorned in rich profusion the head of the girl in the lace department of Hoskin & Marl's. "Well, the Honeys warn't. None I ever see, leastways," announced Cap'n Ira. "Howsomever, Ida May fits her mother's maiden name in disposition, if ever a gal did. She's pure honey, Tunis; right from the comb! And she takes to everything around the house that handy." Prudence was equally enthusiastic. And Tunis Latham could see for himself many things which marked the régime of the newcomer at the Ball homestead as one of vast improvement over that past régime of the old couple, who had been forced to manage of late in ways which troubled their orderly souls. "Catch as catch can," was Cap'n Ball's way of expressing the condition of the household and other affairs before the advent of Ida May. Now matters were already getting to be "shipshape," and no observer could fail to note the increased comfort enjoyed by Cap'n Ira and Prudence. Nor need Tunis feel anxious, either, regarding the girl's state of mind or body. She was so blithe and cheerful that he could scarcely recall the picture of that girl who had waited upon him in the cheap restaurant on Scollay Square. Here was a transformation indeed! Nor had Ida May's activities been confined wholly to the house and the old folks' comfort. He noted that the wire fence of the chicken run was handily repaired; that Aunt Prue's few languishing flowers had been weeded; and that one end of the garden was the neater for the use of hoe and rake. It was too late in the season, of course, for much new growth in the vegetable beds; but the half-hearted attention of John-Ed, junior, had never brought about this metamorphosis, Tunis well knew. He went on to the Latham house, feeling well pleased. Aside from all other considerations, he was glad to know that his Machiavellian plan had brought about these good results. He did not have much time to spend with Sheila, for the _Seamew's_ freighting business was good. He never remained ashore but one night between trips, and he spent that evening with his Aunt Lucretia, whose enjoyment of his presence in the house was none the less keen because inarticulate. But when he started off across the fields for the port in the early morning he saw Sheila's rising light, and she was at the back door to greet him when he went past. They stole a little time to be together there, whispering outside the door so as not to awaken Cap'n Ira and Prudence. And Tunis Latham went on to the wharf where the _Seamew_ tied up with a warmth at his heart which he had never experienced before. That another girl rose betimes on these mornings and waited and watched for him to pass, the young schooner captain never noticed. That Eunez Pareta should be lingering about the edge of Portygee Town as he came down from the Head made small impression on his mind. He never particularly remarked her presence or her smile as being for him alone. It was that Eunez did not count in any of his calculations. "That girl at Cap'n Ball's place, Tunis," said the Portygee girl. "Does she like it up there?" "Oh, yes! She's getting on fine," was his careless response. "And will they keep her?" "Of course they will keep her." He laughed. "Who wouldn't, if they got the chance?" "_Si?_" Eunez commented sibilantly. Naturally, many people besides Eunez Pareta in and about Big Wreck Cove were interested in the coming of the stranger to Cap'n Ira Ball's. Those housewives who lived on Wreckers' Head and in the vicinity were able more easily to call at the Ball homestead for the express purpose of meeting and becoming acquainted with "Sarah Honey's daughter." And they did so. "I'd got into the way of thinking," remarked Cap'n Ball dryly, "that most folks--'ceptin' John-Ed and his wife--had got the notion we'd dried up here, Prue and me, and blowed away. Some of 'em ain't never come near in six months. I swan!" "Now, Ira," admonished his wife, "do have charity." "Charity? Huh! I'll take a pinch of snuff instead. That's a warnin', Prudence! _A-choon!_" Not until the second Sunday after the _Seamew_ had brought Ida May from Boston did Big Wreck Cove folk in general get a "good slant," as they expressed it, at the Balls' visitor. There was an ancient carryall in the barn, and on the Saturday previous little John-Ed was caught and made to clean this vehicle, rub up the green-molded harness, and give the Queen of Sheba more than "a lick and a promise" with the currycomb and brush. At ten o'clock on Sunday morning Sheila herself backed the gray mare out of her stable and harnessed her into the shafts of the carryall. "For a city gal, you are the handiest creature!" sighed Prudence, marveling. The girl only smiled. She was now used to such comments. They did not make her heart flutter as had any reference to her past life at first. The bell in the steeple of the green-blinded, white-painted church on the farther edge of the port was tinkling tinnily as the girl drove the old mare down the hill, with Cap'n Ira and Prudence in the rear seat of the carriage. "We ain't felt we could undertake churchgoing for months, Ida May," the old woman said. "And I miss Elder Minnett's sermons." "So do I," agreed her husband, with his usual caustic turn of speech. "I swan! I can sleep better under the elder's preaching than I can to home." "If you go to sleep to-day, Ira, I shall step on your foot," warned his wife. "You'd better take care which one you step on," rejoined Cap'n Ira. "I got a corn on one that jumps like an ulcerated tooth. If you touch that I shall likely surprise you more'n I do when I take snuff." The Portygees had a chapel devoted to their faith. The carriage passed that on the way to the Congregational Church. A girl, very dark as to features, very red as to lips, and dressed in very gay colors in spite of her destination, was mounting the chapel steps. She halted to stare particularly at the quietly dressed girl driving the gray mare. "Ain't that Pareta's girl, Ira?" asked Prudence. "I cal'late." "What a bold-looking thing she's grown to be! But she's pretty." "As a piney," agreed Cap'n Ira. "I reckon she sets all these Portygee boys by the ears. I hear tell two of 'em had a knife fight over her in Luiz's fish house some time ago. She'll raise real trouble in the town 'fore she's well and safely married." "That is awful," murmured the old woman, casting another glance back at the girl and wondering why Eunez Pareta scowled so hatefully after them. Following service, as usual, there was social intercourse on the steps of the church and at the horse sheds back of it. Particularly did the women gather about Aunt Prudence and Sheila. As for the men, both young and old, the newcomer's city ways and unmistakable beauty gave them much to gossip about. Several of the younger masculine members of Elder Minnett's congregation came almost to blows over the settlement of who should take the fly cloth off Queenie, back her around, and lead her out to the front of the church when the time came to drive back to the Head. In addition, Cap'n Ira found himself as popular with the young men as he was wont to be in the old days when he was making up his crew at the port for the _Susan Gatskill_. "Prudence," he said to his wife, but quite loud enough for the girl to hear as they drove sedately homeward, "I cal'late I shall have to buy me some shot and powder and load up the old gun I put away in the attic, thinking I wouldn't never go hunting no more." "Goodness gracious gallop!" ejaculated his wife. "What for? I cal'late you _won't_ go hunting at your time of life!" "I dunno. I may be forced to load it up for protection. But maybe rock salt will do instead of shot," said Cap'n Ira, still with soberness. "A feller has got a right to protect himself and his family." "Against what, I want to know?" "I can see the Ball place is about to be overrun with a passel of young sculpins that are going to be more annoying than a dose of snuff in your eye. That's right." "Why, how you talk!" "Didn't ye see 'em all standing around as we drove away from the church, casting sheep's eyes? And they're hating each other already like a hen hates dishwater. I swan!" "For the land's sake!" "No. For Ida May's sake," chuckled Cap'n Ira. "That's who I've got to defend with a shotgun." The girl flushed rosily, but she laughed, too. "You can leave them to me, Uncle Ira. I shall know how to get rid of them." "Maybe they won't come," said Prudence. "They won't? I swan!" snorted her husband. "They all see she's more'n half Honey. Couldn't keep 'em away any more than you can flies." It was quite as Cap'n Ira prophesied. The path from Big Wreck Cove across the fields to the Head, a path which had become grass-grown of late years, was soon worn smooth. It was a shorter way from the town than the wagon road. The errands invented by the youthful and more or less unattached male inhabitants of the port to bring them by this path through the Ball premises were most ingenious indeed. Early on Monday morning, while Sheila was hanging out her first lineful of clothes, Andrew Roby, clam basket and hoe on arm, appeared as the first of a long line of itinerant pedestrians who more or less bashfully bade Cap'n Ira good day as he sat in his armchair in the sun. "What's the matter?" asked the old man soberly. "All the clams give out down to the cove? I heard they was getting scarce. You got to come clean over here to the beaches, I cal'late, to find you a mess for dinner, Andy?" "Well--er--Cap'n Ira, mother was wishing for some big chowder clams," said young Roby, his eyes squinting sidewise at the slim figure of Sheila on tiptoe to reach the line. "Ye-as," considered the old man. "You got that cat still, Andy?" "The _Maybird?_ Oh, yes, sir!" "And there's a fair wind. She'd have taken you in half the time to the outer beaches, and saved your legs," said the caustic speaker. "But exercise is good for you, I don't dispute." A match, one might think, could easily have been touched off at Andrew's face. He had not much more to say, and went on without having the joy of more than a nod and smile from the busy Sheila. Then came Joshua Jones. Joshua usually was to be found behind his father's counter, the elder Jones being proprietor of one of the general stores in Big Wreck Cove. Joshua was a bustling young man with a reddish ruff of hair back of a bald brow, "side tabs" of the same hue as his hair before each red and freckled ear, and a nose a good deal like an eagle's beak. In fact, the upper part of his face--Cap'n Ira had often remarked it--was of noble proportions, while the lower part fell away surprisingly in a receding chin which seemed saved from being swallowed completely only by a very prominent Adam's apple. "I swan!" the captain had said judiciously. "It's more by good luck than good management that Josh's chin didn't fall into his stomach. Only that knob in his neck acts like a stopper." But when the lanky young storekeeper appeared on this occasion, Cap'n Ira hailed him cheerfully before Joshua could reach the back door. "Hi, Josh! You ain't goin' for clams, too, be ye?" "No, no, Cap'n Ira!" cried young Jones cheerfully. "I'm looking to pick up some eggs regular. We want to begin to ship again, and eggs seem to be staying in the nests. He, he! Has Mrs. Ball got any to spare?" "I don't cal'late she has. You see," said Cap'n Ira soberly, "we got another mouth to feed eggs to now. Did you know we had Ida May Bostwick visiting us? A young lady from Boston. Prue's niece, once removed." "Why--I--I--ahem! I saw her at church, Cap'n Ira," faltered Joshua. "Did ye, now?" rejoined Cap'n Ira, in apparent wonder. "I didn't suppose you would ever notice her, you not being much for the ladies, Joshua." "Oh, I ain't so blind!" giggled the young man, peering in through the kitchen door, where Sheila was stepping briskly from tubs to sink and back again. "That's a fortunate thing," agreed the old man. "But you've got a long v'y'ge before you, if you cal'late to go to all the houses on the Head to pick up eggs. Good luck to you, Joshua!" Josh found himself passed along like a country politician in line at a presidential reception. His legs got to working without volition, it seemed, and he was several rods away before he realized that he had not spoken to the girl at all. Zebedee Pauling, whose ancestor had been an admiral and was never forgotten by the Pauling family--Paulmouth was said to have been named in their honor--arrived at the Ball back door just as the family was finishing the usual "picked-up" washday dinner. Zebedee took off his cap with a flourish, and his grin advertised to all beholders the fact that he felt shy but pleased at his own courage in appearing thus on the Head. "Why, Zeb!" exclaimed Prudence. "We haven't seen you up here for a dog's age. Won't you set?" "Oh, no'm, no'm! I was just stopping by and thought I'd ask how are you all, Aunt Prue." He bobbed and smiled, but kept his gaze fixed upon Sheila to the exclusion of the two old people. But Cap'n Ira was never to be overlooked. "You're going to be mighty neighborly, now, Zeb," he said. "We shall see you often." "Er--I don't know, Cap'n Ira," stammered Zebedee, rather taken aback. The old man rose and hobbled toward the door with the aid of his cane, fumbling in his pocket meanwhile. "Here, Zeb," he said, producing a dime. "You're a willin' friend, I know. I'm running low on snuff. Get me a packet, will ye? American Affection is my brand. Just slip it in your pocket and bring it along with you when you come by to-morrow." "But--but I don't know as I shall be up this way to-morrow, Cap'n Ira. Though maybe I shall." And he glanced again at the smiling girl. "Course you will, or next day at the latest," said the old man stoutly. "I can see plainly that you ain't going to neglect Prue and me no more. And I shall want that snuff." "Well--er--Cap'n--" "If you don't come," pursued the perfectly sober captain, "you can hand the snuff to Andy Roby, or to Josh Jones, or to 'most any of the boys. They'll be up this way pretty near every day, I shouldn't wonder." Zebedee took the hint and the dime. He was no "slow coach" if he was longshore bred. He got the chance of carrying another heavy basket of clothes out to the lines for Sheila, who rewarded him with a smile, and then he nodded to the old man as he left. "I'll bring that snuff myself, Cap'n Ira," he assured him. "Don't it beat all?" queried the captain, shaking his head reflectively, as he resumed his seat. "Don't it beat all? For old folks, Prue, we do certainly seem to be popular." "Oh, you hesh!" exclaimed his wife. But Sheila giggled delightedly. The way Cap'n Ira handled the several visitors who thereafter came to Wreckers' Head continued to amuse the girl immensely. Nor did the visits cease. The Ball homestead was no longer a lonely habitation. Somebody was forever "just stopping by," as the expression ran; and the path from the port was trodden brown and sere as autumn drew on apace. CHAPTER XIV THE HARVEST HOME FESTIVAL It was not that Sheila Macklin had no graver moments. There were nights when, in spite of her healthful weariness of body, arising from the work of the household, she lay awake for long hours of restless, anxious thought. And sometimes her pillow was wet with tears. Yet she was not of a lachrymose disposition. She could not invent imaginary troubles or build in her mind gibbets on which remorse and sorrow might hang in chains. Indeed, how could she be sorrowful? Why should she feel remorse? She had taken another girl's name and claim of parentage, and she filled a place which the other girl might have had. But the rightful owner of the name had scorned this refuge. The real Ida May Bostwick had no appreciation of what the Balls had to offer, and she had been unwilling even to open communication with her relatives down on the Cape. Besides, Tunis Latham always cheered the girl who was playing an imposter's part with the declaration that she had done just right--that without her presence on Wreckers' Head Cap'n Ira and his wife would be in a very bad way, indeed. She could see that this was so. Her coming to them had been as great a blessing in their lives as it had been in her own. She fully realized that Cap'n Ira and his wife would not have admitted her to their home and to their hearts had she come in her own person and identity. This was not so much because of their strict morality as because of their strict Puritanism. For a puritan may not be moral always, but he must be just. And justice of that character is seldom tempered by mercy. What they might have forgiven the real Ida May they could scarcely be expected to forgive a stranger. In spite of this situation, the Balls were being blessed by the presence of a girl in their household who had been tainted with a sentence to a reformatory. Even now, when she knew they loved her and could scarcely imagine what they would do without her, Sheila Macklin was quite convinced that a whisper about these hidden miseries would turn Cap'n Ball, and even Prudence, against her. Therefore she was careful, putting a guard upon her tongue and almost keeping watch upon her secret thoughts. She never allowed herself to lapse into reverie in their presence for fear the old people might suspect that she had a past that would not endure open discussion. And, deliberately and with forethought, the intelligent girl went about strengthening her position with the Balls and making her identity as Ida May Bostwick unassailable. She had a retentive memory. Nothing Aunt Prudence ever said in her hearing about Sarah Honey, her ways when she was young, or what the old woman knew or surmised about her dead niece's marriage and her life thereafter, escaped the girl. She treasured it all. When visitors were by--especially the neighboring women who likewise remembered Sarah Honey--the masquerader often spoke in a way to reduce to a minimum any suspicion that she was not the rightful Ida May. Even a visit from Annabell Coffin--"she who was a Cuttle"--went off without a remark being made which would yield a grain of doubt. Mrs. Coffin had heard of Ida May while she visited "his folks" in Boston, in a most roundabout way. She did say to the girl, however: "Let's see, Ida May, didn't they tell me that you worked for a spell in one of them great stores? I wish you could see 'em, Aunt Prue! The Marshall & Denham department store on Washington Street covers acres--_acres_! Was it there that you worked, Ida May?" "No," replied Ida May calmly. "What store did you work in?" "Hoskin & Marl's," said the girl, still unruffled. "To be sure. That's what Esther Coffin said she heard, I remember. But I never got to that store. Couldn't go to all of 'em. It tired me to death, just going around Marshall & Denham's." This and similar incidents were building blocks in the structure which she was raising. Nor did she consider it a structure of deceit. The foundation only was of doubtful veracity. These people had accepted her as somebody she was not, it was true; but she gained nothing thereby that the real Ida May would not have had to win for herself. With Tunis approving and encouraging her, how could the girl spend much time in doubt or any at all in despair? She felt that she was a much better girl--morally as well as physically--in this environment than she had been for many, many months. Instead of being conscience wrung in playing the part of impostor and living under an assumed name and identity, she felt a sense of self-congratulation. And when in the company of the captain of the _Seamew_ she felt almost exalted. There was a pact between them that made their tie more than that of sister and brother. Yet, of love they never spoke--not during those first weeks on Wreckers' Head. He never failed to talk with Sheila as he came up from the town when the schooner lay at her moorings in the cove or was docked ready to discharge or take aboard freight. Business remained good, but all was not plain sailing for the young shipmaster. He confided in the girl many of his perplexities. When he went away again, rain or shine, the girl did not fail to be up and about when he passed the Ball homestead. He knew that she did this purposely--that she was on the watch for him. Her reason for doing so was not so clear to the young man, but he appreciated her interest. Was he overmodest? Perhaps. He might have gained courage regarding the girl's attitude toward him had he known that, on the nights he was at home, she sat in her darkened, upper room and watched the lamp he burned until it was extinguished. On the other hand, Tunis Latham's brotherly manner and cheerful kindness were a puzzle to Sheila. She knew that he had been kinder to her than any other man she had ever met. But what was the root of that kindness? There were many pleasant thoughts in Sheila's heart just now; nor did she allow the secret of her past to leave its acid scars upon her soul. She was the life and joy of the old house on the Head; she was the center of amusement when she went into company at the church or elsewhere. She managed, too, to be that marvelous specimen of beautiful womankind who can attract other girls as well as men. For one thing, the girl played no favorites. She treated them all alike. None of the young men of Big Wreck Cove could honestly crow because Ida May Bostwick had showed him any special favor. And none of them suspected that Tunis Latham had the inside track with the girl from the city. At least, this was unsuspected by all before the occasion of the "harvest-home festival"--that important affair held yearly by the ladies' aid of the Big Wreck Cove church. For the first time in more than a year, Cap'n Ira and Prudence ventured to town in the evening. Church socials, in the past, and while Cap'n Ira was so much at sea, had been Prudence Ball's chief relaxation. She was naturally of a social disposition, and the simple pleasure of being with and of a party of other matrons of the church was almost the height of Prudence's mundane desire. When Cap'n Ira heard her express the wish to go to the harvest-home festival he took an extra pinch of snuff. "I swan!" he said. "If we take that Queen of Sheby out at night, she'll near have a conniption. She'll think the world's come to an end. She ain't been out o' her stable at night since Hector was a pup--and Hector is a big dog now! How can you think of such a thing, Prudence?" "Queenie won't mind, I guess," said his wife calmly. "I shouldn't be surprised if you was saying one word for her and a good many more'n one for yourself, Ira." However, they went to the harvest-home festival. It was bound to be a very gay and enjoyable occasion, and Queenie did not stumble more than three times going down the hill into the port. "That old critter would be the death of us, if she could do it without being the death of herself, too," fumed Cap'n Ira. There were half a dozen young men almost fighting for the privilege of taking Queenie around to the sheds and blanketing her, the winner hopeful of a special smile and word from Sheila. The decorated church was well filled when the trio from Wreckers' Head entered, and most delicious odors rose from the basement, where the tables were laid. Sheila was immediately surrounded by her own little coterie of young people and was enjoying herself quietly when a newcomer, whose appearance created some little surprise at the door, approached the group of which the girl was the center. "Why, here's Orion Latham!" exclaimed one girl. "I didn't know the _Seamew_ was in." "We just made it by the skin of our teeth," Orion said, making it a point to shake hands with Sheila. "How are you, Miss Bostwick? I never did see such a Jonah of an old tub as that dratted schooner! I thought she never would get back this trip." "I cal'late you wouldn't think she was Jonahed if the _Seamew_ was yours, 'Rion," snickered Andrew Roby. "I wouldn't even take her as a gift," snarled Orion. "Guess you won't get her that way--if any," chuckled Joshua Jones. "Tunis, he knows which side o' the bread his butter's on. He's doin' well. We cal'late--pa and me--to have all our freight come down from Boston on the _Seamew_." Orion glowered at him. "You'd better have a care, Josh," he growled. "That schooner is hoodooed, as sure as sure! She'll stub her nose some night on Lighthouse Point Reef, if she don't do worse. You can't scurcely steer her proper." "Nonsense, 'Rion!" spoke up Zebedee Pauling. "I'd like to sail on her myself." "Perhaps," Sheila interposed, rather flushed, and looking at Orion with unmistakable displeasure, "Orion will give up his berth to you, Zebedee. He seems so very sure that the schooner is unlucky. I came down from Boston in her, and I saw nothing about her save to admire." "And if you found her all right, Miss Bostwick," struck in the gallant Joshua, "she's good enough for me. Of course, I heard tell some thought the _Seamew_ had a bad reputation--that she run under a fishing boat once and was haunted. But I cal'late that's all bosh." "Yah!" growled Orion. "Have it your own way. But after the dratted schooner is sunk and you lose a mess of freight, Josh Jones, I guess you'll sing small." "I've heard," said Andrew Roby gravely, "that it's mighty bad manners to bite the hand that feeds you. You never was overpolite, 'Rion Latham." "Not only that, but he's clean reckless with his own livelihood," added Zebedee Pauling. CHAPTER XV AN INVITATION ACCEPTED It was a small incident, of course; scarcely to be noted at all when it was over. Yet the impression left upon Sheila's mind was that Orion Latham was deliberately endeavoring to injure his cousin's business with the _Seamew_. If he talked like this before the more or less superstitious Portygees, how long would Tunis manage to keep a crew to work the schooner? Had she dared she would have taken Orion to task there and then for his unfaithfulness. The fellow was, as Cap'n Ira had once observed, one of those yapping curs always envious of the braver dog's bone. To the girl's disgust, too, Orion Latham showed plainly that he considered that he, as an older acquaintance of the girl, could presume upon that fact. He clung to her throughout the evening like a mussel to duck grass. Of all the Big Wreck Cove youth, he was the only one that she could not put in his place. She did not think it wise to snub him so openly that Orion would take offense. This course might do the captain of the _Seamew_ harm. She foresaw trouble in the offing for Tunis, in any case, and she did not wish to do anything that would spur Orion to further and more successful attempts to harm his cousin's business. There was another matter troubling Sheila's mind after Orion had come to the harvest-home festival. Mason Chapin likewise appeared at the church. But Tunis did not come. He knew, of course, of the festival, and he had known when he sailed last for Boston that the Balls and Ida May intended to go. It did seem as if Tunis might have come, if for only a little while, before going home. These thoughts made Sheila rather inattentive to other proposals, and she found herself obliged to go down to supper with Orion, since he had outsat and outtalked all the other young men who had hovered about her. She was nice to Orion; the girl could scarcely be otherwise, even to those she disliked, unless some very important matter arose to disturb her, but she did not enjoy the remainder of the evening, and she was glad when Cap'n Ira and Prudence were ready to go home. It was full time, the girl thought. Even then Orion Latham assumed altogether too much authority. Sheila had been about to send little John-Ed around for Queenie and the carryall, but Orion put the boy aside with a self-assured grin. "Nobody ain't going to put you in the carriage, Ida May, but me," he declared. "I'll get the old mare." He seized his cap and went out. In a few minutes they had said good-bye, and the old couple and the girl went out on the church steps. Sheila saw the carryall standing before the door. A figure stood at the old mare's head which she presumed to be Orion's. "The chariot is ready, I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira. "Come on, Prudence." Sheila helped the old woman into the rear seat and then aided Cap'n Ira as well. She got in quickly in front, but as she was about to gather up the reins the man holding Queenie's head came around swiftly and stepped in beside her to the driver's place. "I swan! That you, Tunis?" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "Looks like it," the captain of the _Seamew_ said gravely. "All clear aft?" "You can pay off, Tunis," returned the old man. "Tuck that robe around your knees, Prudence. This night air is as chill as a breath off the ice barrens." Orion loafed into the lamplight by the steps before Queenie got into action. His scowl was unseen, but his voice was audible--as it was meant to be--to Sheila's ears. "There he is--hoggin' everything, same as usual. How did I know he was hanging around outside here, waiting to drive her home? Just as though he owned her! Huh! He may be skipper aboard that dratted schooner, but that gives him no right to boss me ashore. I won't stand it." "Sit down to it, then, 'Rion," snickered one of the other young fellows. "I cal'late Tunis has got the inside course on all of us." The girl said nothing to the captain of the _Seamew_ at first. It was Prudence who asked him why he had not been in the church. "I could not get over here until just now," Tunis replied quietly. Sheila wondered if he really had been detained on the schooner. Perhaps he had refrained from coming to the festival for fear the good people of Big Wreck Cove would notice his attentions to her. He had never been publicly in her company since he had brought her down from Boston. Orion Latham's outburst there at the church door was the first cue people might have gained of anything more than a passing acquaintanceship between the captain of the _Seamew_ and the girl who had come to live with the Balls. These thoughts bore down the girl's spirits tremendously. The simple pleasure of the evening was quite erased from her memory. She remained speechless while old Queenie climbed the hill to the Head. The desultory conversation between Cap'n Ira, Prudence, and the young shipmaster scarcely attracted the girl's attention. If Tunis looked at her curiously now and then, she did not see his glances. And she merely nodded her understanding of his statement when Tunis said, speaking directly to her: "The _Seamew's_ going to lie here over Sunday this time, Ida May." "That'll be nice for you, Tunis," Aunt Prue put in. "You can go to church. You don't often have that privilege. Seafarin' is an awful godless life." Queenie sprang ahead gallantly at the sound of a hearty sneeze from Cap'n Ira, just then, and they were soon at home. Tunis jumped out and aided the old woman and then the captain to alight. Sheila got out on the other side of the carriage. She would have preferred to run on into the house, but she could not really do that. Queenie must be unharnessed and put in her stable and given a measure of oats to munch. Of course, Tunis would offer to do this, but she could not leave him to attend to it without a word. "I'll help you with Queenie, Ida May," said the captain of the _Seamew_. That settled it. She had to remain outside while Cap'n Ira and Prudence went into the house. Tunis led the old mare toward the barn. A lantern, burning very dimly, was in a box just outside the big door, and Sheila got this and held it while Tunis busied himself with the buckles. "I didn't mean to interfere," the man said, suddenly breaking the silence between them. "But as I was coming this way, of course, I expected to ride along with you. So--" "What do you mean, Captain Latham?" the girl asked wonderingly. "Orion said you sent him out to get Queenie." "Why, I--" "Of course, you didn't know I was there. I had just reached the church. But 'Rion is so fresh--" "He took it upon himself to go," said the girl calmly. "I did not send him. I guess you know how your cousin is." "He is too fresh. I'd like to punch him," growled Tunis, to the girl's secret delight. It sounded boyish, but real. "I don't know that I can stand him aboard the _Seamew_ much longer. He attends to everybody's business but his own." "He means you no good, Captain Latham," she said frankly. "To-night he was repeating that silly story about the _Seamew_ being haunted." "Cat's-foot!" ejaculated Tunis. "I wish I'd fired old Horry Newbegin for starting _that_." "But 'Rion keeps it up." "If he believed she was hoodoed, you wouldn't get him aboard with a wire cable," growled Tunis. "It would be better for you and for the success of your business, Captain Latham, if 'Rion was really afraid of going aboard the _Seamew_," she said with confidence. "Well, I don't see how I can fire him. He's my cousin--in a way. And there is enough ill feeling in the family now. Gran'ther Peleg left all his money to me, and it made Orion and his folks as sore as can be." "You are inclined to be too kind. I am not sure it is always wise to be too easy." "Like chopping off the dog's tail an inch at a time, so's not to hurt him so much, eh?" he chuckled. "Something like that." "Well, I'm almost tempted to give 'Rion his walking ticket. I've reason enough. He can't even keep a manifest straight." "Does he even try?" "And that also is in my mind," acknowledged Tunis. "I'm pretty well fed up on 'Rion, I do allow. But I don't know what Aunt 'Cretia would say." Then he laughed again. "Just about what she usually says, I guess; nothing at all. But she abhors family squabbles. "That reminds me, Ida May. This being the first Sunday I've been home since you came here, I want you should go over with me after church to-morrow and have dinner at our house." "Oh, Captain Latham! I--" "And don't you guess you could employ some other term when speaking to me, Ida May?" he interrupted. "I get 'captained' almost enough aboard the schooner and up to Boston. Just plain 'Tunis' for those that are my friends suits me a sight better." "I shall call you 'Tunis,' if you like," she said composedly. "But about taking dinner with you--I am not so sure." "Why not?" he demanded. "Your aunt has never called here since I have been on the Head." "She don't call anywhere. She never did that I can remember. She goes to church on Sunday sometimes. Occasionally she has to go to town to buy things. Once in a dog's age she leaves anchor and gets as far as Paulmouth. But other times she's never off the place." "I--I feel hesitant about doing what you ask, Captain--Tunis, I mean." "Why?" "You know well enough," said Sheila. "If anything should turn up--if the truth should come out--" "Now, are you still worrying about that, Ida May?" "Don't you think of it--Tunis?" "Not a bit! We're as safe as a church. That girl will never show up here on Wreckers' Head. Of course not!" He seemed absolutely confident. In the dim illumination of the lantern she looked very closely into his face. Then it was not fear of exposure that kept Tunis Latham silent. She moved closer to him, looking up into his countenance, holding the lantern so that her own face was in the shadow. "Who suggested my coming to dinner, Tunis? You, or your Aunt Lucretia?" "If you knew my aunt! Well! She seldom says a word. But when I have anything to say, I talk along just as though she answered back like an ordinary person would. I can tell if she's interested." "Yes?" "She's been interested in you from the start, I know. She showed it in her look the very first time I spoke of you--that day I brought you here to Wreckers' Head." "But--but you have never spoken of this before. She did not come to call." "I'll tell you," said Tunis earnestly. "I wanted to be sure. Aunt 'Cretia knew your--er--Sarah Honey very well." "Oh." "Just about as well as Mrs. Ball did. When she was staying here with Aunt Prue, she used to run over to our place a lot. "You don't remember it," continued Tunis, grinning suddenly; "but you were taken over there when you were a baby." "Oh, don't! Don't!" cried the girl. "Let us not speak so lightly--so carelessly. Suppose--suppose--" "Suppose nothing!" exclaimed Tunis. "Don't have any fears. She wanted to know just how you looked--every particular. Oh, she has ways of showing what she wants without getting what you'd call voluble! I told her about your hair--your eyes--everything. I know from the way she looked that she accepts the fact of your being the real Ida May without more question than Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue." She was silent, thinking. Then she sighed. "I will accept the invitation, Tunis. But I feel--I feel that all is not for the best. But what must be must be. So--oh, I'll go!" CHAPTER XVI MEMORIES--AND TUNIS The benison of that most beautiful season of all the year, the autumn, lay upon Wreckers' Head and the adjacent coast on that Sunday morning. Alongshore there is never any sad phase of the fall. One reason is the lack of deciduous trees. The brushless hills and fields are merely turned to golden brown when the frosts touch them. The sea--ever changing in aspect, yet changeless in tide and restraint--was as bright and sparkling as at midsummer. Along the distant beaches the white ruffle of the surf seemed to have just been laundered. The green of the shallows and the blue of the deeper sea were equally vivid. When she first arose Sheila Macklin looked abroad from that favorite north window of her bedroom, and saw that all the world was good. If she had felt secret misgivings and the tremor of a nervous apprehension, these feelings were sloughed away by this promising morning. The fear she had expressed to Tunis Latham the evening before did not obsess her. She continued placid and outwardly cheerful. Whatever threatened in the immediate future, she determined to meet it with as much composure as she could summon. Nobody but Sheila Macklin knew wholly what she had endured since leaving her childhood's home. When Tunis Latham had come so dramatically into her life she had been almost at the limit of her endurance. To him, even, she had not confessed all her miseries. To escape from them she would have embraced a much more desperate expedient than posing as Ida May Bostwick. The ethics of the situation had not really impressed her at first. The desire to get away from her unfortunate environment, from the city itself, and to go where nobody knew her history, not even her name, was the main thought at that time in the girl's mind. Tunis Latham's confident assurances that she would be accepted without question by Cap'n Ball and Prudence caused her to put aside all fear of consequences at the moment. It was a desperate stroke, but she had been in desperate need, and she had carried the matter through boldly. Now that she seemed so securely established in the Ball household and was accepted by all the community of Big Wreck Cove as the real Ida May, it seemed foolish to give way to anxiety. Discovery of the imposture was remote. Yet, as she had hinted to Tunis, she had an undercurrent of feeling--a more-than-faint apprehension--that all was not right. Something was lurking in the shadows of the future which menaced their peace and security. She was ever mindful of the fact that Tunis had gone sponsor for her identity as Ida May. Should her imposture be revealed, her first duty would be to protect him. How could she do this? What tale could she concoct to make it seem that he was as much duped as were Cap'n Ball and Prudence? This seemed impossible. She saw no way out. He had met the real Ida May Bostwick, and then had deliberately introduced Sheila Macklin as the girl he had been sent for! If the truth were revealed, what explanation could be offered? Had she allowed her mind to dwell upon this phase of the affair she would surely have revealed to those about her, unobservant as they might be, that she had a secret cause for worry. She must drive it into the back of her mind--ignore it utterly. And this she did on this beautiful Sabbath morning. When Tunis came up to the Head to accompany the Balls to church--Aunt Lucretia did not attend service on this day--a very close observer would have seen nothing in the girl's look or manner to suggest that so keen an anxiety had touched her. This should have been Sheila's happy day--and it was. For the first time, the young captain of the _Seamew_ linked his interest with her in a deliberate public appearance. Although she feared in secret the result of that appearance at church with Tunis Latham, it nevertheless thrilled her. He harnessed Queenie after giving that surprised animal such a curry-combing and polishing as she had not suffered in many a day. Sheila rode with Prudence on the rear seat of the carryall. "I'm berthed on the for'ard deck along o' you, Tunis," said the old man, hoisting himself with difficulty into the front seat. "If the afterguard is all ready, I be. Trip the anchor, boy, and set sail!" As they passed down through Portygee Town the denizens of that part of Big Wreck Cove were streaming to their own place of worship. It was a saint's day, and the brown people--both men and women, ringed of ears and garbed in the very gayest colors--gave way with smiles and bows for the jogging old mare and the rumbling carryall. Some of the _Seamew's_ crew were overtaken, and they swept off their hats to Prudence and the supposed Ida May, grinning up at Tunis with more than usual friendliness. "Ah!" exclaimed Eunez Pareta to Johnny Lark, the _Seamew's_ cook. "So you know she of the evil eye, eh?" "What do you mean?" asked Johnny. "That pretty girl who rides behind Captain Latham?" "_Si!_" "She has no evil eye," declared the cook stoutly. "It is told me that she has," said the smiling girl. "And she has put what you call the 'hoodoo' on that schooner. She come down in her from Boston." "What of it?" retorted the cook. "She is a fine lady--and a pretty lady." "So Tunis Latham think--heh?" demanded Eunez fiercely. "And why not?" grinned Johnny. "Bah! Has not all gone wrong with that _Seamew_ ever since she sail in the schooner?" demanded the girl. "An anchor chain breaks; a rope parts; you lost a topmast--yes? How about Tony? Has he not left and will not return aboard the schooner for a price? Do you not find calm where other schooners find fair winds? Ah!" "Pooh!" ejaculated Johnny Lark. "Old woman's talk!" "Not!" cried the girl hotly. "It is a truth. The saints defend us from the evil eye! And Tunis Latham is under that girl's spell." Johnny Lark tried to laugh again, but with less success. Many little things had marred the fair course of the _Seamew_ and her captain's business. He, however, shook his head. "Not that pretty girl yonder," he said, "has brought bad luck to the _Seamew_. No, no!" "What, then?" asked Eunez, staring sidewise at him from eyes which seemed almost green. "See!" said Johnny, seizing her wrist. "If the _Seamew_ is a Jonahed schooner, it is because of something different. Yes!" "Bah!" cried Eunez, yet with continued eagerness. "Tell me what it may be if it is not that girl with the evil eye?" "Ask 'Rion Latham," whispered Johnny. "You know him--huh?" The Portygee girl looked for a moment rather taken aback. Then she said, tossing her head: "What if I do know 'Rion?" "Ask him," repeated Johnny Lark. "He is cousin of our captain. He knows--if anybody knows--what is the trouble with the _Seamew_." And he shook his head. Eunez stared at him. "You know something you do not tell me, Juan?" "Ask 'Rion Latham," the cook said again, and left her at the door of the church. * * * * * Those swains who had been "cluttering the course"--to quote Cap'n Ira--did not interfere in any way with the Balls' equipage on this Sunday at the church. There was none who seemed bold enough to enter the lists with Tunis Latham. He put Queenie in the shed and backed her out again and brought her around to the door when the service was ended without having to fight for the privilege. 'Rion Latham, however, was the center of a group of young fellows who were all glad to secure a smile and bow from the girl, but who only sheepishly grinned at Tunis. 'Rion was not smiling; there was a settled scowl upon his ugly face. "I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira, as they drove away, "that 'Rion must have eat sour pickles for breakfast to-day and nothing much else. Yet he seemed perky enough last night at the sociable. I wonder what's got into him." "I'd like to get something out of him," growled Tunis, to whom the remark was addressed. "What's that?" "Some work, for one thing," said the captain of the _Seamew_. "He's as lazy a fellow as I ever saw. And his tongue's too long." "Trouble is," Cap'n Ira rejoined, "these trips you take in the schooner are too short to give you any chance to lick your crew into shape. They get back home too often. Too much shore leave, if ye ask me." "I'd lose Mason Chapin if the _Seamew_ made longer voyages. And I have lost one of the hands already--Tony." "I swan! What's the matter with him?" "His mother says Tony is scared to sail again with the _Seamew_. Some Portygee foolishness." "I told you them Portygees warn't worth the grease they sop their bread in," declared Cap'n Ira. The two on the rear seat of the carryall paid no attention to this conversation. "I'm real pleased," said the old woman, "that you are going to dinner with Lucretia Latham, Ida May. Your mother thought a sight of her, and 'Cretia did of Sarah Honey, too. Sarah was one of the few who seemed to understand Lucretia. She's so dumb. I declare I can't never get used to her myself. I like folks lively about me, and I don't care how much they talk--the more the better. "Lucretia Latham might have got her a good man and been happily married long ago, if it hadn't been that when a feller dropped in to call on her she sat mum all the evening and never said no more than the cat. "I remember Silas Payson, who lived over beyond the port, took quite a shine to Lucretia, seeing her at church. Or, at least, we thought he did. Silas began going down to Latham's Folly of an evening, now and then, and setting up with Lucretia. But after a while he left off going and said he cal'lated he'd join the Quakers over to Seetawket. Playing Quaker meeting with just one girl to look at didn't suit, noway." And the old woman laughed placidly. "Tunis says he understands his aunt," ventured the girl. "Tunis has had to put up with her. But he can say nothing a good deal himself, if anybody should ask ye. That's the only fault I've found with Tunis. I've heard Ira talk at him for a straight hour in our kitchen, and all the answer Tunis made was to say 'yes' twice." The girl did not find the captain of the _Seamew_ at all inarticulate later, as they crossed the old fields of the Ball place and walked down the slope into the saucerlike valley where lay Latham's Folly. She had never known Tunis to be more companionable than on this occasion. He seemed to have gained the courage to talk on more intimate topics than at any time since their acquaintanceship had begun. "I guess you know," he observed, "that most all the money Uncle Peke left me--after what the lawyers got--I put into that schooner. There's a mortgage on her, too. You see, although the old place will come to me by and by, Aunt Lucretia has rights in it while she lives. It's sort of entailed, you know. I could not raise a dollar on Latham's Folly, if I wanted to. So I am pretty well tied up, you see. "But the schooner is doing well. That is, I mean, business is good, Ida May. Other things being equal, I will make more money with her the way I am doing now than I could in any other business. My line is the sea; I know that. I am fitted for it. "And if I had invested Uncle Peke's legacy and kept on fishing, or tried for a berth in a deep bottom somewhere, I would not get ahead any faster or make so much money. Besides, long voyages would take me away from home, and, after all, Aunt Lucretia is my only kin and she would miss me sore." "I am sure she would," said the girl with sympathy. "But all ain't plain sailing," added the young skipper wistfully. "I am running too close to the reefs right now to crow any." "But I am sure you will be successful in the end. Of course you will!" "That's mighty nice of you," he said, smiling down into her vivid face. "With you and Aunt Lucretia both pulling for me, I ought to win out, sure enough. "You can't fail to like her," he added. "If you just get the right slant on her character, I mean, Ida May. Hers has been a lonely life. Not that there has not almost always been somebody in the house with her. But she has lived with her own thoughts. She reads a great deal. There is not one topic I can broach of which she has not at least a general knowledge. I was sent away to school, but when I came home vacations I brought my books and she read them all. "And she is a splendid listener." He laughed. "You'll find that out for yourself, I fancy. And I know she likes people to talk to her--when they have anything to say. Tell her things; that is what she enjoys." In spite of his assurances, Sheila Macklin approached the old, brown house behind the cedars with much secret trepidation. Although Aunt Lucretia had a neighbor's girl come in to help her almost daily, she had preferred to prepare the dinner on this occasion with her own hands. And, perhaps, she did not care to have the neighbor's child around when the supposed Ida May came to the house for the first time. They saw her watching from the side door--a tall, angular figure in a black dress. Her hair was done plainly and in no arrangement to soften the gaunt outline of her face, but there was much of it, and Sheila longed to make a change in that grim coiffure. The woman smiled so warmly when she saw the two approach that almost instantly the girl forgot the grim contour of Aunt Lucretia's face. That smile was like a flash of sunshine playing over one of those barren, brown fields through which they had passed so quickly on the way down from the Ball house. "This is Ida May, Aunt Lucretia," said Tunis, as they reached the porch. The smiling woman stretched forth a hand to the girl. Her eyes, peering through the spectacles, were very keen, and when their gaze was centered upon the girl's face it seemed that Aunt Lucretia was suddenly smitten by some thought, or by some discovery about the visitor, which made her greeting slow. Yet that may have been her usual manner. Tunis did not appear to observe anything extraordinary. But Sheila thought Aunt Lucretia had been about to greet her with a kiss, and then had thought better of it. CHAPTER XVII AUNT LUCRETIA There was nothing thereafter in Aunt Lucretia's manner--surely not in her speech--to lead Sheila to fear the woman did not accept her at face value. Why should she suspect a masquerade when nobody else did? The girl took her cue from Tunis and placidly accepted his aunt's manner as natural. Aunt Lucretia put the dinner on the table at once. They ate, when there was special company, in the dining room. The meal was generous in quantity and well cooked. It was evident that, like most country housewives, Lucretia Latham took pride in her table. Had the visitor come for the meal alone she would have been amply recompensed. But the woman seldom uttered a word, and then only brief questions regarding the service of the food. She listened smilingly to the conversation between Tunis and the visitor, but did not enter into it. It was difficult for the girl to feel at ease under these circumstances. Especially was this so after dinner, when she asked to help Aunt Lucretia clear off the table and wash and dry the dishes. The woman made no objection; indeed, she seemed to accept the girl's assistance placidly enough. But while they were engaged in the task--a time when two women usually have much to chatter about, if nothing of great importance--Aunt Lucretia uttered scarcely a word, preferring even to instruct her companion in dumb show where the dried dishes should be placed. Yet, all the time, the girl could not trace anything in Aunt Lucretia's manner or look which actually suggested suspicion or dislike. Tunis seemed eminently satisfied with his aunt's attitude. He whispered to Sheila, when they were alone together: "She certainly likes you, Ida May." "Are you sure?" the girl asked. "Couldn't be mistaken. But don't expect her to tell you so in just so many words." Later they walked about the dooryard and out-buildings--Tunis and the visitor--and Aunt Lucretia watched them from her rocking-chair on the porch. What her thoughts were regarding her nephew and the girl it would be hard to guess, but whatever they were, they made her face no grimmer than usual, and the light in her bespectacled eyes was scarcely one of dislike or even of disapproval. Yet there was a strange something in the woman's look or manner which suggested that she watched the visitor with thoughts or feelings which she wished neither the girl nor Tunis to observe. Late in the afternoon the two young people started back for the Ball house, taking a roundabout way. They did not even follow the patrol path, well defined along the brink of Wreckers' Head as far as the beach. Instead, they went down by the wagon track to the beach itself, intending to follow the edge of the sea and the channel around to a path that led up the face of the bluff to the Ball homestead. It was a walk the girl had never taken. The reaction she experienced after having successfully met and become acquainted with Aunt Lucretia put Sheila in high spirits. Tunis had never seen her in quite this mood. Although she was always cheerful and not a little gay about the Ball homestead, she suddenly achieved a spirit of sportiveness which surprised the captain of the _Seamew_. But he wholly liked and approved of this new mood. She had made herself a new fall frock and a pretty, close-fitting hat--something entirely different, as he had noticed, from the styles displayed by the other girls of Big Wreck Cove. And he was observant enough to see that this outfit was more like what the girls in Boston wore. She ran ahead to pick up a shell or pebble that gleamed at the water's edge from a long way off. She escaped a wetting from the surf by a scant margin, and laughed delightedly at the chance she took. Back against the foot of the bluff certain brilliant flowers grew--fall blossoms that equaled any in Prudence Ball's garden--and the girl gathered these and arranged them in an attractive bouquet with a regard for color that delighted her companion. They came, finally, in sight of a cabin back under the bank on the far side of the little cove, where once Tunis had reaped clams while Cap'n Ira and the Queen of Sheba made their unfortunate slide down the face of the bluff. The sea was so low now that Tunis could aid the girl across the mouth of the tiny inlet on the sand bar which defended it from the sea. There was but one channel over which she need leap with his help. The cabin captivated Sheila, especially when she learned it was no longer occupied. It had a tight tin roof and a cement-pipe chimney with a cap to keep the rain out. The window sashes had been carried away and the door hung by a single hinge. However, the one-roomed cabin was otherwise tight and dry. "Sometimes fishing parties from the port come around here and camp for a day or two," explained Tunis. "But Hosea Westcott used to live here altogether. Even in the winter. He caught his own fish and split and dried them; he dug clams and picked beach plums and sold them in town, or swapped them for what he needed. Sometimes the neighbors gave him a day's work." "An old and lonely man, Tunis?" the girl murmured. "That is what he was. All his immediate family was gone. So, when he fell ill one winter and one of the coast guards found him here almost starved and helpless, they took him away to the poor farm." They went on around the end of the headland and walked up the beach toward the port. Before they reached the path by which they intended to mount to the summit of Wreckers' Head, they observed another couple going in the same direction, following the edge of the water on the firm strand. The woman was dressed in such brilliant hues that she could be mistaken for nobody but a resident of Portygee Town. "That is the daughter of Pareta, who brought up your trunk when you came here, Ida May," said Tunis carelessly. "But do you see who the man is?" she said, with some surprise. "It is your cousin." "'Rion? So it is. Well," he added rather scornfully, "no accounting for tastes. She's a decent-enough girl, I guess, but we don't mix much with the Portygees. Although most of them are all right folks, at that. But fooling around those girls sometimes starts trouble, as 'Rion ought to know by this time." As they climbed the path, Tunis aiding his companion at certain places, the girl, looking down, thought they were being closely watched by the other couple on the beach. There was nothing in this to disturb her mind; a feeling of confidence had overcome her since her experience with Aunt Lucretia. Her present environment was so far from the scenes of her old pain and misery that it seemed nothing actually could disturb her again. The peacefulness of the scene impressed Tunis as well. When they came up finally upon the brink of the headland they saw a spiral of smoke rising from one of the chimneys of the distant Ball homestead. The man pointed to it and, smiling down upon her, repeated a verse he had read somewhere which he knew expressed the hope she held: "I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled Above the green elms that a cottage was near; And I said, 'if there's peace to be found in the world, A heart that was humble might hope for it here.'" "That is pretty near right, don't you think, Ida May?" "It is, indeed! Oh, it is!" she cried. "And my heart _is_ humble, Tunis. I feel that God has been very good to me--and you," she added softly. "I've been mighty good to myself," he responded. "Ida May, there never was a girl just like you, I guess. Anyway, I never saw such a one. I--I don't know just how to put it, but I feel that you are the only girl in the world I can ever feel the same toward." "Tunis!" He took her hand, looking so hungrily into her face that she, blushing, if not confused, could not bear his gaze, and the long lashes drooped to veil the violet eyes. "You understand me, Ida May?" whispered the captain of the _Seamew_ eagerly. "I don't know, fixed as I am, that I've any right to talk to you like this. But--but I can't wait any longer!" She allowed her hand to remain in his warm clasp, and now she looked up at him again. "Have you thought of what all this may mean, Tunis?" she asked. "You bet I have. I haven't been thinking of much else--not since the first time I saw you." "What? You felt--felt that you could like me that night when we sat on the bench so long on the Common?" "My Godfrey, Ida May!" he exclaimed. "Since that time you slipped on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and I caught you. That's when I first knew that you were the most wonderful girl in the world!" "Oh, Tunis! Do you mean that?" "I certainly do," he said stoutly. "That--that you thought _that_? At very first sight?" "I couldn't get you out of my mind. I went about in a sort of dream. Why, Ida May, when Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue talked so much about wanting that other girl down here, all I could think of was you! I half believed it must be you that they sent me for--until I came face to face with that other girl." Her face dimpled suddenly; her eyes shone. The look she gave him passed through Tunis Latham like an electric shock. He trembled. He would have drawn her closer. "Not here, Tunis," she whispered. "But if you dare take me--knowing what and who I am--I am all yours. Whenever you feel that you can take me I shall be ready. Can I say more, Tunis?" He looked at her solemnly. "I am the happiest man alive. I am the happiest man alive, Ida May!" he breathed. CHAPTER XVIII IDA MAY THINKS IT OVER The _Seamew_ sailed next day, short-handed. Not only had Tony, the boy, left, but one of the foremast hands did not put in an appearance. A grinning Portygee boy came to the wharf and announced that "Paul, he iss ver' seek." Tunis knew it would be useless to go after the man, just as it had been useless to go after Tony. He had been unable to ship another boy in Tony's place, and when he let it be known among the dock laborers and loungers about Luiz Wharf that there was a berth open in the _Seamew's_ forecastle, nobody applied for it. "What is the matter with those fellows?" the skipper asked Mason Chapin. "They were tumbling over each other a few weeks ago to join us, and now there isn't an offer." "Some Portygee foolishness," grumbled the mate. "I wonder," muttered Tunis. "You wonder if it's so?" queried the mate. "You know how silly these people are once they get a crazy notion in their heads." "What's the crazy notion, Mr. Chapin?" The mate flung up his hands and shrugged his shoulders. "A haunt--a jinx--_something_. The Lord knows!" "I wonder if it is a Portygee notion or something else," said Tunis Latham, his eyes fixed on the back of Orion, busy, for once, at the other rail. "Whatever it is, Captain Latham," said Mason Chapin with gravity, "I suggest you fill your berths at Boston." "Guess I'll have to. But the offscourings of the city docks! They will be worse than these Portygees." It was not a prospect he welcomed. He well knew the sort of dock rats he must put up with if he wished to make up his crew with city hands for a short trip. The sea tramps who are within reach of coasting skippers are the same kind of worthless material that shiftless farmers must depend upon in harvest time. Even the lack of one man forward, to say nothing of the cook's boy, made a considerable difference in the working of the schooner. 'Rion Latham loudly proclaimed that he was being imposed upon when he was forced to work with the captain's watch. He had shipped as supercargo and clerk, he had! This treatment was an imposition. "You know what you can do about it, 'Rion, if you like," the skipper said to him calmly, but aside. "I wouldn't want to feel that I was holding you to a job that you did not like. You can leave the _Seamew_ any time you want." "Huh! The rats will be doing that soon enough," growled 'Rion. But he did not say this where Captain Latham could hear. It was Horry Newbegin who heard him. "It strikes me, young feller, that if I quarreled with my victuals and drink the way you do, I'd get me another berth and get shet of all this." And the old salt wagged his head. "I don't get you at all, 'Rion." "You wait," growled the younger man. "I'll leave at the right time. And if things go as I expect, everybody else will leave him flat, too." "You're taking a chance talking that way," admonished the old man. "It's just as much mutiny as though you turned and hit the skipper or the mate." "It is, is it? I'll show him!" "Show who?" asked Horry, in some wonder at the other's spitefulness. "That dratted cousin of mine. Thinks he owns the earth and sea, as well as this hoodooed tub of a schooner. Gets the best of everything. But he won't always. He never ought to have got the money to buy this old tub." "You said you wouldn't have her for a gift," chuckled the old man. "But that don't make it any the more right that he should have her. And she is hoodooed. You know she is, Horry." The old mariner was silent. 'Rion craftily went on: "Look what a number of things have happened since he put this derned schooner into commission. We broke an anchor chain in Paulmouth Harbor, didn't we? And the old mud hook lies there to this day. Did you ever see so many halyards snap in your life, and in just a capful of wind? Didn't we have a tops'l carried away--clean--in that squall off Swampscott? And now the hands are leaving her." "Guess you know something about that," growled Horry. 'Rion grinned. "Maybe I do. I don't say 'no' and I don't say 'yes.' However, we've all got to work like dogs to make up for being short-handed." "Nobody is kicking much but you," said the older man. "That's all right. I've got pluck enough not to stand being imposed upon. Them Portygees--well, there's no figuring on what they will do." "I can see you are bent on making them do something that will raise trouble," Newbegin said, shaking his head once more. "What do you expect? You know the _Seamew_ is hoodooed. Huh! _Seamew_! That ain't no more her rightful name than it is mine." "I wouldn't say that." "I would!" snapped 'Rion. "She's the _Marlin B._, out o' Salem. No matter what he says, or anybody else. She's the murder ship. If he sailed her over that place outside o' Salem Harbor where those poor fellows was drowned, they'd rise again and curse the schooner and all aboard her." The old man shuddered. He turned his face away and spat reflectively over the rail. The tug of the steering chains to starboard was even then thrilling the cords of his hands and arms with an almost electric shock. 'Rion watched him slyly. He knew the impression he was making on the old man's superstitious mind. He played upon it as he did upon the childish minds of some of the Portygee seamen. So Captain Tunis Latham did not arrive in Boston in a very calm frame of mind. Although he had no words with 'Rion, and really no trouble with the crew in general, he felt that trouble was brewing. And the worst of it was, it was trouble which he did not know how to avert. It was not so easy to fill the empty berth in the forecastle, even from the offscourings of the docks. It was a time when dock labor was at a premium. And short voyages never did interest good sailormen. In addition, knowing that the _Seamew_ sailed from her home port, decent seafarers wanted to know what was the matter with her that the captain could not fill his forecastle at that end. These men wondered about Captain Latham, too. They judged that infirmities of temper must be the reason his men did not stay with the schooner. He was, perhaps, a driver--too quick with his fist or the toe of his boot. Questions along this line were bound to breed answers--and answers from those members of the _Seamew's_ crew who were not friendly to the skipper. In some little den off Commercial Street 'Rion Latham had forgathered with certain dock loiterers, and, after that, word went to and fro that the _Seamew_ was haunted. If she ever sailed off Great Misery Island, the crew of a run-under Salem fishing smack would rise up to curse the schooner's company. And that curse would follow those who sailed aboard her--either for'ard or in the afterguard--for all time. In consequence of this the only man who applied for the empty berth aboard the _Seamew_ was more than a little drunk and so dirty that Captain Latham would not let him come over the rail. Nor could the young shipmaster give much time to looking up hands. He had freight ready for his return trip. It must be got aboard, stowed properly, and advantage taken of the tide and a fair wind to get back to the Cape. He had not been in the habit of going up into the city at all of late. If that girl behind the lace counter of Hoskin & Marl's had expected to see Tunis Latham again, she had been disappointed. Her warm invitation to him to call on her--possibly to take her again to lunch--had borne only Dead Sea fruit. He had accepted her decision regarding the Balls and Cape Cod as final and irrevocable. At least, he had had no intention of ever going back and discussing the suggestion again. The possibility of the real Ida May Bostwick changing her mind and reconsidering her refusal to communicate with the Balls or visit Wreckers' Head never once entered Tunis' mind, if it had Sheila Macklin's. He had seen how scornfully the cheap little shop-girl had refused the kind offer extended to her by her old relatives. He could not have imagined her thinking of the old people and their home and Big Wreck Cove in any different way. He was quite right in this. Ida May Bostwick never would have looked upon these several matters differently. The thing was settled. Born and bred in the city, she could not conceive of any sane girl like herself deliberately burying herself down on the Cape, to "live on pollock and potatoes," as she had heard it expressed, and be the slave of a pair of old fogies. Not for her! She would not think of it. Indeed, this phase of the offer Tunis had brought her really made Ida May Bostwick angry. What did he think she was, anyway? In fact, she was inclined to think that that seafaring person had almost insulted her. Although she had deliberately spoken of him as her "Cousin Tunis" to the girls who were her confidantes in the store and to her landlady, who was likewise curious about him, Ida May Bostwick was much pleased by the thought of him. Then she began to compare Tunis with the young men she knew in Boston. She knew that the young men she got acquainted with were either very light minded or downright objectionable. If any of them contemplated marriage at all, they knew it could not be undertaken upon the meager salaries they were paid. Marriage meant teamwork, with the girl working down-town just as hard as ever, and then working at night when she went home, and on Sundays, even if she and her bridegroom lived only in a furnished room and did light housekeeping. Ida May Bostwick had a brain explosion one day when she considered these all-too-evident facts. She said: "I bet _that_ fellow wouldn't expect his wife to stand behind a lace counter and take the sass of floorwalkers and buyers, as well as lady customers, all day long. Not much! He's a regular guy, if he is a hick. My gracious! Don't I wish he'd come back! If I ever get my claws on him again--" Just what she might do to Tunis under those circumstances she did not even explain to herself. But she began to think of Tunis a good deal. He was a good-looking man, too. And he spent freely. Ida May Bostwick remembered the lunch at Barquette's. It was true that Sarah Honey had been all Prudence Ball and Aunt Lucretia Latham and other Wreckers' Head folk believed her to be. But she died when Ida May was small, and the girl had been brought up wholly under the influence of the Bostwicks. That family had lacked refinement and breeding and graciousness of manner to a degree that would have amazed and shocked Sarah Honey's relatives down on the Cape. Not that the girl thought of Tunis Latham's refinement with any wistfulness. She thought of his well-filled wallet, that he was something more than a common sailor, that he undoubtedly owned a good home, even if it was down at Big Wreck Cove, and that he seemed "soft" and "easy." "A girl might wind him right around her finger, if she went at it right," Ida May Bostwick finally decided. "Some girl will. I wonder how long it would take to get him to sell out down there and live up here in town? My mother came from that awful hole, and she caught a city fellow. I bet I could do this, if it was worth my while. My goodness! Why not? "There's property there, too. I wonder how much those old creatures are worth. And how long they will live. He spoke like they needed somebody because they were sick. Ugh! I don't like folks when they are sick. Ma was _awful_. I can remember it. And there was pa, when he was cripped with rheumatism before he died." This phase of the matter fairly staggered Ida May Bostwick. She put the faint glimmerings of the idea out of her mind--or tried to. Yet that summer she kept delaying her vacation until all the other girls had come back and related all their adventures--those that had actually happened and those that they had imagined. "Ain't you going to take any time off, Ida May?" they asked. At last she said she expected to visit her folks "down on the Cape." "You remember that nice-looking farmer that came in to speak to me that time and took me to lunch at Barquette's?" she asked Miss Leary. "I know you _said_ he took you there." "Well, he did, smarty! He's my cousin--of course, not too close." And Ida May giggled. "Well, we've been corresponding." "I hope it's all perfectly proper," grinned Miss Leary. Ida May Bostwick stuck out her tongue. But she laughed. "I've got a good mind," she said to her friend, "to go down and see that fellow's folks. They're well fixed, I guess. And the store pays you for one week of your vacation. I wouldn't lose much, even if it did turn out to be a dead-and-alive hole." CHAPTER XIX THE ARRIVAL There was a driving road down past Latham's Folly and on across certain sand flats and by cranberry bogs to a small settlement where Prudence had a stepsister still living. This old woman lived with her granddaughter's husband's kinsfolk, who were so distantly related to Cap'n Ira's wife that the relationship could scarcely be followed. "It takes us Cape Codders," remarked Cap'n Ira, "to study out the shoals and channels of kinship. It's 'cause we're such good navigators that we're able to do it." "And now that we've got Ida May to harness up Queenie for us and look after the house while we're gone, and you feel so much spryer yourself, Ira, I don't see why we can't visit our folks a little," Prudence said. He agreed, and they set off in high fettle just before noon, expecting to return before dark. Sheila was upstairs dusting when, not long after the noon hour, she saw from one of the windows the spread canvas of the _Seamew_--there was no mistaking the schooner--making through the channel into the cove. "Tunis is coming! Tunis is coming! Tunis is coming soon!" Her heart sang the refrain over and over again. She fairly danced about the household tasks she had set herself to do while the old couple were absent. Now and again she ran to some point where she could watch the _Seamew_. The memory of Tunis' kisses were on her lips and in her heart. In the dusk of the previous Monday morning, when he was on his way to the port to take command of his schooner, the young shipmaster had held her in his arms at the back door there, and had told her over and over again of his love for her. Thought of that moment was an exquisite memory to the girl. She saw the schooner drop anchor off Portygee Town, with all its canvas rattling down in windrows of white. She even saw the little gig launched. Tunis was coming ashore. He would soon be up the hill. His long strides would soon bring him to her side again--open-eyed, ruddy-faced, a veritable sea god among men! She ran out a dozen times to gaze down the road and wonder what kept him. Then she turned her back on the road and spent the next half hour in beating the dust out of all the parlor and sitting room sofa pillows and one or two of the covered chairs. Peace, like the sunshine itself, lay over all of Wreckers' Head. Here and there a spiral of smoke rose from a chimney, and fowl wandered about the well-reaped fields. But not much other life was visible. The fall haze gave to distant objects a dimmer outline, softening the sharp lineaments of the more rugged landscape. Color and form took on new beauty. It was all so lovely, so peaceful, that it was impossible that the girl should have dreamed of what was approaching. Since she had come her mind had not been so far from apprehension of disaster. Since Sunday, when she had wandered with Tunis along the shore, it had seemed to the young woman that no harm could assail her. She was secure, sheltered, impregnably fortified both in Tunis' love and in the situation she had gained with the Balls and in the community. She knew, at last, that somebody was on the road, but she would not look. She heard the latch of the gate and the creak of its hinges. Somebody was behind her. How softly Tunis stepped! She thought that he was approaching her quietly, believing he could surprise her. In a moment she would feel his arms about her and would surprise him by laying her head back against his breast and putting up her lips to be kissed. But, as he delayed, she turned her head ever so slyly. It was not the heavily shod feet of Tunis Latham she saw. What she saw was a pair of the very lightest of pearl-gray shoes, wonderful of arch and heel. Above were slim ankles and calves incased in fiber-silk hose the hue of the shoes. She flashed a glance at the face of the stranger, and her gaze was immediately held by a pair of fixed brown eyes. There were green glints in the eyes--sharp, suspicious gleams that warned Sheila, before the other uttered a word, to set watch and ward upon her own lips. Not that she suspected who the stranger was. "Good afternoon," was her greeting. "Is this where the Balls live?" was the demand, with a note in the voice which betokened both weariness and vexation. "Yes." The girl set down her bag and gave a sigh of relief. "Well, I am glad! I thought I'd never get here. I never did hear of such a hick place! No taxi, of course, and not even a hack or any other carriage to be hired. I've walked _miles_. And such a rough road!" The parlor settee and easy-chairs had just been brought outdoors for their weekly beating and dusting. Sheila pointed to a seat. "Do sit down," she urged. "It is a long walk from the port." "You said it! And after riding over from Paulmouth in that dinky old stagecoach, too," went on the stranger, as though holding Sheila responsible for some measure of her discomfort. "Say, ain't the folks home?" She cast a sour look around the premises. "Gee! It's a lonesome place in winter, I bet." "Did you wish to see Mrs. Ball?" asked Sheila, eying the visitor with nothing more than curiosity. "I guess so. She is Mrs. Prudence Ball, isn't she?" "Yes. Mrs. Ball and the captain have gone away for the day. I am ever so sorry. You wished to see her particularly?" "I guess I did." The stranger looked her over with more interest. "Say, how old are the Balls?" The abrupt question drew a more penetrating look from Sheila. The visitor certainly was not Cape bred. Her smart cheapness did not attract Sheila at all. There was something so unwholesome about her that the observer had difficulty in suppressing a shudder. Yet her prettiness was orchidlike. But there are poisonous orchids. "They are quite old people," Sheila said, finally answering the question. "Cap'n Ira is over seventy and Prudence is not far from that age. You--you are not acquainted with them?" "I never saw 'em. But I've heard a lot about 'em," said the stranger, with a light laugh. "They are sort of relations of mine." "You are a relative?" asked the girl. Even then she had no thought of who this newcomer was. "Cap'n Ira's relative? Or Mrs. Ball's, if I may ask?" "Well, I guess it is the old woman's. But I'm kind of curious to see 'em first, you know, before I make any strong play in the relationship game. Gee! Is this the parlor furniture?" "Some of it," was the wondering rejoinder. "Looks like the house, don't it? Down at the heel and shabby. Say, have they got much money, after all--them Balls? You're a neighbor, I suppose? You must know 'em well." "I live here," said the other girl rather sternly. "Huh? You mean around here?" "I live here with Cap'n Ira and Mrs, Ball," was the further explanation. "You _do_? You?" Her voice suddenly became shrill. It rose half an octave with surprise. Her gaze, which had merely been insolent, now became suspicious. She scrutinized Sheila closely. "I didn't know the Balls had anybody living with 'em," she resumed at length. "You ain't been here long, have you?" "Oh, for some time," was the cheerful rejoinder. "They hire you?" "Not--not exactly. You see, I am sort of related to them, too." "A relation of this old Cap'n Ira?" "Of Mrs. Ball." "Huh! Say, what's you name?" "My name is Bostwick," was the composed reply. "You did not mention yours, did you?" "_Bostwick?_" "They call me Ida May Bostwick," said Sheila, demurely smiling, and even then without a suspicion of the vortex into which she was being drawn. "_Ida May Bostwick!_" The visitor rose out of her seat as though a spring had been released under her. Her eyes flattened, distended, and sparked like micaceous rock in the dark. Her hands clenched till the pointed, highly polished nails bit into the palms. "What do you say? _You_ are Ida May Bostwick?" At that moment Sheila Macklin saw the light. It smote upon her brain like a shaft from a great searchlight; a penetrating, cleaving beam that might have laid bare her very soul before the accusing stranger. She staggered, retreating, shrinking, but only for a moment. The pallor that had come into her face left it. Color rose softly under the exquisite skin and there came a haughty uplift of her chin. She stared back into the blazing, greenish-brown eyes of the other, her own eyes unafraid, challenging. "Do you doubt me?" she demanded, with as much composure as though a secure position and a conscience quite at ease were hers. "Who are you? In what way are you interested in my name or in my identity?" "Why, you--you--" The visitor was for the moment stricken speechless. But it was the speechlessness of rage--of wild and uncontrollable fury. Then she caught her breath. "You dirty cheat, you! You stand there and tell me you are Ida Bostwick? You've got gall--you certainly _have_ got gall! "I'd like to know who the devil you are? Comin' right here, wormin' your way into a place that don't belong to you, gettin' on the soft side of my aunt an' uncle, I s'pose, and thinkin' to grab all they got when they die. Oh, I know _your_ kind, miss! "But I'll show you up. I'll let 'em know what's what and who's who. They must be precious soft to take a girl like you in and think she's Ida Bostwick. How _dare_ you?" She stamped her foot. She advanced upon the other threateningly. But the girl she had accused did not retreat. The flush of outrage and that haughty expression were still upon her countenance. She spoke very firmly but in a voice so low that it contrasted the more sharply with the enraged squall of her opponent. She asked: "Who are _you_, if you please?" "You've cheek to ask me. I'd ought to spit on you, so I had! But I'll tell you who I am--and it'll hold you for a while, I guess. I am Ida May Bostwick. You know full and well you are makin' out to these rich relations of mine that you are me. I'll show you up, miss! I'll have you whipped--or jailed--or something. The gall of you!" The other girl heard her with unchanging face. Somehow, that steady, unshrinking look gave Ida May Bostwick pause. It was she who recoiled. CHAPTER XX THE LIE The girl who had seized upon the chance of becoming Ida May Bostwick, and so escaping the horror and despair that enshrouded Sheila Macklin like a filthy mantle, stood after the first blast as firm as a rock under the torrent of vituperation and rage which poured from the other girl's lips. The real Ida May--weak, save in venomous hate, unstable as water, as shallow as a pool of glass--could have joined issue in a hair-pulling, face-scratching brawl. She was of that breed and up-bringing. Sheila Macklin's very dignity held Ida May Bostwick at arm's length. With all right and title to the name and place Sheila had usurped, the new arrival was awed by the impostor's look. Following that first--and merely instantaneous--expression of horrified surprise at Ida May's announcement of her identity, this girl, who was so secure in the confidence of the Balls and the community, proceeded to look down at the claimant of her achieved position with utter calmness. It made the real Ida May almost afraid. Certain as she was of her own name and the assertion of her own personality, the bold and unshaken opposition confronting her in the very look of the impostor abashed Ida May Bostwick. After her first outbreak she was silenced. "Do you really know what you are saying?" the girl in possession asked. "Are you aware that I am Ida May Bostwick? There certainly cannot be two girls of the same name, both related to Mrs. Prudence Ball. That is too ridiculous." The other gasped. Though red and white by turn, from impotence and rage, her fury was quelled under the look of the more composed young woman. "There are twenty people almost within call who know me and who can swear to my name and my assertions that I am Miss Bostwick," went on Sheila, with a calmness which both frightened and daunted the other. "Just why you should come here and make such a preposterous claim I cannot understand. Where do you come from? Who are you--really?" Ida May stared, flaccid, helpless. For the time being all her rage, her rudeness, her amazement, even, drained out of her. For this impostor to face her down in this way; for her to claim Ida May's name and identity with such utter calm--such sangfroid; for Sheila to stand before her and deliberately declare that what Ida May had known to be her own all her life long--her name and distinctive character--was actually another's--all this was so monstrous a thing that Ida May was stunned. Suppose--suppose something had really happened to her mind? People did go mad, Ida May had heard. She had rather a vague idea as to what insanity was like, but she felt her mind slipping. The sure and unafraid expression of the other girl's countenance gave Ida May no help at all. She was sure that her opponent had not lost her mind. She was just a wicked, bad, horrid girl who had somehow got something that belonged to Ida May Bostwick, and meant to keep it if she could. Self-pity filled the visitor's mind in place of the fury she had expended in her first outburst. She dared not attack the other with tooth and nail, for she saw now that this girl was as much her superior in physical strength as she was in strength of character. Therefore, Ida May fell back upon tears. She blubbered right heartily, and, being really weary after her walk from the port, she fell back into the spring rocker, which squeaked almost as protestingly as she did, put her beringed hands before her face, and gave herself to grief. Sheila Macklin's expression did not change. She revealed no sympathy for Ida May Bostwick. If she felt sympathy, it was for that girl who had been persecuted, unfairly accused of stealing, sent to a place worse than prison, afterward branded with the stigma of "jailbird"; that girl whom Tunis Latham had befriended, had rescued from a situation which she could not think of now without a feeling of creeping horror. Was she going to give over without a fight to this new claimant a place which had been and still was her only refuge? It could not be expected that she would do this. She had had no warning of this catastrophe. There had been no opportunity to prepare for a situation which must have shocked her terribly in any case. But if she had only had time-- Time? Time for what? To run away? Or to prepare the Balls, for instance, for the coming of this new claimant? And who knew this girl who said she was Ida May Bostwick? Sheila Macklin was fully aware of the history of Sarah Honey, of her marriage which had quite cut her off from her Cape Cod friends, and of the little that was known at Big Wreck Cove about her daughter, who, since babyhood, had never been seen here. How was one to be sure if this were really the right Ida May? If one girl could make the claim and carry it through so easily, why not another? How could this girl, crying in the rocking-chair, prove her statement that she was Mrs. Ball's niece? These thoughts seethed in Sheila Macklin's brain. She must keep cool! She must hold herself down, keep control of her own mind, and keep the whip hand of this girl before her. And, then, there was Tunis to think of. The appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick wrecked all her happiness, of course, with Tunis. Sheila could not let him continue his association with her. Yet what course should she pursue to save him? That suddenly became the first consideration in Sheila Macklin's mind. How to do this? How to save Tunis from being overwhelmed by the result of his own ill-considered deed? Impulse and love on Tunis Latham's part had brought about this terrible situation. Not that the girl blamed him in the least. Her thought was to protect the captain of the _Seamew_ from being sucked into the whirlpool which she clearly beheld beside her path. Save Tunis! It must be done. This little, inconsequential, weak-minded, loose-lipped girl must not be allowed to wreck Tunis Latham's life. If people came to accept as true the tale the girl could relate, Tunis' reputation would be smirched utterly in the opinion of all Big Wreck Cove folk. Much as Sheila Macklin felt that her own happiness with Tunis was now impossible--a flash of Aunt Lucretia made this realization the more poignant--he must be sheltered from any folly regarding this thing. She knew well his impulsive, generous nature. Who had a fuller knowledge of it than she? She must think and act for herself, without any conference with Tunis. But she must do the only thing, after all, that would balk this wretched girl from the city--for a time, at least. The real Ida May Bostwick had no friends here and no acquaintances among the people of Big Wreck Cove. It would be no easy matter for her to establish either credit or the fact of her identity in the community. It would take time and perhaps be very difficult for Ida May to bring forward conclusive evidence that would convince the Balls, or anybody else, of her real personality and prove that the girl in possession was an impostor. All the latter had to do was to maintain her already-accepted standing, deny the true Ida May's claim, and demand that the latter show proof of her apparently preposterous statement. At least, some considerable delay must ensue through Sheila's course before the girl could convince anybody that she only claimed what was her own. Nor need the battle end there. Ida May Bostwick might find it very difficult to prove to the satisfaction of all concerned that she was the actual niece of Prudence Ball. The very fact that Tunis had brought Sheila and introduced her as the girl he had been sent for was proof so strong that it could not be lightly denied. That phase of the matter--that Tunis was as deep in the conspiracy as she was herself--made Sheila Macklin desperate. She grasped at this only salvation--straw as it was!--for his sake more than for her own. Later, when she was able to think and plan and plot again, she would evolve some method of rescuing Tunis from the results of his own impulsiveness and her weakness in accepting his suggestion as a way out of her personal difficulties. She should have known better! She should have scouted the idea at its inception! She saw that this position in which she was placed was far and away more serious than that she had been in when she sat with Tunis upon the Boston Common bench. She had thought at that time that it needed little more to make her condition too desperate to bear. She would now, she felt, give life itself for the privilege of being back there and able to refuse the reckless plan of escape the captain of the _Seamew_ had submitted to her. She did not for a breath's length blame Tunis for the misfortune that had overtaken her--overtaken them both, indeed. She had accepted his plan with open eyes. In her desperation she had even foreseen the possibility of this outcome. She must blame nobody but herself. But all these thoughts were futile. No use in considering for a single moment past situations and possibilities. She was confronted by a grim and adamant present! And that grim present was in the person of a girl with tear-streaked face who looked up at her, sobbing. "You're the meanest girl I ever heard of. I'll pay you for this. Think of the gall of you comin' here and tellin' my rich relations you was me. I never heard of such a thing! It beats the movies, and and I thought they was just lies. Gee, but you must be a regular crook! I expect the very clothes you got on my aunt bought and gave you. I'll put you where you belong!" "And suppose I put you where you seem to belong?" interrupted the girl in possession. "There is such a place as an insane hospital in this county, I believe. I think you must have either escaped from such a place, or that you belong in one." "Oh!" gasped the other girl, staring up at her amazedly and not a little terrified by Sheila's emphatic speech. "If you really are some distant relative of the family," the latter continued, "Mrs. Ball may wish to see you. Come into the house and I will make you a cup of tea. You need it. And you can wait for Mrs. Ball and the captain to return, if you like." Ida May darted to her feet again. "A cup of tea of _your_ making!" she cried. "You'd put poison in it! You must be a wicked girl--anybody can see that. I wouldn't put anything bad past you. I guess them stories in the movies ain't so much lies, after all. "I want nothing from you, whoever you are, only my name back and the chance you have grabbed off here. I'll go to the neighbors about it. I'll tell 'em what you've done. I guess I can find somebody to believe me." Her abrupt halt warned Sheila that there was somebody approaching. Before she could turn to see who it was, the other girl ejaculated: "My goodness! What is it--a junk wagon? Look at that horse, will you! Say! who's these folks? What a pair of old dubs!" Cap'n Ira and Prudence had returned somewhat earlier than Sheila had expected. Old Queenie came up the lane and turned in at the open gateway beyond the garden. The new girl tugged excitedly at Sheila's arm. "Say! Who are they?" she demanded huskily. "This is Cap'n Ball and Mrs. Ball," was the reply, and the girl in possession hurried forward to help them out of the carriage. "Ahoy, Ida May!" the captain hailed cheerfully. "What's the good word?" He prepared to climb down. The girl assisted Prudence first. "Who's that with you, Ida May?" asked the old woman. Then, with keener eyes than the captain, she observed the change in the girl's face. "What's happened? Something has gone wrong, Ida May, I know. What is it?" "That--that girl--" Sheila almost choked. How could she prevaricate to the good old woman who had been so kind to her? "Who is she, Ida May?" "She says she is your niece," whispered the girl. "My niece? Land's sake! I ain't got no niece but you, Ida May. Say, Ira, do you know this young woman? She ain't none o' your relations, is she?" Cap'n Ira came to the ground finally with a thump of his cane. He straightened up and started at the new arrival. "Red-headed, I swan!" he muttered. "Never was a Ball that I know of with that color topknot. And she looks like one o' these sandpipers ye see along shore. Look at that hat!" "Ida May says she claims to be our niece," Prudence told him. "I swan! I told you we was gettin' mighty popular." Sheila, her limbs now trembling so that she feared she would fall, took Queenie by the head and backed the carriage around. The old mare would have to be put in her stall and the carryall run under cover. But the girl was fearful of moving out of earshot. Cap'n Ira and Prudence approached the real Ida May. The latter had been staring at them, marveling. Unlike Sheila, almost everything that Ida May Bostwick thought was advertised upon her face. "My goodness!" considered Ida May. "What a pair of hicks!" "You was lookin' for somebody named Ball, I cal'late?" Cap'n Ira said within Sheila's hearing as she led the gray mare away. She could not catch the reply. Whatever the real Ida May said, she could not stand by to deny it. Besides, the matter must rest for the present on the evidence, and she did not know yet how much proof Ida May might be able to advance to strengthen her case. If it rested upon mere assertion, then Sheila need merely deny its truth and hold her own! And, frightened as she was, that was exactly what Sheila intended to do. For the sake of Tunis, as well as for her own salvation, she must stand up against the new girl and hold by her own first claim--that she was the girl the Balls had sent Tunis for. CHAPTER XXI AT SWORDS' POINTS Sheila Macklin got Queenie to the stable and unharnessed her. She ran the carryall into the barn and then closed the big door for the night, although the sun was still an hour high. She stopped to fling grain to the poultry, too. These chores she did with the thought in her mind that she might never do them again for Cap'n Ira and Prudence. If that girl could prove her claim, if she could satisfy the old people that they had been cheated by Sheila and Tunis Latham, they might be indignant enough to put her right out--to-night! The trio had disappeared into the house. She heard voices from the sitting room. But she wanted to return the furniture to the front room and finish the task which the real Ida May's coming had interrupted. She had been strong enough when she carried the chairs and the settee into the yard, but she could scarcely get them back again. The strength seemed to have deserted her arms. She staggered in with the last article of furniture and set it in place. The murmur of voices from the room across the hall was steady. What were they saying? What had Ida May told them? How were the Balls taking it? Could that cheap, little thing convince the old people that she was their niece and that the girl they had come to love and trust was an impostor? Sheila Macklin's heart bled for Cap'n Ira and Prudence! If she must go and they took this other girl in her place, would they be happy? And they had been happy during these last months! Would they not miss her if she left them to the mercy of this new claimant? Yes, Sheila loved Cap'n Ira and Prudence. She loved them as though they were her very own! Not since her father had died had the girl been so fond of anybody--except Tunis, of course. And what would Tunis say when he came? What would he expect her to do? To admit the truth of Ida May's claim and give up without a battle? If she did this, she would expose him as well as herself to infamy. It was a situation that would have appalled a person of much stronger character than Sheila Macklin, and she was no weakling. No! She could not give up--not without a struggle. As she had first decided, she must confront the new girl boldly and deny, if she could, any claim Ida May Bostwick put forward. She must do this for Tunis even more than for herself. She arose determinedly. With this thought, strength surged back into her limbs as well as into her mind. For a time she had been weak, undecided. Once more she gathered her energies to oppose the sea of adversity which threatened to overwhelm her. She crossed the hall and opened the sitting room door. Cap'n Ira sat in his usual chair, leaning forward, with his hands clasped over the knob of his cane. Prudence, with a wondering look on her face, sat beside him, and just as far from the new girl as the length of the room would allow. The latter had been speaking with her usual vehemence, and she did not even glance at Sheila when the latter came quietly into the room. "Oh, Ida May!" gasped Prudence, and almost ran to her. "Do you know what she is saying? I never heard of such a thing!" "I tell you she _ain't_ Ida Bostwick," cried the other. "Don't you dare call her that. I'll--" "Hoity-toity, young woman! Avast there!" said the captain gruffly. "We won't get to the rights of this by quarreling. Wait!" He looked at Sheila, and his weatherhued countenance was as kindly of expression as usual. "You know what this young woman says?" he asked. Sheila nodded, but she held Prudence closely. The old woman was sobbing. "This won't do, you know," said Cap'n Ira. "I swan! It beats my time. I expect you've got friends somewhere, young woman, and you ought to be given into their charge. I'm real sorry for you, but what you say don't sound sensible. Ain't you made a mistake? I cal'late you heard about us and Ida May--" "I tell you," cried the girl, starting to her feet again, the brown eyes flashing spitefully, "that that thing there is an impostor. She's got my place. She's took my name. Why, I'll--I'll have her arrested. Ain't there no police in this awful place?" "There's a constable all right," said Cap'n Ira calmly. "But I wouldn't want to call him in. Not just now, anyway. It looks to me you wanted a doctor more than you wanted a constable." "You think I'm crazy!" gasped Ida May. "Well, it looks as though you was a leetle off your course," the old man told her calmly. "You don't talk with sense, to say the least. Making the claim you do would make most anybody think you was a little flighty. Yes, a little flighty, to say the least." And he wagged his head. "Look here," he pursued soothingly. "Have you been sick, perhaps? You ain't quite yourself, be ye? I knowed a feller once that thought he was the angel Gabriel and went around with a tin fish horn, tooting it at all hours of the day and night. But no graves opened for him and nobody was resurrected. They finally put him in the booby hatch, poor feller." "I'm your niece, I tell you," interrupted Ida May, pointing at Prudence, who shrank from her immediately in undeniable fear. "My mother was Sarah Honey before she was married. I guess there must be enough people in this Big Wreck Cove place who knew her and remember her to prove who I am." "I wouldn't try to do that," said Cap'n Ira thoughtfully. "Telling such a thing as this among the neighbors would be the surest way of getting into trouble. That's right. If Prudence--Mrs. Ball--don't know ye, do you think strangers would be likely to back you up? Don't you think it would be better to sit down quietly and rest a while? Maybe you'd better stay with us overnight." "Oh, Ira!" gasped his wife. "I wouldn't scurce dare have her stay. She--she's out of her head. She might do something." "I'll do something fast enough!" cried Ida May, stamping her foot. "I'll do something to that hussy!" "You hear her, Ira?" murmured Prudence, trying to draw Sheila away from the enraged girl. "Threatening damage never broke no bones yet," said the captain calmly. "I'll do _her_ some damage," declared Ida May bitterly. "If none of you won't listen to me, I'll find somebody that will. I'll--" She halted suddenly in her wild and angry speech. Her face changed as if by magic. The flush died in it and the expression of her sparkling eyes became subdued. A simpering look overspread Ida May Bostwick's countenance that warned the other girl, at least, that another person had entered the house. Before Sheila could turn to look toward the kitchen door, Ida May cried: "Oh, Cousin Tunis! If you ain't my cousin exactly, I guess you are pretty near. And ain't I glad you've come! Do you know what this awful girl is saying--what she is doing here? And these old fools won't believe me! I never heard of such a thing. Just you tell them who I am, and I guess they'll make her pack up and get out in a hurry." In the doorway stood the captain of the _Seamew_. The two old people welcomed his appearance with a satisfaction that could not be mistaken. "I swan, Tunis, you come at a mighty handy time," declared Cap'n Ira. "Oh, Tunis! Take that girl away," cried Prudence faintly, pointing at Ida May. The most difficult thing Sheila Macklin had ever done in all her life was what she did now. To act and speak a deliberate falsehood before Tunis Latham! She disengaged herself from Prudence, and before the simpering Ida May could speak again Sheila ran to him. In her face was, for the moment, all the fear and horror of the situation which she felt. It was a warning to him, and he was acute enough to understand it even before she spoke. "Oh, Tunis! This girl must be beside herself. She says her name is Ida May Bostwick and that she is Mrs. Ball's niece." Involuntarily Tunis had stretched forth his hands to welcome Sheila. He drew her closer without giving the Balls any attention whatsoever. One flashing glance he gave to the girl he held so gently--a look which was both a promise and a reassurance. Then he gazed over her head at the smirking Ida May. "What's the matter here?" he demanded. "Matter enough," said Cap'n Ira, not without marking, however, the attitude of the two young people he and Prudence loved. He even nudged his wife, who now stood close beside him. "Matter enough. That gal there, Tunis, seems to have lost her top-hamper. Leastways, some of it is mighty loose." "Tunis Latham!" gasped the new claimant. "You know who I am. Tell that girl--" She halted again, realizing the young man's expression of countenance and his attitude with the other girl. She was quick enough of comprehension to see that this other girl had the advantage of her with the captain of the _Seamew_ as well as with her relatives. In Ida May's own artful mind she had decided that a smart girl could easily "twist that fellow around her finger." This girl who had usurped her name and identity had already succeeded in doing just that! The girl from Hoskin & Marl's halted, the wrathful flush came back into her pretty, insipid face, and she almost screamed: "What's got into you folks? Are you all crazy? Why, that fellow knows who I am well enough! I bet he brought that girl here himself and palmed her off on you." She turned to blaze at Cap'n Ira and Prudence. "He picked her up somewhere--some low creature! But I'll show them both up; that's what I'll do. I'll make them both sorry for cheating me. I guess you folks have got a heap of money, and that fellow and that girl are trying to get it all. But they won't. I'll have my rights or--" "Belay that!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira suddenly. "We won't listen to no more such talk. Whatever we have got--Prudence and me--and whoever you be, young woman, I cal'late we'll do about as we please with it. I think you have broke loose from them that had you in charge. And they ought to be hunting for you. Leastways, I guess you'd better be sent back to 'em." "I'm her niece, I tell you!" reiterated Ida May, pointing at Prudence, who shrank again from the vehement girl. Then she whirled on Tunis. She clasped her hands. Into her rage was distilled some fear because of Cap'n Ira's grim words. "You got to help me," she said to the younger man. "You know who I am, and you daren't deny it!" No man can pace the quarter-deck--even of a packet of no greater importance than the _Seamew_--without having developed the sterner side of his character. And Tunis Latham came of a long line of shipmasters who had handled all sorts and conditions of men. If a skipper does not command the respect of his crew, he'll not get far! The grim mask that had settled upon the countenance of the captain of the _Seamew_ might have stayed the tongue of a more courageous person than Ida May Bostwick. His severe look and manner appalled her. "See here, young woman, I don't like your tone; nor do I understand what you mean. Who do you say this is, Ida May?" he added more gently, looking down into Sheila's face again. "She--" "_I'm_ Ida May Bostwick. You know I am!" wailed the visitor. "Why--why, you must remember me, Tunis Latham. Don't you call her by my name. I won't stand it." "Mad as a hatter! Mad as a hatter!" muttered Cap'n Ira to Prudence. "There's something the matter with her, is there?" proceeded Tunis thoughtfully, eying the claimant as though she was indeed an utter stranger. "How did she get here? What does she want?" "She wants a strait-jacket, I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira. "I don't know what is best to do about her. Prudence says she won't have her in the house overnight. 'Twould be too bad to have to put her in the town lockup." "You _dare_ to!" shrieked Ida May, with courage born of desperation. Tunis put Sheila tenderly aside. He crossed the room to the other girl. He showed no manner of sympathy for her, but he spoke quietly. "This won't do, you know. Mr. and Mrs. Ball don't want you here. You have no claim on them--none at all. Even if you chanced to be a relation, they have not got to take you in if they don't want to." "They've taken that other girl in!" cried Ida May wildly. "That is their business. They want her. They don't want you. You have no more standing here than you would have if you went into the house of the governor of the State and demanded recognition there." "What a wicked man you are!" gasped Ida May. "And--and I thought you was a simp!" Tunis did not even change color. He addressed her as though he believed she was not right in her mind. Sheila watched him, not now in fear, but in wonder. She had thought she must battle with this girl for Tunis' name and reputation. But the captain of the _Seamew_ had seized the reins of affairs himself and was likely to do much better in the emergency than Sheila could ever dream of doing. "Come, now," said Tunis Latham calmly. "I do not know where you belong or where you came from last. But you cannot stay here. Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue do not want you. If you have any friends near--" "I've got friends all right! You'll find out that I've got 'em!" gasped the girl threateningly. "You know anybody in Big Wreck Cove?" "No, I don't. I've just come here. But I mean to stay here till I get my rights. I'll show you all!" "You can't show us anything to-night," interposed Tunis firmly. "Whatever you mean to try to do cannot be done right now, you know. You will have to sleep somewhere, and I shall have to do one of two things--no, one of three things." She looked at him wonderingly, but she was listening. "I will take you back to the port. You cannot go home--wherever you live--to-night. In the morning you can go over with Ben Craddock on the stage to Paulmouth." "I won't!" The girl's determination was roused. There was a stubborn streak in her character that would make her a bitter antagonist. Tunis, as well as Sheila, realized this. "All right," said the captain of the _Seamew_ calmly. "Then I'll get you a place to stay down in the port. Or I shall have to see the justice of the peace and have you committed for your own safety." "You don't dare!" cried Ida May again. "You tempt me too far, young woman," he said sternly, "and you'll find just how much I dare. Will you come along with me now and behave yourself?" "That's the ticket, Tunis," muttered Cap'n Ira. "Put her where she belongs." "So my own folks turn me out, do they?" cried Ida May, hatefully, staring at the two old people. "If anybody is crazy it is those two," and she pointed to the Balls. "Take in a drab like that girl and throw _me_ out. Why, I believe I've seen her before. Somehow, she looks familiar," she added, her sharp gaze fixed on Sheila again. "Well, wherever it was, she was up to no good, I'll be bound." "Are you coming with me willingly, and now?" put in Tunis more harshly. "You are taking a chance, young woman, in talking this way." "Oh, she's got _you_ going. That's plain to be seen! I thought you was a nice fellow. But I guess you're like other sailors. I always heard they was a bad lot--running after women--" "Will you come without any more words?" interrupted Tunis grimly. "I'll have to go back to the town, I suppose. But remember! This ain't the end of this," she weakly blustered. "This your bag?" said Tunis calmly, picking up Ida May's satchel. "All right. We'll go." He did not attempt to look at Sheila again, nor at Cap'n Ira and Prudence. He walked behind Ida May, but rather hustled her out of the door. She might have cast back some final defiance, but he gave her no chance. It was almost twilight when they went out at the kitchen door. They left the trio in the sitting room speechless for the moment. But Sheila Macklin's speechlessness arose through different thoughts from those of the Balls. The girl left behind realized that this almost unexpected outcome was but the momentary triumph of falsehood. CHAPTER XXII A WAY OUT "Ida May, you'd better sit down. You look like you'd had a stroke," declared the captain. "Why wouldn't she, the dear child?" cried Prudence. "What do you suppose is the matter with that girl? Is she crazy?" "Crazy ain't no name for it," her husband rejoined. "Her top-hamper is all askew, I cal'late. I never see the beat." But just now Sheila could not endure any discussion of the strange girl. She rose as quickly as she had seated herself. "I must fix supper," she said briskly. "You sit still, Aunt Prudence. You're flustered, I can see. There is nothing for you to do." "That's right," put in Cap'n Ira. "Get a bite ready against Tunis comes back. He'll want something fillin' after handling that crazy gal." He winked at Prudence and nudged her. The outstanding incident for the old man was the unmistakable signs Tunis and Sheila had given that they were in love with each other. "What did I tell ye when that gal first come here?" whispered Cap'n Ira hoarsely, when the girl had left the room. "I knowed that the hull generation here on the Cape hadn't been struck blind, not by a jugful! And it's evident to my mind, Prudence, that Tunis Latham has had his eyes pretty wide open from the first." "Oh! I hope--it can't be that Ida May would leave us," murmured Prudence. "I don't mean to be selfish." "Looks like we could get another gal easy enough if we wanted her," remarked the old man, with some bitterness. "I swan, Prue! S'pose Ida May had turned out to be the sort of a gal that flyaway critter is? We are blessed; we certainly are." And he treated himself to a liberal pinch of snuff. Sheila did not wish to hear the two old people talk about the real Ida May Bostwick. When Tunis took the girl away it was an enormous relief. Of that she was quite sure. The malevolent attitude of the frustrated Ida May was sufficient to frighten anybody. Shelia was positive enough that, as Ida May had promised, the matter was not ended. That venomous girl would not be content to leave Big Wreck Cove without making a further attempt--perhaps many--to establish herself in her right identity and in what she considered her rightful place with the Balls. Supper was late that evening. They were only just seated at the table when Tunis returned. "Come on, boy," said Cap'n Ira. "There's a place set for you. Tell us what you did with that crazy girl." Sheila was busy between the stove and the table and did not come to the side of the captain of the _Seamew_ as he took the chair indicated. He was not smiling as usual, but neither did he seem alarmed. He replied to the questions of the old people with tranquillity. "I did not advise her to go to the Burchell House," Tunis said. "You know what a talker Sally Burchell is. I remember that Mrs. Pauling took boarders in the summer, and I went to her with that girl." "You mean Zeb's mother?" asked Prudence. "Well, she'll take care of her, I guess. And Zeb is strong and willing. If she gets crazy in the night, they ought to be able to hold her." A faint smile flickered for a moment about Tunis Latham's stern lips. "I don't guess she will act up so very bad with strangers." "I swan! We was strangers enough to her, it would seem," exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "But she seems to consider that you ought not to be," Tunis pointed out. "Never heard of such a thing!" muttered the old man. "I would have been glad to get her out of town this very night," Tunis observed quietly. "But it could not be done. She is convinced that she has what she calls 'rights,' and she proposes to remain and fight for them." "I swan!" "You will have to be firm with her. I explained to Zeb's mother what we thought was the matter with her. And I'll try to find her friends. She says she comes from Boston." "Goodness gracious gallop!" exclaimed the old woman, more angry than frightened now. "She certainly can't stay here and tell those awful things she was saying about Ida May." "I don't really see how we are going to stop her, right at first," Tunis rejoined. "Of course, if she continues to come up here and bother you, you can have her arrested." "Oh!" gasped Sheila. "Now, gal," said Cap'n Ira firmly, "don't you let your tender heart deceive you. That crazy critter ain't worth worrying about. She shan't be hurt. But I won't have her coming round here frightening you and Prudence. No, sir!" "Quite right," said Tunis, agreeing. "Oh, Tunis!" murmured the girl. "But she will make talk. No doubt she will make talk," said Prudence in a worried tone. "We ought to stop her, somehow, from telling such things about our Ida May." "Does she want money?" asked Cap'n Ira gruffly. "She talked as though she did." "I think to offer her money would be the very worst possible way of shutting her up," said Tunis. "She wants to come here and live and be accepted as your niece." "I never did!" gasped Prudence. "She says nothing else will suit her. She seems to think she can prove what she had claimed. I think the best thing to do is to let her try it." Sheila could not eat. She merely stared from one to the other of the three and listened to the discussion. In no way could she see a shadow of escape from ultimate disaster; yet she saw that Tunis was determined to fight it out on this line, to deny the stranger's claim and hold to what had already been gained for the girl in possession! "Well," Prudence said, with a sigh, "I can see plainly it is going to stir up a puddle of muddy water. Unless she says or does something that makes the authorities take her and put her away, there will be them that will believe her--or half believe her." "Let 'em talk," growled Cap'n Ira. "'Twon't be the first time Big Wreck Cove folks got a mouthful to chew." "But it will hurt Ida May," said Prudence, her voice trembling, as she squeezed the girl's hand and held it. "'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,'" began Cap'n Ira. Then he broke off in anger when he saw the girl's face, and exclaimed: "But, I swan! They'll keep you dodging, and that's a fact! Ought to be some way of shutting her up, Tunis." "I don't know how that is going to be done. Not just at first, anyway. Perhaps something will turn up. And, anyway, she hasn't begun to talk yet." "It's like being tied down to one o' them railroad tracks and waiting for the fast express to come along and crunch ye," grumbled the old man. "I know how Ida May feels. But you keep a stiff upper lip, my gal. You've got plenty of friends that won't listen to any such crazy notions as that other gal's got in her noodle." In this manner the old folks comforted themselves in part. But nothing that was said could comfort Sheila. Tunis smoked a pipe with Cap'n Ira after supper, while the girl cleared off the table and washed and dried the dishes. Then he got her outside just after he had bidden Cap'n Ira and Prudence good night. They walked away silently from the kitchen door into the deep murk of a starless night. The moaning of a rising sea upon the outer reefs was the requiem of Sheila's hopes. One thing, she saw clearly, she must do. If she remained and fought for her place with the Balls, she must stand alone. Whether or not she held her place, she must not allow Tunis to be linked with her in this situation. As she slipped deeper and deeper into the morass, she could not cling to him and drag him as well into infamy and disgrace. Away from the house, fully out of earshot from the kitchen, she halted. Tunis had taken her hand in his warm, encouraging grasp. She let it remain, but she did not return his pressure. "Dear, this is dreadful," he whispered, "I know. But leave it to me. I'll find some way out." "There is no way out, Tunis," she said confidently. "Cat's-foot! Don't say that," he cried in exasperation. "There is always a way out of every jam." "This girl will do one of two things," said Sheila firmly. "Either she will prove her claim, or she will give up and go back to Boston. You know that." "She'll fight hard, I guess" he admitted. "Either way, Tunis," the girl pursued, "there is bound to be much doubt cast upon my character--upon _me_. If the truth becomes known, I am utterly lost. If it is hushed up, I must go on living a lie--if I stay here." "Don't talk that way!" he exclaimed gruffly. "Of course you'll stay here. If not with the Balls, then with me." "Stop!" she begged him. "Wait! I am going to state the matter plainly as it is. We can no longer dodge it. This is the _truth_ which we have been trying to ignore. I have not been foolish only; I have been wicked. And my greatest sin was in allowing you to link yourself with me so closely." "What do you mean?" he gasped. "Just what I say. It was wrong for me to allow you to be friendly with me before the Balls and other people. I should not have gone to your house last Sunday. I should not have allowed you to introduce me to your Aunt Lucretia." "Ida May!" "That is not my name," she whispered. "Let there be no further mockery between you and me, Tunis. I have been wicked; _we_ have been wicked. We must pay for what we have done. There is no escaping that. I must not keep you as my lover, Tunis. I was wrong--oh! so wrong--last Sunday. Reckless, wicked, drifting with a current, I scarcely knew where." "My dear girl--" "Now I see the rocks ahead, Tunis. I can shut my eyes to them no longer. Disaster is at hand. You shall not be overwhelmed, as I may be overwhelmed at any time. I will not have your ruin on my conscience!" "My ruin?" he repeated. "Ridiculous! My dear girl, you are talking like a mad woman. You cannot snap the tie that binds us. You cannot shoulder all the responsibility for this situation. The sin is as much mine as yours, if it is a sin. I'm in it as deep as you are." "You must not be," she cried. "You can escape. You _shall_ escape." "Suppose I refuse to do so?" And he said it confidently. "Tunis, I have thought of a way out for you," she cried suddenly. "I don't want to hear it." "But you must hear it!" "I will not accept it." "You cannot help yourself," she told him firmly. "Oh, I know what I am about! You may be angry; you will perhaps be laughed at a bit. But to be laughed at is better than to be scorned." "What under the sun do you mean, girl?" he exclaimed, both startled and horrified by her determined words. "Do you think I would desert you in the middle of the current and swim ashore?" "But I will desert you. I am determined to desert you. I refuse to cling to you, a millstone about your neck to drag you down. Ah, Tunis, whether or not that girl makes her claim good, what you and I had hoped for cannot be! An explanation must be made of your part in this frightful affair. That, in itself, must separate you and me." "What explanation? There is no such explanation that can be made. I glory in the fact that we are together in this, Sheila, and whatever comes of it, we stand or fall together!" "Ah, Tunis, you _are_ a man! I knew that before. But nothing you can say will bend my determination. I withdraw all I said to you Sunday and on Monday morning before you went away. I positively withdraw all I promised you. It cannot be, Tunis. We cannot look forward to any happiness when we began so unwisely." "'Unwisely?' What do you mean?" demanded the captain of the _Seamew_. "Chance threw us together. _Providence_, I tell you! I needed you fully as much as you needed me. And surely these poor old folks needed you, Sheila. Consider what you have been to them." "It makes no difference in our association, Tunis," she said, shaking her head. "Why, that night we talked upon that bench on Boston Common, had I dared propose such a thing, I would have said: 'Come and marry me now.' I would, indeed, Sheila." The girl clenched her hands and drew in a breath. She raised her face to his, and in the darkness Tunis Latham saw it shine with a light from within. A great and desperate longing filled her voice when she cried: "Oh, why didn't you do just that, Tunis Latham? I would have said 'yes.' And all this--_this_ need not have been." Swiftly she caught him around the neck, pressed her lips fiercely to his, while the tears rained down her face, wetting his face as well. Then she was gone. He heard her sobbing wildly in the dark. He was alone. CHAPTER XXIII A CALL UNANNOUNCED Cap'n Ira and Prudence did not see Sheila again that evening, for she slipped in by the kitchen door after they had gone into the sitting room and went up to her own chamber. They heard her mount the stairs and marked the tread of her light feet overhead. The girl was not thinking of the old people just then. Their need entered into her determination to remain if she could. But this night was one time when Sheila Macklin thought almost altogether of herself and her personal difficulties. Her present and acknowledged love for the young captain of the _Seamew_ had been of no mushroom growth. She might not say, as Tunis did, that she had fallen in love at first sight. But very soon after meeting the young shipmaster from Big Wreck Cove she had appreciated his full value and realized that he was far and away the best man she had ever met. Indeed, in that moment when Tunis Latham had caught Sheila in his arms as she had slipped in front of the restaurant on Scollay Square, the girl's mind had been stabbed through by such a poignant feeling, such a desire to know more about him, that she was actually frightened by the strength of this concern. She knelt before her north window with the frosty air breathing in like a balm upon her fevered body, and strained her eyes for a glimpse of the light that always burned in Tunis' window when he was at home. It was a long time before she saw it. For Tunis Latham had walked about the fields a long time after she left him, and it was late when he finally entered the big brown house behind the cedars. Aunt Lucretia, who had been expecting him, after she had seen the _Seamew_ heading for the cove that afternoon, was still sitting in the kitchen when her nephew entered. Composed as the man's features were, there was still an expression upon them which startled the woman. It brought her out of her chair, even if it did not bring an audible question to her lips. "I was delayed, Aunt 'Cretia," he said. "No; nothing new about the _Seamew_ or about business. It's--there's trouble up to the Balls'." He knew her first thought would be for the health of the two old people, and he had to explain a little more. "They are all right--Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue. It's about Sh--Ida May." "Tunis! Nothing has happened to the girl?" He must take Aunt Lucretia into his confidence--at least, to some extent. Just how much could he tell her? How much dared he tell her? From somebody, he felt sure, she would hear about this other girl who had appeared to claim kinship with the Balls and demand that Sheila give over to her the place she had with Cap'n Ira and Prudence. For Ida May Bostwick was going to talk. Tunis knew that well enough. Although he had warned her sternly that evening against talking, he knew well enough that after the girl had recovered from her first fright she would spit out the venomous tale that she had already concocted in her mind about Sheila and himself. He could not bring himself to confess to Aunt Lucretia all the truth about his first meeting and subsequent association with Sheila. Indeed, he hoped he would never be obliged to tell it. But he must tell Aunt Lucretia nothing but the truth. He did this by beginning at the coming of the real Ida May Bostwick to the Ball house that afternoon and her claim to Sheila's place with the family. As he told the story, Aunt Lucretia gazed upon him so fixedly, so intently, that the captain of the _Seamew_ was disturbed. He could not understand her expression. Perhaps he told the story haltingly of how Ida May had been turned out and he had taken her back to the port and housed her with Mrs. Pauling. He made few comments, however; he left Aunt Lucretia to draw her own conclusions. It was not until he had quite finished that she spoke again. "That crazy girl, is she--" "I don't know that she's crazy," said Tunis gruffly. "It would seem so. Does she look like Ida May?" Tunis started. The question seemed to probe into a matter that he had not before considered. But he shook his head negatively. "Nothing like her," he said. "Reddish hair. Brown eyes--or kind of brown. When she's maddest there are green lights in 'em. Not nice eyes at all." Aunt Lucretia nodded and said no more upon that point. What her question had dealt with in her own mind, Tunis could not guess. She watched his face, now pale and sadly drawn. Then she placed a firm hand upon his arm to arouse his attention. "Tunis! This--this girl at Cap'n Ira's is something to you?" "My God! Aunt 'Cretia, she's _everything_ to me," he groaned, his reticence breaking down. "Is she a good girl, Tunis?" "As good as gold. On my honor, there was never a nobler or better girl. I--I love her!" The words burst from him now in a great gush of emotion. These Lathams, when they did break up, often ran over. "I can't tell you the hold she has on me. If I lose her through this or any other cause, I'm done for! "She thinks she isn't good enough for me. She is afraid of this girl who claims her place. She fears that I am going to be looked down on if I have anything more to do with her. And I tell you, if she was not the girl I know her to be, I would still cling to her. I must have her. I tell you, I must!" Tears came to his eyes. His voice, hoarse and broken, carried to the woman's heart the knowledge that the one and overpowering passion of the man's life was rampant within him. What or whoever the girl at the Ball homestead might be, Tunis Latham was bound to her by ties which could not be broken. She did the thing most generous; quite in accordance with her unselfish disposition. She stepped nearer to her nephew and put her arms about his neck. She kissed him. She gave no further evidence of doubt or disapproval. Indeed, when he left her to go to his room, he was assured that, however the world might look upon him, Aunt Lucretia was his supporter. The girl in the Ball house saw the glimmer of his lamp that night for a very few minutes. There was a day's work before him, and Tunis Latham, like other hard-working men, must have his sleep. Sheila kept the night watches alone. She went to bed, but the lids of her eyes could not close. Sleep was as far from her as heaven itself. She went over the entire happenings of the previous afternoon and evening with care, giving to each incident its rightful importance, judging the weight of each word said, each look granted her. Did the Balls suspect her in the least? Had the story Ida May Bostwick told made any real impression upon their minds? No! She finally told herself that thus far she was secure. Ida May must bring something besides assertion to influence the minds of the two old people. And if she had had documentary proof in her possession yesterday, the new claimant would have shown it. Nobody carries about with him birth certificate or memoranda of identification and relationship. If Ida May had been warned of what she was to meet at the old house on Wreckers' Head, without doubt she would have tried to equip herself in some such way for the interview. It might be very difficult for the girl to obtain any evidence that would assure the Balls of her actual relationship to them. Sheila had foreseen this possibility from the first. She was still quite determined to hold on, to make the other girl do all the talking and all the proving. She herself would rest upon the foundation of her establishment in the place Ida May Bostwick claimed. The latter certainly could not know Sheila's true history. Sheila was as much a stranger to Ida May as she had been to the Balls when Tunis had brought her to Wreckers' Head. And then, suddenly, a thought seared through the girl's mind. Something that Ida May Bostwick had said just before Tunis hurried her out of the house! "I believe I've seen her before. Somehow, she looks familiar." These two sentences, spoken in Ida May's sneering way, had made little impression on the excited Sheila at the time they were spoken. But now they made the girl's heart beat wildly. Suppose it were true! Suppose Ida May should really remember who Sheila was? It was not impossible that the girl from the lace counter of Hoskin & Marl's knew of Sheila's disgrace. Sleep was not within her reach. The long hours of the night dragged past. Dimly dawn crept along the dark line of the horizon, circling all her world as far as Sheila could see it from her bed. But it was still dark below her north window when she caught the sound of a familiar step, the crunch of gravel under Tunis' boot. She lay shaking for a moment, holding her breath. She heard the tiny pebbles rattle upon the window sill. For the first time she had not been downstairs to greet Tunis on his way to the port. Could she let him go now without a word? But she must! She must be firm. Nevertheless, she slipped softly out of bed. The pebbles rattled again. She caught up a dark veil from her bureau and wrapped it about her face. She crept to the north window. The veil would mask her face so that he could not distinguish it in the shadow. But she could look down upon him. She saw him standing there so firmly--so determinedly. His was no nature to give over easily anything he had set his heart on. All the more reason why Sheila should not appear to weaken. She crouched there breathlessly as he tossed up more pebbles. Then she heard him sigh. Then he turned slowly away, and his feet dragged off along the path, and he went out of sight. The girl crept back into bed. She hid her face in the pillow and dry sobs racked her frame. This was the hardest of all the hard things she had to do. She had wounded Tunis to the heart! CHAPTER XXIV EUNEZ PARETA Tunis Latham went down the track toward the port as the dull dawn glimmered behind him in a frame of mind so dismal and despairing that more than Sheila Macklin would have pitied the captain of the _Seamew_. Against the tide of emotions which now surged in his heart he scarcely had the energy to battle. Never had he felt less like approaching his usual tasks as commander and owner of the schooner and facing the trials he knew would meet him upon this coming trip to Boston. Freight was waiting upon Luiz Wharf, and he would be able to pick up the remainder of his cargo at Hollis, which, with the wind as it was now, he could reach that afternoon by four o'clock. Given good luck, he would warp into the T-wharf next day before nightfall. The uncertain point which troubled him most was the matter of the crew of the _Seamew_. The Portygees remaining with him--even Johnny Lark, the cook--had been in a most unhappy temper all the way back from Boston on the last trip. Tunis could depend upon Mate Chapin, Boatswain Newbegin, and 'Rion Latham himself to stick by the schooner. For, in spite of his quarreling and long tongue about a hoodoo, Tunis thought that his cousin was a man above any real fear of the very superstitions he talked about. But four men could not safely work the schooner to Boston, nor in season to keep his contract with the consignees of freight which the _Seamew_ carried. Troubled as he had been at Boston, and delayed, Tunis wished now that he had remained there even longer while he made search for and engaged a proper crew for the schooner. He had better, perhaps, have paid the fare of the Portygees back to Big Wreck Cove and so saved quarreling with them. When he had been about to leave the schooner the afternoon before, the foolish fellows had sent a spokesman to him asking if he was sure the _Seamew_ was not the old _Marlin B._, the Salem fishing craft which had been acclaimed "the murder ship" from the Banks to the Cape by all coasting seamen several years before. To answer this question rasped the pride of the owner of the _Seamew_. For a seaman to ask a question of one of the officers--a question of such a nature--was flaunting authority in any case. Although Captain Latham considered the question ridiculous and utterly unworthy of a serious answer, he had replied to it. He had told the sailor that to the best of his knowledge and belief the old _Marlin B._ was several thousand miles away from the Cape at that time, and that the _Seamew_ was herself and no other. In any case, he had said he had no personal fear of sailing in the schooner as long as he could keep a decent crew of seamen aboard her, but that he would stand for no more foolishness from his present crew. Tunis had spoken quite boldly. But, to tell the truth, he did not know where or how he was to sign another crew and a cook if the Portygees deserted the schooner. Not at Big Wreck Cove. He had heard too many whispers about the curse upon his schooner from people of all classes in the port. Even Joshua Jones, who was supposed to be a pretty hard-headed merchant, had been influenced by the story 'Rion Latham had first told about the _Seamew_. He and his father had hesitated to give Tunis an order for another lot of freight now waiting on the dock at Boston. They wanted to be sure that the schooner was not going to sail from the latter port undermanned. Whether or not the Joneses believed in the hoodoo, they did know that if the _Seamew_ sailed without a proper crew their insurance on the freight would be invalid. So the farther Tunis walked down toward the wharves, the more these thoughts assailed and overcame his mind, to the exclusion even of the tragic happenings back there on the Head the night before. He could not consider Ida May Bostwick--not even Sheila--now. The schooner, with her affairs, was a harsh mistress. His all was invested in the _Seamew_, and business had not been so good thus far that he could withdraw with a profit. Far from that! There were financial reefs and shoals on either hand, and that fact the young skipper knew right well. As he drew near to Portygee Town, he glanced toward the open door of Pareta's cottage and saw the girl, Eunez, seated upon the step. She did not come out to meet him, as had been her wont, but she hailed him as he approached--though in a sharper tone than usual. "So Captain Tunis Latham has still another girl? He is a lion with the ladies, it is plain to be seen. Ah!" "You don't mind, do you, Eunez?" replied the young man, trying to assume his usual careless manner of speech. "You have the reputation of being pretty popular with the fellows yourself." "Ah!" she said again, tossing her head. "Who is this new girl I see you walk with last evening, Tunis?" "She is a stranger in Big Wreck Cove," was his noncommittal reply. "So I see. They come and go for you, Tunis Latham. You are the fickle man, eh?" "Tut, tut, Eunez!" he laughed. "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. How about yourself? Didn't I see you going to church with Johnny Lark last Sunday? And then, in the afternoon, you had another cavalier along the beaches. Oh, I saw you!" The color flashed into her dark cheek, and her black eyes reflected some unexplained anger. Beside her, leaning against the house wall, was the handle end of a broken oar. Tunis chanced to mark that there was a streak of dull blue paint on it. "You have sharp eyes. Tunis Latham," hissed the girl. "Not all of the Lathams are too proud to walk with Eunez Pareta--or too proud to think of her. But _you_--bah!" She got up suddenly, turned her back upon him, and entered the cottage. Tunis walked on, just a little puzzled. Horry Newbegin sat on the rail of the schooner smoking, and evidently looking anxiously for the appearance of the skipper. There was no smoke rising from the galley chimney. "What's the matter with cooky?" demanded Tunis briskly. "The dratted Portygee's gone off to Paulmouth. He left word that he couldn't sail with us this trip." "Then he'll never sail on the _Seamew_ again," declared the skipper grimly. "And _that_ won't bother him none," said the boatswain gloomily. "I'll get breakfast for all hands," said Tunis. "I'm not above that. Where are the hands?" "As far as I know, Cap'n Tunis, they are where Johnny Lark is. Haven't shown up, and don't mean to," said Horry doggedly. Tunis Latham cursed his delinquent crew soundly. The rage which flamed into his eyes, added to the pallor of his face, made an ugly mask indeed. It was not often that he gave way to such an outburst, but Horry had seen the same deadly anger displayed on occasion by Captain Randall Latham. "Where's Mr. Chapin?" "He was here before you, Cap'n Tunis. He's gone up to town to see if he can drum up some hands." "Where's 'Rion?" "He says he'll be here by the time you get ready to wheel the stuff aboard." And the old man pointed with his pipe-stem toward the open door of the shed. "Ha!" ejaculated Tunis. "Feared I'd set him to work, eh? Well, they're all dogs together--the whole litter of 'em. I'll make the coffee. Tell me when Mr. Chapin comes. I suppose we can hire enough hands to get the freight aboard." "But we can't work the schooner with three men, Cap'n Tunis; nor yet with four." "Don't I know that? I'll get a crew if I have to shanghai them," promised Tunis grimly. Mason Chapin came along with half a dozen fellows after a while. One was a negro who could cook. But there was no breakfast worthy of the name served aboard the _Seamew_ that morning. They were late already in getting to work. It was the middle of the forenoon before the schooner left port. There was a crew, such as it was. But Mason Chapin had been obliged to promise them extra pay to get them aboard the schooner at all. When 'Rion Latham slipped aboard finally, half the loading of the cargo had been accomplished. Tunis himself was keeping tally. The skipper beckoned his cousin to him. "'Rion," he said, "you certainly are about as useless a fellow as I ever had anything to do with. These Portygees who have left me in the lurch have some excuse for their actions. They are ignorant and superstitious. You know mighty well that the stuff you have been repeating about the schooner being cursed is nothing but lies and old-women's gossip! You've done it to make trouble. I ought to have had booted you overboard at the start." "Aw--you--" "Close your hatch!" ejaculated Tunis. "And keep it closed. I'm talking, and I won't take any of your slack in return. I am not married to you, thanks be! I think you've got pretty near enough of me, and I'm sure I have of you, 'Rion. I give you warning--" "Oh! You do?" snarled 'Rion, his ugly face aflame. "Yes. I give you _fair_ warning. When the _Seamew_ gets back here to Big Wreck Cove again, you're through! You can take your dunnage ashore now if you like, but you go without pay if you do. Or you can do your work properly on this trip and return. _Then_ you get through. Take your choice." He expected 'Rion would leave the _Seamew_ then and there. Tunis half hoped, indeed, that he would do so. But to his surprise, Orion suddenly snatched the book and pencil out of the skipper's hand and, growling that "he'd stay the voyage out," shuffled away to the rail and began taking tally of the barrels and cases being hauled aboard. Working smartly, the new crew got the _Seamew_ under sail and out of the cove two hours later. The wind held in a favorable quarter, and they reached Hollis betimes. There they finished the schooner's loading, and about dark went out to sea on a long tack and got plenty of sea room before they made the short leg of it. Supper was the first good meal they had had aboard that day. After everything was cleaned up, the black cook joined the crew forward. In whispers the men talked over both the skipper and his schooner. The story of the curse was known to everybody in Big Wreck Cove by this time, and none of these new men was ignorant of it. They had, however, merely used it as a means of getting more pay than ordinary seamen were getting in such vessels. "'Tain't nothing as I can see," one of the older men said, "that is likely to hurt us. It's a curse on the schooner, not on us folks that warn't aboard her when she run under that other boat. And as long as we keep away from the spot where the poor devils was drowned, we ain't likely to see no ha'nts." The cook's eyes rolled tremendously. "You thinks likely this yere is that _Marlin B._?" "Bah!" exclaimed one, whose name was Carney. "It's only talk. Maybe she ain't that schooner at all. Mr. Chapin says she ain't." "Is that so?" sneered the voice of 'Rion Latham behind them. "You fellows don't want to believe what the skipper and the mate say. It ain't to their benefit for you to believe the truth. Look here!" "What's that?" asked Carney, looking at the article Orion pushed forward in the dark. "A broken oar?" "That's what it is. I found it only this morning in the hold, when I was helping stow the last of the cargo. It was wedged in behind a timber of her frame." "Well? What of it?" "Strike a match somebody. See what's burned into that handle?" Their heads were clustered about the faint glimmer of the match flame. But the light was sufficient to reveal what 'Rion pointed out. Burned more or less unevenly were the letters M A R L I N B. "What do you think of that?" exclaimed 'Rion. "Would that broken oar be aboard of this dratted schooner if she wasn't the _Marlin B._ painted over and a new name give her? What do you fellows think of it?" There was silence in the group when the match flame died out. It was finally the negro cook who made comment: "Lawsy me!" he groaned. "Ef I had only de faith of Peter I'd up an' walk ashore from dis here cussed schooner right now!" CHAPTER XXV TO LOVE AND BE LOVED The girl whom Cap'n Ira Ball found in the kitchen of the old house on Wreckers' Head when he hobbled out of his bedroom the next morning was not the Ida May he had been wont to find of late, ready with his shaving materials, hot water, and a clean and voluminous checked apron to be tucked in about the neckband of his shirt. All was in readiness as usual, but the girl herself was smileless, heavy-eyed, and slack of step. That she had suffered both in body and mind since the day before, the least observant person in the world would have easily comprehended. "I swan, Ida May!" gasped the old man. "Whatever's happened to you?" "I did not sleep well, Uncle Ira," she told him faintly. "Sleep? Why you look as though you'd been standing double watch for a week of Sundays! I never see the beat! Has that crazy gal coming here set ye all aback this way?" "I--I am afraid so." "'Tis a shame. I won't stand to have that gal come here again. Prudence has been starting and crying out all night, too. She's as much upset as you be. I cal'late you don't feel like shaving of me this morning, Ida May." "Oh, yes, I do, Uncle Ira! Don't mind how I look." "But I do mind," he grumbled. "Folks' looks is a great p'int. I've always held to it. Talk about a singed cat being better than it looks--I doubt it!" "People of my complexion always look worse after a sleepless night," explained Sheila, trying to smile at him. "That's a pity, too. And I feel the need of being spruced up a good deal myself this morning, Ida May," he continued. "D'you see how straggly my hair is gettin'? Do you think you could trim it a mite?" "Why, of course I can, Uncle Ira," she rejoined cheerfully. "I swan! You be a likely gal, Ida May," said the old man, both reflectively and gratefully. "What would Prue and me do without you? And no other girl but just you would have begun to fill the bill o' lading. That's as sure as sure! See now," he went on, with emphasis, "suppose you'd been such a one as that half-crazy critter that come here yesterday! Where'd Prudence and me been with her in the house? Well!" "She--she may not be as bad as she seemed under those particular circumstances," Sheila said hesitatingly. "If she had come here--had come here first and you and Aunt Prue had not known me at all--" "I swan! Don't say no more! Don't say no more, I tell ye!" gasped Cap'n Ira. "It's bad luck to talk such a way; I do believe it is. Come on, Ida May. You tackle my hair and let's see what you can do with it. I know right well you'll make it look better than Prudence used to do." Cap'n Ira was talking for effect, and the result he wished to achieve was bringing a smile to Sheila's face and a brighter light into her eyes, the violet hues of which were far more subdued than he desired. His success was not marked, but he changed to some degree the forlorn expression of the girl's countenance, so that when Prudence appeared in the midst of the operation of shaving, Sheila could greet the old woman with a tremulous smile. "You deary-dear!" crooned Prudence, with her withered arms about the strong, young frame of the girl, drawing her close. "I know you've suffered this night. That mad girl was enough to put us all out o' kilter. But don't let any thought of her bother you, Ida May. Your uncle and I love you, and if forty people said you didn't belong here, we should keep you just the same. Ain't that so, Ira?" "Sure is," declared the captain vigorously. "No two ways about it. We couldn't get along without Ida May, and I cal'late, the way things look, that I'd better get that high fence I spoke of built around this place at once. We're likely to have somebody come here and carry the gal off almost any time. I can see that danger as plain as plain!" Prudence laughed, yet there was a catch in her voice too. She kissed the girl's tear-wet face tenderly. Sheila's heart throbbed so that she could scarcely go on with the task of shaving Cap'n Ira. How could she continue to live this lie before two people who were so infinitely kind to her and who loved her so tenderly? And the girl loved them in return. It was no selfish thought which held Sheila Macklin here in the old house on Wreckers' Head. She had put aside all concern for her own personal comfort or ease. Had it not been for her desire to shield Tunis and continue to aid and comfort Cap'n Ira and Prudence, she might quickly and quietly have left the place and thus have escaped all possibility of punishment for the deception she had practiced. Yes, had these other considerations not been involved, she would have run away! Although she chanced to have no money just at this time, she would have left the Ball homestead and Wreckers' Head and the town itself and walked so far away that nobody who knew her would ever see her again. She had thought of doing this even as far back as the time when she was so lonely and miserable in Boston. Now, she would willingly have become a tramp for the purpose of getting out of the affliction which enmeshed her. She could not, nevertheless, yield to this temptation. If she ran away from the Balls and Big Wreck Cove, she would tacitly admit the truth of all Ida May Bostwick's claims, and possibly involve Tunis in the wreckage. Therefore she held to her determination of keeping her place here until she was actually driven forth. As a last resort, having now worked out the detail of that plan in her mind, she believed she could save Tunis from much calumny if it became positively necessary for her to depart under this cloud and abandon her place to the real Ida May. The latter must, however, come with positive proof of her identity--evidence sufficient to convince Cap'n Ira and Prudence--before Sheila Macklin would release her grasp upon what she had obtained by trickery and deceit. Not for a moment did the girl try to excuse to herself what she had done. In spite of the Balls' need of her, and in spite of Tunis' love, Sheila did not try to deceive herself with any sophistry about the end justifying the deed. Such thinking could not satisfy her now. Sheila's eyes were opened. She beheld before her both the wide and the narrow way. If she took the pleasanter path, it was with a full knowledge of what she did. Yet would it be the pleasanter path? She doubted this. If she continued to fight for a place which was not hers by right, she must walk for all time in a slippery way. This claim of the real Ida May might be perennial; the girl might return again and again to the attack. For years--as long as the Balls lived and Sheila remained with them--she must be ever on the alert to defend her position with them. And after the good old people died--what then? Their property here on the Head and their money would no more belong to Sheila Macklin than it did now. She shrank in horror from the thought of swindling the real Ida May out of anything which might legally be hers when the Balls were gone. Of course, Cap'n Ira and Prudence could will their property to whom they pleased. Still, Ida May was Prudence's niece! As the day dragged on, Ida May did not appear, but the old folks talked about her continually, until Sheila thought she must cry aloud to them to stop. "The poor thing must be half-witted, of course," Mrs. Ball said ruminatively. "Can't be otherwise. But she must have known something about Sarah Honey and her folks." "Seems likely," agreed Cap'n Ira. "Now, you know, Ira, Sarah was an orphan and I was her mother's only relation--and only that in a kind of a left-handed way, for I wasn't really her aunt. That branch of the Honeys--Sarah's father's folks--had all died out. Sarah lived about--kinder from pillar to post as you might say--till she went to Boston and met Mr. Bostwick. Isn't that so, Ida May?" "Yes. So I understand," agreed the girl faintly. "Now, you don't remember your mother much, Ida May," pursued Prudence confidently. "You was too young when she died. And you being brought up among the Bostwicks, you didn't know much about us down here on the Cape. But don't you remember any neighbor that lived near you there in Boston that had a gal something like this crazy one that come here?" "I swan!" ejaculated Cap'n Ira. "You're coming out strong, old woman, I do say." Sheila could only shake her head. "Why, see," said Prudence, encouraged by her husband's commendation, "there might have been a neighbor woman that Sarah--your mother, you know, Ida May--was close acquainted with. Maybe she used to talk with this neighbor a good deal about her young days, and how she lived down here. You know women often gossip that way." "I'll say they do!" put in Cap'n Ira, tapping the knob of his cane. "Well, now," said the old woman, greatly interested in her own idea, and a little proud of it, "suppose that neighbor had a little girl who heard all these things Sarah Bostwick might have said. And if that child's brain wasn't just right--if she was a little weak-minded, poor thing--what's more reasonable than that she treasured it all up in her mind and after years, in one of her spells of weak-mindedness, she got the idea _she_ was Ida May Bostwick, and determined to come here and visit us!" "I swan, Prudence!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "It's like a story-book--a reg'lar novel." "Well, it might be," said his wife, smiling quite proudly. "Only after all, that gal didn't seem so very weak-minded," muttered Cap'n Ira. "She seemed more mean and ugly than weak." Sheila had thought somewhat along this line herself. At least, she knew how weak the real Ida May's story must sound to most people in the neighborhood, unless the claimant had actual proof of birth and name to bolster her attempt to win the Balls. There was but a tenuous thread connecting Ida May with Big Wreck Cove, or any other part of Cape Cod. The Bostwicks--the girl's immediate family, at least--were dead. These facts, already gathered by Sheila from Aunt Prudence's conversation with the neighboring women, were the foundation on which she had built her desperate hope of keeping up the deception and thwarting the other girl, no matter how bitterly the latter might press her claim. Nor was she, Sheila felt, depriving Ida May of anything which the latter, if she obtained it, would actually prize. The shallow girl was not the sort of person to appreciate the kindness of the two old people or give them any comfort and sympathy in return. Why, both Cap'n Ira and Prudence already shrank from the new claimant! This fact, however, did not cause Sheila, the imposter, to lose sight of the point that Cap'n Ira and his wife could both be very stern in attitude and speech toward the evildoer. They made no compromises with evil. Even the old man, philosophical as he was and wont to look upon most human frailities with a lenient if not a humorous eye, would not excuse actual crime. And something very like a crime had been committed. The day passed without any reappearance of Ida May upon Wreckers' Head, but just after nightfall and while the supper dishes were being cleared away, Zebedee Pauling knocked at the kitchen door. All three of the Ball household looked upon the young fellow expectantly when he stepped in. "I was just passing by and thought I'd look in and see how you all were," said Zeb, with his usual shy manner and apologetic smile. "Come in and set down, Zeb," said the captain eagerly. "I cal'late you've got some news for us." "I don't know," said Zeb thoughtfully, "but what you've got some news that might satisfy mom and me. That is, about that girl Tunis brought to the house." "What about her, Zeb?" queried Prudence anxiously. "Mom and I would be glad to know what you know about her," said Zebedee. "She--she 'pears to have a--a great imagination." "I shouldn't wonder," Cap'n Ira snorted. "She don't act crazy, but she certainly talks crazy," the visitor went on emphatically. "Why, she says the most ridiculous things about--about Miss Bostwick!" He bowed and blushed as he spoke the name and looked penitently toward Sheila. "Why, she declares _her_ name is Bostwick!" "That's what she done up here," said Cap'n Ira grimly. "I cal'late she means to kick up a fuss. Is she still stopping with your mother, Zeb?" "Yes. She paid a week's board money down. I expect mom wouldn't have taken her, or it, if Tunis hadn't brought her." "That wasn't Tunis' fault," snapped the old man. "He had to get shet of her somehow. We expect she'll try to make trouble." "Oh, as for that," said Zeb, with some relief, "I don't see, even if she is your niece, why she should expect you to take her in if you don't want to!" "She ain't," said Cap'n Ira flatly. "You can take that from me, Zeb." "Not any relation at all?" "None at all, as far as we know," declared the captain. "Then what does she want to talk the way she does, for?" cried the young man. "I told mom she was crazy, and now I know she is." "I guess likely," agreed the old man, taking upon himself the burden of the explanation. "None of us up here ever saw the gal before. Neither Prudence nor me nor Ida May. She's loony!" "I told mom so," reiterated Zeb, with a great sigh of relief. "I know what she said must be a pack of foolishness. But you know how mom is. I--" "She's soft. I know," returned Cap'n Ira. "She's so tender-hearted," explained Zeb. "The girl talks so. She's talked mom not into believing in her, but into kind of listening and sympathizing with her. And now, to-night, she's took her to see Elder Minnett." "What? I swan! To see the elder!" ejaculated Cap'n Ira. "What she needs is a doctor, not a minister. What do you think of that, Prudence?" "I hope Elder Minnett will be able to put her in better mind," sighed his wife. "That girl must have a very wicked heart, indeed, if she isn't really crazy." CHAPTER XXVI ELDER MINNETT HAS HIS SAY Another night counted among the interminable nights which have dragged their slow length across the couch of sleeplessness. To Sheila, lying in the four-poster--a downy couch, indeed, for a quiet conscience--the space of time after she blew out her lamp and until the dawn passed like the sluggish coils of some Midgard serpent. An eternity in itself. She came down to her daily tasks again with no change in her looks, although her voice had the same placid, kindly tone which had cheered the old people for these many weeks. But they both were worried about her. "Maybe she's been working too hard, Prudence," ventured the old man. "Can it be so, d'ye think?" "She says she likes to work. She's a marvel of a housekeeper, Ira. I don't mean to put too much on her, but I can't do much myself, spry as I do feel this fall. And she won't let me, anyway." "I know, I know," muttered Cap'n Ira. "She's with you like she is with me. Always running to help me, or to pick up something I let fall, or to fetch and carry. A kinder girl never breathed. I swan! What should we do without her, Prue? That Tunis--" "Sh!" Prudence begged him. "Don't chaff no more about that, Ira." "Why not?" he asked. "Though I don't feel much like chaffing when I think of them getting married. 'Tis a pretty serious business for us, Prudence." "I had a chance to hint about it last night when you went outside with Zebedee," whispered his wife, "I spoke about Tunis. She--she says she'll never leave us to marry Tunis or any other man." "What's that?" ejaculated Cap'n Ira. "He wouldn't agree to come and live here, I reckon. What would become of his Aunt 'Cretia? I don't guess there's any fear of her getting married, is there?" "No, no! Don't be funnin'! But Ida May said just that--in so many words." "She's mad with him, do you cal'late? They had a tiff!" cried her husband. "And they were like two turtledoves the night that other gal come here. It don't seem possible. I swan! _That's_ why she's so on her beam ends, I bet a cake!" "It may be. She wouldn't say much. I didn't understand, though, that they had quarreled. Only that she'd made up her mind that she wouldn't marry." "Oh, she'll change her mind!" said Cap'n Ira, wagging his head. "Do you think so? Not so easy. You'd ought to know by this time how firm Ida May can be." "The Lord help Tunis then," said Cap'n Ira emphatically. "But his loss is our gain. Ain't no two ways about that." Sheila's secret thoughts were not calculated to calm her soul. Her determination braced her body as well as her mind to go about her daily tasks with her usual thoroughness, but she could not confront the old people with even a ghost of her usual smile. So she kept out of their way as much as possible and communed alone with her bitter thoughts. The uncertainty of what Ida May was doing and saying down there in Big Wreck Cove was not all that agitated Sheila. Her conscience, so long lulled by her peaceful existence here with the two old people, was now continually censuring her. Sin brings its own secret punishment, though the sinner may hide the effects of the punishment for a long time. But Sheila could not now conceal the effect of the mental pain and the remorse she suffered. Of one thing she might be sure. The neighbors had not as yet heard about the real Ida May or heard her story. Otherwise some of the women living on the Head would have been in to hear the particulars from Prudence. But that afternoon the throaty chug of Elder Minnett's little car--it had created almost a scandal in Big Wreck Cove when he bought it--was heard mounting the road to the Head. "I swan!" commented Cap'n Ira, who sat at the sunny sitting-room window, for it was a cold day. "Here comes that tin wagon of the elder's. But he's alone. Get on your best bib and tucker, Prudence, for there ain't any doubt but what he's headin' in this way." "Oh, dear me!" fluttered his wife. "I wonder what he's going to say. Make the tea strong, Ida May. The elder likes it so it'll about bear up an egg. And open a jar of that quince jam. I wish we had fresh biscuits, although them you made for dinner were light as feathers." "I'll make some now. There's a hot oven," replied the girl. "No, no," interposed Cap'n Ira firmly. "I want you should sit in here with us and hear all the elder's got to say." "Perhaps, Uncle Ira, he will want to talk to you and Aunt Prue privately." "There won't be no private talk about you, Ida May," snorted the captain, his keen eyes sparkling. "Not much! If he's got anything to say to your aunt and me, he's got to say it in your hearing." The elder was a tall and bony man with a stiff brush of gray beard and bushy hair to match, which seemed as uncompromising as his doctrinal discourses in the pulpit. He was an old-fashioned preacher, but not wholly an old-fashioned thinker. Sheila had thought, on the few occasions when she had met him away from his pulpit, that there was an undercurrent of humanity in him quite equal to that in Cap'n Ira Ball, but his personal appearance and rather gruff manner made it difficult for one to be sure of the measure of his tenderness. How Elder Minnett appeared in the sick room or in the house of sorrow, she did not know. She could not very well imagine his being tender at any time with the sinner at whom he thundered from the pulpit. Secretly she trembled at the old clergyman's approach. "Well, Elder!" was the warm greeting of Prudence at the front door when the rattling automobile came to a wheezing halt before the gate. "Do tell! Ira said he see you coming up the road, and I was determined you shouldn't drive by without speaking. Do come in." "I propose to, Sister Ball," was the grim-lipped reply. He came into the house and took the proffered chair in the sitting room. They spoke of the weather, of the tide, and of the clam harvest. The farm crops back of Big Wreck Cove did not interest Cap'n Ira. "Well," said the elder finally, clearing his throat, "I've come up here on an errand you can possibly guess, Cap'n Ira and Sister Ball." "Maybe we can and maybe we can't," observed the captain with a countenance quite as wooden as the elder himself displayed. "I come on behalf of that young woman who was here to see you the other day." "It's my opinion you'd done better to have gone to the insane asylum folks about her," rejoined Cap'n Ira. "Now, Ira!" said Prudence softly. "Seeing it as you do, Cap'n Ira," the elder remarked quite equably, "I conclude that you might think that. But you formed your judgment in the heat of--well, not anger, of course--but without sufficient reflection." "Humph!" grunted Cap'n Ira noncommittally. "I have talked with that young woman on two occasions," said the elder. "With what young woman?" interrupted Cap'n Ira. "With the girl staying at the Widow Pauling's. The girl who claims to be your niece." "You'd better talk with the other young woman," said Cap'n Ira sternly. "Ida May! Just you come in here and sit down. You are as much interested as we be, I guess. _This_ is Ida May Bostwick, Elder Minnett," he added, as Sheila entered. "Yes, yes. I have had the pleasure," said the elder, bowing gravely without offering to shake hands. He turned abruptly to Prudence. "You are quite convinced in your own mind, Sister Ball, that the young woman at the Pauling's is not your niece?" "Why, Elder Minnett," returned Prudence, "how _can_ she be? Ida May is Sarah Honey's only child, and Sarah was only distantly related to me. There never was another girl in the family--not like that one that came here the other day, for sure!" And the old woman shook her head emphatically. "That girl you got down there at the port, Elder, is crazy--crazy as a loon," put in Cap'n Ira harshly. "I am not so sure of that," the clergyman said shortly. "I swan! Beg your pardon, Elder. No offense. But you don't mean to say that she seems sane and sensible to you?" "Sane--yes! As for being sensible, that is another thing," confessed Elder Minnett. "Huh! What do you mean by that?" asked Cap'n Ira curiously. "She has told her story in full to me, and told it twice alike," said the grim-visaged minister, looking at Sheila as he answered the query. "An insane person is not so likely to do that, I believe. But she is not what I would call a sensible young woman. Not at all." "I should say not!" gasped Prudence. "But I have heard her, and I have reflected on what she has said. I do not see, if she is an impostor, how she could have made up that story." "Then she _must_ be loony," muttered Cap'n Ira. "I presume she told the same story to you that she did to me," pursued Elder Minnett. "I do not understand Tunis Latham's part in it, but the rest of her story seems quite reasonable." "Reasonable?" repeated Prudence, with some warmth. "Do you call it reasonable to say what she did about Ida May?" "In speaking of the young woman's reasonableness I mean in regard to the personal details she gave me. What she said in her anger to, or of, other people has no influence whatsoever on my judgment." "Well, it has on mine!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "I'd have drove out a dozen gals that spoke as she did to Prudence and Ida May--crazy or not!" "You would be wrong, Cap'n Ball," said the elder severely. "Well, let's have the p'ints the girl makes!" growled the old shipmaster. "I will listen to 'em." Elder Minnett bowed formally and began Ida May's story, checking off the several assertions she had made when she was at the Ball house far more clearly than the girl herself had done. As Sheila listened, her heart sank even lower. It was so very reasonable! How could the Balls fail to be impressed? But Cap'n Ira and Prudence listened with more of a puzzled expression in their countenances than anything else. It seemed altogether wild and improbable to them. Why! There sat Ida May before them. There could not be two Ida May Bostwicks! "Say!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira suddenly, after Elder Minnett had concluded, "that girl says she worked at Hoskin & Marl's?" "Yes." "Why, ain't that where you worked, Ida May?" "Yes," was Sheila's faint admission. "You never see her there, did you?" "I do not remember of having seen her until she came here," the girl said quite truthfully. "Ought to be some way of proving up that," muttered Cap'n Ira. "I have written to Hoskin & Marl, at the other young woman's instigation, and have asked about her," said Elder Minnett. "Well, I never!" gasped Prudence, and her withered, old face grew pink. "I hope you will not take offense," said the visitor evenly. "You must understand that the young woman has come to me in trouble, and it is my duty to aid her if I can--in any proper way. That is my office. _Any_ young woman"--he looked directly at Sheila again as he said it--"will find in me an adviser and a friend whenever she may need my help." "We all know how good you are, Elder Minnett," Prudence hastened to say. "But that girl--" "That girl," he interrupted, "is a human being needing help. I have advised her. Now I want to advise you." "Out with it, Elder," said Cap'n Ira. "Good advice ain't to be sneezed at--not as I ever heard." "I have the other young woman's promise that she will tell her story to nobody else--nobody at all--until I can hear from those whom she says are her employers. But with the understanding that you will do your part." "What's that?" asked Cap'n Ira quickly. "She wants to come up here and stay with you. She says she is sure you are her relatives. She says if you will let her come, she will be able to prove to you that she is the real niece you expected--whom you sent for last summer." "Why, she's crazy!" again cried Cap'n Ira. "I--I am almost afraid of her," murmured Prudence, looking from Sheila to her husband. "I assure you, Sister Ball, she is not insane. She is harmless." "She didn't talk as though she was when she was here--not by a jugful," declared Cap'n Ira bitterly. "That was because she was angry," explained Elder Minnett patiently. "You must not judge her by her appearance when she came here the other day and found--as she declares--another girl in her rightful place." "I swan!" exclaimed the old shipmaster, bursting out again. "I won't stand for that. Her rightful place, indeed! Why, if she was forty times Prudence's niece and we didn't want her here, what's to make us take her, I want to know?" "Do you think we ought to, Elder?" questioned Prudence faintly. "I think, under all the circumstances, that it is your Christian duty. Know the girl better. See if there is not something in her that reminds you--" "Avast there!" shouted Cap'n Ira, pounding with his cane on the floor. "That's going a deal too far. 'Christian duty,' indeed! How about our duty to Ida May setting there, and to ourselves? Prudence is afraid of that crazy gal in the first place." "I give you my word she is not insane." "That's your opinion," said the captain grimly. "I wouldn't back it with my word, Elder, unless I was prepared to go the whole v'y'ge. Do you mean to say that you accept that gal's story as true--in all partic'lars?" "I don't say that." "Then I shall stick to my opinion. She's as loony as she can be. And I am plumb against insulting our Ida May by letting the girl come up here. What do you say, Prudence?" The old woman was much perturbed. Elder Minnett was a minister of the gospel. To be told by him that it was her Christian duty to take a certain course bore much weight with Prudence Ball. But when she looked at Sheila, sitting there so pale and silent, and realized that on her head all this was falling, the old woman rose up, burst into tears, and threw herself into the girl's arms. "No, no!" she sobbed. "Don't let her come here, Ira. We don't want her. We don't want anybody but Ida May whom we love so dear, and who we know loves us. We can't do it, Elder Minnett! Why, if they should come and tell me--and prove it--that Ida May wasn't our niece and that other girl was, I couldn't bear the creature 'round. No, I couldn't. I couldn't forgive anybody that would separate us from this dear, dear girl!" Cap'n Ira had got upon his feet and was leaning forward on his cane. With a shaking finger he drew the elder's attention to the two women, rocking in each other's arms. "You hear that? You see that?" demanded the captain brokenly, the tears starting from his own eyes and finding gutters down his cleanly shaved cheeks. "That's your answer, Elder! You have some idea how Prudence and I longed for young company in this house, and somebody to help and comfort us. _And we got her._ "Ida May come to us like the falling of manna in the wilderness for them spent and wandering Israelites. She has been to us more than ever we dared hope for. If she was our own child and had growed up here on Wreckers' Head our own born daughter, I couldn't think no more of her. "And you come here and ask us to give countenance for a moment to a half-witted girl that says she belongs here in Ida May's place, and claiming Ida May's name. More than that, she saying that our own girl that we love so is a liar and an impostor and altogether bad--such as she must be if she had fooled us so. I swan! Elder, I should think you'd have more sense." And Cap'n Ira concluded abruptly and with a return to his usual self-control. The silence which ensued was only broken by the old woman's sobs. Cap'n Ira, frankly wiping his own eyes with the great silk handkerchief which he usually flourished when he took snuff, strode across the room and patted Prudence's withered shoulder. He said nothing, nor did the elder. It was Sheila who broke the silence at last. She had stood up. Now she put Prudence tenderly into Cap'n Ira's arms. She gave him, too, such a thankful, beaming glance that the old man was almost staggered. For he had not seen one of those smiles for more than two days. "Elder Minnett," Sheila said, and her voice was quite steady, "I think it is my place to speak." "Yes?" was the noncommittal response of the grim old minister. "I should not think for a moment of doubting your judgment in such a matter. If you say Cap'n Ira and Mrs. Ball should receive this--this girl here while the matter is being examined, I hope they will agree with you and allow her to come." "Why, Ida May!" gasped Prudence. "That gal's an angel! She ain't nothing but an angel!" marveled Cap'n Ira. "But I think," said Sheila, "that the girl should be made to promise that while she is here, and if she comes here, that she will not speak to anybody outside this room at the present time of the claim she makes--especially as it seems to affect Captain Latham." "I swan! That's so! He's got a wage and share in this thing, ain't he? And he ain't here to defend himself, if we be." The elder nodded slowly. His gaze did not leave Sheila's face. "I think I can promise that in her name. Indeed, I had already extracted such a promise before I would undertake to come up here. I have warned Mrs. Pauling not to repeat a word the girl said to her. And Zebedee is a prudent young man." "I told Zeb myself to keep his hatch battened," growled Cap'n Ira. "But, I swan, Ida May! I don't see how you can bear to have the crazy critter here. And Prudence--" "If Ida May says she is willing," sighed the old woman, glad to be able to set a course not opposed to her minister's advice. "Thank you, young woman," Elder Minnett said, speaking grimly enough to Sheila. "Those who have nothing to fear can afford to be generous. You have done right." The subject was dropped--to the relief of all of them. Tea was poured from the marble-topped, black-walnut table, and Sheila passed biscuit, jam, cakes, and other delicacies. She performed her part of the ceremony with apparent calm. She did not speak to the elder again, nor he to her, save when she ran out to carry forgotten gloves to him when he had climbed into the automobile. The grim old man shot her through with the keenest of keen glances as he accepted the gloves. "I don't think, young woman," he said softly, "that you are likely to put poison in that other girl's tea--as she says she's afraid you will." Then he drove away. CHAPTER XXVII CAP'N IRA SPEAKS OUT Wrung as Sheila's heart had been by the expression of the old woman's utter confidence in her and by Cap'n Ira's warm words of approbation spoken before the elder, it was nevertheless for Tunis Latham's sake that she had abetted the minister's desire and had agreed that the real Ida May Bostwick should come to the Ball house on Wreckers' Head. By extracting a promise from Ida May that she would talk to nobody for the present--especially about the connection of the captain of the _Seamew_ with Ida May's affairs--Sheila believed she had entered a wedge which might open the way for the young man to escape from a situation which threatened both his reputation and his peace of mind. To save Tunis! She was fairly obsessed by that thought. Her vow before the picture of Tunis' mother in the _Seamew's_ cabin must be in Sheila's view to the very end. She had a sufficient share of that vision of the Celt to be deeply impressed by a promise made as that had been made--though in secret. It was a sacred pledge. It was no easy matter for any of the Ball household to consider the coming of Ida May with serenity. Prudence, at heart, shrank from the claimant on her hospitality almost as much as Sheila did. If Cap'n Ira hid his perturbation better than the others, he nevertheless hobbled about with a very solemn countenance. "I swan!" he muttered within Sheila's hearing. "It's most like there was a corpse in the house. This ain't no way to live. I do wish Elder Minnett could have minded his own business and let well enough alone. Let the girl talk, and other folks, too. Trying to stop gossip is like trying to put your finger on a drop of quicksilver. There won't be no good come o' that girl being here. That's as sure as sure." The elder's car came wheezing up the hill again about the middle of the forenoon. He did not alight himself, but Ida May needed the presence of nobody to lend her assurance. She hopped out of the car with her bag and flaunted her cheap finery through the gate and in at the front door. Her reception at this end of the house marked the unmistakable fact that Prudence and Cap'n Ira received her as a stranger rather than in a confidential way. "Well, Aunt Prue! For you are my aunt whatever you may say," was Ida May's prologue. "And you are my uncle," she added, her greenish-brown eyes flashing a glance at the grimly observant captain. "I must say it's pretty shabby treatment I've got from you so far. But I don't blame you--not at all. I blame that girl and Tunis Latham." "Avast there!" put in Cap'n Ira so sternly and with so threatening a tone of voice and visage that even Ida May was silenced. "We've let you come here, my girl, because Elder Minnett asked us to; and not at all because our opinion of you is changed. Far from it. You're here on sufferance and you'd best be civil spoken while you remain. Ain't that the ticket, Prudence?" His wife nodded, in full accord with his statement of the situation, although she could not bear to look so sternly on any person as Cap'n Ira now looked at Ida May. "Well! I like that!" sniffed the girl, tossing her head, but she actually shrank from the captain. "Furthermore, as regards Tunis Latham, you was to say nothing about him outside of this house if you was let come here. And I warn you, we don't care to hear nothing in his disfavor _in_ this house." "Oh! I can see he's a favorite with you," muttered Ida May. "Then trim your sails according," admonished the old man. "In addition, you mentioned the young woman we already got here in a way we don't like none too well. I want to impress on your mind that it was only through her saying she was agreeable to your coming here that we agreed to the elder's request and let you come." "She did, eh?" cried Ida May, flouncing in her chair. "Well, I don't thank her." "No. I cal'late you ain't of a thanking disposition," said Cap'n Ira. "But you like enough won't drop your bread butter-side down. That's all." Ida May, startled by his speech, stared with less impudence at the old man. For his part, the captain watched her pretty closely, and he had met and judged too many people in his day not to form gradually, as the hours passed, a decided opinion regarding Ida May. Nor did he cling to his first impression--the one made in haste and some vexation, when she had first tried to thrust herself into the Ball household and demanded the place filled by Sheila Macklin. This girl certainly was not insane. But with all her apparent smartness, Cap'n Ira easily saw that she was not intelligent--that she had scarcely ordinary understanding. Beside the newcomer's shallow nature and even more shallow endowments, Sheila seemed to be from a different world. "I swan!" whispered Cap'n Ira to Prudence some time later. "The difference between them two girls! They ain't to be spoke of in the same county, I declare. Look at that one, Prudence," he said, with a side glance at the newcomer. "Ain't she a sight with them thin and flashy clothes?" "I can't see anything about her that looks like any of the Honeys, let alone Sarah." "Huh! No. Only that her hair's sorter red," returned Cap'n Ira, "like Sarah's was." The visitor proved her position in the household by sitting idly in a rocking-chair looking over some pictures which were on the table or staring out of the window. She offered to do nothing for Prudence. But, of course, Ida May was not very domestic. Living in a furnished room and working behind the counter in a department store does not develop the domestic virtues to any appreciable degree. She did not see Sheila until dinner was on the table and she was called to the meal with Cap'n Ira and the old woman. The stiff, little bow with which Ida May favored the girl in possession was returned by the latter quite as formally. Sheila had regained complete control of voice and face now. Although she did not actually address Ida May, her manner was such that there was no restraint put upon the company. It was the newcomer's manner, if anything, that curtailed the usual friendly intercourse at the Ball table. Ida May possessed some powers of observation. She would have said herself that she was able to "put two and two together." The way the meal had been cooked, the way it was served, and the work entailed in doing both these things, were matters not overlooked by the visitor. She knew that Prudence had given neither thought nor attention to getting the dinner. The girl the Balls had received in Ida May's name and supposed identity had done it all herself. It seemed to be expected of her! She saw, before the day was over, that Sheila was a very busy person indeed. That she not only did the housework, but that she waited upon Prudence and Cap'n Ira "hand and foot." She did it with such unconcern that the new girl could be sure these tasks were quite what was expected of her. "Why," exclaimed Ida May to herself, "she's just hired help! Is _that_ what they wanted me for when they sent Tunis Latham up to Boston after me? I'd like to see myself!" She had foreseen something of this kind when she had refused so unconditionally to come down here to the Cape. And her observation of the house and its furnishings, as well as the appearance of the old couple, had confirmed her suspicion that her belief in the Balls "being pretty well fixed" was groundless. After her interview with Elder Minnett, although she had refrained from detailing her story and her spiteful comments about Sheila and Tunis Latham to the Paulings, she had not ceased to question Zebedee and his mother about the financial condition of the Balls. She had learned that a couple of thousand dollars would probably buy all the real property the old people owned on Wreckers' Head. There was a certain invested sum which secured them a fair living. Beyond that, the Big Wreck Cove people knew of no wealth belonging to either Cap'n Ira or Prudence. Ida May already considered that she had come down here to the Cape on a fool's errand. She would like to make herself solid, however, with the old folks so as to benefit when they were dead and gone, if that were possible. But to make herself a kitchen drudge for them? She would like to see herself! There was a phase of the situation which held Ida May to the course she had set sail upon, and one which would hold her to it to the bitter end. Her spitefulness and determination to be revenged upon this unknown girl who had usurped the place originally offered her by the Balls, and who had stolen her name as well, was quite sufficient to cause a person of Ida May Bostwick's character to fight for her rights. She would be revenged on Tunis, too. Or, at least, she would make him, as well as the other girl, suffer for the slight he had put upon her. Had she not preened her feathers and strutted her very best on the occasion when he interviewed her at Hoskin & Marl's and taken her out to lunch? And to no end at all! He had been quite unimpressed by Ida May's airs and graces. Yet he would take up with this other girl--a mere nobody. Worse than a nobody, of course. She must be both a bad and a cunning woman to have done what it was plain she had done. She had wound Tunis Latham around her finger, and had hoodwinked the old people in the bargain! Ida May saw the other girl waiting on Prudence and Cap'n Ira; she observed her tenderness toward them and their delight in her ministrations; and these things which she regarded with her green-glinting eyes made her taste the bitterness of wormwood. She hated Sheila more and more as the day wore on; and she scorned the old people both for what she considered this niggardliness and for their simplicity, as well, in being fooled by this other girl. For, of course, to Ida May's mind, Sheila's kindness and the love shown for the Balls on her part was all put on. It could not be otherwise. Ida May Bostwick could not, in the first place, imagine any sane girl "falling for the two old hicks." Prudence could seldom show herself other than kindly toward any person whether she exactly approved of that person or not. So she chatted cheerfully at Ida May, if not with her. She was quite as insistent as Cap'n Ira, however, in keeping away from the vexing question of the identity of the two girls. Right at the first the question had been raised: where should the visitor be put to sleep? Ida May was prepared to object strenuously if any slight was put upon her, such as being given some little, tucked-up attic room away from the rest of the family. Had she dared, she would have demanded the use of the room the false Ida May occupied; only she was not sure, after seeing the position Sheila seemed to hold in the household, that she cared to be put to sleep in the room of the "hired help." But Sheila herself settled that question. "The guest room is ready. Aunt Prue," she said to Prudence. "I cleaned it this week and the little stove is set up in there if it should grow cold overnight. All the bed needs is aired sheets. I'll get them out of the press." So Prudence took Ida May to the guest chamber, which was beyond the parlor. A black-walnut set, which had been the height of magnificence when Cap'n Ira and Prudence were married, filled the shade-drawn room with shadows. There was an ingrain carpet on the floor of a green groundwork with pale-yellow flowers on it, of a genus known to no botanist. The tidies on the chair backs were so stiff with starch that it would be a punishment to lay one's head against them. On a little marble-topped table between the windows was something made of shells and seaweed in a glass-topped case. It looked to Ida May like a dead baby in a coffin. "Of all the junk!" she muttered to herself when Prudence left her to arrange the contents of her bag as she chose. "And that girl likes it here! Well, I'll show her who's who and what's what! "I'd like to know where I ever saw her face before? I bet it was somewhere she'd no business to be--just as she has sneaked in here where she doesn't belong. The nasty, hateful thing! "If Bessie Dole or Mayme Leary could only see this dump!" she added, looking over the room again. "Anyhow, I've made 'em give me the best they've got. I'll show 'em how to treat a _real_ relation that comes to see 'em." Supper time came and passed no more cheerfully than had the midday meal. The society of the old people was anything but enlivening for Ida May. In desperation she began to talk, and out of sheer perverseness she lighted upon the subject of the establishment of Hoskin & Marl. Now Prudence found this topic of interest, for since Annabel Coffin--she who was a Buttle--had dilated upon those great marts of trade in Boston, the old woman had been vastly curious. Sheila had never cared to talk of her experiences as saleswoman behind the counter. "They tell me they sell most everything you could name in those stores," Prudence said reflectively. "Heaps of dry goods, I suppose. Let me see, what did you sell, my dear?" "I'm in the laces," said Ida May. "But Hoskin & Marl sell lots besides dry goods." "Oh, yes! Annabel did say something about automobiles and--and plasters; didn't she, Ira?" "Goodness knows," rejoined her husband with a groan. "Annabel Coffin said so much the last time she was here that my head buzzes now when I think of her." "Now, you hesh!" said Prudence. "Never can interest a man in such things. So you sold laces, did you, my dear? Oh, Ida May!" she exclaimed suddenly to Sheila, sitting on the other side of the table. "Ida May, what did you say you sold in that store? You worked for Hoskin & Marl, didn't you?" "Ye-es. I--I was in the silverware and jewelry department," stammered Sheila, the question coming so unexpectedly that she could not exercise consideration before making answer. "Now, is that so?" cried Prudence. "That must have been nice. To handle all them pretty things. But lace is pretty, too," she added, turning quickly to the guest again. "I expect you find it so." The old woman was startled into silence by the expression she saw upon Ida May's face. The latter was glaring across the table at Sheila. No other word could so express the intense and malevolent look in those greenish-brown eyes and on that sharp countenance. Sheila's gaze was enthralled as well by Ida May's sudden emotion. She half rose from her chair. But her strength left her limbs again, and she fell back into the seat. "What's the matter, Ida May?" demanded Cap'n Ira, in wonder and alarm. The real Ida May sprang up with a shriek. She shook her hand at Sheila and for a moment could not articulate. Then she said: "I know her now! I knew I'd seen that creature before and I thought I'd remember what and who she is. And she dares come down here and sneak her way into honest people's houses! The gall of her!" CHAPTER XXVIII GONE "Looker here, girl!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira sternly. Putting his hand upon Ida May's shoulder, he forced her down into her chair again. His own eyes gleamed angrily, and his countenance expressed his wrath. "What was you told on coming here? Didn't you promise to keep a taut line on all that foolishness? I won't stand for it. No, Prudence!" he exclaimed, as his wife tried to interfere. "I won't stand for it. She must either keep away from that business, or I'll put her right out of the house. Leastways, it being night, I'll send her to her room." "Do you think you can boss me like that?" cried Ida May hotly, so angry herself that she forgot her fear of him. "I'm not your slave, nor your hired help, like that creature." She pointed scornfully at Sheila. "And you'll just listen to something I've got to say. If you don't, I'll go out to-morrow and tell everybody in this hick town. I'll hire a hall to tell 'em in!" "Won't--won't you be good, deary?" begged Prudence, before her husband could make any rejoinder to this defiance. "You know you promised Elder Minnett you would be if we let you come here." "I don't want to stay here. I've seen enough of this place and you all! And I would be ashamed to stay any longer than I can help with folks that take in such a girl as she is." Again Ida May's little claw indicated Sheila, who stared, speechless, helpless, at least for the time being. The harassed girl could fight for herself no longer. She knew that she was on the verge of betrayal. She could not stem the tide of Ida May's venom. The latter must make the revelation which had threatened ever since she had come to Wreckers' Head. There was no way of longer smothering the truth. It would come out! "Look here," Cap'n Ira said, his curiosity finally aroused, "the elder says you ain't crazy! But it looks to me--" "I'm not crazy, I can tell you," snapped Ida May, taking him up short. "But I guess you and Aunt Prue must be. Why, you don't even know the name of this girl you took in instead of me--in my rightful place. But I can tell you who she is--and what she's done. I remember her now. I knew I'd seen her before--the hussy!" "Belay that!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. But he said it faintly. He was looking at the other girl now, and something in her expression and in her attitude made him lose confidence. His voice died in his throat. Ida May Bostwick had the upper hand at last--and she kept it. "Look at her," she exulted, the green lights in her brown eyes glinting like the sparkling eyes of a serpent. "Look at her. She knows that I know. She's come down here and fooled you all, but she can't fool you any longer. And that Tunis Latham! Why, it can't be possible he knew what she was from the first!" "See here," said Cap'n Ira shakily. "What do you mean? What are you getting at--or trying to? If you got anything to say about Ida May, get it out and be over with it." "Oh, Ira! Don't! Stop her!" wailed Prudence. Like the old man, Prudence finally realized that there was something wrong--something very wrong, indeed--with the girl they had known for months as Ida May and whom they had learned to love so dearly. Nobody looking at Sheila could doubt this for a moment. Her tortured expression of countenance, the wild light in her eyes, her trembling lips, advertised to the beholders that the last bastion of her fortress was taken, that the wall was breached and into that breach now marched the triumphant phrases of the real Ida May's bitter, gloating speech. "Look at her!" repeated the latter. "She can't deny it now. She knows I know her and what she is. Why, Aunt Prue--and you, Captain Ball--have been fooled nice, I must say. And that Tunis Latham! Well, he can't be much!" "Don't--don't say anything against Tunis!" It was not a voice at all like the usual mellow tones of Sheila Macklin which uttered those faint words. Hoarse, strained, uncertain, there was yet a note of command in the phrase which had its influence on the wildly excited Ida May. "I'll say what I've got to say about _you_, miss!" she exclaimed with exultation. "And you--nor they--shan't stop me. You're the girl that was arrested in the store for stealing. It must have been two--why, it must have been more than three years ago. I hadn't worked there but a little while. No wonder I didn't remember you at first." Cap'n Ira vented a groan and caught at his wife's hand. She was sobbing frantically. She still murmured her plea for the captain to stop the awful revelation Ida May was bent on making. But the latter gave no heed and the captain himself was speechless. "And I can't remember her name even now," went on Ida May, flashing a look at the Balls. Their pitiful appearance made no impression upon her. "But that don't matter. I guess they've got your record at Hoskin & Marl's. You worked there all right; sure you worked there, in the jewelry section. You stole something. I saw the store detective, Miss Hopwell, take you up to the manager's office. I never heard what they did to you, but they did a plenty, I bet." She turned confidently again to the horrified captain and his wife. "Just see how she looks. She don't deny it. How she managed to work that Tunis Latham into bringing her down here, I don't know. She pulled the wool over his eyes all right. "Why, she's a thief! She was arrested! I guess you can see now that I'm not crazy--far from it. She won't dare say again that she is Ida May Bostwick. I--guess--not!" The malevolent exultation of the girl was fearful to behold. But neither Cap'n Ira nor Prudence now looked at Ida May. Leaning against her husband, the tears coursing over her withered cheeks, Prudence joined Cap'n Ira in gazing at the other girl. She rose slowly to her feet. Something like strength came back to her; even into her voice, as Sheila again spoke. Nor did she look at Ida May, but fixed her feverish gaze upon the two old people. "What--what she says is true--as far as I am concerned. But--but Tunis did not know. It is not his fault. I was desperate. I heard what he said to--to Miss Bostwick. I chanced to overhear it. I was desperate; I hated the city. I was willing to take a chance for the sake of getting among people who would be kind to me--who were good." "Bah!" exclaimed Ida May raucously. "You're not fit to go among good people!" Sheila did not heed her. She spoke slowly--haltingly, but what she said held the old people silent. "Tunis is not to blame. I told him this--this girl"--she pointed to Ida May, but did not look at her--"was not the right Miss Bostwick. I said that I was the girl he wanted to see. I made him think so. I tricked him. Don't listen to her!" she added wildly, as the enraged Ida May would have interposed. "Tunis thought she had talked to him just for a joke. I made him believe that. I--I would have done anything then to get away from the city and to come down here. Perhaps he was at fault because he did not take more time to find out about me--to be sure I was the right girl. But he cannot be blamed for anything else. I tell you, it was all my fault." "I don't believe it!" snapped Ida May. But Cap'n Ira put her aside with his hand, and there was returned firmness in his voice. "Is this the truth? Are you what she says you are?" he asked. "Oh, don't, Ira!" gasped his sobbing wife. "She--" "We've got to learn the straight of it," said the old man sternly. "If we've been bamboozled, we've got to know it. Now's the time for her to speak." Sheila was still gazing at him. She nodded, indicating that his question was already answered. "You--you mean to say you stole--like she says?" "I was arrested in Hoskin & Marl's. They accused me of stealing. Yes." She said no more. She turned, when he did not speak again, and walked slowly to the stairway door. She opened it and went up, closing the door behind her. It was Ida May who moved first when she was gone. She jumped up once more and started for the stairway. "I'll tell her what's what!" she ejaculated. "The gall of her to come here and say she was me and get my rightful place! I'll put her out with my own hands!" Somehow--it would be hard to say just how--Cap'n Ira was before her, ere she could arrive at the stairway door. "Avast!" he said throatily. "Don't take too much upon yourself, young woman. You don't quite own these premises--yet." "You ain't going to stand for her stayin' here any longer, are you?" demanded the amazed Ida May. "Whether or not she stays here is more my business and Prudence's business than it is yours," said the old man. "But there's one thing sure, and you may as well l'arn it first as last: you're not to speak to her nor do anything else to annoy her. Understand?" "You--you--" "Heed what I tell ye!" said Cap'n Ira, grim-lipped and with flashing eyes. "You interfere with that girl in any way and it won't be her I'll put out o' the house. I'll put you out--night though it is--and you'll march yourself down to the port and to the Widder Pauling's alone. Understand me?" There was silence again in the kitchen, save for Prudence's pitiful sobbing. * * * * * In Tunis Latham's mind as he came up from the port four days later was visioned no part of the tragedy which had occurred at the Ball homestead during his absence on this last voyage to Boston. He had suffered trouble enough during the trip even to dull the smart of Sheila's renunciation of him before he had left the Head. Indeed, he could scarcely realize even now that she had meant what she said--that she could mean it! So brief had been their dream of love--only since that recent Sunday when they walked the beaches about the foot of Wreckers' Head--that it seemed to the captain of the _Seamew_ it could not be so soon over. If Sheila really and truly loved him, how could anything part them? When he considered her wild manner and her trenchant words when last he had seen her, however, his heart sank. He had gained during the few months of their acquaintance a pretty accurate idea of how firm she could be--how unwavering in face of any difficulty. He realized that her obstinacy, when her mind was once settled on a course of action, was not easily overcome. She had declared that they could not be lovers any longer; that the situation which had arisen through the appearance of the real Ida May upon Wreckers' Head had made her decision necessary; and she had refused to consider any other outcome of this dreadful affair. In his business there was much which would have disturbed Tunis in any event. The negro cook had deserted the _Seamew_ the moment after she touched the Boston wharf. Although the other hands had remained by the schooner until she had just now dropped anchor in the cove below, he was not at all sure that they would sail with him for another voyage. Why these new men should be more troubled by the silly tattle of the hoodoo than even the Portygees had been was a problem Tunis could not solve. And seamen were so scarce just then in Boston that he had been obliged to risk another voyage without engaging strangers to man the _Seamew_. Besides, being a true Cape Codder, he disliked hiring other than Cape men to work the schooner. For one thing he could be grateful. Orion Latham had taken his chest ashore this very day. And Zebedee Pauling had offered himself in Orion's place on the wharf as Tunis had just now come ashore. He had been glad to take on Zeb in place of his cousin. And from young Pauling he had learned at least one piece of news connected with affairs on Wreckers' Head. Zeb told him that the girl he had brought to the Pauling house had talked with Elder Minnett and that the elder had later taken her up to the Ball house, where she had remained. There was not much gossip about the matter it seemed. Nobody seemed to know who the young woman was; nor did Zeb know what was going on at the Ball homestead. It was with this slight information only that Tunis now approached the old place. He saw Cap'n Ira hobbling into the barn, but he saw nobody else about. The day was gray, and a chill wind crept over the brown earth, rustling the dead stalks of the weeds and curling little spirals of dust in the road which rose no more than a foot or two, then fell again, despairingly. In any event the young shipmaster must have felt the oppression of the day and the lingering season. His spirits fell lower, and he came to the Ball place with such a feeling of depression that he hesitated about turning in at the gate at all. As Cap'n Ira did not at once come out of the barn, the younger man made his way there instead of going first to the kitchen door. He shrank from meeting the real Ida May again. At any rate, he wanted first to get the lay of the land from the old man. He looked into the dim interior of the place and for a moment did not see Cap'n Ira at all. The ghostly face of the Queen of Sheba appeared at the opening over her manger. Tunis was about to call when he saw the old man straining upon the lower rungs of the ladder to reach the loft to pitch down a bunch of fodder. Queenie whinnied softly. "Hello, Cap'n Ira!" Tunis hailed. "What are you doing that for?" He hastened to cross the barn floor to his aid. "Where's Ida May that she lets you do this?" "Ida May?" The old man repeated the name with such disgust that Tunis was all but stunned and stopped to eye Cap'n Ira amazedly. "D'ye think she'd take a step to save me a dozen? Or lift them lily-white hands of hers to keep Prudence from doing all the work she has to do? I swan!" "What do you mean?" demanded Tunis. "You sound mighty funny, Cap'n Ira. Hasn't Ida May been doing all and sundry for you for months? Is she sick?" "I--I don't mean _that_ gal," quavered Cap'n Ira. "I mean the real Ida May." He half tumbled off the ladder into Tunis Latham's arms. He clung to the young man tightly, and, although it was dark in the barn, Tunis could have sworn that there were tears on the old man's cheeks. "Don't you know we've got the right Ida May with us at last--Prudence's niece that has come here to visit for a while and play lady? Yes, you was fooled; we was bamboozled. That--that other gal, Tunis, is a real bad one, I ain't no doubt. She pulled the wool over your eyes and made a monkey of most everybody, it seems. She--" "Who are you talking about?" cried Tunis, in his alarm almost shaking the old man. "I'm telling you the girl you brought down here, thinking she was Ida May Bostwick, turned out to be somebody else. I don't know who. Anyway, she ain't no relation of Prudence or me. I ain't blaming you none, boy; she told us we musn't blame you, for you didn't know the truth about her, either." "Cap'n Ira, where is she?" demanded the younger man hoarsely. "She ain't here. She's gone. She left four nights ago--after Ida May had remembered what she'd done in that big store in Boston. Oh, she admitted it--" "You mean to tell me she's gone? That you don't know where she is?" almost shouted Tunis. "Easy, boy! Remember I got some feeling yet in them arms you was squeezing. It ain't our fault she went. She left us in the night--stole out with just a bundle of clothes and things. Left, Prudence says, every enduring thing she'd got since she come here--that we give her." Tunis groaned. "Yes, she's gone. And she's left that other dratted girl in her place. I swan, Tunis, I'd just as leave have the figgerhead of the old _Susan Gatskill_ sittin' by our kitchen stove as to have that useless critter about. She ain't no good to Prudence and me--not at all!" CHAPTER XXIX ON THE TRAIL There was but a single idea in Sheila Macklin's mind when she left those three people in the kitchen and mounted to her room. Indeed, there was scarcely left to the sadly distracted girl another sane thought. She must leave the house before she could be further questioned. She hoped that she had said enough to exonerate Tunis. If she said more, it might be to raise some doubt in the minds of Cap'n Ira and Prudence as to Tunis' ignorance of her true reputation. She must escape any cross-examination--on that or any other topic. She believed that the captain of the _Seamew_ possessed sufficient caution to keep secret the particulars of their first meeting until he had heard from the old people the few false details she had left in their minds. She had done all she could to make Tunis' reputation secure in the eyes of those who must know any particulars of his connection with her. She had kept her vow to the dead woman whom the young shipmaster had, throughout his life, so revered--his mother. She did not light her bedroom lamp until she knew by the sounds from below that the family had retired for the night. Then, stepping softly, she went over her small possessions and made a bundle of those which she had brought with her when she came from Boston. The articles of apparel purchased with money given her by the Balls she left in the closet or in the bureau drawers. This done, she did not lie down on the bed, but sat by the north window staring out into the starlit dark. There was no lamp to watch in the window of Latham's Folly to-night. Tunis was far away. Had she been prepared for this unexpected catastrophe, she would have been far, far away from Wreckers' Head before Tunis returned. As it chanced, she possessed very little money--scarcely more than enough to take her to Paulmouth. There she would be no better off than she was at Big Wreck Cove. Sheila was not, in truth, quite accountable for her actions at this time. To get away from the Ball house was her only really clear thought. What followed must fall as fate directed. At the first faint gleam of dawn in the sky, and as the distant stars paled and disappeared, the girl crept down the stairs with her bundle, her shoes in her hand, and went out by the kitchen door. She heard only the deep breathing of the old captain from across the sitting room and now and then the sobbing breath of Prudence, like the breathing of a hurt child that has fallen asleep in pain and half wakes to a realization of it. As she turned to close the outer door softly behind her, the girl's heart throbbed in response to the old woman's sorrow. While she sat on the bench to lace her shoes the cat, old Tabby, came rubbing and purring about her skirts. Muffled, as though from a great distance, a rooster vented a questioning crow as though he doubted that it was yet time to announce the birth of another day. She went to the barn to feed Queenie for the last time. That outraged old creature displayed her surprised countenance at the opening above her manger and blew sonorously through her nostrils. Perhaps the gray mare remembered how she had been aroused at a similar hour once before, and by Cap'n Ira himself. That experience must have been keen in the Queen of Sheba's memory if she had any memory at all. But the troubled girl gave the mare less attention than usual, throwing down some fodder and pouring a measure of corn into the manger. The mare turned to that with appetite. Corn came not amiss to Queenie, no matter at what hour it was vouchsafed her. Her sound old teeth did not stop crunching the kernels as Sheila went out of the barn. From the shed she secured an ax and a spade, as well as a basket. In spite of her condition of mind she knew exactly what she wanted to do--and she did it. Had she thought out her intention for months she could have gone about the matter no more directly and practically. Yet, had one stopped Sheila and asked her what she was about--exactly what her intentions were--the query would have found her unprepared with an answer. Both her physical and mental condition precluded Sheila from going far from the Ball homestead. What she had been through during these past few days had drained out of her physical vigor as well as all intellectual freshness. When Cap'n Ira Ball had led the feebly protesting Queen of Sheba across these empty fields to her intended sacrifice, the two had made no more dreary picture against the dim dawn than did Sheila now. She carried the bundle she had made slung over one shoulder by a length of rope. The spade, ax, and basket balanced her figure on the other side; she bent forward as she walked and, from a distance, Prudence herself would have looked no older or more decrepit than did the girl now leaving the Ball premises. She did not follow the same course that the captain and Queenie had followed on that memorable occasion, but took a path that led to a cart track to the beach behind John-Ed Williams' house. Nobody was astir anywhere on Wreckers' Head but herself. In an hour she arrived at the objective point toward which she had been headed from the first. Why and how she had thought of this refuge it would be hard to tell. Least of all could Sheila have explained her reason for coming here. It was in her mind, it was away from all other human habitations, and she did not think anybody would have the right to drive her from it. The cabin formerly occupied by Hosea Westcott was well above the tide, was, or could be made, perfectly dry, was roughly, if not comfortably furnished, and offered the girl a shelter in which she thought she would be safe. To one who had spent such weary months in a narrow room in a Hanover Street lodging house, going in and out with speech with scarcely any one save the person to whom she paid her weekly dole of rent, there could be no loneliness in a place like this, where the surf soughed continually in one's ear, a hundred feathered forms flashed by in an hour, sails dotted the dimpling sea, and the strand itself was spread thick with many varieties of nature's wonders. During the summer and early fall, Sheila had become a splendid oarswoman. In a skiff belonging to little John-Ed which was drawn up on the sands not far from the cabin she had paddled out through the narrow neck of the tiny cove's entrance and pulled bravely through the surf and out upon the sea beyond. She had learned more than a bit of sea lore, too, from Cap'n Ira and Tunis. And regarding the edible shellfish to be found along the beaches, she was well informed. If an old man such as Hosea Westcott, feeble and spent, no doubt, could pick up a living here, why could not she? Sheila did not fear starvation. Indeed, she did not even look forward to such a possibility. She did not fear work of any kind. With every salt breath she drew, strength, like the tide itself, flowed into her body. Although her mind remained in a partially stunned condition, her muscles soon recovered their vigor. Of course the girl's presence here in the abandoned cabin, her taking up a hermit life on the shore, could not remain unknown to the neighbors on Wreckers' Head for long. Yet at this season of the year the men were all busy elsewhere and the women almost never came down to the beaches. It is a remarkable fact that most longshore women have little interest in the beauties or wonders to be found along the beaches, even in the sea itself. Perhaps this is because the latter is such a hard mistress to their menfolk. Nevertheless, Sheila could not hide herself away from everybody--not even on that first day. The Balls made no outcry when they found that she had disappeared. And no near-port fishing craft came by. But the smoke from the chimney of the cabin, when she had swept and made comfortable its interior and built a fire of driftwood in the rusty pot stove, attracted at least one sharp eye. Down the bank, along with a small avalanche of sand and gravel, plunged little John-Ed and his freckled face appeared at the doorway. "By the great jib boom!" he cried. "What you doing here? Playing castaway?" "Yes, John-Ed," said Sheila. "That is it exactly. I am a castaway." He stared at her. She could not take this boy into her confidence. But already little John-Ed was a henchman of hers, in spite of the fact that Sheila often had made him work. "I am going to stay here for a while," she told him. "But I would rather nobody but you knew about it." "By the great jib boom!" exploded the boy for a second time. "Not even Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prudence?" "Not even them," sighed the girl. "I bet it's because you don't want to stay there while that other girl is visitin' them. Ain't that it? She's a snippy thing!" "You must not say so to anybody," urged Sheila. "It will not be wrong for you to say nothing about my being here to your father and mother. Do you understand?" "I can keep a secret, all right," he assured her proudly. "I believe you can. And do you think you could get off to go down to the store for me this evening?" "Going down anyway for mom," he assured her. Sheila had a dollar and a little change besides. She had already planned just what the dollar would buy in the way of necessaries. There were cooking utensils in the cabin sufficient for her modest needs. She gave little John-Ed the dollar and her list and warned him to hide her purchases safely until the next morning and bring them to her on his way to school. "What you going to eat to-night?" he asked her bluntly. "I dug some clams at low water and caught a big horseshoe crab." "Cousin Phineas brought us more squeteague than we can eat. Mom told me to cut one up for the hens. I'll bring it down to you in a little. It's a fresh one." In spite of her refusal, he did this, and brought along, too, a box of sweet crackers which he had bought and hidden away in his bedroom closet in preparation for some time when he might wake up in the night and feel that he was on the verge of famine. "Though I never did wake up in the night that I can remember, 'cept that time I had the toothache," he observed. And in this way Sheila began her hermit life in the fisherman's cabin. But Sheila was not without a practical design as to her future. In her determination to accept no further aid from the Balls she had crippled her finances. Back in the inland town where she had spent her girlhood, and where Dr. Macklin had served the community so long, there were those who, in disapproving Sheila's venture into the city, at least had a sense of justice. Some of these critical friends whom the young woman had shrunk from appealing to heretofore, still owed for Dr. Macklin's services; and Sheila felt that in this present tragic emergency she must attempt the collection of these old debts. She wrote letters praying that money might be sent her by express to Paulmouth, but with the orders addressed under cover to "John-Ed Williams, Jr." at the Big Wreck Cove post office. She explained her design to her juvenile confidant and little John-Ed was made immensely proud of such mark of her trust. She could have found no more faithful adherent than the boy, and with him the secret of her dwelling on the lonely shore and in her hermit-like state was safe. But her presence there could not be hidden for long; of that she was well aware. Little John-Ed, however, told nobody of her whereabouts until the day Tunis Latham came back from Boston and learned that the girl he loved had stolen away from her home in the Ball house. Coming out of the rear door of the barn, fresh from the interview with the old captain which had so shocked him, Tunis saw a small boy astride the low stone fence that marked the rear boundary of the Ball farm. The captain of the _Seamew_ was in no mood to bandy words with little John-Ed Williams, but the sharp tooth of his troubled thought fastened upon one indubitable fact: if there is anything odd going on in a community, the small boy of that community knows all about it--or, at least, as much about it as it is possible to know. Tunis could not have walked up to any adult person on Wreckers' Head and asked the question which he put to little John-Ed on the spur of the moment: "Where is she?" He did not have to utter Sheila's name. Indeed, he was doubtful by what name it would be wise to call her. But he did not have to be plainer with little John-Ed. He saw in the sly expression of the boy's eyes that he knew whom he meant. But he shook his head. "You know where she went," was the schooner captain's accusation. "Where is she?" "I--I can't tell you," stammered the boy. "I promised not." A promise is a promise, especially to a small boy who scorns to "snitch." Tunis thought a moment. "Show me," he said, and his voice had in it that tone which made the foremast hands jump to obey when a squall was coming. The boy got promptly off the wall. "All right," he said gruffly. "But don't you tell her I showed you, Cap'n Tunis Latham." "Trust me," agreed the captain of the _Seamew_, and followed after little John-Ed with such tremendous strides that the latter had to run to keep ahead of him. Tunis was led to that point on the bluff from which a curl of smoke from the cabin chimney could be seen. He halted almost in horror--stricken to the heart when he understood. "Alone?" he muttered. "Yep," was the reply. "She's playing she's a castaway. Nobody but me knows it." Then, fearing he had said too much, John-Ed ran away. Tunis descended the bluff by a perilous path--he would not delay to go around by the cart track--and came in plain view of the cabin. The door hinge had been repaired, and the door now swung freely. A strip of cotton cloth had been tacked over the gaping window. There was that neatness about the abandoned cabin which must always be associated in his mind with Sheila Macklin, even had he not seen her sitting pensively upon a driftwood timber by the door. The ax had been doing good service, for there was a great heap of wood cut into stove lengths. The fragrant odor of something--chowder, perhaps--simmering on the stove, floated through the open door. It was the coarse sand crunching under his boots which aroused her. She did not start at his approach, but raised her eyes languidly. He wondered if she had expected him. She must have seen the _Seamew_ pass several hours earlier as they headed in toward the channel. "My God, Sheila!" he exclaimed with bitterness, but without anger. "You can't stay here." "I must--for a while. No. Don't talk about it, please, Tunis." Her gesture had a finality to it which silenced the objections rising to his lips. "Nothing you can say will change my determination. And you must not come here again." "What will people say?" he gasped. The violet eyes blazed suddenly while she surveyed him. This was not the girl he had known before. At least, she was not the same as when he had seen her last. Even at that previous interview her look and manner had not so reminded him of the girl he had sat beside on the bench on Boston Common. She was alone again. The flower of her nature that had expanded while she lived her all too brief and happy life with the Balls was now withered. She was hopeless again; she had become once more the Sheila Macklin that he had met under such wretched circumstances at that past time. But in spite of her helplessness and her wretchedness, there was something in the girl's expression which convinced Tunis Latham before he again spoke that nothing he could say would in any degree change her determination. "That confounded girl never should have been allowed to come back to the house up there," he cried almost wildly. "Why did Elder Minnett want to interfere? It was not his business! No one need have known the truth." "Don't you see, Tunis, that just because it was the truth it was sure to become known? At least, the main points in the whole matter were sure to come out. But if you are careful, if you are wise, nobody need know more of your share in the transaction than I have told already." "Cap'n Ira asked me if it was true. He told me what you said. Sheila, you ruined your own reputation with the old folks to save me. Girl--" "Did I have any reputation to lose, Tunis?" she interrupted, yet speaking softly. "I could not save myself. I have tried to save you. Don't be ill-advised; don't be foolish. Say nothing, and it will all blow over--for you." "You think I'll accept such a sacrifice on your part?" he demanded fiercely. "I am making no sacrifice. Nothing I can do or say; nothing you can do or say; nothing anybody can do or say; will change my situation. We need not both be ruined in the eyes of the community. Soon I will get away. They will forget me. It will all blow over. You need not suffer." "What do you think I am?" he cried again. "Am I the sort of a fellow, you think, to shelter myself behind you?" "Shelter your Aunt Lucretia. Shelter your business prospects. Shelter the good name of your mother's son. You can do me absolutely no good by telling any different story from the one I was forced to tell. Let it be, Tunis." She said it wearily. She dropped her eyes again, looking away from him. But when he would have stepped nearer and caught her to him, she leaped up and with look and tone warded him away. "Don't touch me! Be at least so kind, Tunis. Make it no harder for me than you can help." "You are breaking my heart, Sheila!" "Mine is already broken," she told him. "And I do not blame you, Tunis. It is the punishment for my own sins. I attempted to escape from my overwhelming troubles in a wrong way. I see it now. I know it to be so. I must go somewhere else and build again--if I may. But never again upon a foundation of trickery and deceit. Oh! Never! Never!" She stepped around the big block on which she had been sitting, entered the cabin, and closed the door behind her. She left him standing there hopeless, miserable, almost distraught by all the entanglements of this tragedy that had come upon them. CHAPTER XXX THE STORM Captain Tunis Latham, pacing the deck of the _Seamew_, had come to a conclusion which was by no means complimentary to his own self-respect. During his manifold duties and the business bothers connected with the sailing of the undermanned schooner, his mind had seized upon and grappled with a train of ideas which brought him logically to the decision that he was playing a weak and piffling part. Strong in most things, Tunis Latham had allowed his better sense to be throttled and his purpose balked in the thing which meant more to him than the schooner, his business success, or anything else in life. The broader the rift grew between Sheila and himself, the clearer he saw that without her he was a ship without a rudder and that nothing could come of his life save wreck and disaster. She had renounced him for his own good, as she believed, and he had tacitly consented to her ruling. He might be slow of thought regarding such things, but once having made up his mind--and it was made up now--he was of the kind that obstacles do not frighten. Not only did he realize that by bowing to the girl's will he had been weak, but he was determined to take matters in the future into his own hands. He should not have allowed Sheila, in the first place, to shoulder the responsibility of handling the emergency of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at Big Wreck Cove. Sheila, in an attempt to save his reputation, to save his self-respect in the eyes of the home folks and of the world in general, had uttered a direct falsehood and cut herself off from him and from those who loved her. This was too much for any decent man to stand. Was he a coward? Would he shelter himself--as he had told her--behind her skirts? Tunis believed that Cap'n Ira and Prudence, when once the shock of the girl's revelation was past, loved her so dearly that they would forgive Sheila if they knew all the truth--if they knew the girl as he knew her. He was not so sure of Aunt Lucretia. He had feared to tell her the night before that Sheila had gone to live in the old fisherman's cabin, in spite of the sympathy Lucretia had previously shown him. But he believed his silent aunt fully appreciated the better qualities of the girl she had seen on but one occasion, and that she would, in time, admit that Sheila was more than worthy of her nephew's love. In any event he had his own life to make or mar. Without Sheila he knew it would be utterly fruitless and without an object. Rather than lose Sheila he would sell the schooner, cut himself off from friends and home, and, with her, face the world anew. He was determined, if Sheila left Big Wreck Cove, that he would go with her. Nobody--not even the girl herself--could shake this determination now born in the mind of the captain of the _Seamew_. Sheila had borne his reputation upon her heart from the beginning, but he should have at first thought of her good name and the opinion the world must needs hold of Sheila Macklin. She had been unfairly accused. She had been abused, ill-treated, punished for a sin which was not hers. It was not enough that he had tried to help her hide away from those who knew of her persecution. The only right thing to do--the only sane course, and the one which should have been pursued from the start--was to attempt to disprove the accusation under which the girl had suffered and set her right not only before Big Wreck Cove folk, but before the whole world. The poignant feeling of sin committed, with which Sheila herself was now burdened, did not influence Tunis Latham. It was the logic of the idea which convinced him that they had been totally wrong in what they had done. He should have married Sheila on the night they had met in Boston and set about first of all tracing back her trouble and disproving the flimsy evidence which must have convicted her of stealing from Hoskin & Marl's. He told himself it was not piety, but hard common sense which suggested this as the only and practical way to handle the matter. It was, in truth, the awakened hope in a loving heart. Tunis had been able to keep scarcely enough of his crew to handle the _Seamew_ in fair weather; and the barometer was falling, with every indication in sea and sky of the approach of bad weather. He feared the few hands he had would desert when they reached Boston. Zebedee Pauling was a young host in himself--far and away a better seaman than Orion Latham, as well as a better fellow. But the schooner could not be sailed with good will. Tunis' mind, however, remained fixed upon Sheila's troubles rather than upon his own; and as soon as the schooner docked, he went up into the town and wended his way directly to the great department store in which he had once interviewed the troublesome Ida May Bostwick. * * * * * The cargo was out, and the _Seamew_ had already been warped into another wharf where freight was awaiting her when the skipper returned to the water front that afternoon. The three men remaining of the forecastle crew were still at work, assisted by Zebedee and Horry Newbegin. They had not had a regular cook for two trips now. But a new complication had arisen. Mason Chapin stood at the rail waiting his return, and a taxicab had been summoned. The mate carried a bag. "A telegram from Doctor Norris. My wife's worse, Mr. Latham. I've got to go back just as fast as steam will get me there," was his greeting to the skipper of the _Seamew_. This was according to the agreement Mason Chapin had made in the beginning. His wife was sorely ill, and surely Tunis would not stand between a man and his sick wife! But it left a very serious situation upon the schooner when the mate drove away in the taxicab. Six men, forward and aft, to handle a suit of sails which equaled those of any seagoing racing yacht. If it had not been for the freight--some of which was perishable--the master of the _Seamew_ would have laid up until he could have got together a more numerous crew at least. But instead of going to the seamen's employment offices, Tunis had to turn to himself, while the heavier pieces of freight were lowered down the hatchway of the schooner. It was near evening when the hatch was battened down and a small tug snaked them out of the dock and from among the greater shipping, and gave them a whistled blessing in midstream. All hands and the skipper tailed on to the sheets and got her canvas spread. Then the skipper went below to the galley and prepared supper. Tunis Latham could be no stickler for quarter-deck etiquette on this voyage, that was sure. But although the hands growled, and even Horry looked sour, Tunis seemed strangely excited; indeed, he looked less woebegone than he had for many a day. Something seemed to have given him a new zest in life. He even spoke to the hands cheerfully, and they were a trio of as surly dogs as ever quarreled with their food and a ship's officers. "I'll lay up at the cove until I get a decent crew this time, if I lose all my existing contracts," Tunis said to Zebedee. "I'll find a bunch of men who are not afraid of their shadows. Huh! Hoodooed, is she? I'll show 'em that she can sail, even if Davy Jones himself sits on her bowsprit!" There was wind enough, in all good conscience. They discovered that before they were out of the bay. It had shifted into the northeast, and the _Seamew_ went roaring away on her course under reefed canvas, heeling over to it like a racing yacht. But the long tacks to seaward which the gale enforced made it impossible for the schooner to beat back to Hollis where the first of her freight must be discharged until after breakfast the next morning. By that time the three foremast hands who had been obliged to work double watches were fairly stewing in their own rage. Tunis had to see his consignees while the freight was being discharged; when he got back to the wharf there was nobody aboard the schooner save Horry and Zebedee. The latter had a broken oar in his hand and he and the ancient seaman seemed to be in a condition of utter amazement. "What's to do now?" demanded the skipper. "They've gone, Cap'n Latham," stammered Zebedee. "Say they won't put foot on the _Seamew's_ deck again. That--that confounded 'Rion--" "What's the matter with Orion now?" exclaimed Tunis. "I hoped I was well rid of him. Has he turned up here at Hollis?" "Look at this," said Zebedee, shaking the broken oar. "Here's what it seems 'Rion found in the hold two trips back. So those fellows say. He left it with 'em. And they say the schooner is a murder ship and they won't try to work her no further." Tunis seized the piece of oar. Along one side was a streak of faint blue paint. He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar before--leaning against the door frame of Pareta's cottage in Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man's daughter. "What in thunder!" He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into the wood: MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression which betrayed a great perturbation of soul. The old man could scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was plain that superstition had him by the throat. "So this is the thing that rotten 'Rion played them with, is it?" Tunis demanded. "Trying to make them think my beautiful _Seamew_ was once the _Marlin B._? Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out of Mike Pareta's woodpile, or I'm a dog-fish! See that blue streak? I saw this broken oar at Pareta's house. Bet you anything Eunez had something to do with it, too. Though why she should want to harm me, who never said a cross word to her, I can't see." "She and your cousin are mighty thick," Zebedee said reflectively. "That's a fact." "Thicker than they ought to be for the girl's good, I guess," agreed Tunis. Then he said to Horry: "What's the matter with you, old man? Do you want to desert me, too, all along of a broken oar with some silly letters burned into it?" The ancient mariner had got a grip upon himself. The simple explanation that punctured the bubble of superstition so convincingly might not have altogether satisfied Horry. But he was a true and just man. "I never deserted your father, Cap'n Randall Latham, not even when his ship sunk under him," the old man declared. "I was saved from that wreck by chance, not because I tried to be. And I ain't likely to desert his son." "How about you, Zebedee?" demanded the captain of the _Seamew_. "I am not afraid of any foolish talk, anyway, Captain Latham. Had I been I wouldn't have applied for the berth. I had heard enough about it. Eunez Pareta, I believe, talked too much to the Portygees, and that is why you couldn't keep them. But I'm not a Portygee." "I'll say you're not," agreed Tunis. "But we're left in something of a fix. This freight for Josh Jones and his father is needed. Some other stuff consigned to Big Wreck Cove ought to be there by to-night. And I can't get a man for love or money here to help us out. I tried while I was uptown." Zeb showed no hesitation. He shrugged his blue-jerseyed shoulders. "Don't you cal'late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail and jib? It'll take time, but she's the sweetest sailing craft I was ever in in my life," he said. "She's certainly all right, 'cept for that pull to sta'bbo'd," muttered Horry. "Humph! Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage. And this isn't any capsize wind at that," murmured the captain of the _Seamew_. "But it's got to be done. Come! Will you risk it with me?" They looked aloft and then at each other. There was little save reflection in their several glances. Men of this caliber do not hesitate over a risk of life or ship. Cautious as Tunis Latham was, his agreement with those he had contracted with called for a prompt fulfillment of the details of the pact. Nor did the prospect of the rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the _Seamew_ should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale. And they knew that a gale was coming. This was no place for a schooner of the _Seamew's_ size to ride out the storm. She might easily drag her anchors and go ashore on the Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship. So the trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better chance. CHAPTER XXXI BITTER WATERS Ah, yes! youth, and romance linked with a self-scrutiny born of her New England ancestry if not of her father's Celtic blood, had brought Sheila Macklin to her dreadful pass. One might have said, if one were hardened enough, that had the young woman "possessed an ounce of sense" she would not have made herself penniless, an outcast, and so suffered because she could not escape quickly from an environment well-nigh poignant enough to turn her brain. She was days in recovering from the shock of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at the Ball homestead. And those hours of torture that had followed had eaten like acid into Sheila's soul. She had by no means recovered herself when Tunis had his brief interview with her. Had she not shut herself away from him--refused to even discuss the situation with the troubled skipper of the _Seamew_--she must have broken down, given way to that womanly weakness born of love for the man of her choice. For Sheila knew how Tunis Latham suffered. She felt that her course was right; nevertheless she fully appreciated how keen the blow of her decision fell upon the partner in her sin. A sin it was--almost, it seemed to her now, an unpardonable crime. To seize upon another girl's identity; to usurp another's chance; to foist herself upon the unsuspecting and kindly souls at the Ball homestead in a way that raised for them a happiness that was merely a phantom--the thought of it all was now a draught of which the dregs were very, very bitter. Over and over again she recalled all that Ida May Bostwick had said to and of her. It was all true! Coarse and unfeeling as the shopgirl was, Sheila lashed her troubled soul with the thought that what Ida May had said was deserved. Neither circumstances nor the fact that Tunis had suggested the masquerade excused the transgression. The days of her waiting on fate, alone in the cabin under Wreckers' Head, gave no surcease to her mental castigation. Her sin loomed the more huge as the hours dragged their slow length by. And yet, with it all, Sheila's keenest anguish came through her renunciation of Tunis' love. She could see no possible way of holding to that if she would purge herself of the fault she had committed. And above the stain of her false position since she had come to the Cape was the overcloud of that accusation which had first warped Sheila Macklin's life and humbled her spirit. She believed that she could never escape the shame of that prosecution and punishment for a crime she had not committed. She believed that, no matter where she might go nor how blamelessly she might live, the fact that she had been sentenced to a woman's reformatory would crop up like the ugly memory of a horrid dream to embitter her existence. Was her life linked with Tunis Latham's, he must suffer also from that misfortune. And so Sheila Macklin waited from hour to hour, from day to day, dully and in a brooding spirit, for release from a situation which must in time embitter her whole nature. * * * * * From the cabin at the foot of the seaward bluff of Wreckers' Head, the coming of the black gale out of the northeast was watched anxiously by Sheila, from the very break of this day. Tunis might be on the sea. She doubted if the threat of bad weather would hold the _Seamew_ in port. There was no rain--just a wind which tore across the waste of waters within view of her station, scattering their crests in foam and spoondrift, and rolling them in huger and still huger breakers on the strand. It was a magnificent sight, but a terrifying one as well. The girl watched almost continually for a white patch against the black of the storm which might mark a sailing craft in peril. Steam vessels went past, several of them. They, surely, were in little danger, were their hulls ordinarily sound and their engines perfect. All the fishing craft had made for cover the night before. The New York-Boston steamers would keep to the inside passage in this gale. Sheila had made all taut and trim inside the cabin. She had plenty of firewood and sufficient provisions to last her for a time. About noon she heard the crunch of footsteps on the sand. It was little John-Ed who first appeared before her eyes. He thrust a letter into Sheila's hand. "Dad brought it up from the port this morning, and I got it away from him. Say," he continued, evidently much disturbed, "he's coming here." "Who is coming here--your father?" "No, no! Not dad. I--I couldn't help it. I didn't tell him. I said you wanted to play alone here at being shipwrecked, and I was just like you said--your man Friday." "Who do you mean?" asked Sheila, greatly agitated. "Not--" "I bet 'twas that Tunis Latham told him you was here," continued John-Ed. "Anyway, don't blame me. All I done was to help him down the path." He disappeared. Sheila stepped to the door. Cap'n Ira was laboring over the sands toward the cabin, leaning on his cane, his coat flapping in the wind and his cap screwed on so tightly that a hurricane could not possibly have blown it away. But in addition and aside from the buffeting he had suffered from the wind, the old man looked much less trim and taut than Sheila had ever before seen him. He had not been shaved for at least three days; a button hung by a thread upon his coat; there was a coffee stain on the bosom of his shirt. He looked so miserable, and so faint, and so buffeted about, that the girl cried out, running from the door of the cabin to meet him. The sweat of his hard effort stood on his brow, and he panted for breath. "I swan! Ida May--er--well, whoever you be, gal, let me set down! I'm near spent, and that's a fact." "Oh, Cap'n Ball, you should not have done this!" cried the girl, letting him lean upon her and aiding him as rapidly as possible to the cabin door. "You should not have done this. You--you can do nothing for me. You can do no good by coming here." "Humph! P'r'aps not. Mebbe you're right. Let me set down on that box, gal," he muttered. He eased himself down upon the rough seat against the wall. He removed the cap with an effort and took his huge handkerchief from its crown. He mopped his brow and face and finally heaved a huge sigh. "I swan! That was a pull," he said. "So you're settled here. Gone to housekeeping on your own hook, have ye?" he said. "Just for a little while, Cap'n Ira. Only--only until I can get away. I--I have been expecting some money--payment of one of my father's old bills." She slit the envelope of the letter little John-Ed had just brought her. Inside was a pale-blue slip--a money order. "Yes," she said. "I can get away now. I must go somewhere to earn my living, and as far away from here as I can get." "So you think on traveling, do you?" said the old man. "You ain't content with Big Wreck Cove and the Head?" "Oh, Cap'n Ira!" she cried. "You know I can't stay here. Winter is coming. Besides, the people here--" "Ain't none of 'em asked ye to come an' live with them?" "Cap'n Ball!" "Ain't ye seen Tunis?" The girl hid her face from him. She put her hands over her eyes. Her shoulders shook with her sobbing. Cap'n Ira took a reflective pinch of snuff. "I cal'late," he said, after wiping his eyes, "that it ain't Tunis' fault that you are going away any more than it is mine and Prudence's. You just made up your mind to go." "Cap'n Ball!" she exclaimed faintly, and again raised her eyes to his. "Can--can I help it? _Now?_" "I don't know," he said, pursing his lips. "I don't know, gal, as anybody is driving you away from Wreckers' Head and them that loves ye here." She was speechless. She gazed at him with drenched eyes, her face quivering uncontrollably. A hand pressed tightly to her breast seemed endeavoring to still the wild fluttering there. "I don't know," he repeated, "that we got much to offer a gal like you, and that's a fact. We learned to know you pretty well while you stayed with us, Prue and me did. Somehow, we can't just seem to get the straight of what you told us that night you left. It--it ain't possible that you made some mistake, is it? Mebbe you was talking about some other gal?" "Oh, Cap'n Ball!" she sighed. "I am able to tell you nothing that will change your opinion of me." "Well, I don't know. I don't know. What you did say," he observed in that same reflective, gentle tone, "didn't seem to change our opinion much. Not mine and Prudence's." "Cap'n Ball!" "No," he went on, wagging his head. "You committing such a fault as you say you was accused of, and you coming down here as you did, through a trick--somehow those facts, if they be facts, don't seem to have much effect on our opinion. Me and the old woman feel that somehow--we don't know how--what you told us that night and what you done for us before that night don't fit together nohow." She stared at him without understanding. He cleared his throat and mopped his brow again with the big silk handkerchief. "No, gal, we can't understand how anybody as good and loving as you have been to us can be at heart as bad as--as other folks might try to make out. Fact is, we know you can't be bad." "What--what do you mean, Cap'n Ball?" she asked faintly. "I swan! I tell ye what I'm getting at," burst out the old man. "We want you to come back. Prudence, she wants you to come back. I swan! I want you to come back. Why, even that dratted Queen of Sheby needs you, Ida May--or, whatever your name is! We've got to have you!" "Prudence can't scurcely get around the house. And that niece of hers sits there like a stick or a stun, not willin' to scurce lift her hand to help. Thank the Lord _she's_ goin' home to-day. Her visit's come to an end. She don't like it down here. She says we're all a set of--er--hicks, I believe she calls us. "Howsomever, we're all high and dry on the reefs, gal, and it seems likely you're the only one can get us off. You ain't got to go away from here, if you don't want to. I've made it pretty average plain to that Bostwick gal that no matter what happens, she's got no expectations as far as Prudence and me are concerned. It was money and nothing but money she was after. Her being Prudence's niece in kind of a far-fetched way don't make it our duty--not even our Christian duty, as Elder Minnett calls it--to keep a gal in the house that we don't want, nor yet die at her convenience and leave her our money. And so I'll tell the elder if he undertakes to put his spoon in the dish again." Sheila was listening to words that she had never expected to hear from the old captain. Could this be true? Were Cap'n Ira and Prudence, in spite of what they knew about her--what she had told them and Ida May had told them--desirous of having her back? Was there a chance, no matter what the real Ida May Bostwick could say, for Sheila to return and take up her peaceful life with the Balls? Could this be real? Indeed, was it right for her to do this? Tunis-- She arose and walked to the open door, looking out almost blindly at first upon the gale-smitten sea. It was like her heart--so tossed about and fretted by winds of opinion. What should she do? Which way should she turn? Not to save Sheila Macklin from trouble or disgrace. Not even to save Tunis from possible scorn. The question that assailed her now was only: _Was it right?_ Suddenly, out upon the mountainous waves, she spied a sail. It was reefed, flattened down, almost tri-cornered. The two sticks of the schooner and the jaunty bowsprit pointing skyward heaved again into view. She stood so long gazing at the craft that Cap'n Ira spoke again. "What d'ye say, gal?" he asked anxiously. "Look--look here, Cap'n Ira!" she exclaimed. "Can it be the _Seamew_? Is she trying to head in for the channel? Oh! Are they in danger out there?" The old man rose with his usual difficulty and hobbled to the door, leaning on his cane. He peered out over her shoulder, and his keen and experienced eyes saw and identified the laboring vessel almost at once. "I swan! That is the _Seamew_, Ida May," he exclaimed. "Tut, tut! What's Tunis got himself into such a pickle for? 'Tain't reasonable he should--being as good a seaman as he is. "My, my! Why don't he get some cloth on her? He can't have lost all his upper canvas. Don't he know he needs tops'ls to beat up aslant of this gale and get into the shelter of the Head? I swan! If there's men enough there to man her proper, why don't they do the right thing?" "Oh, Cap'n Ball," gasped the girl, "perhaps there are not enough men with him. Perhaps his crew has deserted again." "I swan!" rejoined the old man. "What did he set sail for, then? Ain't he got a mite of sense? But, I tell ye, Ida May, if he don't get more canvas on her, and get under better way, he'll never make that channel in this world." "Oh!" "The schooner's sure to go on the outer reef. She never can claw off the land now. Without help--if that's his trouble--Tunis Latham will never get that schooner into Big Wreck Cove. And God help him and them that's with him!" added the captain reverently. CHAPTER XXXII A GIRL TO THE RESCUE On shore the gale seemed a stiff and dangerous blow. At sea, even with a stanch deck under one's feet, the wind proved to have passed the hurricane mark long since. The captain of the _Seamew_ felt that the elements had conspired bitterly to assail his schooner. Before they were a mile beyond the end of the Hollis breakwater, Tunis knew that he had the fight of his seagoing experience on his hands. When they were fairly out of the semi-shelter of the point behind which Hollis lay, Tunis and his two companions realized very quickly just what they had to contend with. They had spread a handbreadth of mainsail, but the jib was blown out of the boltropes by one big swoop of wind and carried down to leeward, looking like a giant's shirt. "Still feel that tug to sta'bbo'd," grumbled Horry. "Just like--" "Belay that!" commanded Tunis. "I begin to believe that's bad luck, anyway. If you hadn't got on to that tack when we first put the schooner into commission, those Portygees wouldn't have even remembered the _Marlin B._ And _that_ schooner thousands of miles away from these seas!" "I cal'late 'Rion Latham would have found something else to harp on then," said Zebedee. "He was bound to ruin you if he could." Quickly the gale increased instead of abating, and it was utterly impossible for the trio to get topsails on her. She needed the pull of upper canvas if she was to tack properly for the mouth of the channel into Big Wreck Cove. They fought for two hours to bring this much-desired object to pass, hoping for a lull or a shifting of the gale which might aid them. The yellow sands of Wreckers' Head were plainly in view all that time. To give up the attempt and run before the gale was a folly of which Tunis Latham had no intention of being guilty if it could possibly be avoided. Manned as she was, the schooner might never be worked back to a landfall if they did so. The keen old eyes of Horace Newbegin first spied the thing which promised hope. From his station at the wheel he shouted something which the younger men did not catch, but his pointing arm drew their gaze shoreward. Coming out from the Head was an open boat. Four figures pulled at the oars while another held the steering sweep. The daring crew was heading the boat straight on for the pitching schooner! "The coast guard!" the old man was now heard to shout. "God bless them fellers!" But Tunis knew it was not the lifeboat from the distant station. He knew the boat, if he could not at first identify those who manned it. It was an old lifeboat that had been stored in a shed below John-Ed Williams' place, and these men attempting their rescue were some of the neighbors from Wreckers' Head. They came on steadily, the steersman standing at his post and handling the long oar as though it was a feather's weight. His huge figure soon identified him. It was Captain John Dunn, who, like Ira Ball, had left the sea, and he had left his right forearm, too, because of some accident somewhere on the other side of the globe. But with the steel hook screwed to its stump and the good hand remaining to him, Captain Dunn handled that steering oar with more skill than most other men with two good hands could have done. How the four at the oars pulled the heavy boat! Tunis sought to identify them as well. He saw John-Ed Williams--in a place at last where he was forced to keep up his end, though he was notably a lazy man. Ben Brewster had the oar directly behind John-Ed. The third figure Tunis could not identify--not at once. The man at the bow oar was Marvin Pike, who pulled a splendid stroke. So did that unknown oarsman. They were all bravely tugging at the heavy oars. Tunis had faith in them. Zebedee suddenly plunged across the pitching deck and reached the rail where Tunis stood. Discipline--at least seagoing etiquette--had been somewhat in abeyance aboard the _Seamew_ during the last few hours. Zeb caught the skipper by the arm. "See her?" he bawled into the ear of the surprised Tunis. "What's that?" "See her hair? It's a girl! As I'm a living sinner, it's a girl! Pulling number three oar, Captain Latham! Did you ever?" Clinging to a stay, the captain of the _Seamew_ flung himself far over the rail as the schooner chanced to roll. He could look down into the approaching lifeboat. He saw the loosened, dark locks of the girl who was pulling at number three oar. On the very heels of Zeb's words the captain was confident of the girl's identity. "Sheila!" His voice could not have reached her ear because of the rush and roar of the wind and sea, but, as though in answer to his shout, the girl glanced back and up, over her shoulder. For a moment Tunis got a flash of the face he so dearly loved. What a woman she was! She lacked no more in courage than she did in beauty and sweetness of disposition. What other girl along all this coast--even one born of the Cape strain--would have dared take an oar in that lifeboat in face of such dire peril as this? "Good Lord, Cap'n Latham!" shrieked Zeb. "That's Miss Bostwick!" Tunis straightened up, squared his shoulders, and looked at Zebedee proudly. He wanted Zeb to know--he wanted the whole world to know, if he could spread the news abroad--that the girl pulling number three oar was the girl he loved, and was going to marry! * * * * * An hour later the _Seamew_, her topsails drawing full and her lower canvas properly handled, drove on like the bird she was through the channel into the cove, trailing the old lifeboat behind her. The skipper had taken the wheel himself, but that "tug to sta'bbo'd" did not disturb his equanimity as it sometimes did Horry's. Sheila, muffled in oilskins and sea boots, but with her wet hair flowing over her shoulders, stood beside the skipper. No matter how satisfied and confident Tunis might appear, the girl was still in an uncertain state of mind. "And so," she said to him anxiously, "I do not know what to tell them. Cap'n Ira seemed so poorly and so unhappy. And he says Aunt Prue is almost ill. "But it was Cap'n Ira who told me what to do when we saw the _Seamew_ in danger; how to get the men together and how to launch the boat! Oh, it was wonderful! He was not too overcome to be practical and realize your need, Tunis." "Trust Cap'n Ira," agreed the young man. "And what other girl could have done what you did, Sheila? Hear what Cap'n John Dunn says? You ought to be a sailor's daughter. _I_ can tell him you are going to be a sailor's wife." "No, no! Oh, Tunis! It can't--" "No 'can't' in the dictionary," interrupted the captain of the _Seamew_. "You and I are going to have one big talk, Sheila, after I take you up home." "Up home?" she repeated. "You are going back to Cap'n Ira's. You know you are. That other girl has beat it for Boston, you say, and there's not a living reason why you shouldn't return to the Balls. Besides, they need you. I could see that with half an eye when I went away the other morning. The old man hobbling around the barn trying to catch an old hen was a sight to make the angels weep." "Poor, poor Cap'n Ira!" she murmured. "And poor Aunt Prudence--and poor _me_!" exclaimed Tunis. "What do you think is going to happen to me? If you go away, I shall have to sell all I own in the world and follow you." "Tunis!" she cried, almost in fear. "You wouldn't." "I certainly would. I am going to have you, one way or another. Nobody else shall get you, Sheila. And you can't go far enough or fast enough to lose me." "Don't!" she said faintly. "You cannot be in earnest. Do you know what it means if you and I have any association whatsoever? Oh! I thought this was all over--that you would not tear open the wound--" "I don't mean to hurt you, Sheila," he said softly. But he was smiling. "I have got something to tell you that will, I believe, put an entirely different complexion on your affairs." "What--what can you mean?" she burst out. "Oh, tell me!" "I'll tell you a little of it now. Just enough to keep you from thinking I am crazy. The rest I will not tell you save in the Balls' sitting room before Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue." "Tunis!" she murmured with clasped hands. "Yesterday I spent two hours in the manager's office of Hoskin & Marl's. They have been looking for you for more than six months. Naturally, there was no record of you after you left that--that school when your time was out. They didn't seem to guess you'd have got work in that Seller's place." "What do you mean? What did they want me for?" gasped the girl. "Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your pardon. He cried, that manager did. He broke down and cried like a baby--especially after I had told him a few things that had happened to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn't found such good friends in Cap'n Ira and Prudence. That's right. He was all broke up." The girl stood before him, straight as a reed. She rocked with the pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were glued to the planks. She could not have fallen! "They--they know--" "They know they sent to jail the wrong girl. The woman that stole the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote 'em all about it from the sanitarium where the firm sent her. They are sending you papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the pawnbroker and the store detective, and--and a lot of other folks. Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated." She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face, although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him. "Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here--and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found all this out. And--and I would never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done." "Huh! Yes. I cal'late that's so, Sheila," he said. "But how about me? Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you? Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that thought. There is for me, at any rate." She flashed him a look then that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham's very soul. His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden. She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct words to Cap'n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis. But that prevarication, at least, had been for no purpose of self gain. And so Sheila looked at her lover for just that passing moment with all the passion which filled her heart for him. Had Tunis not been steering the _Seamew_ through a pretty tortuous channel at just that moment there is no knowing what he would have done--spurred by Sheila's look! CHAPTER XXXIII A HAVEN OF REST Wreckers' Head so shelters the cove from the northeast that the schooner could be brought safely in to Luiz Wharf, instead of dropping her anchor in deep water. Half the port, and all of Portygee Town, crowded nearby wharves and streets to welcome Tunis Latham's schooner; for news of her peril and the way in which help had reached the _Seamew_ had come down from the Head as on the wings of the wind itself. There was one face on the wharf Tunis Latham sought out with grim persistency as the schooner was made fast. He had purposely placed Sheila in Zebedee Pauling's care. Tunis kept, directly under his hand, the broken oar which had helped to make so much of his recent trouble. When the _Seamew_ was safe, her skipper leaped ashore. And he carried the broken oar with him. Orion, grinning and sneering by turns, saw his cousin coming. It must have been preternatural sagacity which caused him to see and recognize the broken oar. Having seen it, he jumped for the head of the wharf. Tunis leaped away on his cousin's trail. The crowd parted to let them through, and then joined in a streaming, excited tail to their kite of progress. Most of the spectators lived in Portygee Town. Some of them had been members of the _Seamew's_ deserting crews. They were afraid of Tunis Latham, but they had little sympathy for Orion. The skipper caught up with him in the middle of the road and almost opposite the Pareta cottage. Orion had picked up a cobblestone as he reached the street and, finding himself about to be overtaken, he turned and threw the missile at Tunis' head. The latter dodged it and, with a single, savage blow of the oar felled his cousin to the roadway. "You unmitigated scoundrel!" Tunis roared. "I ought to take your life. Because of you I nearly lost my own to-day--and the lives of two other men and my schooner into the bargain. You villain!" As Orion tried to scramble up, the skipper of the _Seamew_ made another pass at him with the oar, and the fellow fell again. "Don't hit me! Don't hit me again, Tunis! Remember I'm your cousin. I--I haven't done a thing--true an' honest, I haven't!" The listeners gathered closer. Tunis Latham's face displayed such rage that the Portygees expected him to continue his attack with the oar. But instead he shook it before their eyes--and Orion's. "See it?" he demanded of the bystanders. "That's the scurvy trick the dog played me. Found this broken oar in somebody's woodpile, burned the name of the _Marlin B._ into the handle, and foisted it on a fool crew to prove that my schooner was once called by that name. I ought to pound him to death!" Suddenly a brilliant figure whirled into the midst of the crowd and reached the angry skipper and his victim. Eunez, her black eyes ablaze, her face ruddy with anger, planted herself before Tunis Latham, hands on hips, confronting him boldly. One glance at the prostrate Orion assured her that, although there was blood upon his face, he was not much hurt. She tossed her head and snapped her fingers under the nose of the captain of the _Seamew_. "So now, Tunis Latham! It is that you have waked up! Of a gr-r-reat smartness are you, eh?" she cried. "You scorn us all, and tr-r-reat us as you would dogs. Heh! All you shipmasters are alike. "But _you_--we put the laugh on you, eh? That oar in your hand--ha, ha! Do not lay the blame altogether upon your cousin. _I_ burned those letters into that wood with my curling irons. Fooled by a girl, eh, Tunis Latham? Ah! Learn your lesson, Captain Latham! We Portygee women are not to be scorned by _any_ schooner captain. No!" She snapped her fingers again in his face and turned away, swaying her hips and tossing her head as she disappeared into her father's cottage. When Tunis looked around for his cousin, he found that that facile young man, taking advantage of the girl's intervention, had slipped away. * * * * * A winter hurricane had pounced upon the Cape and torn at it with teeth and claws, as though seeking to dismember it--to wrench the forty-mile curved claw of the Cape from the remainder of Barnstable County. The driven snow masked everything--earth, houses, trees, and the shivering bushes; it clung to these objects, iced upon them like frosting. No craft ventured out of Big Wreck Cove, least of all the _Seamew_, although she had a cargo in her hold and a complete and satisfied crew in her forecastle. Tunis Latham was speaking of the latter fact to Aunt Lucretia in the warm and homelike kitchen of Latham's Folly. "Zeb is a good fellow. He has got together a bunch of hands that aren't afraid of ghosts or bogies. You couldn't make those Portygees or some of the other hands we had see the ridiculousness of their fear of the _Seamew_--bless her! But with this bunch Zeb has got together I wouldn't fear to sail around the Horn." His aunt looked startled at the suggestion and shook her head. "I know you wouldn't want I should go for such a long voyage, Aunt Lucretia," he replied. "And I don't want to myself. But I couldn't be content here if I didn't see the prospect bright before me of getting Ida--I mean, of getting Sheila." His aunt looked at him again not unkindly, but said not a word. "I've told you all about it, Aunt Lucretia," the skipper of the _Seamew_ pursued. "Everything. If Sheila did wrong to come down here as she did, I did a greater wrong in encouraging her to come and in tempting her with the chance of escaping from the mess she was in. And she's paid--we've both paid--for our folly. "As for folks talking, if that Bostwick girl wants to keep her job with Hoskin & Marl's she'll keep her mouth shut about Sheila. She understands that. And Hoskin & Marl--everybody, in fact that was connected with that awful thing that happened to Sheila--have done all in their power to make amends." For the first time his aunt's lips opened. "The poor child!" she said. "I want more than your sympathy for Sheila, auntie," he urged earnestly. "I want your approval of what Sheila and I mean to do--in time. Of course, I must be better established first and be making money enough to support a--a family. And Sheila would not think of leaving the old people up there. They need her so sorely." "But you may as well know, first as last, Aunt Lucretia, that I mean to marry Sheila. I know it was wrong in me to try to palm her off on you as somebody she wasn't--to try to fool you--" "You did not fool me, Tunis; not for a moment," she told him softly. He stared at her in amazement. "No," went on his usually inarticulate aunt. "The moment I first looked into her face I knew she was not Sarah Honey's daughter. That baby's eyes were brown when Sarah brought her here years ago; and no brown eyes could change to such a beautiful violet-blue as--as Sheila's. I knew you and she were trying to deceive me, but I could not help loving the dear girl from my first sight of her." That was a very long speech indeed for Aunt Lucretia to make. She put her arms about Tunis Latham's neck and said all the rest she might have said in a loving kiss. Driving as the storm was, there remained something that took the skipper of the _Seamew_ out into the welter of it. With the wet snow plastering his back he climbed out of the saucerlike valley to the rear premises of the Ball place. He even gave a look in at the barn to make sure that all the chores were done for the night. The gray ghost of the Queen of Sheba's face was raised a moment from her manger while she looked at him inquiringly, blowing softly through her nostrils the while. "You're all right, anyway," said Tunis, chuckling as he closed the barn door. "You've got a friend for life." He went on to the kitchen door. Inside he could hear the bustle of Sheila's swift feet, the croon of Prudence's gentle voice, and then a mighty "A-choon!" as Cap'n Ira relieved his pent-up feelings. "Don't let them fish cakes burn, gal," the old man drawled. "If Tunis ain't here mighty quick he can eat his cold. Oh! Here he is--right to the nick o' time, like the second mate's watch comin' to breakfast." Tunis had shaken his peacoat free of the clinging snow and now stamped his sea-boots on the rug. He smiled broadly and confidently at Sheila and she returned it so happily that her whole face seemed to irradiate sunshine. Prudence nudged Cap'n Ira's elbow. "Ain't it a pretty sight, Ira?" she whispered. "She looks 'most as sweet as you did, Prue, when I took you to the altar," sighed the old man windily. "I swan! Women is most alike, young an' old. All but that dratted Ida May Bostwick. _She_ was a caution to cats." "Now you hush, Ira. She's our own rel'tive and we ought not to speak ill of her." "Ha!" blew Cap'n Ira, reminding Tunis of the old mare when she snorted. "Ha! Maybe she is. But even so I want none o' her. An' I told Elder Minnett so. I got kinder of an idee that the elder won't be so brash, puttin' his spoon into other folks' porridge again." "Hush, Ira! Don't be irreverent. Remember he's a minister." "So he is. So he is," concluded Cap'n Ira. "They say charity covers a multitude of sins; and I expect the call to be a preacher covers a multitude of sinners." He chuckled mellowly again. "But sometimes I've thought that the 'call' some of our preachers hear 'stead o' being the voice of God is some other noise they mistook for it. Well, there, Prudence, I won't say no more. But you must allow that Elder Minnett's buttin' in, as the boys say, come pretty nigh bustin' everything to flinders. "Come, Tunis. Do sit down or that gal won't be able to dish up supper, and I'm as hungry as a wolf. Pull up your chair, Prudence. Ain't this livin', I want to know?" He shuddered luxuriously at the howl and rattle of the wind without. "Now, folks: 'For that with which we are about to be blessed make us truly thankful. Amen.' Put your teeth in one o' them biscuit, Tunis. I want to recommend 'em to you. Ain't none better on this endurin' Cape--no, sir. We got the best cook on the Head. If you are ever lucky enough to get one ha'f as good, Tunis--" "Now, you be still, Ira," admonished Prudence, smiling comfortingly at the blushing girl. "You better sing small, Cap'n Ira," said the skipper of the _Seamew_ hoarsely. "It's mebbe just because we're good-natured and forbearing that you are keeping your cook for a while." "Ha! So that's the way the wind blows, eh?" croaked Cap'n Ira. "You talk big, young man. But we know Sheila better than you do, p'r'aps. Don't we, Prue?" His little old wife, with her winter-apple face wrinkled in a smile of utter confidence, leaned nearer Sheila to pat her hand. The girl seized the wrinkled claw suddenly and pressed it with both of hers--pressed it gratefully and with a full-charged heart. "Don't be disturbed. Don't fear," she whispered so that the old woman only might not hear. "I will not leave you." The two men looked deeply into each other's eyes and with a great understanding. They are not demonstrative, these Cape men, not as a rule; but Cap'n Ira and Tunis Latham understood all entailed in that promise so softly given, and they subscribed to it. Sheila was to have her way. Hours later Tunis lit the lamp in his bedroom and then stood before his window, gazing out into the driving snow. Almost immediately he saw the gleam of another lamp, far up the slope, showing from that north window of Sheila's chamber in the old Ball house. This was the signal they had agreed upon--their good-night symbol whenever he was at home. He stood there a long time, looking out. Although the wintry wind raved across Wreckers' Head and the snow scurried wildly before it, there was springtime in the hearts of Tunis Latham and Sheila--the springtime of their hopes. THE END 
22745	----	FAIR HARBOR * * * * * * By JOSEPH C. LINCOLN FAIR HARBOR GALUSHA THE MAGNIFICENT THE PORTYGEE "SHAVINGS" MARY-'GUSTA CAP'N DAN'S DAUGHTER THE RISE OF ROSCOE PAINE THE POSTMASTER THE WOMAN HATERS KEZIAH COFFIN CY WHITTAKER'S PLACE CAP'N ERI EXTRICATING OBADIAH THANKFUL'S INHERITANCE MR. PRATT MR. PRATT'S PATIENTS KENT KNOWLES: "QUAHAUG" CAP'N WARREN'S WARDS THE DEPOT MASTER OUR VILLAGE PARTNERS OF THE TIDE THE OLD HOME HOUSE CAPE COD BALLADS * * * * * * FAIR HARBOR A Novel by JOSEPH C. LINCOLN Author of "Galusha the Magnificent," "Shavings," "Mary 'Gusta," "Mr. Pratt," "Cap'n Eri," Etc. D. Appleton and Company New York :: 1922 :: London Copyright, 1922, by D. Appleton Company Copyright, 1922, by the Curtis Publishing Company Printed in the United States of America FAIR HARBOR CHAPTER I "Hi hum," observed Mr. Joel Macomber, putting down his knife and fork with obvious reluctance and tilting back his chair. "Hi hum-a-day! Man, born of woman, is of few days and full of--of somethin', I forget what--George, what is it a man born of woman is full of?" George Kent, putting down his knife and fork, smiled and replied that he didn't know. Mr. Macomber seemed shocked. "_Don't know?_" he repeated. "Tut, tut! Dear me, dear me! A young feller that goes to prayer meetin' every Friday night--or at least waits outside the meetin'-house door every Friday night--and yet he don't remember his Scriptur' well enough to know what man born of woman is full of? My soul and body! What's the world comin' to?" Nobody answered. The six Macomber children, Lemuel, Edgar, Sarah-Mary, Bemis, Aldora and Joey, ages ranging from fourteen to two and a half, kept on eating in silence--or, if not quite in silence, at least without speaking. They had been taught not to talk at table; their mother had taught them, their father playing the part of horrible example. Mrs. Macomber, too, was silent. She was busy stacking plates and cups and saucers preparatory to clearing away. When the clearing away was finished she would be busy washing dishes and after that at some other household duty. She was always busy and always behind with her work. Her husband turned to the only other person at the crowded table. "Cap'n Sears," he demanded, "you know 'most everything. What is it man born of woman is full of besides a few days?" Sears Kendrick thoughtfully folded his napkin. There was a hole in the napkin--holes were characteristic of the Macomber linen--but the napkin was clean; this was characteristic, too. "Meanin' yourself, Joel?" he asked, bringing the napkin edges into line. "Not necessarily. Meanin' any man born of woman, I presume likely." "Humph! Know many that wasn't born that way?" Mr. Macomber's not too intellectual face creased into many wrinkles and the low ceiling echoed with his laugh. "Not many, I don't cal'late," he said, "that's a fact. But you ain't answered my question, Cap'n. What is man born of woman full of?" Captain Kendrick placed the folded napkin carefully beside his plate. "Breakfast, just now, I presume likely," he said. "At least, I know two or three that ought to be, judgin' by the amount of cargo I've seen 'em stow aboard in the last half hour." Then, turning to Mrs. Macomber, he added, "I'm goin' to help you with the dishes this mornin', Sarah." The lady of the house had her own ideas on that subject. "Indeed you won't do anything of the sort," she declared. "The idea! And you just out of a crippled bed, as you might say." This remark seemed to amuse her husband hugely. "Ho, ho!" he shouted. "That's a good one! I didn't know the bed was crippled, Sarah. What's the matter with it; got a pain in the slats?" Sarah Macomber seldom indulged in retort. Usually she was too busy to waste the time. But she allowed herself the luxury of a half minute on this occasion. "No," she snapped, "but it's had one leg propped up on half a brick for over a year. And at least once a week in all that time you've been promisin' to bring home a new caster and fix it. If that bed ain't a cripple I don't know what is." Joel looked a trifle taken aback. His laugh this time was not quite as uproarious. "Guess you spoke the truth that time, Sarah, without knowin' it. Who is it they say always speaks the truth? Children and fools, ain't it? Well, you ain't a child scarcely, Sarah. Hope you ain't the other thing. Eh? Ho, ho!" Mrs. Macomber was halfway to the kitchen door, a pile of plates upon her arm. She did not stop nor turn, but she did speak. "Well," she observed, "I don't know. I was one once in my life, there's precious little doubt about that." She left the room. Young Kent and Captain Kendrick exchanged glances. Mr. Macomber swallowed, opened his mouth, closed it and swallowed again. Lemuel and Sarah-Mary, the two older children, giggled. The clock on the mantel struck seven times. The sound came, to the adults, as a timely relief from embarrassment. Captain Kendrick looked at his watch. "What's that?" he exclaimed. "Six bells already? So 'tis. I declare I didn't think 'twas so late." Joel rose to his feet, moving--for him--with marked rapidity. "Seven o'clock!" he cried. "My, my! We've got to get under way, George, if we want to make port at the store afore 'Liphalet does. Come on, George, hurry up." Kent lingered for a moment to speak to Sears Kendrick. Then he emerged from the house and he and Joel walked rapidly off together. They were employed, one as clerk and bookkeeper and the other as driver of the delivery wagon, at Eliphalet Bassett's Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Notion Store at the corner of the main road and the depot road. Joel's position there was fixed for eternity, at least he considered it so, having driven that same delivery wagon at the same wage for twenty-two years. "Me and that grocery cart," Mr. Macomber was wont to observe, "have been doin' 'Liphalet's errands so long we've come to be permanent fixtures. Yes, sir, permanent fixtures." When this was repeated to Mr. Bassett the latter affirmed that it was true. "Every time the dum fool goes out takin' orders," said Eliphalet, "he stays so long that I begin to think he's turned _into_ a permanent fixture. Takes an order for a quarter pound of tea and a spool of cotton and then hangs 'round and talks steady for half an hour. Permanent fixture! Permanent gas fixture, that's what _he_ is." George Kent did not consider himself a permanent fixture at Bassett's. He had been employed there for three years, or ever since the death of his father, Captain Sylvester Kent, who had died at sea aboard his ship, the _Ocean Ranger_, on the voyage home from Java to Philadelphia. George remained in Bayport to study law with Judge Knowles, who was interested in the young man and, being a lawyer of prominence on the Cape, was an influential friend worth having. The law occupied young Kent's attention in the evenings; he kept Mr. Bassett's books and sold Mr. Bassett's brown sugar, calico and notions during the days, not because he loved the work, the place, or its proprietor, but because the twelve dollars paid him each Saturday enabled him to live. And, in order to live so cheaply that he might save a bit toward the purchase of clothes, law books and sundries, he boarded at Joel Macomber's. Sarah Macomber took him to board, not because she needed company--six children and a husband supplied a sufficiency of that--but because three dollars more a week was three dollars more. Joel and George having tramped off to business and the very last crumb of the Macomber breakfast having vanished, the Macomber children proceeded to go through their usual morning routine. Lemuel, who did chores for grumpy old Captain Elijah Samuels at the latter's big place on the depot road, departed to rake hay and be sworn at. Sarah-Mary went upstairs to make beds; when the bed-making was over she and Edgar and Bemis would go to school. Aldora and Joey, the two youngest, went outdoors to play. And Captain Sears Kendrick, late master of the ship _Hawkeye_, and before that of the _Fair Wind_ and the _Far Seas_ and goodness knows how many others, who ran away to ship as cabin boy when he was thirteen, who fought the Malay pirates when he was eighteen, and outwitted Semmes by outmaneuvering the _Alabama_ when he was twenty-eight, a man once so strong and bronzed and confident, but now so weak and shaken--Captain Sears Kendrick rose painfully and with effort from his chair, took his cane from the corner and hobbled to the kitchen. "Sarah," he said, "I'm goin' to help you with those dishes this mornin'." "Sears," said Mrs. Macomber, taking the kettle of boiling dish-water from the top of the stove, "you'll do nothin' of the kind. You'll go outdoors and get a little sunshine this lovely day. It's the first real good day you've had since you got up from bed, and outdoors 'll help you more than anything else. Now you go!" "But look here, Sarah, for Heaven's sake----" "Be still, Sears, and don't be foolish. There ain't dishes enough to worry about. I'll have 'em done in half a shake. Go outdoors, I tell you. But don't you walk on those legs of yours. You hear me." Her brother--Sarah Macomber was a Kendrick before she married Joel--smiled slightly. "How do you want me to walk, Sarah, on my hands?" he inquired. "Never mind my legs. They're better this mornin' than they have been since that fat woman and a train of cars fell on 'em.... Ah hum!" with a change of tone, "it's a pity they didn't fall on my neck and make a clean job of it, isn't it?" "Sears!" reproachfully. "How can you talk so? And especially now, when the doctor says if you take care of yourself, you'll 'most likely be as well as ever in--in a little while." "A little while! In a year or two was what he said. In ten years was probably what he meant, and you'll notice he put in the 'most likely' even at that. If you were to lash him in the fore-riggin' and keep him there till he told the truth, he'd probably end by sayin' that I would always be a good for nothin' hulk same as I am now." "Sears, don't--please don't. I hate to hear you speak so bitter. It doesn't sound like you." "It's the way I feel, Sarah. Haven't I had enough to make me bitter?" His sister shook her head. "Yes, Sears," she admitted, "I guess likely you have, but I don't know as that is a very good excuse. Some of the rest of us," with a sigh, "haven't found it real smooth sailin' either; but----" She did not finish the sentence, and there was no need. He understood and turned quickly. "I'm sorry, Sarah," he said. "I ought to be hove overboard and towed astern. The Almighty knows you've had more to put up with than ever I had and you don't spend your time growlin' about it, either. I declare I'm ashamed of myself, but--but--well, you know how it is with me. I've never been used to bein' a loafer, spongin' on my relations." "Don't, Sears. You know you ain't spongin', as you call it. You've paid your board ever since you've been here." "Yes, I have. But how much? Next to half of nothin' a week and you wouldn't have let me pay that if I hadn't put my foot down. Or said I was goin' to try to put it down," he added with a grim smile. "You're a good woman, Sarah, a good woman, with more trials than your share. And what makes me feel worst of all, I do believe, is that I should be pitched in on you--to be the biggest trial of all. Well, that part's about over, anyhow. No matter whether I can walk or not I shan't stay and sponge on you. If I can't do anything else I'll hire a fish shanty and open clams for a livin'." He smiled again and she smiled in sympathy, but there were tears in her eyes. She was seven years older than her brother, and he had always been her pride. When she was a young woman, helping with the housework in the old home there in Bayport, before her father's death and the sale of that home, she had watched with immense gratification his success in school. When he ran away to sea she had defended him when others condemned. Later, when tales of his "smartness," as sailor or mate, or by and by, a full rated captain, began to drift back, she had gloried in them. He came to see her semi-occasionally when his ship was in port, and his yarns of foreign lands and strange people were, to her, far more wonderful than anything she had ever found in the few books which had come in her way. Each present he brought her she had kept and cherished. And there was never a trace of jealousy in her certain knowledge that he had gone on growing while she had stopped, that he was a strong, capable man of the world--the big world--whereas she was, and would always be, the wife and household drudge of Joel Macomber. Now, as she looked at him, pale, haggard and leaning on his cane, stooping a little when he had been so erect and sturdy, the pity which she had felt for him ever since they brought him into her sitting-room on the day of the railway accident became keener than ever and with it came an additional flash of insight. She realized more clearly than she had before that it was not his bodily injuries which hurt most and were the hardest to bear; it was his self-respect and the pride which were wounded sorest. That he--_he_--Sears Kendrick, the independent autocrat of the quarter deck, should be reduced to this! That it was wringing his soul she knew. He had never complained except to her, and even to her very, very seldom, but she knew. And she ventured to ask the question she had wanted to ask ever since he had sufficiently recovered to listen to conversation. "Sears," she said "I haven't said a word before, and you needn't tell me now if you don't want to--it isn't any of my business--but is it true that you've lost a whole lot of money? It isn't true, is it?" He had been standing by the open door, looking out into the yard. Now he turned to look at her. "What isn't true, Sarah?" he asked. "That you've lost a lot of money in--in that--that business you went into. It isn't true, is it, Sears? Oh, I hope it isn't! They say--why, some of 'em say you've lost all the money you had put by. An awful sight of money, they say. Sears, tell me it isn't true--please." He regarded her in silence for a moment. Then he shook his head. "Part of it isn't true, Sarah," he answered, with a slight smile. "I haven't lost a big lot of money." "Oh, I'm _so_ glad. Now I can tell 'em a few things, I guess." "I wouldn't tell 'em too much, because the other part _is_ true. I have lost about all I had put by." "Oh, Sears!" "Um--hm. And served me right, of course. You can't make a silk ear out of a sow's purse, as old Cap'n Sam Doane used to love to say. You can't, no matter how good a purse--or--ear--it is. I was a pretty good sea cap'n if I do say it, but that wasn't any reason why I should have figured I was a good enough business man to back as slippery an eel as Jim Carpenter in the ship chandlery game ashore." "But--you----" Mrs. Macomber hesitated to utter the disgraceful word, "you didn't fail up, did you, Sears?" she faltered. "You know that's what they say you did." "Well, they say wrong. Carpenter failed, I didn't. I paid dollar for dollar. That's why I've got next to no dollars now." "But you--you've got _some_, Sears. You must have," hopefully, "because you've been paying me board. So you must have _some_ left." The triumph in her face was pathetic. He hated to disturb her faith. "Yes," he said dryly, "I have some left. Maybe seven hundred dollars or some such matter. If I had my legs left it would be enough, or more than enough. I wouldn't ask odds of anybody if I was the way I was before that train went off the track. I'd lost every shot I had in the locker, but I'm not very old yet--some years to leeward of forty--there was more money to be had where that came from and I meant to have it. And then--well, then this happened to me." "I know. And to think that you was comin' down here on purpose to see me when it did happen. Seems almost as if I was to blame, somehow." "Nonsense! Nobody was to blame but the engineer that wrecked the train and the three hundred pound woman that fell on my legs. And the engineer was killed, poor fellow, and the woman was--well, she carried her own punishment with her, I guess likely. Anyhow, I should call it a punishment if I had to carry it. There, there, Sarah! Let's talk about somethin' else. You do your dishes and, long as you won't let me help you, I'll hop-and-go-fetch-it out to that settee in the front yard and look at the scenery. Just think! I've been in Bayport almost four months and haven't been as far as that gate yet--except when they lugged me in past it, of course. And I don't recall much about that." "I guess not, you poor boy. And I saw them bringin' you in, all stretched out, with your eyes shut, and as white as---- Oh, my soul and body! I don't want to think about it, let alone talk about it." "Neither do I, Sarah, so we won't. Do you realize how little I know of what's been goin' on in Bayport since I was here last? And do you realize how long it has been since I _was_ here?" "Why, yes, I do, Sears. It's been almost six years; it will be just six on the tenth of next September." The speech was illuminating. He looked at her curiously. "You do keep account of my goin's and comin's, don't you, old girl?" he said. "Better than I do myself." "Oh, it means more to me than it does to you. You live such a busy life, Sears, all over the world, meetin' everybody in all kinds of places. For me, with nothin' to do but be stuck down here in Bayport--well, it's different with me--I have to remember. Rememberin' and lookin' ahead is about all I have to keep me interested." He was silent for a moment. Then he said: "It looks as if rememberin' was all I will be likely to have. Think of it, Sarah! Four months in Bayport and I haven't been to the post-office. That'll stand as a town record, I'll bet." "And--and you'll keep up your courage, Sears? You won't let yourself get blue and discouraged, for my sake if nobody else's?" He nodded. "I couldn't, Sarah," he said earnestly. "With you around I'd be ashamed to." She ran to help him down the step, but he waved her away, and, leaning upon the cane and clinging fast to the lattice with the other hand, he managed to make the descent safely. Once on the flat level of the walk he moved more rapidly and, so it seemed to his sister, more easily than he had since his accident. The forty odd feet of walk he navigated in fair time and came to anchor, as he would have expressed it, upon the battered old bench by the Macomber gate. The gate, like the picket fence, of which it was a part, needed paint and the bench needed slats in its back. Almost anything which Joel Macomber owned needed something and his wife and family needed most of all. An ancient cherry tree, its foliage now thickly spotted with green fruit, for the month was June, cast a shadow upon the occupant of the bench. At his feet grew a bed of daffodils and jonquils which Sarah Macomber had planted when she came, a hopeful bride, to that house. Each year they sprouted and bloomed and now, long after Sarah's hopes had ceased to sprout, they continued to flourish. Beside the cherry tree grew a lilac bush. Beyond the picket fence was the dusty sidewalk and beyond that the dustier, rutted road. And beyond the road and along it upon both sides were the houses and barns and the few shops of Bayport village, Bayport as it was, and as some of us remember it, in the early '70's. In some respects it was much like the Bayport of to-day. The houses themselves have changed but little. Then, as now, they were trim and white and green-shuttered. Then, as now, the roses climbed upon their lattices and the silver-leaf poplars and elms and mulberry trees waved above them. But the fences which enclosed their trim lawns and yards have disappeared, and the hitching posts and carriage blocks by their front gates have gone also. Gone, too, are the horses and buggies and carryalls which used to stand by these gates or within those barns. They are gone, just as the ruts and dust of the roads have vanished. When Mrs. Captain Hammond, of the lower road, used to call upon Mrs. Ryder at West Bayport, she was wont to be driven to her destination in the intensely respectable Hammond buggy drawn by the equally respectable Hammond horse and piloted by the even more respectable--not to say venerable--Hammond coachman, who was also gardener and "hired man." And they made the little journey in the very respectable time of thirty-five minutes. Now when Mrs. Captain Hammond's granddaughter, who winters in Boston but summers at the old home, wishes to go to West Bayport she skims over the hard, oiled macadam in her five thousand dollar runabout and she finishes the skimming in eight minutes or less. And although the dwellings along the Bayport roads are much as they were that morning when Captain Sears Kendrick sat upon the bench in the Macomber yard and gazed gloomily at the section of road which lay between the Macomber gate and the curve beyond the Orthodox meeting-house--although the houses were much the same in external appearance, those who occupy them at the present day are vastly different from those who owned and lived in them then. Here is the greatest change which time has brought to old Bayport. Now those houses--the majority of them--are open only in summer; then they were open all the year. They who come to them now regard them as playthings, good-time centers for twelve or fourteen weeks. Then they were the homes of men and women who were proud of them, loved them, meant to live in them--while on land--as long as life was theirs; to die in them if fortunate enough to be found by death while ashore; and at last to be buried near them, under the pines of the Bayport cemetery. Now these homes are used by business men or lawyers or doctors, whose real homes are in Boston, New York, Chicago, or other cities. Then practically every house was owned or occupied either by a sea captain, active or retired, or by a captain's widow or near relative. For example, as Captain Kendrick sat in his brother-in-law's yard on that June morning of that year in the early '70's, within his sight, that is within the half mile from curve to curve of the lower road, were no less than nine houses in which dwelt--or had dwelt--men who gained a living upon a vessel's quarter deck. Directly across the road was the large, cupola-crowned house of Captain Solomon Snow. Captain Sol was at present somewhere between Surinam and New York, bound home. His wife was with him, so was his youngest child. The older children were at home, in the big house; their aunt, Captain Sol's sister, herself a captain's widow, was with them. Next to Captain Solomon's was the Crowell place. Captain Bethuel Crowell was in Hong Kong, but, so his wife reported at sewing circle, had expected to sail from there "any day about now" bound for Melbourne. Next to Captain Bethuel lived Mrs. Patience Foster, called "Mary Pashy" by the townspeople to distinguish her from another Mary Foster in East Bayport. Her husband had been drowned at sea, or at least so it was supposed. His ship left Philadelphia eight years before and had never been spoken or heard from since that time. Next to Mary-Pashy's was the imposing, if ugly, residence of Captain Elkanah Wingate. Captain Elkanah was retired, wealthy, a member of the school-committee, a selectman, an aristocrat and an autocrat. And beyond Captain Elkanah lived Captain Godfrey Peasley--who was not quite of the aristocracy as he commanded a schooner instead of a square-rigger, and beyond him Mrs. Tabitha Crosby, whose husband had died of yellow fever while aboard his ship in New Orleans; and beyond Mrs. Crosby's was--well, the next building was the Orthodox meeting-house, where the Reverend David Dishup preached. Nowadays people call it the Congregationalist church. On the same side of the road as the Macomber cottage were the homes of Captain Sylvanus Baker and Captain Noah Baker and of Captain Orrin Eldridge. Bayport, in that day, was not only by the sea, it was of the sea. The sea winds blew over it, the sea air smelled salty in its highways and byways, its male citizens--most of them--walked with a sea roll, and upon the tables and whatnots of their closed and shuttered "front parlors" or in their cupboards or closets were laquered cabinets, and whales' teeth, and alabaster images, and carved chessmen and curious shells and scented fans and heaven knows what, brought from heaven knows where, but all brought in sailing ships over one or more of the seas of the world. The average better class house in Bayport was an odd combination of home and museum, the rear two-thirds the home section and the remaining third, that nearest the road, the museum. Bayport front parlors looked like museums, and generally smelled like them. To a stranger from, let us say, the middle west, the village then must have seemed a queer little community dozing upon its rolling hills and by its white beaches, a community where the women had, most of them, traveled far and seen many strange things and places, but who seldom talked of them, preferring to chat concerning the minister's wife's new bonnet; and whose men folk, appearing at long intervals from remote parts of the world, spoke of the port side of a cow and compared the three-sided clock tower of the new town hall with the peak of Teneriffe on a foggy morning. All this, odd as it may have seemed to visitors from inland, were but matters of course to Sears Kendrick. To him there was nothing strange in the deep sea atmosphere of his native town. It had been there ever since he knew it, he fondly imagined--being as poor a prophet as most of us--that it would always be. And, as he sat there in the Macomber yard, his thoughts were busy, not with Bayport's past or future, but with his own, and neither retrospect nor forecast was cheerful. He could see little behind him except the mistakes he had made, and before him--not even the opportunity to make more. Overhead, amid the cherry branches, the bees buzzed and the robins chirped. From the kitchen window came the click of dishes as Mrs. Macomber washed and wiped them. Around the curve of the road by the meeting-house came Dr. Sheldon's old horse, drawing Dr. Sheldon's antiquated chaise, with the doctor himself leaning back comfortably upon its worn cushions. Captain Kendrick, not being in the mood for a chat just then even with as good a friend as his physician, made no move, and the old chaise and its occupant passed by and disappeared around the next curve. Sarah-Mary and Edgar and Bemis noisily trooped out of the house and started for school. Edgar was enthusiastically carolling a ditty which was then popular among Bayport juvenility. It was reminiscent of a recent presidential campaign. "Grant and Greely were fightin' for flies, Grant gave Greely a pair of black eyes--" The children, like Doctor Sheldon and the chaise, passed out of sight around the bend of the road. Edgar's voice, more or less tunefully, drifted back: "Grant said, 'Do you want any more?' Greely said, 'No, for my eyes are too sore.'" Sears Kendrick crossed his knees and changed position upon the bench. Obviously he could not hope to go to sea again for months at the very earliest. Obviously he could not live during those months at his sister's. She would be only too delighted to have him do so, but on that point his mind was made up. And, quite as obviously, he could not long exist, and pay an adequate price for the privilege of existing, with the small sum which was left after his disastrous voyage upon the sea of business. His immediate problems then were two: First, to find a boarding place which was very, very cheap. Second, if possible, to find a means of earning a little money. The first of these he might, perhaps, solve after a fashion, but the second--and he a cripple! He groaned aloud. Then he gradually became aware of a new set of sounds, sounds approaching along the road from the direction in which the children and the doctor's equipage had disappeared. The sounds, at first rather confused, gradually separated themselves into two varieties, one the sharp, irregular rattle of a springless cart, the second a hoarse unmusical voice which, like Edgar's, was raised in song. But in this case the rattle of the cart caused the song to be broken unexpectedly into jerky spasms, so to speak. Nevertheless, the singer kept manfully at his task. "Now the _Dreadnought's_ a-bowlin' (_Bump! Rattle_) down the wild Irish sea Where the pass (_Bump!_) engers are merry with hearts full of glee, While the sailors like lions (_Gid-dap! What's the matter with ye_) walk the decks to and fro, She's the Liverpool packet (_Bump! Bang! Crack!_) Good Lord, let her go!" Sears Kendrick sat upright on the settee. Of course he recognized the song, every man who had ever sailed salt water knew the old _Dreadnought_ chantey, but much more than that, he believed he recognized the voice of the singer. Leaning forward, he watched for the latter to appear. Then, around the clump of lilacs which leaned over Captain Sol Snow's fence at the corner, came an old white horse drawing an old "truck-wagon," the wagon painted, as all Cape Cod truck-wagons then were and are yet, a bright blue; and upon the high seat of the wagon sat a chunky figure, a figure which rocked back and forth and sang: "Now the _Dreadnought's_ a sailin' the (_Bang! Bump!_) Atlantic so wide, While the (_Thump! Bump!_) dark heavy seas roll along her black side, With the sails neatly spread (_Crump! Jingle!_) and the red cross to show, She's the Liverpool packet; Good Lord, let----" Captain Kendrick interrupted here. "Ahoy, the _Dreadnought_!" he hailed. "_Dreadnought_ ahoy!" "Good Lord, let 'er go!" roared the man on the seat of the truck-wagon, finishing the stanza of his chantey. Then he added "Whoa!" in a mighty bellow. The white horse stopped in his tracks, as if he had one ear tipped backward awaiting the invitation. His driver leaned down and peered into the shadow of the lilac bush. "Who--?" he began. "Eh? _What?_ Limpin', creepin', crawlin', jumpin' Moses and the prophets! It ain't Cap'n Sears Kendrick, is it? It is, by Henry! Well, well, _well_, WELL, _WELL_!" Each succeeding "well" was louder and more emphatic than its predecessor. They were uttered as the speaker rolled, rather than climbed, down from the high seat. Alighting upon a pair of enormous feet shod in heavy rubber boots, the tops of which were turned down, he thumped up the little slope from the road to the sidewalk. Then, thrusting over the fence pickets a red and hairy hand, the size of which corresponded to that of the feet, he roared another string of delighted exclamations. "Cap'n Sears Kendrick, on deck and all taut again! Well, by the jumpin', creepin'! If this ain't--Cap'n Sears, sir, how be you?" His broad-brimmed, battered straw hat had fallen off in his descent from the wagon seat, uncovering a partially bald head and a round, extremely red face, two-thirds of which was hidden by a tremendously thick and bristly tangle of short gray whiskers. The whiskers were now bisected by a broad grin, a grin so broad and so ecstatic that its wrinkles extended to the bulbous nose and the apple cheeks above. "Cap'n Sears, sir," repeated the driver of the truck-wagon, "I'm proud to see you on deck again, sir. Darned if I ain't!" The captain leaned forward and shook the big red hand extended across the fence pickets. "Judah Cahoon, you old salt herrin'," he cried heartily, "I'm just as glad to see you! But _what_ in the world are you doin' here in Bayport?" CHAPTER II Mr. Cahoon's grin vanished and the expression of his face above the whiskers indicated extreme surprise. "What am I doin' here?" he repeated. "Didn't you know I was here, Cap'n Sears?" "Of course I didn't. The last I heard of you you had shipped as cook aboard the _Gallant Rover_ and was bound for Calcutta, or Singapore or somewhere in those latitudes. And that was only a year ago. What are you doin' on the Cape and pilotin' that kind of a craft?" indicating the truck wagon. The question was ignored. "Didn't they never tell you I was here?" demanded Judah. "Didn't that Joel Macomber tell you I been hailin' him every time he crossed my bows, askin' about you every day since you run on the rocks? Didn't he tell you that?" "No." "Never give you my respects nor--nor kind rememberances, nor nawthin'?" "Not a word. Never so much as mentioned your name." "The red-headed shark!" "There! There! Sshh! Never mind him. Come in here and sit down a minute, can't you? Or are you in a hurry?" "Eh? No-o, I ain't in no 'special hurry. Just got a deck load of seaweed aboard carting it up home, that's all." "Home? What home?" "Why, where I'm livin'. I call it home; anyhow it's all the home I got. Eh? Why, Cap'n Sears, ain't they never told you that I'm livin' at the Minot place?" "The Minot place! Why--why, man alive, you don't mean the General Minot place, do you?" "Um-hm. That's what folks down here call it. There ain't no Generals there though." "And _you_ are livin' in the General Minot house? Look here, Judah, are you trying to make a fool of me?" Mr. Cahoon's countenance--that portion of it above the whisker tidemark, of course--registered horror at the thought. He had been cook and steward aboard Captain Kendrick's ships for many voyages and his feeling for his former skipper was close kin to idolatry. "Eh?" he gasped. "Me try to make a fool out of _you_, Cap'n Sears? _Me?_ No, no, I got _some_ sense left, I hope." Kendrick smiled. "Oh, the thing isn't impossible, Judah," he observed dryly. "It has been done. I have been made a fool of and more than once.... But there, never mind that. I want to know what you are doin' at the General Minot place. Come aboard here and tell me about it. You can leave your horse, can't you? He doesn't look as if he was liable to run away." "Run away! Him?" Judah snorted disgust. "Limpin' Moses! He won't run away for the same reason old Cap'n Eben Gould didn't say his prayers--he's forgot how. I was out with that horse on the flats last week and the tide pretty nigh caught us. The water in the main channel was so deep that it was clean up to the critter's garboard strake, and still, by the creepin', I couldn't get him out of a walk. I thought there one spell he might _drift_ away, but I knew dum well he'd never run.... Whoa! you--you hipponoceros you!" addressing the ancient animal, who was placidly gnawing at the Macomber hitching post. "'Vast heavin' on that post! _Look_ at the blasted idiot!" with huge disgust. "To home, by the creepin', he'll turn up his nose at good hay and then he'll cruise out here and start to swaller a wood fence. Whoa! Back! Back, or I'll--I'll bore a hole in you and scuttle you." The old horse condescended to back for perhaps two feet, a proceeding which elicited a grunt of grudging approval from Mr. Cahoon. The latter then settled himself with a thump upon the settee beside Captain Kendrick. "How's the spars splicin'?" he inquired, with a jerk of his thumb toward the captain's legs. "Gettin' so you can navigate with 'em? Stand up under sail, will they?" "Not for much of a cruise," replied Sears, using the same nautical phraseology. "I shan't be able to run under anything but a jury rig for a good while, I'm afraid. But never mind the spars. I want to know how you happen to be down here in Bayport, and especially what on earth you are doin' at the Minot place? Somebody died and left you a million?" Mr. Cahoon's whiskers were split again by his wide grin. "If I was left a million _I'd_ die," he observed with emphasis. "No, no, nothin' like that, Cap'n. I'm there along of ... humph! You know young Ogden Minot, don't you?" "No, I guess I don't. I don't seem to remember him. Ogden Minot, you say?" "Sartin. Why, you must have run afoul of him, Cap'n Sears. He has a--a sort of home moorin's at a desk in Barstow Brothers' shippin' office up on State Street. Has some kind of berth with the firm, they tell me, partner or somethin'. You must have seen him there." "Well, if I have I.... Hold on a minute! Seems to me I do remember him. Tall fellow, dresses like a tailor's picture; speaks as if--" "As if the last half of every word was comin' on the next boat. That's him. Light complected, wears his whiskers wing and wing, like a schooner runnin' afore the wind. Same kind of side whiskers old Cap'n Spencer of the _Farewell_ used to carry that voyage when I fust run afoul of you. You was second mate and I was cook, remember. You recollect the skipper's side whiskers, Cap'n Sears? Course you do! Stuck out each side of his face pretty nigh big as old-fashioned studdin' sails. Fo'mast hands used to call 'em the old man's 'homeward-bounders.' Ho, ho! Why, I've seen them whiskers blowin'--" Kendrick interrupted. "Never mind Cap'n Spencer's whiskers," he said. "Stick to your course, Judah. What about this Ogden Minot?" "Everythin' bout him. If 'twan't for him I wouldn't be here now. No sir-ee, 'stead of settin' here swappin' yarns with you, Cap'n Sears, I'd be somewheres off Cape Horn, cookin' lobscouse and doughboy over a red-hot galley stove. Yes sir, that's where I'd be. And I'd just as soon be here, and a dum sight juster, as the feller said. Ho, ho! Tut, tut, tut! You can't never tell, can you? How many times I've stood in my galley with a gale of wind blowin', and my feet braced so's I wouldn't pitch into the salt-horse kittle every time she rolled, and thinkin'--" "There, there, Judah! Bring her up, bring her up. You're three points off again." "Eh? So I be, so I be. I'll try and hold her nose in the notch from now on. Well, 'twas last October, a year ago, when I'd about made up my mind to go cook in the _Gallant Rover_, same as you said. I hadn't signed articles, you understand, but I was cal'latin' to, and I was down on Long Wharf where the _Rover_ was takin' cargo, and her skipper, Cap'n Gustavus Philbrick, 'twas--he was a Cape man, one of the Ostable Philbricks--he asked me if I wouldn't cruise up to the Barstow Brothers' office and fetch down some papers that was there for him. So I didn't have nawthin' to do 'special, and 'twas about time for my eleven o'clock--when I'm in Boston I always cal'late to hist aboard one eleven o'clock, rum and sweetenen' 'tis generally, at Jerry Crockett's saloon on India Street and.... Aye, aye, sir! All right, all right, Cap'n Sears. I'll keep her in the notch, don't worry. Well--er--er--what was I sayin'? Oh, yes! Well, I had my eleven o'clock and then I cruised up to the Barstow place, and the fust mate there, young Crosby Barstow 'twas, he was talkin' with this Ogden Minot. And when I hove in sight young Barstow, he sings out: 'And here's another Cape Codder, Ogden,' he says. 'You two ought to know each other. Cahoon,' says he, 'this is Mr. Ogden Minot; his folks hailed from Bayport. That's down your way, ain't it?' "'You bet!' says I. 'My home port's Harniss, and that's right next door. Minot? Minot?' I says, tryin' to recollect, you understand. 'Seems to me I used to know a Minot down that way. Why, yes, course I did! You any relation to old Ichabod Minot, that skippered the _Gypsy Maid_ fishin' to the Banks? Ichabod hailed from--from--Denboro, seems to me 'twas.' "He said no pretty sharp. Barstow, he laughed like fury and wanted to know if this Ogden Minot looked like Ichabod. 'Is there a family resemblance?' he says. I told him I guessed not. 'Anyhow,' says I, 'I couldn't tell very well. I only seen Ichabod when he was drunk.' That tickled Barstow most to death. 'You never saw him but that once, then?' he wanted to know. 'Oh, yes,' says I, 'I seen him about every time he was on shore after a fishin' trip.' "That seemed to make him laugh more'n ever and even young Ogden laughed some. Anyhow, we got to talkin' and I told Barstow how I was cal'latin' to go cook on the _Gallant Rover_. 'And I'm sick of it,' I says. 'I'd like a nice snug berth ashore.' 'You would?' says Barstow. Then he says, 'Humph!' and looks at Minot. And Minot, he says, 'Humph!' and looked at him. And then they both says, 'Humph!' and looked at me. And afore I set sail from that office to carry Cap'n Philbrick's papers back to him I'd agreed not to sign on for that v'yage as cook until I'd cruised down here to Bayport along of young Ogden Minot to see how I'd like to be sort of--of general caretaker and stevedore, as you might call it, at the General Minot place. You see, young Ogden was the General's grandson and he'd had the property left him. And 'twas part of the sailin' orders--in the old General's will, you understand--that it couldn't be sold, but must always be took care of and kept up. Ogden could rent it out but he couldn't sell it; that was the pickle _he_ was in. Understand, don't you, Cap'n Sears?" Kendrick nodded. "Why--yes, I guess likely I do," he said. "But this Minot boy could live in it himself, couldn't he? Why doesn't he do that? As I remember it, it was considerable of a house. I should think he would come here himself and live." Judah nodded. "You would think so, wouldn't you?" he agreed. "But _he_ don't think so, and what's a mighty sight more account, his wife don't think so. She's one of them kind of women that--that--well, when she gets to heaven--course I ain't layin' no bets on her gettin' there, but _if_ she does--the fust thing she'll do after she fetches port is to find out which one of them golden streets has got the highest-toned gang livin' on it and then start in tryin' to tie up to the wharf there herself. _She_ wouldn't live in no Bayport. No sir--ee! She's got winter moorin's up in one of them streets back of the Common, and summer times she's down to a place called--er--er--Nahum--Nehimiah--No--jumpin' prophets! What's the name of that place out on the rocks abaft Lynn?" "Nahant?" suggested his companion. "That's it. She and him is to Nahant summers. And what for _I_ don't know, when right here in Bayport is a great, big, fine house and land around it and--and flower tubs in the front yard and--and marble top tables--and--and haircloth chairs and sofys, and--and a Rogers' statoo in the parlor and--and.... Why, say, Cap'n Sears, you ought to _see_ that house and the things in it. They've spent money on that house same as if a five dollar bill wan't nawthin'. Wasted it, I call it. The second day I was there I wanted to brush off some dust that was on the chair seats and I was huntin' round from bow to stern lookin' for one of them little brush brooms, you know, same as you brush clothes with. Well, sir, I'd about give up lookin' when I happened to look on the wall of the settin'-room and there was one hangin' up. And, say, Cap'n Sears, I wisht you could have seen it! 'Twas triced up in a--a kind of becket, as you might say, made out of velvet--yes, sir, by creepin', velvet! And the velvet had posies and grass painted on it. And, I don't know as you'll believe it, but it's a fact, the handle of that brush broom was gilded! Yes sir, by Henry, _gilded_! 'Well,' thinks I to myself, 'if this ain't then I don't know what is!' I did cal'late that I was gettin' used to style, and high-toned money-slingin', but when it comes to puttin' gold handles onto brush-brooms, that had me on my beam ends, that did. And ain't it a sinful waste, Cap'n Sears, I ask you? Now ain't it? And what in time is the _good_ of it? A brush-broom is just a broom, no matter if----" Again the captain interrupted. "Yes, yes, of course, Judah," he agreed, laughing; "but what do you do up there all by yourself? In that big house?" "Oh, I don't live in the whole house. I could if I wanted to. Ogden, he don't care where I live or what I do. All he wants of me, he says, is to keep the place lookin' good, and the grass cut and one thing or 'nother. He keeps hopin' he's goin' to rent it, you know, but they won't nobody hire it. The only thing a place big as that would be good for is to keep tavern. And we've got one tavern here in Bayport already." Kendrick seemed to be thinking. He pulled his beard. Of course he wore a beard; in those days he would have been thought queer if he had not. Even the Harvard students who came to Bayport occasionally on summer tramping trips wore beards or sidewhiskers; the very callowest Freshman sported and nourished a moustache. "So you don't occupy the whole house, Judah?" asked the captain. "No, no," replied Mr. Cahoon. "I live out in the back part. There's the kitchen and woodshed and dinin'-room out there and a couple of bedrooms. That's all _I_ want. There's nine more bedrooms in that house, Cap'n," he declared solemnly. "That makes eleven altogether. Now what in tunket do you cal'late anybody'd ever do with eleven bedrooms?" Kendrick shook his head. "Give it up, Judah," he said. "For the matter of that, I don't see what you do with two. Do you sleep in one week nights and the other on Sundays?" Judah grinned. "No, no, Cap'n," he said. "I don't know myself why I keep that other bedroom fixed up. Cal'late I do it just for fun, kind of makin' believe I'm going to have company, I guess. It gets kind of lonesome there sometimes, 'specially meal times and evenin's. There I set at mess, you know, grand as the skipper of the _Great Republic_, cloth on the table, silver knife and fork, silver castor with blue glass vinegar and pepper-sass bottles, great, big, elegant mustache cup with 'Forget Me Not' printed out on it in gold letters--everything so fine it couldn't be no finer--but by creepin', sometimes I can't help feelin' lonesome! Seems foolish, don't it, but I be." Captain Kendrick did not speak. He pulled at his beard with more deliberation and the look in his eye was that of one watching the brightening dawn of an idea. "I told Ogden so last time he was down," continued Mr. Cahoon. "He asked me if I was comf'table and if I wanted anything more and I told him I didn't. 'Only thing that ails me,' I says, 'is that I get kind of lonesome bein' by myself so much. Sometimes I wisht I had comp'ny.' 'Well, why don't you _have_ comp'ny?' says he. 'You've got room enough, lord knows.' 'Yes,' I says, 'but who'll I have?' He laughed. 'That's your lookout,' says he. 'You can't expect me to hire a companion for you.'" "Humph!" Kendrick regarded him thoughtfully. "So you would like company, would you, Judah?" "Sartin sure I would, if 'twas the right kind. I got a cat and that helps a little mite. And Cap'n Shubal Hammond's wife told me yesterday she'd give me a young pig if I wanted one. That's what I'm cartin' home this little mite of seaweed for, to bed down the pig sty. But cats and hogs, they're all right enough, but they ain't human." "Do you keep hens?" This apparently harmless question seemed to arouse Mr. Cahoon's ire. His whiskers bristled and his nose flamed. "Hens!" he repeated. "Don't talk to me about hens! No, sir, by the prophets, I don't keep hens! But them everlastin' Fair Harborers keep 'em and if they'd keep 'em to home I wouldn't say a word. But they don't. Half the time they're over my side of the fence raisin' blue hob with my garden. Hens! Don't talk to me about 'em! I hate the sight of the critters." Kendrick smiled. "And after all," he observed, "hens aren't human, either." Judah snorted. "Some are," he declared, "and them's the worst kind." There was, doubtless, a hidden meaning in this speech, but if so Sears Kendrick did not seek to find it. Laying a hand upon the broad shoulder of his former sea-cook he lifted himself to his feet. "Judah," he asked, briskly, "is that seaweed in your cart there dry?" "Eh? Dry? Yes, yes, dry as a cat's back. Been layin' on the beach above tide mark ever since last winter. Why?" "Do you suppose you could help me hoist myself aboard?" "Aboard? Aboard that truck-wagon? For the land sakes, what for?" "Because I want a ride. I've been in drydock here till I'm pretty nearly crazy. I want to go on a cruise, even if it isn't but a half mile one. Don't you want to cart me down to your anchorage and let me see how you and General Minot and the gilt whisk broom get along? I can sprawl on that seaweed and be as comfortable as a gull on a clam flat. Come on now! Heave ahead! Give us a hand up!" "But--limpin' prophets, Cap'n Sears, I couldn't cart you up the main road of Bayport in a seaweed cart. You, of all men! What do you cal'late folks would say if they see me doin' it? Course I'd love to have you ride down and see how I'm livin'. If you'd set up on the thawt there," indicating the high seat of the truck-wagon, "I'd be proud to have you. But to haul you along on a load of seaweed that's goin' to bed down a hog! Cap'n, you _know_ 'twouldn't be fittin'! Course you do." His horror at the sacrilege was so ludicrous that Kendrick laughed aloud. However, he insisted that there was nothing unfitting in the idea; it was a good idea and founded upon common-sense. "How long do you think these sprung sticks of mine would last," he said, referring to his legs, "if they were jouncin' up and down on that seat aloft there? And I couldn't climb up even if I wanted to. But, you and I between us, Judah, can get me in on that seaweed, and that's what we're goin' to do. Come, come! Tumble up! All hands on deck now! Lively!" The familiar order, given with a touch of the old familiar crispness and authority, had its effect. Mr. Cahoon argued no more. Instead he sprang to attention, figuratively speaking. "Aye, aye, sir!" he said. "Here she goes. Take it easy, Cap'n; don't hurry. Ease yourself down that bankin'. If we was to let go and you come down with a run there'd be the divil and all to pay, wouldn't there? So ... so.... Here we be, alongside. Now---- Aloft with ye." They had reached the road by the tailboard of the wagon. And now Judah stooped, picked up his former skipper in his arms and swung him in upon the load of dry seaweed as if he were a two year old boy instead of a full-grown, and very much grown, man. "Well," he asked, as he climbed to the seat, "all ready to make sail, be we? Any message you want to leave along with Sary? She won't know what end you've made, will she?" "Oh, she'll guess I've gone buggy-ridin' with the doctor. He's been threatenin' to take me with him 'most any day now. Sarah'll be all right. Get under way, Judah." "Aye, aye, sir. Git dap! Git dap! Limpin', creepin', crawlin', hoppin', jumpin'.... Starboard! _starboard_, you son of a Chinee! Need a tug to haul this critter into the channel, I swan you do! Git dap! All shipshape aft there, Cap'n Sears? Good enough! let her run." The old white horse--like the whisk broom and the Rogers group, a part of the furniture of the General Minot place--plodded along the dusty road and the blue truck-wagon rolled and rattled behind him. Captain Kendrick, settling his invalid limbs in the most comfortable fashion, lay back upon the seaweed and stared at the sky seen through the branches of elms and silver-leaf poplars which arched above. He made no attempt to look over the sides of the cart. Raising himself upon an elbow to do so entailed a good deal of exertion and this was his first trip abroad since his accident. Besides, seeing would probably mean being seen and he was not in the mood to answer the questions of curious, even if sympathetic, townsfolk. Judah made several attempts at conversation, but the replies were not satisfactory, so he gave it up after a little and, as was his habit, once more broke forth in song. Judah Cahoon, besides being sea cook on many, many voyages, had been "chantey man" on almost as many. His repertoire was, therefore, extensive and at times astonishing. Now, as he rocked back and forth upon the wagon seat, he caroled, not the _Dreadnought_ chantey, but another, which told of a Yankee ship sailing down the Congo River, evidently in the old days of the slave trade. "'Who do you think is the cap'n of her? Blow, boys, blow! Old Holy Joe, the darky lover, Blow, my bully boys, blow! 'What do you think they've got for dinner? Blow, boys, blow! Hot water soup, but a dum sight thinner, Blow, my bully boys, blow! 'Oh, blow to-day and blow to-morrer, Blow, boys, blow! And blow for all old salts in sorrer, Blow, my bully----' "Oh, say, Cap'n Sears!" "Yes, Judah?" "They've put up the name sign on the Fair Harbor since you was in Bayport afore, ain't they? We're right off abreast of it now. Can't you hist yourself up and look over the side? It's some consider'ble of a sign, that is. Lobelia she left word to have that sign painted and set up last time she was here. She's over acrost in one of them Eyetalian ports now, so I understand, her and that feller she married. Eh? Ain't that quite a sign, now, Cap'n?" Kendrick, because his driver seemed to be so eager, sat up and looked over the sideboard of the truck-wagon. The vehicle was just passing a long stretch of ornate black iron fence in the center of which was a still more ornate gate with an iron arch above it. In the curve of the arch swung a black sign, its edges gilded, and with this legend printed upon it in gilt letters: FAIR HARBOR For Mariners' Women "Without, the stormy winds increase, Within the harbor all is peace." Behind the fence was a good-sized tract of lawn heavily shaded with trees, a brick walk, and at the rear a large house. The house itself was of the stately Colonial type and its simple dignity was in marked contrast to the fence. Captain Kendrick recognized the establishment of course. It, with its next door neighbor the General Minot place, was for so many years the home of old Captain Sylvanus Seymour. Captain Sylvanus, during his lifetime, was active claimant for the throne of King of Bayport. He was the town's leading Democratic politician, its wealthiest citizen, with possibly one exception--its most lavish entertainer--with the same possible exception--and when the Governor came to the Cape on "Cattle Show Day" he was sure to be a guest at the Seymour place--unless General Ashahel Minot, who was the exception mentioned--had gotten his invitation accepted first. For General Minot was Bayport's leading Whig, as Captain Sylvanus was its leading Democrat, and the rivalry between the two was intense. Nevertheless, they were, in public at least, extremely polite and friendly, and when they did agree--as on matters concerning the village tax rate and the kind of doctrine permitted to be preached in the Orthodox meeting-house--their agreement was absolute and overwhelming. In their day the Captain and the General dominated Bayport by sea and land. But that day had passed. They had both been dead for some years. Captain Seymour died first and his place and property were inherited by his maiden daughter, Miss Lobelia Seymour. Sears Kendrick remembered Lobelia as a dressy, romantic spinster, very much in evidence at the church socials and at meetings of the Shakespeare Reading Society, and who sang a somewhat shrill soprano in the choir. Now, as he looked over the side of Judah Cahoon's truck-wagon and saw the sign hanging beneath the arch above the gate of the Seymour place he began dimly to remember other things, bits of news embodied in letters which his sister, Sarah Macomber, had written him at various times. Lobelia Seymour had--she had done something with the family home, something unusual. What was it? Why, yes.... "Judah," he said, "Lobelia Seymour turned that place into a--a sort of home, didn't she?" Judah twisted on the wagon seat to stare at him. "What are you askin' me that for, Cap'n Sears?" he demanded. "You know more about it than I do, I guess likely. Anyhow, you ought to; you was brought up in Bayport; I wasn't." "Yes, but I've been away from it ten times longer than I've been in it. I'd forgotten all about Lobelia. Seems to me Sarah wrote me somethin' about her, though, and that she had turned her father's place into a home for women." "For mariners' women, that's what she calls it. Didn't you see it on the sign? Ho, ho! that's a good one, ain't it, Cap'n Sears? 'Mariners' women!' Course what it means is sea cap'ns widders and sisters and such, but it does sound kind of Brigham Youngy, don't it? Haw, haw! Well, fur's that goes I have known mariners that--Hi! 'Vast heavin' there! What in time you tryin' to do, carry away that gate post? Whoa! Jumpin' creepin', limpin'---- Whoa! _Look_ at the critter!" in huge disgust and referring to the white horse, who had suddenly evinced a desire to turn in at a narrow driveway and to gallop while doing so. "Look at him!" repeated Judah. "When I go up to the depot he'll stand right in the middle of the railroad track and go to sleep. I have to whale the timbers out of him to get him awake enough to step ahead so's a train of cars won't stave in his broadside. But get him home here where he can see the barn, the place where he knows I stow the oats, and he wants to run right over top of a stone wall. Can't hardly hold him, I can't. Who-a-a!... Well, Cap'n Sears, here we be at the General Minot place. Here's where I sling my hammock these days." Kendrick looked about him, at the grassy back yard, with the ancient settee beneath the locust tree, the raspberry and currant bushes along the wall, the venerable apple and pear trees on the other side of the wall, at the trellis over the back door and the grape vine heavily festooning it, at the big weather-beaten barn, carriage house and pig-pens beyond. Turning, he looked upward at the high rambling house, its dormers and gables, its white clapboards and green window blinds. The sunlight streamed over it, but beneath the vine-hung lattice and under the locust tree were coolness and shadow. The wing of the big house, projecting out to the corner of the drive, shut off the view to or from the road. Somehow, the whole yard, with its peace and quiet and sunshine and shadow, and above all, its retirement, made a great appeal. It seemed so homelike, so shut away, so comforting, like a sheltered little backwater where a storm-beaten craft might lie snug. Mr. Cahoon made anxious inquiry. "What do you think of it, Cap'n?" he asked. His visitor did not reply. Instead he said, "Judah, I'd like to see your quarters inside, may I?" "Sartin sure you may. Right this way. Look out for the rocks in the channel," indicating the brick floor beneath the lattice. "Two or three of them bricks stick up more'n they ought to. Twice since I've been here the stem of one of my boots has fetched up on them bricks and I've all but pitch-poled. Take your time, Cap'n Sears, take your time. Here, lean on my shoulder, I'll pilot you." The captain smiled. "Much obliged, Judah," he said, "but I shan't need your shoulder. There aren't any stairs to climb, are there? Stair climbin' is too much for me yet awhile. Perhaps it will always be. I don't know." The tone in which he uttered the last sentence caused his companion to turn his head and regard him with concern. "Sho, sho, sho!" he exclaimed, hastily. "What kind of talk's that, Cap'n! I'll live to see you shin up and hang your hat on the main truck yet.... There, here's the galley. Like it, do you?" The "galley" was, of course, the kitchen. It was huge and low and very old-fashioned. Also it was, just now, spotlessly clean. From it opened the woodshed, and toward the front, the dining room. "I don't eat in here much," observed Judah, referring to the dining room. "Generally mess in the galley. Comes more natural to me. The settin' room, and back parlor and front parlor are out for'ard yonder. Come on, Cap'n Sears." The captain shook his head. "Never mind them just now," he said. "I want to see the bedrooms, those you use, Judah. That is, unless they're up aloft." "No, no. Right on the lower deck, both of 'em. Course there _is_ plenty more up aloft, but, as I told you, I never bother 'em. Here's my berth," opening a door from the sitting room. "And here's what I call my spare stateroom. I keep it ready for comp'ny. Not that I ever have any, you understand." Judah's bedroom was small and snug. The "spare stateroom" was a trifle larger. In both were the old-fashioned mahogany furniture of our great-grandfathers. Mr. Cahoon apologized for it. "Kind of old-timey stuff down below here," he explained. "Just common folks used these rooms, I judge likely. But you'd ought to see them up on the quarter deck. There's your high-toned fixin's! Marble tops to the bureaus and tables and washstands, and fruit--peaches and pears and all sorts--carved out on the headboards of the beds, and wreaths on the walls all made out of shells, and--and kind of brass doodads at the tops of the window curtains. Style, don't talk!... Sort of a pretty look-off through that deadlight, ain't there, Cap'n Sears? Seems so to me." Kendrick had raised the window shade of the spare stateroom and was looking out. The view extended across the rolling hills and little pine groves and cranberry bogs, to the lower road with its white houses and shade trees. And beyond the lower road were more hills and pines, a pretty little lake--Crowell's Pond, it was called--sand dunes and then the blue water of the Bay. The captain looked at the view for a few moments, then, turning, looked once more at the room and its furniture. "So you've never had a passenger in your spare stateroom, Judah?" he asked. "Nary one, not yet." "Expectin' any?" "Nary one. Don't know nobody to expect." "But you think it would be all right if you did have some one? Your er--owner--young Minot, I mean, wouldn't object?" "Object! No, no. He told me to. 'I should think you'd die livin' here alone,' he says. 'Why don't you take a boarder? I would if I was you.'" Sears Kendrick stopped looking at the room and its furniture and turned his gaze upon his former cook. "Take a boarder?" he repeated. "Did Ogden Minot tell you to take a boarder? And do you think he meant it?" "Sartin sure he meant it. He don't care what I do--in reason, of course." "Humph!... Well, then, Judah, why don't you take one?" "Eh? Take one what? A boarder? Who'd I take, for thunder's sakes?" Captain Kendrick smiled. "Me," he said. CHAPTER III For the half hour which followed the captain's utterance of that simple little word, "Me," exclamation, protestation and argument heated and unwontedly disturbed the atmosphere of the Minot spare stateroom and when the discussion adjourned there, of the little back yard. The old white horse, left to himself and quite forgotten, placidly meandered on until he reached a point where he could reach the tender foliage of a young pear tree which leaned over the wall toward him. Then, with a sigh of content, he proceeded to devour the tree. No one paid the least attention to him. Captain Kendrick, now seated upon the bench beneath the locust, was quietly but persistently explaining why he desired to become a boarder and lodger at Mr. Cahoon's quarters on the after lower deck of the General Minot house, and Judah was vociferously and profanely expostulating against such an idea. "It ain't fittin', I tell you," he declared, over and over again. "It ain't fittin', it's the craziest notion ever I heard tell of. What'll folks think if they know you're here--you, Cap'n Sears Kendrick, that all hands knows is the smartest cap'n that ever sailed out of Boston harbor? What'll they say if they know you've hove anchor along of me, stayin' here in the--in the fo'castle of this house; eatin' the grub I cook--" "I've eaten your cookin' for a good many months at a stretch, Judah. You never heard me find any fault with it, did you?" "Don't make no odds. That's different, Cap'n Sears, and you know 'tis. It's ridiculous, stark, ravin' ridiculous." "So you don't care for my company?" "Don't tuk so! Wouldn't I be proud to have ye? Wouldn't I ruther have you aboard here than anybody else on earth? Course I would!" "All right. And you're goin' to have me. So that's all settled." "Settled! Who said 'twas settled? Course 'tain't settled. You don't understand, Cap'n Sears. 'Tain't how I feel about it. 'Tain't even maybe how you feel about it. But how'll your sister feel about it? How'll Joel feel? How'll the doctor feel? How'll the folks in town feel? How'll--" "Oh, shh! shh! Avast, Judah! How'll the cat feel? And the pig? What do I care? How'll your old horse feel if he eats the other half of that pear tree? That's considerably more important." Judah turned, saw the combination of ancient equine and youthful tree and rushed bellowing to the rescue of the latter. When he returned, empty of profanity and copiously perspiring, his former skipper was ready for him. "Listen, Judah," he said. "Listen, and keep your main hatch closed for five minutes, if you can. I want to come here to board with you for a while and I've got the best reasons on earth. Keep still and I'll tell you again what they are." He proceeded to give those reasons. They were that he had little money and must therefore live inexpensively. He would not remain at his sister's because she had more than enough care and work in her own family. George Kent boarded with her and one boarder was sufficient. Then--and this was the principal reason for selecting the General Minot spare stateroom--he wished to live somewhere away from observation, where he could be alone, or nearly alone, where he would not be plagued with questions. "You see, Judah," he said, "I've had a bump in more ways than one. My pride was knocked flat as well as my pocket book. The doctor says I've got to stay ashore for a good while. He says it will be months before I'm ready for sea--if I'm ever ready--" "Hold on, hold on! Cap'n Sears, you mustn't talk so. Course you'll be ready." "All right, we'll hope I will. But while I'm gettin' ready to be ready I want to lie snug. I don't want to see a whole lot of people and have to listen to--to sympathy and all that. I've made a fool of myself, and that kind of a fool doesn't deserve sympathy. And I don't want it, anyhow. Give me a pair of sound spars and my health once more and you won't find me beggin' for sympathy--no, nor anything else.... But there," he added, straightening and throwing back his shoulders in the way Judah had seen him do so often on shipboard and which his mates had learned to recognize as a sign that the old man's mind was made up, "that's enough of that. Let's stick to the course. I like this place of yours, Judah, and I'm comin' here to live. I'm weak yet and you can throw me out, of course," he added, "but I tell you plainly you can't _talk_ me out, so it's no use to try." Nevertheless, Mr. Cahoon kept on trying and, when he did give in only gave in halfway. If Captain Sears was bound to do such a fool thing he didn't know how he was going to stop him, but at least he did insist that the captain should take a trial cruise before signing on for the whole voyage. "I tell you what you do, Cap'n Sears," he said. "You make me a little visit of--of two, three days, say. Then, if you cal'late you can stand the grub--and me--and if the way Bayport folks'll be talkin' ain't enough to send you back to Sary's again, why--why, then I suppose you can stay right along, if you want to. _'Twould_ be fine to have you aboard! Whew!" He grinned from ear to ear. The captain accepted the compromise. "All right, Judah," he said. "We'll call the first few days a visit and I'll begin by stayin' to dinner now. How'll that do, eh?" Mr. Cahoon affirmed that it would do finely. The only drawback was that there was nothing in the house for dinner. "I was cal'latin' to go down to the shore," he said, "and dig a bucket of clams. Course they'll do well enough for me, but for you--" "For me they will be just the ticket," declared Kendrick. "Go ahead and dig 'em, Judah. And on the way stop and tell Sarah I'm goin' to stay here and help eat 'em. After dinner--well, after dinner I shall have to go back there again, I suppose, but to-morrow I'm comin' up here to stay." So, still under protest, Judah, having unloaded the seaweed, climbed once more to the high seat of the truck-wagon and the old horse dragged him out of the yard. After the row of trees bordering the road had hidden him from sight Kendrick could hear the rattle of the cart and a fragment of the _Dreadnought_ chantey. "Now the _Dreadnought's_ becalmed on the banks of Newfoundland, Where the water's all green and the bottom's all sand. Says the fish of the ocean that swim to and fro: 'She's the Liverpool packet, good Lord, let her go.'" Rattle and chantey died away in the distance. Quiet, warm and lazy, settled down upon the back yard of the General Minot place. A robin piped occasionally and, from somewhere off to the left, hens clucked, but these were the only sounds. Kendrick judged that the hens must belong to neighbors; Judah had expressed detestation of all poultry. There was not sufficient breeze to stir the branches of the locust or the leaves of the grapevine. The captain leaned back on the settee and yawned. He felt a strong desire to go to sleep. Now sleeping in the daytime had always been a trick which he despised and against which he had railed all his life. He had declared times without number that a man who slept in the daytime--unless of course he had been on watch all night or something like that--was a loafer, a good for nothing, a lubber too lazy to be allowed on earth. The day was a period made for decent, respectable people to work in, and for a man who did not work, and love to work, Captain Sears Kendrick had no use whatever. Many so-called able seamen, and even first and second mates, had received painstaking instructions in this section of their skipper's code. But now--now it was different. Why shouldn't he sleep in the daytime? There was nothing else for him to do. He had no business to transact, no owners to report to, no vessel to load or unload or to fit for sea. He had heard the doctor's whisper--not meant for his ears--that his legs might never be right again, and the word "might" had, he believed, been substituted for one of much less ambiguous meaning. No, all he was fit for, he reflected bitterly, was to sit in the sun and sleep, like an old dog with the rheumatism. He sighed, settled himself upon the bench and closed his eyes. But he opened them again almost at once. During that very brief interval of darkness there had flashed before his mind a picture of a small park in New York as he had once seen it upon a summer Sunday afternoon. The park walks had been bordered with rows of benches and upon each bench slumbered at least one human derelict who, apparently, realized his worthlessness and had given up the fight. Captain Kendrick sat upright on the settee, beneath the locust tree. Was he, too, giving up--surrendering to Fate? No, by the Lord, he was not! And he was not going to drop off to sleep on that settee like one of those tramps on a park bench. He rose to his feet, picked up his cane, and started to walk--somewhere. Direction made little difference, so long as he kept awake and kept going. There was a path leading off between the raspberry and currant bushes, and slowly, but stubbornly, he limped along that path. The path ended at a gate in a white picket fence. The gate was unlatched and there was an orchard on the other side of it. Captain Sears opened the gate and limped on under the apple trees. They were old trees and large and the shade they cast was cool and pleasant. The soft green slope beneath them tempted him strongly. He was beginning to realize that those shaky legs of his were tiring in this, the longest walk they had attempted since the accident. He had a mind to sit down upon the bank beneath the apple trees and rest. Then he remembered the mental picture of the tramps on the park benches and stubbornly refused to yield. Leaning more heavily upon his cane, he limped on. The path emerged from beneath the apple trees, ascended a little rise and disappeared around the shoulder of a high thick clump of lilacs. Kendrick, tiring more and more rapidly, plodded on. His suffering limbs were, so to speak, shrieking for mercy but he would not give it to them. He set himself a "stint"; he would see what was beyond the clump of lilacs, then he would rest, and then he would hobble back to the Minot yard. Incidentally he realized that he had been a fool ever to leave it. His teeth grimly set and each step a labor, he plodded up the little rise and turned the corner of the lilac bushes. There he stopped, not entirely because his "stint" was done, but because what he saw surprised him. Beyond the lilacs was a small garden, or rather a series of small gardens. The divisions between them appeared to be exactly the same size and the plots themselves precisely the same size and shape. There were--although the captain did not learn this until later--seven of these plots, each exactly six by nine feet. But there resemblance ceased, for each was planted and arranged with a marked individuality. For example, the one nearest the lilac bushes was laid out in a sort of checkerboard pattern of squares, one square containing a certain sort of old-fashioned flower and its neighbors other varieties. The plot adjoining the checkerboard was arranged in diamonds and spirals; the planting here was floral also, whereas the next was evidently utilitarian, being given up entirely to corn, potatoes, onions, beets and other vegetables. And the next seemed to be covered with nothing except a triumphant growth of weeds. At the rear of these odd garden plots was a little octagonal building, evidently a summer-house. Over its door, a door fronting steps leading down to the gardens, was a sign bearing the name "The Eyrie." And behind the summer-house was a stretch of rather shabby lawn, a half dozen trees, and the rear of a large house. Captain Sears recognized the house as the Seymour residence, now the "Fair Harbor." He had strayed off the course and was trespassing upon his neighbors' premises. This fact was immediately brought to his attention. From somewhere at the rear of the gardens a shrill feminine voice exclaimed: "Mercy on us! Who's that?" And another feminine voice chimed in: "Eh! I declare it's a man, ain't it?" And the first voice observed sharply: "Of course it is. You didn't think I thought it was a cow, did you?" "But what's he doin' here? Is he a tramp? "I don't know, but I'm going to find out. Hi! Here! You--man--where are you going?" Captain Sears had, by this time, located the voices as coming from the "Eyrie," the summer-house with the poetical name. He had so far, however, been able to see nothing of the speakers. But now the tangle of woodbine and morning-glory which draped the front of the summer-house was drawn aside and revealed a rustic window--or unglazed window opening--with two heads framed in it like a double portrait. Both of these heads were feminine, but one was thin-faced and sharp-featured, and gray-haired, while the other was like a full moon--a full moon with several chins--and its hair was a startlingly vivid black parted in the middle and with a series of very regular ripples on each side. It was the thin face which was hailing him. The other was merely staring, open-eyed and open-mouthed. "Here, you--man!" repeated the shrill voice--belonging to the thin face. "Where are you going?" The captain smiled. "Why, nowhere in particular, ma'am," he replied. "I was just figurin' that I'd gone about as far as I could this voyage." His smile became a chuckle, but there were no symptoms of amusement visible upon the faces framed in the window of the Eyrie. The thin lips merely pressed tighter and the plump ones opened wider, that was all. "Why don't you answer my question?" demanded the thin woman. "What are you doing on these premises?" "Why, nothin' in particular, ma'am. I was just tryin' to take a little walk and not makin' a very good job at it." There was an interruption here. The full moon broke in to ask a question of its own. "Who is he? What's he talkin' about?" it demanded. "I don't know who he is--yet." "Well, what's he talkin' about? Make him speak louder." "I will, if you give me a chance. He says he is taking a walk. What are you taking a walk in here for? Don't you know it isn't allowed?" "Why, no, ma'am, I didn't. In fact I didn't realize I was in here until I--well--until I got here." "What is he sayin'?" demanded the moon-face again, and somewhat testily. "I can't hear a word." Now the captain's tone had been at least ordinarily loud, so it was evident that the plump woman's hearing was defective. Her curiosity, however, was not in the least impaired. "What's that man talkin' about now?" she persisted. Her companion became impatient. "Oh, I don't know," she snapped. "Do give me a chance, won't you? I think he's been drinking. He says he doesn't know where he is or how he got here." Kendrick thought it high time to protest. Also to raise his voice when doing so. "That wasn't exactly it," he shouted. "I was takin' a little walk, that's all. I have to navigate pretty slow for my legs aren't just right." "What did he say wa'n't right?" demanded the plump female. "His legs." "Eh! Legs! What's he talkin' about his legs for?" "Oh, I don't know! Do be still a minute. It's his head that isn't right, I guess he means.... Don't you know you're trespassing? What do you mean by coming in here?" "Well, ma'am, I didn't mean anything in particular. I just happened in by accident. I'm sorry." "Humph! You didn't come in here to run off with anything that didn't belong to you, I hope." The captain looked at her for a moment. Then his lip twitched. "No, ma'am," he said, solemnly, "I didn't come with that idea--but--" "But? What do you mean by 'but'?" "But I didn't realize what there was in here to run off with. If I had.... There, I guess I'd better go. Good day, ladies. Sorry I troubled you." He lifted his cap, turned, and limped out of sight around the clump of lilacs. From behind him came a series of indignant gasps and exclamations. "Why--why--Well, I never in all my born days! The saucy, impudent--" And the voice of the moon-faced one raised in bewildered entreaty: "What was it? What did he say? Elviry Snowden, why don't you tell me what 'twas he _said_?" Captain Kendrick hobbled back to the Minot yard. He hobbled through the orchard gate, leaving it ajar, and reaching the bench beneath the locust tree, collapsed upon it. For some time he was conscious of very little except the ache in his legs and the fact that breathing was a difficult and jerky operation. Then, as the fatigue and pain ceased to be as insistent, the memory of his interview with the pair in the Eyrie returned to him and he began to chuckle. After a time he fancied that he heard a sympathetic chuckle behind him. It seemed to come from the vegetable garden, Judah's garden, which, so Mr. Cahoon told his former skipper, he had set out himself and was "sproutin' and comin' up better'n ary other garden in the town of Bayport, if I do say it as shouldn't." Kendrick could not imagine who could be chuckling in that garden. Also he could not imagine where the chuckler could be hiding, unless it was behind the rows of raspberry and currant bushes. Slowly and painfully he rose to his feet and peered over the bushes. Then the mystery was explained. The "chuckles" were clucks. A flock of at least a dozen healthy and energetic hens were enthusiastically busy in the Cahoon beds. Their feet were moving like miniature steam shovels and showers of earth and infant vegetables were moving likewise. Judah had boasted that the fruits of his planting were "comin' up." If he had seen them at that moment he would have realized how fast they were coming up. The sight aroused Captain Kendrick's ire. He was, in a way of speaking, guardian of that vegetable patch. Judah had not formally appointed him to that position, but he had gone away and, by the fact of so doing, had left it in his charge. He felt responsible for its safety. "Shoo!" shouted the captain and, leaning upon his cane, limped toward the garden. "Shoo!" he roared again. The hens paid about as much attention to the roar as a gang of ditch diggers might pay to the buzz of a mosquito. Obviously something more drastic than shooing was necessary. The captain stooped and picked up a stone. He threw the stone and hit a hen. She rose in the air with a frightened squawk, ran around in a circle, and then, coming to anchor in a patch of tiny beets, resumed excavating operations. Kendrick picked up another stone, a bigger one, and threw that. He missed the mark this time, but the shot was not entirely without results; it hit one of Mr. Cahoon's cucumber frames and smashed a pane to atoms. The crash of glass had the effect of causing some of the fowl to stop digging and appear nervous. But these were in the minority. The captain was, by this time, annoyed. He was on the verge of losing his temper. Beyond the little garden and between the raspberry and currant bushes he caught a glimpse of the path and the gate through which he had just come on his way back from the grounds of the Fair Harbor. That gate he saw, with a twinge of conscience, was wide open. Obviously he must have neglected to latch it on passing through, it had swung open, and the hens had taken advantage of the sally port to make their foray upon Judah's pet vegetables. They were Fair Harbor hens. Somehow this fact did not tend to deepen Sears Kendrick's affection for them. "Shoo! Clear out, you pesky nuisances!" he shouted, and waving his cane, charged laboriously down upon the fowl. They retreated before him, but their retreat was strategic. They moved from beets to cabbages, from cabbages to young corn, from corn to onions. And they scratched and pecked as they withdrew. Nevertheless, they were withdrawing and in the direction of the open gate; in the midst of his panting and pain the captain found a slight comfort in the fact that he was driving the creatures toward the gate. At last they were almost there--that is, the main body. Kendrick noted, with sudden uneasiness, that there were stragglers. A gaily decorated old rooster, a fowl with a dissipated and immoral swagger and a knowing, devil-may-care tilt of the head, was sidling off to the left. Two or three young pullets were following the lead of this ancient pirate, evidently fascinated by his recklessness. The captain turned to head off the wanderers. They squawked and ran hither and thither. He succeeded in turning them back, but, at the moment of his success, heard triumphant cluckings at his rear. The rest of the flock had, while his attention was diverted by the rooster and his followers, galloped joyfully back to the garden again. Now, as Captain Sears gazed, the rooster and his satellites flew to join them. All hands--or, more literally, all feet--resumed excavating with the abandon of conscientious workers striving to make up lost time. And now Sears Kendrick did lose his temper. Probably at another time he might have laughed, but now he was tired, in pain, and in no mood to see the humorous side of the situation. He expressed his opinion of the hens and the rooster, using quarter deck idioms and withholding little. If the objects of his wrath were disturbed they did not show it. If they were shocked they hid their confusion in the newly turned earth of Judah Cahoon's squash bed. Whether they were shocked or not Sears did not stop to consider. He intended to shock them to the fullest extent of the word's meaning. At his feet was a stick, almost a log, part of the limb of a pear tree. He picked up this missile and hurled it at the marauders. It missed them but it struck in the squash bed and tore at least six of the delicate young squashlings from their moorings. Kendrick plunged after it--the hens separating as he advanced and rejoining at his rear--picked up the log and, turning, again hurled it. "There!" roared the captain, "take that, damn you!" One of the hens did "take it." So did some one else. The missile struck just beneath the fowl as she fled, lifted her and a peck or two of soil as well, and hurled the whole mass almost into the face of a person who, unseen until then, had advanced along the path from the gate and had arrived at that spot at that psychological instant. This person uttered a little scream, the hen fled with insane yells, the log and its accompanying shower fell back to earth, and Sears Kendrick and the young woman--for the newcomer was a young woman--stood and looked at each other. She was bareheaded and her hair was dark and abundant, and she was wearing a gingham dress and a white apron. So much he noticed at this, their first meeting. Afterward he became aware that she was slender and that her age might perhaps be twenty-four or twenty-five. At that moment, of course, he did not notice anything except that her apron and dress--yes, even her hair and face--were plentifully besprinkled with earth and that she was holding a hand to her eyes as if they, too, might have received a share of the results of the terrestrial disturbance. "Oh!" he stammered. "I'm awfully sorry! I--I hope I didn't hurt you." If she heard him she did not answer, but, removing her hand, opened and shut her eyes rapidly. The captain's alarm grew as he watched this proceeding. "I--I _do_ hope I didn't hurt you," he repeated. "It--it didn't put your eyes out, did it?" She smiled, although rather uncertainly. "No," she said. "You're sure?" "Yes." The smile became broader. "It's not quite as bad as that, I guess. I seem to be able to see all right." He drew a relieved breath. "Well, I'm thankful for so much, then," he announced. "But it's all over your dress--and--and in your hair--and.... Oh, I _am_ sorry!" She laughed at this outburst. "It is all right," she declared. "Of course it was an accident, and I'm not hurt a bit, really." "I'm glad of that. Yes, it was an accident--your part of it, I mean. I didn't see you at all. I meant the part the hen got, though." Her laugh was over, but there was still a twinkle in her eye. Kendrick was, by this time, aware that her eyes were brown. "Yes," she observed, demurely, "I--gathered that you did." "Yes, I--" It suddenly occurred to him that his language had been as emphatic as his actions. "Good lord!" he exclaimed. "I forgot. I beg your pardon for that, too. When I lose my temper I am liable to--to make salt water remarks, I'm afraid. And those hens.... Eh? There they are again, hard at it! Will you excuse me while I kill three or four of 'em? You see, I'm in charge of that garden and.... _Get out!_" This last was, of course, another roar at the fowl, who, under the leadership of the rake-helly rooster, were scratching harder than ever in the beds. The captain reached for another missile, but his visitor stepped forward. "Please don't," she begged. "Please don't kill them." "Eh? Why not? They ought to be killed." "I know it, but I don't want them killed--yet, at any rate. You see, they are my hens." "Yours?" The captain straightened up and looked at her. "You don't mean it?" he exclaimed. "Yes, I do. They are mine, or my mother's, which is the same thing. I am dreadfully sorry they got in here. I'll have them out in just a minute. Oh, yes, I will, really." Kendrick regarded her doubtfully. "Well," he said, slowly, "I know it isn't polite to contradict a lady but if you'll tell me _how_ you are goin' to get 'em out without killin' 'em, I'll be ever so much obliged. You can't drive 'em, I know that." "I shan't try. Just wait, I'll be right back." She hurried away, down the path and through the open gate. Captain Sears Kendrick looked after her. Behind and about him the Fair Harbor hens clucked and scratched blissfully. In very little more than the promised minute the young woman returned. She carried a round wooden receptacle--what Cape Codders used to call a "two quart measure"--and, as she approached, she shook it. Something within rattled. The hens, some of them, heard the rattle and ceased their digging. "Come, chick, chick! Come, biddy, biddy, biddy!" called the young woman, rattling the measure. More of the fowl gave up their labors, and looked and listened. Some even began to follow her. She dipped a hand into the measure, withdrew it filled with corn, and scattered a few grains in the path. "Come, biddy, biddy, biddy!" she said again. And the biddies came. Forgetting the possibilities of Judah Cahoon's garden, they rushed headlong upon the golden certainties of those yellow kernels. The young woman retreated along the path, scattering corn as she went, and after her scrambled and pecked and squawked the fowl. Even the sophisticated rooster yielded to temptation and was among the leaders in the rush. The corn bearer and the flock passed through the open gate, along the path beneath the Fair Harbor apple trees, out of sight around the bend. Sears Kendrick was left alone upon the battle ground, amid the dead and wounded young vegetables. But he was not left alone long. A few minutes later his visitor returned. She had evidently hurried, for there was a red spot on each of her cheeks and she was breathing quickly. She passed through the gate into the grounds of the General Minot place and closed that gate behind her. "There!" she said. "Now they are locked up in the hen yard. How in the world they ever got out of there I don't see. I suppose some one left the gate open. I--What were you going to say?" The captain had been about to confess that it was he who left the gate open, but he changed his mind. Apparently she had been on the point of saying something more. The confession could wait. "What was it?" asked the young woman. "Oh, nothin', nothin'." "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter much how they got out, as long as they did. But I am _very_ sorry they got into Mr. Cahoon's garden. I hope they haven't completely ruined it." They both turned to survey the battlefield. It was--like all battlefields after the strife is ended--a sad spectacle. "Oh, dear!" exclaimed the visitor. "I am afraid they have. What _will_ Mr. Cahoon say?" The captain smiled slightly. "I hope you don't expect me to answer that," he observed. "Why?... Oh, I see! Well, I don't know that I should blame him much. Have--have they left anything?" "Oh, yes! Yes, indeed. There are a good many--er--sprouts left. And they dug up a lot of weeds besides. Judah ought to be thankful for the weeds, anyhow." "I am afraid he won't be, under the circumstances." "Maybe not, but there is one thing that, under the same circumstances, he _ought_ to be thankful for. That is, that you came when you did. You may not know it, but I had been tryin' to get those hens out of that garden for--for a year, I guess. It seems longer, but I presume likely it wasn't more than a year." She laughed again. "No," she said, "I guess it wasn't more than that." "Probably not. If it had been any longer, judgin' by the way they worked, they'd have dug out the underpinnin' and had the house down by this time. How did you happen to come? Did you hear the--er--broadsides?" "Why, no, I--But that reminds me. Have you seen a tramp around here?" "A tramp? What sort of a tramp?" "I don't know. Elvira--I mean Miss Snowden--said he was a tall, dark man and Aurora thought he was rather thick-set and sandy. But they both agree that he was a dreadful, rough-looking creature who carried a big club and had a queer slouchy walk. And he came in this direction, so they thought." "He did, eh? Humph! Odd I didn't see him. I've been here all the time. Where was he when they saw him first?" "Over on our property. In the Fair Harbor grounds, I mean. He came out of the bushes, so Elvira and Aurora say, and spoke to them. Insulted them, Elvira says." "Sho! Well, well! I wonder where he went." "I can't think. I supposed of course you must have seen him. It was only a little while ago, not more than an hour. Have you been here all that time?" "Yes, I've been here for the last two hours. What part of your grounds was it? Would you like to have me go over there and look around?" "No, thank you. You are very kind, but I am sure it won't be necessary. He has gone by now, of course." "I should be glad to try." Then, noticing her glance at his limp, he added: "Oh, I can navigate after a fashion, well enough for a short cruise like that. But it is funny that, if there was a tramp there such a little while ago, I didn't run afoul of him. Why, I was over there myself." "You were?" "Yes, you see, I----" He stopped short. He had been about to tell of his short walk and how he had inadvertently trespassed within the Fair Harbor boundaries. But before he could speak the words a sudden and amazing thought flashed upon him. "Eh?" he cried. "Why--why, I wonder----" His visitor was leaning forward. Judging by her expression, she, too, was experiencing a similar sensation of startled surmise. "Why----" repeated the captain. "Oh!" exclaimed the young woman. "You don't suppose----" "It couldn't possibly be that----" "Wait a minute, please. Just a minute." Sears held up his hand. "Where did those folks of yours see this tramp? Were they in a--in a kind of roundhouse--summer-house, you might call it?" "Why, yes. They were in the Eyrie." "That's it, the Eyrie. And is one of the--er--ladies rather tall and narrow in the beam, gray-haired, and speaks quick and--school-marmy?" "Yes. That is Miss Elvira Snowden." "Of course--Elvira. That's what the other one called her. And she--the other one--is short and broad and--and hard of hearin'?" "Yes. Her name is Aurora Chase. Is it possible that you----" "Just a second more. Has this short one got a--a queer sort of hair rig? Black as tar and with kind of--of wrinkles in it?" She smiled at this description. "Yes," she said. "Do you mean that _you_ are----" "The tramp? I guess likely I am. I was over on your premises just a little while ago and met those two ladies." "But you can't be. They said he--the tramp--was a dreadful, rough man, with a club and--and----" "Here's the club." Captain Kendrick exhibited his cane. "And these lame legs of mine would account for that slouchy walk they told you about. I guess there isn't much doubt that I am the tramp. But I'm sorry if they thought I insulted 'em. I surely didn't mean to." He described the meeting by the Eyrie and repeated the dialogue as he remembered it. "So you see," he said, in conclusion, "that's all there is to it. I suppose that hint of mine about bein' tempted to run off with one of 'em is the nearest to an insult of any of it. Perhaps I shouldn't have said it, but--but it popped into my head and I couldn't hold it back. I didn't really mean it," he added solemnly. "I wouldn't have run off with one of 'em for the world." This, and the accompanying look, was too much. His visitor had been listening and trying to appear grave, although her eyes were twinkling. But now she burst out laughing. "Honest I wouldn't," reiterated Captain Sears. "And I'm sorry for that insult." "Absurd! You needn't be. If there was any insult it was the other way about. The idea of Elvira's suggesting that you came over there to steal. Well, we've settled the tramp, at any rate, and I apologize for the way you were treated, Mr.----" "Kendrick. My name is Kendrick." "Yes, Mr. Kendrick. And I am very sorry about the garden, too. Please tell Mr. Cahoon so, and tell him I think I can promise that the gate won't be left open again." "I'll tell him when he comes back. He'll be here pretty soon, I guess. He and I are old shipmates. He shipped cook aboard of me for a good many voyages." She was moving toward the path and the gate, but now she paused and turned to look at him. There was a new expression on her face, an expression of marked interest. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Are you--are you Cap'n Sears Kendrick? The one who was--hurt?" "Wrecked in the train smash up? Yes, I'm the one. Look like a total wreck, don't I?" He laughed as he said it, but there was a taint of bitterness in the laugh. She did not laugh. Instead she took a step toward him and involuntarily put out her hand. "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" she said. "Eh? Oh, you needn't be. I'm gettin' along tip-top. Able to walk and ride and--er--chase hens. That's doin' pretty well for one day." "I know. But they were my--our--hens and they must have tired you so. Please forgive us. I won't," with a smile, "ask you to forgive them." "Oh, that's all right, that's all right, Miss--er----" "Berry. I am Elizabeth Berry. My mother is in charge here at the Harbor." "Harbor? Oh, yes, over yonder. Berry? Berry? The only Berry I remember around here was Cap'n Isaac Berry. Cap'n Ike, we young fellows used to call him. I went to sea with him once, my first voyage second mate." "Did you? He was my father. But there, I _must_ go. Good-by, Cap'n Kendrick. I hope you will get well very fast now." "Thanks. Good-bye. Oh, by the way, Miss Berry, what made you think I might be Sears Kendrick? There are half a dozen Kendricks around Bayport." "Yes, but--excuse me--there is only one Cap'n Sears Kendrick. You are one of Bayport's celebrities, Cap'n." "Humph! Notorieties, you mean. So all hands have been talkin' about me, eh? Humph! Well, I guessed as much." "Why, of course. You are one of our shining lights--sea lights, I mean. You must expect to be talked about." "I do--in Bayport, and I'll be talked about more in a day or two, I guess." "Why?" "Eh? Oh, nothin', nothin'. I was thinkin' out loud, didn't realize I spoke. Good-by." "Good-by." The gate closed behind her. Kendrick sat down once more upon the bench beneath the locust tree. When Judah returned with the bucket of clams he found his guest and prospective boarder just where he had left him. "Well, by Henry, Cap'n Sears!" he exclaimed. "Still at the same old moorin's, eh? Been anchored right there ever since I sot sail?" "Not exactly, Judah. Pretty nearly, though." "Sho! Kind of dull music for you, I'm afraid. Whoa, you lop-sided hay-barge! Stand still till I give you orders to move, will ye! That's what I warned you, Cap'n Sears; not much goin' on around here. You'll be pretty lonesome, I guess likely." "Oh, I guess I can stand it, Judah. I haven't been lonesome so far." "Ain't, eh? That's good. Well, I got my clams; now I'll steer this horse into port and come back and get to work on that chowder. Oh, say, Cap'n Sears; I see Sary and told her you was cal'latin' to stay here for dinner." "Did you? Much obliged. What did she say?" "Say? She said a whole lot. Wanted to know how in time you got up here. 'You didn't let him _walk_ all that great long ways, Judah Cahoon?' she says. 'I ain't altogether a fool, be I?' says I." Mr. Cahoon paused to search his pockets for a match. "What answer did she make to that?" asked the captain. Judah grinned. "Wa--ll," he drawled, "she said, 'Perhaps not--altogether.' 'Twan't much, but it was enough of the kind, as the feller said about the tobacco in the coffee pot. Oh, say, that reminds me, Cap'n Sears; there was somebody else talkin' about you. I--whoa, you camel, you! Creepin', crawlin', jumpin'---- Well, go ahead, then! I'll tell you the rest in half a shake, Cap'n. Git dap!" Horse, cart and driver jogged and jolted into the barn. After a brief interval Mr. Cahoon reappeared, carrying the clam bucket. They entered the kitchen together. Then the captain said: "Judah, you said some one beside Sarah was talkin' about me. Who was it?" "Hey? Oh, 'twas Emeline Tidditt, her that's keepin' house for Judge Knowles. She says the old judge is gettin' pretty feeble. Don't cal'late he'll last out much longer, Emeline don't. Says it's nothin' but just grit and hang-on that keeps him alive. He's a spunky old critter, Judge Knowles is, 'cordin' to folks's tell. Course I don't know him same as some, but I cal'late he's a good deal on the general build and lines of a man name of George Dingo that I run afoul of one time to a place called Semurny--over acrost. You know Semurny, don't ye, Cap'n? One of them Med'terranean port 'tis." "Smyrna, do you mean?" "Um-hm. That's it, Semurny. I was there aboard the _William Holcomb_, out of Philadelphy. We was loadin' with figs and truck like that. You remember the old _Holcomb_, don't you, Cap'n Sears? Sartin sure you do. Horncastle and Grant of Philadelphy they owned her. Old Horncastle was a queer man as ever I see. Had a cork leg. Got the real one shot off in the Mexican war or run over by a horse car, some said one and some said t'other. Anyhow he had a cork one spliced on in place of it, and--ho, ho! 'twas as funny a sight as ever I see--one time he fell off the wharf there in Philadelphy. Yes, sir, fell right into the dock, he did. And when they scrabbled down the ladder to haul him in there wasn't nothin' in sight but that cork leg, stickin' up out of water. The rest of him had gone under, but that cork leg hadn't--no, sire-ee! Haw, haw! Well ... er ... er.... What did I start to talk about, Cap'n Sears?" "I don't know, Judah. It was a good while ago. You began by sayin' that you met Judge Knowles's housekeeper." "Hey? Why, sure and sartin!" Mr. Cahoon slapped his leg. "Sartin sure, Cap'n Sears, that was it. And I said she and me got to talkin' about you. Well, well, well! I started right there and I fetched up way over in Semurny, along of George Dingo. Well, by Henry! Ain't that queer, now?" He rubbed his legs and shook his head, apparently overcome by the queerness of it. Kendrick, judging that another Mediterranean cruise was imminent, made a remark calculated to keep him at home. "What did this--what's-her-name--this Tidditt woman say about me?" he asked. "Hey? Oh, she said that Judge Knowles wanted to see you. Said that he asked about you 'most every day, wanted to know how you was gittin' along, because just as soon as you was well enough to cruise on your own hook he wanted you to come in and see him." "Judge Knowles wanted me to come in and see him? Why, that's funny! I don't know the judge well. Haven't seen him for years, and then only two or three times. What on earth can Judge Knowles have to say to me?.... Humph! I can't think." He tried to think, nevertheless. Judah busied himself with the sloppy process of clam opening. A little later he observed: "So you wan't lonesome all alone here by yourself while I was gone, Cap'n? That's good. Glad to hear it." "Thanks, Judah. I wasn't alone, though." "You wan't? Sho! Do tell! Have company, did ye? Somebody run in?" "Yes. And they wouldn't run out again, not for a good while. They came on business." "Business? What kind of business?" "Well, I suppose you might call it gardening. They were interested in raisin' vegetables, I know that." Judah laid down the clam knife and regarded his former skipper. "Raisin' vegetables?" he repeated slowly. "What--? Look here Cap'n Sears, who was they? Where'd they come from?" "I believe they came from next door?" "Next door? From the Harbor?" He rose to his feet, suspicion dawning upon his face above the whiskers. "Yes, Judah." "Cap'n Sears, answer me right straight out. Have those dummed everlastin' Fair Harbor hens been in my garden again?" "Yes, Judah." "Have they--have they?----" Words failed him. He strode up the path to the garden. Then, after a moment's comprehensive gaze upon the scene of ruin, the words returned. CHAPTER IV Sears Kendrick's prophecy that Bayport would, within the next day or two, talk about him even more than it had before was a true one. As soon as it became known that he had left the Macomber home and was boarding and lodging with Judah Cahoon in the rear portion of the General Minot house every tongue in the village--tongues of animals and small children excepted--wagged his name. At the sewing-circle, at the Shakespeare Reading Society--convening that week at Mrs. Tabitha Crosby's--after Friday night prayer-meeting at the Orthodox meeting-house, in Eliphalet Bassett's store at mail times, in the sitting-rooms and kitchens and around breakfast, dinner and supper tables from West Bayport to East Bayport Neck and from Poverty Lane to Woodchuck's Misery--the principal topic was Captain Kendrick's surprising move. "Why?" that was the question. Various answers were offered, many reasons suggested, but none satisfied everybody. At the Shakespeare Society meeting, just before the reading aloud of "Cymbeline" began--"Cymbeline" carefully edited, censored and kalsomined by the selective committee, Mrs. Reverend David Dishup and Miss Tryphosa Taylor--the feelings of the genteel section of the community were expressed by no less a personage than Mrs. Captain Elkanah Wingate. Mrs. Wingate, speaking from the Mount Sinai of Bayport's aristocracy, made proclamation thus: "Why, if the man must leave his sister's and go somewhere else to live, _why_ in the world does he choose to go _there_? Aren't there good, respectable, genteel boarding-houses like--well, like yours, Naomi, for instance? _I_ should say so." Mrs. Naomi Newcomb, whose home sheltered a few "paying guests," smiled and shook her head. The shake indicated not a doubt of Mrs. Wingate's judgment, but complete loss as to Sears Kendrick's reasons for behaving as he had. Other members shook their heads also. Mary-Pashy Foster, who had spent a winter in France when her husband was ill with the small-pox at Havre, shrugged her shoulders. "And," continued Mrs. Captain Wingate, "when you consider the place he has gone to and the person he has gone with! Good heavens, _I_ say! Good heavens!" More words and exclamations of approval. Several others declared that they said so, too. "Gone to live," went on Mrs. Wingate, "not in the General Minot house proper--there might be some explanation for _that_, perhaps--but they tell me that this Judah Cahoon only uses the back part of the house and that Cap'n Kendrick has got a room just off the kitchen or thereabouts." "And Judah himself!" broke in Miss Taylor. "He is as rough and common as--as--I don't know what. How a man like Cap'n Kendrick can lower himself--debase himself to such a person's level I _do_ not see. You would as soon expect a needle to go through a camel's eye, as the saying is." There was a slight interval of embarrassment after this outburst. The majority of those present realized that the speaker had gotten her proverb twisted, but, she being Miss Tryphosa Taylor, no one felt like venturing to set her right. Mrs. Captain Godfrey Peasley relieved the situation; she had a habit of relieving situations--when she did not make them tenser. She had gotten into the Shakespeare Reading Society purely by persistence and the possession of adamantine self-confidence. From that shot-proof exterior snubs, hints and reproofs glanced like blown peas from the hull of a battleship. "Heaven knows," confided Mrs. Captain Wingate to Miss Taylor and the Reverend Mrs. Dishup, "why Amelia Peasley ever wanted to join the Society. She doesn't know whether Shakespeare is a man or a disease." Which may or not have been true, the fact remaining that Mrs. Peasley _had_ wanted to join the Society and--joined. Now, while others hesitated, following Miss Tryphosa's little blunder, she spoke. "I think," she declared, with conviction, "that Sears Kendrick ought to be ashamed of himself. _I_ think such actions are degradatin'--yes, indeed, right down degradatin'." After that, further comments upon the captain's conduct would have seemed like anti-climaxes. Therefore the Society proceeded to read "Cymbeline." Mrs. Peasley had something to say about "Cymbeline," also. Captain Sears himself merely grinned when told of the sensation his conduct was causing. "All right," he said, "let 'em talk. If they aren't talkin' about me they will be about somebody else." Judah, to whom this remark was made, snorted. "Humph!" he growled. "They _be_ talkin' about somebody else. Don't you make no mistake about that, Cap'n Sears." "That so, Judah? Who's the other lucky man?" "Me. Jumpin', creepin'---- Why, some of them womenfolks seem to cal'late I lammed you over the head with a marlinspike and then towed you up here by main strength; seems if they did, by Henry! And some of the men ain't a whole lot better. Makes me madder'n a sore nose. I was down to the store--down to 'Liphalet's--and there was a crew of ha'f a dozen there and they all wanted to know how you was gittin' along. "'Well, he ain't dead yit,' says I. 'He was lively enough when I left him. I ain't come to buy no spade to bury him with.' "You'd think that would satisfy 'em, wouldn't ye? Well, it didn't! Cap'n Noah Baker was there and he wanted to know this, and that little runt of a Thad Black he wanted to know that--and kept on wantin'. And that brother-in-law of yours, Cap'n Sears, that Joel Macomber, I declare to man if he wan't the wust of all. You'd think _he_ ought to keep quiet about your doin's, wouldn't ye, now? But he didn't. 'Don't ask me, boys,' he says. 'I don't know why Sears quit my house and went to Judah's. We manage to bear up without him somehow,' says he, winkin' to the gang, 'but if you ask me his _reasons_ for goin' _I_ can't tell ye. I presume likely Judah can, though,' he says. 'Well, I can see _one_ reason plain enough,' says I, lookin' right at him." Kendrick burst out laughing. "Did he get the idea, Judah?" he inquired. "Him? Nary a bit. Wanted me to tell him what the reason was. Limpin', creepin' prophets! What did a woman like Sary ever marry him for, anyway, Cap'n? Not that it's any of my business, you understand." "I understand. Well, it wasn't any of mine either, Judah." "No, I presume likely not. But that George Kent, he's a nice young feller, ain't he, Cap'n?" "Seems to be," replied Kendrick. "Um--hm. Come up to me, after the gang had quit havin' their good time, and shook hands nice and chummy and wanted to know how you was. 'Tell the cap'n I'm goin' to come in and see him some day,' he says, 'if you and he want callers.' 'Good land, yes,' says I, 'course we do. Don't stop to call, come right along in.' He's a nice boy that young Kent.... But--but some of these days I'm goin' to _hit_ that Thad Black--hit him with somethin' soft like--like an anvil. If that critter fell overboard I wouldn't heave him no life-preserver. No, sir, by Henry, I'd heave him the sheet anchor. The longer he hung on to that the better 'twould suit _me_." To his sister only did Sears give his reasons for leaving her home. With her he was perfectly frank. "You know why I'm doin' this, Sarah," he said. "Now don't you--honest?" Mrs. Macomber hesitated. "Why, Sears," she faltered reluctantly, "I--I suppose I can guess why you _think_ you're doin' it. But that doesn't make it right for you to do it, really." "Oh, yes, it does. Be sensible, Sarah. Here are you with six children to support and work for, not to mention one boarder and--a husband. The house is crowded, aloft and alow. There isn't a bit of room for me." "Now, Sears, how can you talk so? You've _had_ room here, haven't you?" "Yes, I've had it, plenty of it. But how much room have the rest of you had?" "Why--why, we've had enough. Nobody's complained that I know of." "Good reason why. You wouldn't let 'em, Sarah. And of course you never would complain yourself. But that is only part of it. The real thing is that I will not live on you." "But you pay board." "Stuff and nonsense! How much do I pay in comparison with what it costs to keep me?" "You pay me all you can afford, I'm sure; and I rather guess, from what you said about your money affairs the other day, that you pay me more than you ought to afford. And I don't believe you're goin' to pay that Judah Cahoon any high board for livin' in that old rats' nest of his. If you are I shall begin to believe you've gone crazy." Her brother laughed. "I don't mind payin' Judah little or nothin', Sarah," he declared. "What I get will be worth it, probably, and besides he's a strong, healthy man. Then, too--well, I shouldn't say it to any one but you, but there is a little obligation on his side and that keeps me from feelin' like too much of a barnacle.... But there, what is the use of our threshin' this all over again? As I said in the beginnin', Sarah, you know why I'm doin' it perfectly well." Mrs. Macomber sighed. "I suppose I do," she admitted. "It's because you are Sears Kendrick and as independent and--and proud as--as your own self." So the move was made and Captain Sears Kendrick's sea chest and its owner moved into Judah Cahoon's spare stateroom at the General Minot's place. And Bayport talked and talked more and more and then less and less until at the end of the captain's first week in his new quarters the move had become old news and people ceased to be interested in it, a state of affairs which pleased Mr. Cahoon immensely. "There, by Henry!" he declared, on his return from what he called a "cruise down the road along." "I honestly do believe you and me has got so we can bat our weather eye without all hands and the ship's cat tryin' to see us do it. I met no less than seven folks while I was down along just now and only two of 'em hailed to ask how you liked bein' aboard here, Cap'n Sears. Yes, sir, by creepin', only two of 'em; the rest never said a word. What do you think of that? Some considerable change, I call it." So being forgotten by the majority of Bayporters--which was what he desired to be--the captain settled down to live, or exist, and to wait. Just what he was waiting for he would have found hard to tell. Of course he told his sister when she came to see him, which was at least once every other day, that he was waiting for his legs to get whole and strong again, and then he should, of course, go to sea. He told Doctor Sheldon much the same thing, and the doctor said, "Why, of course, Cap'n Kendrick. We'll have you on your own quarter deck again one of these days." He said it with heartiness and apparent sincerity, but Sears was skeptical. After the doctor's visits he was likely to be blue and dejected for a time, and Judah noticed this fact but attributed it to quite a different cause. "It's high time that doctor swab quit comin' here to see you," declared Judah. "Runnin' in here and lettin' go anchor and settin' round and sayin', 'Well, how goes it to-day?' and 'Nice spell of weather we're havin',' and the like of that, and then goin' home and chalkin' up another dollar on the bill. No sense to it, I say. No wonder you look glum, Cap'n Sears. Makes _me_ glum, and 'tain't _my_ money that's bein' talked out of me, nuther. Hear what he said just now? 'I must go,' he says. 'And what did you say? Why, you said, 'Don't hurry, Doctor. What do you want to go for?' All I could do to keep from bustin' out in a laugh. _I_ know what you was sayin' to yourself, you see. 'Stead of sayin', 'What do you want to go for?' you was thinkin', 'What in blue blazes do you want to _come_ for?' Haw, haw! That was it, wan't it, Cap'n?" "Why, no, Judah. I'm always glad to see the doctor." "Ye--es, you be!" with sarcasm. "Glad to see his back. Well, no use, Cap'n, I've got to think up some notion to keep him from comin' here. How would it do to run up a signal 'Small-pox aboard,' or somethin' like that? Think that would keep him off?... No, he's a doctor, ain't he? All he'd read out of that set of flags would be, 'More dollars. Come on in.' Haw, haw! Well, I got to think up some way." Judah's chatter kept his lodger from being too lonely. Mr. Cahoon talked about everybody and everything, and when he was not talking he was singing. He sang when he turned out in the morning to get breakfast, he sang when he turned in at bedtime. He sang while working in the garden repairing the damages done by the Fair Harbor hens. His repertoire was extensive, embracing not only every conceivable variety of chantey and sea song, but also an assortment of romantic ballads, running from "The Blue Juniata," in which: "Wild rowed an Indian girl, Bright Al-fa-ra-ta," to the ancient ditty of twenty-odd verses describing how "There was a rich merchant in London did dwell, He had for his daughter a very fine gel, Her name it was Dinah, just sixteen years old, With a very large fortune in silver and gold. "Singing Too-ral-i-ooral-i-ooral-i-ay, Singing Too-ral-i-ooral-i-ooral-i-ay," and continuing to sing "Too-ral-i-ooral-i-ooral-i-ay" four times after each of the twenty-odd verses to the tragical finish of Dinah and the ballad. As some men take to drink upon almost any or no excuse, so Judah Cahoon took to song. And if the effect upon him was not as unsteadying as an over indulgence in alcohol, that upon his hearers was at times upsetting and disastrous. For example, upon the occasion when Captain Sears again encountered his acquaintances of the Fair Harbor summer-house, Mr. Cahoon's singing completely wrecked what might possibly have been a meeting tending to raise the captain in the estimation of those ladies. Sears happened to be taking what he liked to call his exercise. Judah called it "pacin' decks." He was hobbling back and forth along the path leading to the gate opening upon the Fair Harbor grounds. His landlord was at work in the garden. The captain had limped as far as the gate and was about to turn and limp back again when, behold, along the path beyond that gate appeared two feminine figures strolling with what might be called careful carelessness, looking up, down and on every side except that upon which stood Captain Sears Kendrick. And the captain recognized the pair, the one tall, slim, slender--unusually slim and remarkably slender--the other short and plump--very decidedly plump--as the ladies with whom he had held brief but spirited discourse the fortnight before, the ladies who had peered forth at him from the vine-draped window of the Eyrie--in short, for Miss Elvira Snowden and Mrs. Aurora Chase. The pair came scrolling along the path. They were almost at the gate when Miss Snowden looked up--she would have said she happened to look up--and saw the captain standing there. She was embarrassed and surprised--any one might have noticed the surprise and embarrassment. She started, gasped and uttered a little exclamation. Mrs. Chase, taking her affliction into account, could not possibly have heard the exclamation, but no doubt there was a telepathic quality in it, for she, too, started, looked up and was surprised and embarrassed. "Why--why, oh, dear!" faltered Miss Snowden. "Why! My soul and body!" exclaimed Mrs. Chase. Captain Sears raised his hat. "Good mornin'," he said politely. The ladies looked at each other. Then Miss Elvira, evidently the born leader, inclined her head ever so little and said, "Good morning." Mrs. Aurora looked up at her in order to see what she said. Captain Sears tried again. "It's a nice day for a walk," he observed. Miss Elvira nodded and agreed, distantly--yet not too distant. "I understand," said the captain, "that I gave you ladies a little bit of a scare the other day. Understand you thought I was a tramp. I'm real sorry. Of course I know I hadn't any business over on your premises, but, as a matter of fact, I didn't exactly realize where I was. It was the first cruise I'd made in these latitudes, as you might say, and I didn't think about keepin' on my own side of the channel buoys. I beg your pardon. I'll hope you'll excuse me." Miss Snowden nodded elegantly and murmured that she understood. "You are our new neighbor, I believe," she said. "Why, yes'm, I suppose I am." "Cap'n Kendrick, isn't it?" "Yes." "I hope, Cap'n Kendrick, that you won't think there was any--ah--anything personal in our mistaking you for a tramp the other day. Of course there wasn't. Oh, dear, no!" The captain hesitated. He was wondering just what answer he was supposed to make to this speech. Did the lady wish him to infer that it was the Fair Harbor custom to consider all male strangers tramps until they were proven innocent? Or--but Mrs. Chase saved him the trouble of reply. "Elviry," she demanded, "what are you and him whisperin' about? Why don't you talk so's a body can hear you? He's Cap'n Kendrick, ain't he? Have you told him who we be, same as you said you was goin' to?" Miss Snowden, after looking at the rotund Aurora as if she would like to bite her, smiled instead and began a rather tangled explanation to the effect that she and Mrs. Chase had felt that perhaps they had been a--ah--they might have seemed "kind of hasty--you know, Cap'n Kendrick, in what--in speaking as we did that time, and so--and so I told her if we ever _did_ meet you--if we ever _should_, you know---- But we haven't really met yet, have we? Shall we introduce ourselves? I don't see why not; neighbors, you know. Cap'n Kendrick, this is Mrs. Aurora Chase, widow of the late Cap'n Ichabod Chase. No doubt, you knew Cap'n Chase in the old days, Cap'n Kendrick." And then Aurora, who had been listening with all her ears, and hearing with perhaps a third of them, broke in to say that her husband was not a captain. "He was second mate when he died," she explained. "Aboard the bark _Charles Francis_ he was, bound for New Bedford from the West Indies with a load of guano." Miss Snowden, favoring the veracious Aurora with another look, hastily introduced herself and began to speak of the beauties of the day, of the surroundings, and particularly of the select and refined joys of life at the Fair Harbor. "We have our little circle there," she said. "We live our lives, quiet, retired, away from the world----" Mrs. Chase broke in once more to ask what she was talking about. When the substance of the Snowden rhapsody was given her, she nodded--as well as her several chins would permit her to nod--and announced that she agreed. "We like livin' at the home first-rate," she declared. Elvira flushed. "It is _not_ a home," she said, sharply. "It is a select retreat, that is all. It is not a home in _any_ sense of the word. Every one knows that it is not. Aurora, I wish to goodness you---- But of course Cap'n Kendrick doesn't want to hear about us all the time. He is interested in his own new quarters. Do you like it here, Cap'n Kendrick? I--ah--understand you are, so to speak, a guest of Mr. Cahoon's. He is--ah--a relation of yours?" Sears explained the acquaintanceship between Judah and himself. Miss Snowden nodded comprehension. "That explains it," she said. "I thought he could hardly be a relation of _yours_, Cap'n Kendrick. He is--he is a little bit queer, isn't he? I mean eccentric, you know. Of course I've never met him, and I'm sure he's real good-hearted, but----" She paused, leaving the rest of the sentence to be inferred. Captain Sear's answer was prompt and crisp. "Judah Cahoon is one of the best fellows that ever lived," he said. "Yes, I know. I am sure he is. I didn't mean that. I meant is he--is he----" And then Judah himself, at work in the garden behind the screen of bushes, too busy to hear or even be aware of the conversation at the gate, chose this untoward moment to burst into song, to sing at the top of his voice, and the top of Judah's voice was an elevation from which sound traveled far. He sang: "Oh, Sally Brown was a bright mulatter, Way, oh, roll and go! She drinks rum and chews terbacker, Spend my money on Sally Brown. Whee--_yip_!" Miss Elvira's thin figure stiffened to an exclamation point of disapproval. Captain Kendrick turned uneasily in the direction of the singer. Mrs. Chase, aware that something was going on and not wishing to miss it, cupped her ear with her hand. And Judah began the second verse. "Oh, Sally Brown, I'll surely miss you, Way, oh, roll and go! How I'd love to hug and kiss you! Spend my money on Sally Brown. Whee--_yip_!" "Judah!" roared the captain, who was suffering acute apprehension. "Judah!" "Oh, Sally Brown----" "_Judah!"_ "Eh? What is it, Cap'n Sears?" "Shut up." "Eh! Shut up what? What's open?" "Stop that noise." "What noise?" "That noise of yours. That singin'." "Eh? Oh, all right, sir. Aye, aye, Cap'n, just as you say." Captain Sears, relieved, turned again to his visitors. But the visitors were rapidly retreating along the path, the lines of Miss Elvira's back indicating disgust and outraged gentility. Mrs. Chase, however, looked back. Obviously she still did not know what it was all about. Sears, although he chuckled a good deal over the affair, was a trifle annoyed, nevertheless. It was a good joke, of course, and he certainly cared little for the approval or disapproval of Miss Elvira Snowden. But when he considered what the prim spinster's version of the happening was likely to be and the reputation her story was sure to confer, inside the Fair Harbor fences at least, upon him and his household companion, he was tempted to wish that that companion's musical talent had been hidden under a napkin, or, better still, a feather bed. He--Kendrick--was to live, for a time indefinite, next door to the Fair Harborites, and it is always pleasant to be on good terms with one's neighbors. True, those neighbors might be, the majority of them, what Mr. Cahoon called them--which was whatever term of approbrium he happened to think of at the moment, "pack of old hens" being the mildest--but the captain knew that one, at least, was not an "old hen." "That Berry girl," which was his way of thinking of her, was attractive and kind and a lady. They had met but once, it is true, but she had made a most favorable impression upon him. He had caught glimpses of her on two occasions, in the Fair Harbor grounds, and once she had waved a greeting. She was a nice girl, he was sure of it. If she thought at all of the cripple next door he would like her to think of him in a kindly way, as a decent sort of hulk, so to speak. It was provoking to feel that she would next hear of him as a dissipated ruffian, friend and defender of another ruffian who howled ribald songs in the presence--or at least in the hearing--of ladies. He questioned Judah concerning the Fair Harbor, its founder and the dwellers within its gates. Judah told him what he knew of the story, which was very little more than the captain already knew, his knowledge gained from his sister's letters. Captain Sylvanus Seymour had had but one child, his daughter Lobelia. At his death she, of course, inherited all his property. According to Bayport gossip, as reported by Mr. Cahoon, the old man had died worth anywhere from one half a million to three or five millions. "Richer'n dock mud, I cal'late he was," declared Judah. "Made a lot of money out of his Boston shippin' business and a lot more out of stocks and city real estate and one thing or 'nother." For years after Captain Sylvanus died Lobelia lived alone in the big house. Then she had married. Judah could tell little about the man she married. "He was a music teacher that come to town here one winter, that's about all I can swear to," said Judah. "Down here for his health, so he said, and taught singin' school while he was gittin' healthy. His last name was Phillips, which is all right, but he had the craziest fust name ever _I_ heard. Egbert 'twas. Hoppin', creepin' Henry! Did you ever _hear_ such a name? _Egbert!_ Jumpin' prophets! Boys round town, they tell me, used to call him 'Eg' behind his back. Some of 'em, them that didn't like him, called him 'Soft biled.' Haw, haw! See what they meant, don't you, Cap'n Sears? Egbert, you know, that's 'Eg' for short, and then 'Soft biled' meanin' a soft biled egg.... Hey? Yes, I cal'lated you'd see it, you're pretty sharp at a joke, Cap'n, but there _has_ been them I've told that to that never.... Hey? Aye, aye, sir, I was just goin' to tell the rest of it." According to Judah's report, which was a second or third hand report of course, Egbert Phillips had not been too popular among the males in Bayport. But with the females--ah, there it was different. "He was one of them kind, they tell me," said Judah. "One of them smooth, slick, buttery kind of fellers that draws womenfolks same as molasses draws flies. Hailed from Philadelphy he did. I used to know a good many Philadelphy folks myself once. Why, one time----" The captain broke in to head off the Philadelphia reminiscence. Brought back to Bayport and Egbert and Lobelia, Judah went on to tell what more he knew of the Fair Harbor beginnings. Sears gathered that after the marriage Egbert who, it seemed, was not in love with the Cape as a place of residence, would have liked his wife to sell the old house and move away. But there was a clause in the will of Captain Sylvanus which prevented this. Under that will the property could not be sold while his daughter lived. It was then that Lobelia was seized with her great idea. She, a mariner's daughter, had--until the Providential appearance of the peerless Egbert--faced a lonely old age. But she had at least a comfortable home. There were so many women--sea-captains' widows and sisters--who faced their lonely future without a home. Why not turn the Seymour property into a home for them--a limited number of them? "So she done it," said Judah. "And that's how the Fair Harbor got off the ways." "But you called it a home," objected Captain Sears. "The other day that Snowden woman, the thin one, gave the other, the stout one--what's her name?--Northern lights--Aurora, that's it--she gave Aurora fits for speakin' of the place as a home. She declared it wasn't a home." Mr. Caboon chuckled. "Did, eh?" he observed. "Well, you might call a mackerel gull a canary bird, I presume likely, but 'twouldn't make the thing sing no better. That Elviry critter likes to make believe she's the Queen of Sheby. _She_ wouldn't live in no home--no sir-ee! 'Cordin' to her the Fair Harbor ain't a home because they only take six or eight passengers, or visitors, or patients, or jailbirds--whatever you might to call 'em, and it costs four hundred dollars to pay your way in and a hundred a year to keep you there. So 'tain't a home, you see. It's a--a genteel henhouse, I'd say. That Elviry Snowden she----" Then the captain asked the question to which he had been leading since the beginning. "That Berry girl's mother runs the place, doesn't she?" he asked. Judah snorted. "Yeah," he drawled, "she runs it about the way the skipper's poll parrot runs the vessel. The poll parrot talks a barrel a minute and the skipper goes right along navigatin'. That's about the way 'tis over yonder," with a jerk of the head in the general direction of the Fair Harbor. His lodger was a trifle surprised. "Why, I understood Mrs. Berry--Cap'n Isaac Berry's widow--was manager there," he said. "Um-hm. So she is, the poll parrot manager. But it's that girl of hers, that 'Lizabeth Berry, that really handles the ropes. There's a capable little craft, if you want to know," declared Judah, with emphasis. He whittled a pipe full of tobacco from the mutilated remnant of a plug, and continued to expatiate on the capabilities of Miss Berry. According to him whatever was as it should be within the Fair Harbor boundaries was due to the young woman's efforts, not to those of her mother. "It's kind of queer, ain't it, Cap'n Sears," he observed, "how things average up sometimes. Seems if whoever 'tis works out the course up aloft sort of fixed 'em that way." "What's that got to do with the Berrys?" "Cause it worked that way with them. _You_ knew Cap'n Ike Berry, Cap'n Sears. Sharp, shrewd, able and all that, but rough and hard as the broadside of a white-oak plank. Well, he married a woman from down in the Carolinas somewhere. Her folks was well-off and she was brought up in cotton wool, as you might say. They wouldn't have nothin' to do with her after she married Cap'n Ike. He fell in love with her and carried her off by main strength, as you might say. She'd been treated like a plaything afore he got her and he treated her that way till he died. She is soft-spoken, and kind of good-lookin', and polite and all that--but about as much practical use for bossin' a place like the Fair Harbor as a--well as a paper umbrella would be in a no'theaster. But 'Lizabeth now, she's different. She's got her mother's good looks and nice manners and--and kind of genteelness, you understand, and with 'em she's got her dad's sense and capableness. She's all right, that girl. Don't you think so, Cap'n Sears?" The captain nodded. "I never met her but that once, Judah," he replied. "She was all right then, surely." "I bet you! She's all right most of the time, I guess.... That young George Kent, he thinks so, they tell me." "Oh ... does he?" "Um-hm! He's cruisin' up to the Fair Harbor 'bout every once or twice a week, 'cordin' to tell. If it ain't to see 'Lizabeth I don't know what 'tis. It might be Queen Elviry he's after, but I have my doubts.... Oh, say, Cap'n, speakin' of the Harbor reminds me of Judge Knowles. You ain't been in to see him yet, same as he wanted you to." "That's so, Judah, I haven't. I must pretty soon, I suppose. I can't think what the old judge wants to see me for. But why did talkin' of the Fair Harbor and the rest of it make you think of Judge Knowles?" "Hey? Oh, 'cause the judge is kind of commodore of the fleet there, looks after the money matters for 'em, I understand. He's Lobelia's lawyer, same as he was old Cap'n Sylvanus's afore he died.... I declare I can't guess what he wants to see you for, Cap'n Sears. Do you s'pose----" Judah proceeded to suppose several things, each supposition more far-fetched and improbable than its predecessor. Sears paid little attention to them. He again expressed his intention of calling upon the judge before long and changed the subject. The next day it rained and he did not go and the following day he did not feel like going. On the day after that, however, further procrastination was rendered impossible. Mrs. Tidditt, the judge's housekeeper, visited the General Minot place with another message from her employer. Emmeline was gray-haired, brisk and, as Judah expressed it, "straight up and down," both in figure and manner of speaking. "Good mornin', Cap'n Kendrick," she said. "Judge Knowles wants to know if 'twill be convenient for you to come over and see him this afternoon? Says if 'tis he'll send Mike and the hoss-'n'-buggy around for you at two o'clock." The captain's guilty conscience made him a trifle embarrassed. "Why--why, yes, certainly," he stammered. "I---- Well, I'm ashamed of myself for not goin' over there sooner. Beg Judge Knowles's pardon for me, will you, and tell him I'll be on hand at two sharp. And tell him not to bother to send the horse and team. I'll get there all right." Mrs. Tidditt sniffed. "I'll tell him the first part," she said. "And Mike'll have the hoss-'n'-buggy here at ten minutes of. Judah Cahoon, why in the land of Canaan don't you scrub up that back piazza floor once in a while? It's dirty as a fish shanty." Judah's back fin rose. "Say, who's keepin' house aboard here, anyway?" he demanded. Mrs. Tidditt sniffed again. "Nobody, by the looks," she said, and departed in triumph. At two the Knowles horse and buggy drove into the yard. It was piloted by Mike Callahan, an ancient, much bewhiskered Irishman who had been employed by the judge almost as long as had Mrs. Tidditt. He and Judah assisted Sears into the vehicle and the captain started upon his cruise, which was a very short one, the Knowles establishment being but a few hundred yards from the Minot place. On the way he inquired concerning the judge's health. Mike shook his head. "Bad," he grunted. "It's close _to_, the ould judge is." "Oh, I'm sorry." "Sure ye are. So are we all. He is a fine man, none better--barrin' he's a grand ould curmudgeon. Here ye are, Cap'n. Git up till I lift ye down." Judge Knowles's house--Sears Kendrick had never been in it before--was a big square mansion built in the '50's. There was the usual front door leading to a dark front hall from which, to right and left respectively, opened parlor and sitting rooms. Emmeline ushered the visitor into the latter apartment. It was high studded, furnished in black walnut and haircloth, a pair of tall walnut cases filled with books against one wall, on the opposite wall a libellous oil portrait of the judge's wife, who died twenty years before, and a pair of steel engravings depicting "Sperm Whale Fishing in the Arctic"; No. 1, portraying "The Chase," No. 2, "the Capture." Beneath these stood a marble-topped table upon which were neatly piled four gigantic volumes, bound copies of Harper's Weekly, 1861 to '65, the Civil War period. At the end of the room, where two French windows opened--that is, could have opened, they never were--upon the narrow, iron-railed veranda, sat Judge Marcus Aurelious Knowles, in an old-fashioned walnut armchair, his feet upon a walnut and haircloth footstool--Bayport folk in those days called such stools "crickets"--a knitted Afghan thrown over his legs and a pillow beneath his head. And in that dark, shadowy room, its curtains drawn rather low, so white was the judge's hair and his face that, to Sears Kendrick, just in from the light out of doors, it was at first hard to distinguish where the pillow left off and the head began. But the head on the pillow stirred and the judge spoke. "Ah--good afternoon, Kendrick," he said. "Glad to see you.... Humph. Can't see much of you, can I? Here, Emmeline, put those shades up, will you?" The housekeeper moved toward the windows, but she protested as she moved. "Now, Judge," she said, "I don't believe you want them winder curtains strung way up, do you? I hauled 'em down purpose so's the sun wouldn't get in your eyes." "Um--yes. Well, you haul 'em up again. And don't you haul 'em down till I'm dead. You'll do it then, I know, and I don't want to attend my funeral ahead of time." Mrs. Tidditt gasped. "Oh, Judge Knowles, how _can_ you talk so!" she wailed. "I intend to talk as I choose--while I can talk at all.... There, there, woman, that's enough. Put the blasted things up.... Umph! That's better. Sit down, Cap'n, sit down. I want to look at you." The captain took one of the walnut and haircloth chairs. The judge looked at him and he looked at the judge. He remembered the latter as a tall, broad-shouldered figure, with a ruddy face, black hair slightly sprinkled with gray, and a nose and eye like an eagle's. The man in the armchair was thin and shrunken, the face was deeply lined, and face and hands and hair were snow white. The nose was, however, more eagle-like than ever, and the eyes beneath the rough white brows had the old flash. Sears waited an instant for him to speak, but he did not. So the captain did. "I beg your pardon, Judge," he began, "for not comin' over here sooner. I got your message----" Knowles interrupted. "Oh, you got it, did you?" he said. "Humph! I told Emmeline to get word to you and she said---- Oh, well, never mind that. Can't waste time. I haven't got any too much of it, or strength either. Sorry to hear about your accident, Cap'n. Doctor Sheldon says you had a close call of it. How are the legs?" "Oh, I can navigate with 'em after a fashion, but not far. How are you, Judge? Gettin' better fast, I hope." The head on the pillow gave an impatient jerk. "Your hope is lost then. Don't waste time talking about me. I'm going to die and I know it--and before long.... There, there," as his caller uttered a protest, "don't bother to pretend, Kendrick. We aren't children, either of us, although you're a good many years younger than I am; but we're both too old to make-believe. I'm almost through. Well, it's all right. I've lived past my three score and ten and I'm alone in the world and ought not to mind leaving it, I suppose. I don't much. It's an interesting place and there are two or three matters I should like to straighten up before.... Humph! I'm the one's who's wasting the time. How are you? I don't mean how would you like to be or how do your fool friends and the doctor tell you you are--but how _are_ you?" Captain Sears smiled. It had been a long, long time since any one had talked to him like this. Not since he relinquished a mate's rating for that of a master. But he did not resent it; he, too, was sick of pretending. "I'm in bad shape, Judge," he said. "My legs are better and I can hobble around on 'em, as you saw when I hobbled in here. But as to whether or not they will ever be fit for sea again I--well, I doubt it. And I rather guess the doctor doubts it, too. I don't say so to many, haven't said it to any one but you, but it looks to me as if I were on a lee shore. I may get out of the breakers some day--or I may just lay there and rot and drop to pieces.... Well, as you say, what's the use of wastin' time talkin' about me?" "I've got a reason for talking about you, Cap'n. So you're not confined to your bed. And your head is all right, eh?" Kendrick hesitated. He could not make out what in the world the man was driving at. "Eh?" repeated the judge. "Yes, as right as it ever was, I presume likely. Sometimes I think that may not be sayin' much." "When a man thinks that way it is a favorable symptom, according to my experience. From what I've heard and know, Cap'n Kendrick, your head will do very well. Now there's another question. Have you got all the money you need?" The captain leaned back in his chair. He did not answer immediately. From the head upon the pillow came a rasping chuckle. "Go on," observed Judge Knowles, "ask it." Kendrick stared at him. "Ask what?" he demanded. "The question you had in mind. If I hadn't been a man with one foot in the grave you would have asked me if I considered the amount of money you had any of my damned business. Isn't that right?" Sears hesitated. Then he grinned. "Just about," he said. "I thought so. Well, in a way it is my business, because, if you have all the money you need, fifteen hundred a year for the next two or three years won't tempt you any. And I want to tempt you, Cap'n." Again the captain was silent for an interval. "Fifteen hundred a year?" he repeated, slowly. "Yes." "For what?" "For services to be rendered. I've been looking for a man with time on his hands, who has been used to managing, who can be firm when it's necessary, has had enough experience of the world to judge people and things and who won't let a slick tongue get the better of him. And he must be honest. I think you fill the bill, Cap'n Kendrick." The visitor tugged at his beard. "Look here, Judge Knowles," he said crisply, "what are you talkin' about? What's the joke?" "It isn't a joke." "Well, then what is it? You'll have to give me my bearin's, I'm lost in the fog. Do I understand you to mean that you are offerin' me a berth, a job where I can earn--no, I won't put it that way, where I will be paid fifteen hundred a year?" "I am, and," with another sardonic chuckle, "I rather think you'll earn all you get. Of course fifteen hundred dollars a year isn't a large salary, it isn't a sea captain's wage and share--not such a captain as you've been, Kendrick. But, as I see it, you can't go to sea for a year or two at least. You are planning to stay right here in Bayport. Well, while you are here this thing I am offering you will," there was another chuckle, "keep you moderately busy, and you will be earning something. It may be that fifteen hundred won't be enough to be worth your while. Perhaps I shouldn't venture to offer it if I hadn't heard--hadn't heard----" Sears interrupted. "What you heard was probably true," he said crisply. "True enough, at any rate. Fifteen hundred a year looks like a lot to me now. But what am I to do to get it, that's the question. I'm a cripple, don't forget that." "I should remember it if I thought it necessary. You won't handle this job with your legs. It is your head I want. Cap'n Kendrick, I want you to take charge--take command, if you had rather we used seafaring lingo, of that establishment next door to where you are living now. I want you to act as--well, we'll call it captain of the Fair Harbor." Captain Sears's eyes and mouth opened. His chair creaked as he leaned forward and then slowly leaned back again. "You--you--" he gasped, "you want me to--to manage that--that _old women's home_?" "Yes." "_Me?_" "Yes.... Here! where are you going?" The visitor had risen. "Stop!" shouted Judge Knowles. "Where are you going?" The captain breathed heavily. "I'm goin' to send for the doctor," he declared. "One of us two needs him." CHAPTER V Judge Knowles's answer to his caller's assertion concerning the need of a physician's services was another chuckle. "Sit down, Cap'n," he ordered. Kendrick shook his head. "No," he began, "I'm----" "Sit down." "Judge, look here: I don't suppose you're serious, but if you are, I tell you----" "No, I'm going to tell _you_. SIT DOWN." This time the invalid's voice was raised to such a pitch that Mrs. Tidditt came hurrying from the kitchen. "My soul and body, Judge!" she exclaimed. "What is it? What _is_ the matter?" Her employer turned upon her. "The matter is that that confounded door is open again," he snapped. "Why--why, of course 'tis. I just opened it when I came in." "Umph! Yes. Well then, hurry up and shut it when you go out. _Shut_ it!" Emmeline, going, not only shut but slammed the door. The judge smiled grimly. "Sit down, Kendrick," he commanded once more, panting. "Sit down, I--I'm out of breath. Confound that woman! She seems to think I'm four years old. Ah--ah--whew!" His exhaustion was so apparent that Sears was alarmed. "Don't you think, Judge----" he began, but was interrupted. "Sshh!" ordered Knowles. "Wait.... Wait.... I'll be all right in a minute!" The captain waited. It took more than a minute, and even then the judge's voice was husky and his sentences broken, but his determination was unshaken. "I want you to listen to me, Cap'n Kendrick," he said. "I know it sounds crazy, this proposal of mine, but it isn't. How much do you know about this Fair Harbor place; its history and so on?" Captain Sears explained that his sister had written him some facts concerning it and that recently Judah Cahoon had told him more details. The judge wished to know what Judah had told. When informed he nodded. "That's about right, so far as it goes," he admitted. "Fairly straight, for a Bayport yarn. It doesn't go far enough, though. Here is the situation: "Lobelia, when she first conceived the fool notion," he said, "came to me, of course, to arrange it. I was her father's lawyer for years, and so naturally I was looking out for her affairs. I said all I could against it, but she was determined, and had her way. She, through me, set aside the Sylvanus Seymour house and land to be used as a home for what she called 'mariners' women' as long as--well, as long as she should continue to want it used for that purpose. She would have been contented to pay the bills as they came, but, of course, there was no business method in that, so we arranged that she was to hand over to me fifty thousand dollars in bonds, the income from that sum, plus the entrance fees and one hundred dollars yearly paid by each inmate, was to run the place. That is the way it has been run. She christened it the Fair Harbor. Heaven knows I had nothing to do with that. "For a year or so she lived there herself and had a beautiful time queening it over the inmates. Then that Phillips chap drifted into Bayport." The captain interrupted here. "Oh, then the Fair Harbor was off the ways before she married Phillips?" he said. "Judah told me it was afterwards." "He's wrong. No, the thing had been running two years when that confounded.... Humph! You never met Egbert Phillips, did you, Cap'n?" "No." "You've heard about him?" "Only what Judah told me the other day." "Humph! What did he tell?" "Why, he--he gave me to understand that this Phillips was a pretty smooth article." "Smooth! Why, Kendrick, he is.... But there, you'll meet him some day and no feeble words of mine could do him justice. Besides all my words are getting too feeble to waste--even on anything as beautiful as Egbert the great.... And that condemned doctor will be here pretty soon, so we must get on.... Ah.... Well, he came here to teach singing, Phillips did, and he had all the women in tune before the first lesson was over. They said he was wonderful, and he was--good God, yes! They kept on thinking he was wonderful until he married Lobelia Seymour." "Then they changed their minds, eh?" "Humph! You don't know women, do you, Cap'n? Never mind, you've got time enough left to learn in.... No, they didn't change their minds. They thought Egbert was as wonderful as ever, but they agreed that Lobelia had roped him in. _She_ had roped _him_ in! Oh, lord!... Well, they were married and went to Boston to live. Afterwards they went to Europe. Five years ago they came back here for a week's visit. Cahoon tell you about that?" "No." "Probably he didn't know about it. They did, though, and stayed here with me, of course. Lobelia settled that, I imagine--one of the times when she settled something herself. And while she was here she and I settled something else. She added a codicil to her will making the fifty thousand dollars in my possession and the house and Seymour land a gift, absolute, to the Fair Harbor. And she appointed me as sole trustee of the fund and financial manager of the home, with authority to appoint my own successor. And her husband didn't know a thing about it. Didn't when they went away; I'm sure I don't know whether he does now or not, but he didn't then. No, sir, we settled the Fair Harbor fund and Egbert's hash, so far as it was concerned. Ha, ha! And a blessed good job, too, Kendrick.... Hand me that glass of water, will you? Thanks." He drank a swallow or two of water and lay back upon the pillow. Captain Sears was a little anxious. He suggested that, perhaps, he had better be told the rest another time. "I think you had better rest now, Judge," he counseled. The judge consigned the "rest" idea to a place where, according to tradition, there is very little of it. "I want you to hear this," he snapped. "Don't bother me, but listen.... Where was I?... Oh, yes.... Well, Lobelia and her husband went away, to Europe again. They have been there ever since, living in Italy. Egbert finds the climate there agrees with him, I suppose---- Humph!... I have had letters from Lobelia. The later ones were shorter and not encouraging. She wrote that she wasn't well and the doctors didn't seem to help her much. After two or three of these letters I wrote one, myself--to the American consul at Florence. He is the son of a good friend of mine. I explained the situation and asked him to find out just what ailed her and what the prospects were. His reply explained things. Poor Lobelia is in my position--except that my age entitles me to be there and hers doesn't; she has an incurable disease and she is likely to die at any time. No hope for her. And now, it seems she has found it out. About a month ago I had another letter from her.... Humph!... Wait a minute, Cap'n. Give me that glass again, will you. Sorry to be such a condemned nuisance--particularly to other people.... Wait! Hold on! When I've finished you can talk. Hear the rest of it first. "Lobelia's latest--last, I shouldn't wonder--letter was a sad sort of a thing. I'm a tough old fellow, but I declare I'm sorry for that poor woman. Fool to marry Phillips? Of course she was, but most of us are fools, some time or other. And, if I don't miss my guess, she has repented of her foolishness many times and all the time. She wrote me she knew she was going to die. And she said---- But here is the letter. Read it, that page of it." He fumbled among the papers and books on the table beside him, selected a sheet of paper, covered with closely written lines, and extended it in a shaking hand to his caller. "That explains things a little," he said. "It's illuminating. Read it." Captain Sears read.... "And so I am _very_ anxious, dear Judge Knowles, whatever else happens, that the Fair Harbor shall always be as it is, a home for sisters and widows and daughters of men who went down to the sea in ships, as father did. I know he would have liked it. And _please_, after I'm gone, don't let it be sold or given up, or anything like that. I am asking this of you, because I know I can trust you. You have proved it so many times. And--I never have written you this before but it is true--I have so little left except the Fair Harbor and its endowment. You will wonder where the money has gone. I do not know. It seems to have slipped away little by little and neither my husband nor I can account for...." The page ended there. The captain would have handed it back to Knowles, but the latter asked him to put it on the table. "Put it in the envelope and put the envelope in the drawer, will you, Kendrick?" he said. "My housekeeper is a good housekeeper, but what is mine is hers--including correspondence.... Well, you see? She can't account for the disappearance of the money. I can. When you have a five thousand dollar income and spend ten thousand you can account for a lot.... Humph! Well, the fact is that I am expecting to hear of Lobelia's death at any time. She may be dead to-day--or to-morrow--or next week. And as soon as I hear of it I shall say to myself.... Humph! Cap'n, you know how the Old Farmer's Almanac, along in November, prophesies the weather, don't you? 'About this time look out for snow.' Yes, well, on a date about a month after the day I hear of Lobelia Phillips's death I should write on the calendar: 'About this time look for Egbert.' ... Humph.... Eh? See, don't you, Cap'n Kendrick?" Kendrick smiled, he couldn't help it. He tugged thoughtfully at his beard. "Yes," he admitted, "I guess likely I see. But I don't see where I come in. You can handle Egbert, Judge, or I don't know much about men." The judge snorted. "Handle him," he repeated. "I think I could handle him--and enjoy the job. The trouble is I shan't have the chance. I won't be here. I'll be in the graveyard." He spoke of it as casually as he might of Boston or New York. Again his listener could not help but protest. "Why, Judge," he began, "that's perfectly ridiculous. You----" The judge interrupted. "Perhaps," he said, drily. "In fact, I agree with you. The graveyard is a ridiculous place for anybody to be, but I shall be there--and soon. But I am not going to let it interfere with my plans concerning the Fair Harbor. Lobelia Seymour I've known since she was a little girl, and whether I'm dead or alive, I'm going to have her wishes carried out. That's why I'm telling you these things, Sears Kendrick. I am counting on you to carry them out." The captain leaned back in his chair. "Why pick on me?" he asked, drily. "Why? Because I've got to pick on somebody and do it while I have the strength to pick. You and I have never been close friends, Kendrick, but I've watched you and kept track of you for years, in a general sort of way. Your sister and I have had a long acquaintanceship. There's another woman who made a mistake.... Eh?" Sears nodded. "I'm afraid so," he admitted. "Joel is a good enough fellow, in his way, but----" "But--that's it. Well, he's got a good wife and she's your sister. I know you can handle this Fair Harbor job if you will and if you take it on I shall go to--well, to that graveyard we were talking about, with an easier mind. Look here--why----" "Hold on a minute, Judge. Heave to and let me say a word. If there wasn't any other reason why I shouldn't feel like takin' the wheel of an old woman's home there would be this one: You need a business man there and I'm no business man." "How do you know you're not?" "Because I've just proved it. You heard somethin' of how my voyage in business ashore turned out. I'll tell you the truth about it." He did, briefly, giving the facts of his disastrous sojourn in ship-chandlery. "So that's how good a business man _I_ am," he said in conclusion. "And I'm a cripple besides. Much obliged, Judge, but you'll have to ship another skipper, I'm afraid." He was rising but Judge Knowles barked a profane order for him to keep his seat. "I know all that," he snapped. "Knew about it just after it happened. And I know, too, that you paid your share of the debts dollar for dollar. I'll risk you in this job I'm offering you.... Yes, and you're the only man I will risk--the only one in sight, that is. Come now, don't say no. Think it over. I'll give you a week to think it over in. I'd give you a month, but I might not be here at the end of it.... Will you take the offer under consideration and then come back and have another talk with me? Eh? Will you?" The captain hesitated. He wanted to say no, of course, should say it sooner or later, but he hated to be too abrupt in his refusal. After all, the offer, although absurd, was, in a way, a compliment and he liked the old judge. So he hesitated, stammered and then asked another question. "You've got a skipper aboard the Fair Harbor already, haven't you?" he inquired. "Judah told me that Cap'n Ike Berry's widow was runnin' the place." "Humph! That isn't all he told you, is it?" Kendrick smiled. "Why"--he hesitated, "I--" "Come, come, come! Of course he told you that Cordelia Berry was another one of those mistakes we've been talking about. She is, but her husband was one of my best friends and his daughter is another. No mistake there, Cap'n Kendrick, I tell you.... But you've met Elizabeth, I understand, eh?" He chuckled as he said it. Sears was surprised and a trifle confused. Evidently she had told of their encounter in Judah's garden. "Well, yes," he admitted. "We met." "Ha, ha! So I heard. Handled the poultry pretty well, didn't she? She ought to, she's had experience in handling old hens for some time." "I presume likely. Then I don't see why you don't let her keep on handlin' 'em. What do you want me for?" "Oh, damnation, man, haven't I told you! I want you because I'm going to die and somebody--some man--must take my place.... Look here, Kendrick. I appoint you general manager of the Fair Harbor, take it or leave it. But _if_ you leave it don't do it for a week, and, before you do, promise me you'll go over there some day and look around. Meet Cordelia and talk to her, meet Elizabeth and talk to her. Meet some of the--er--hens and talk to them. But, this is the main thing, look around, listen, see for yourself. Then you can come back and, if you accept, we'll discuss details. Will you do that much?" Captain Sears looked troubled. "Why, yes, I suppose so," he said, reluctantly, "to oblige you, Judge. But it's wasted time, I shan't accept. Of course I thank you for the offer and all that, but I might as well, seems to me, say no now as next week." "No such thing. And you will go there and look around?" "Why--yes, I guess so. But won't the Berry woman and the rest of 'em think I'm nosin' in where I don't belong? I should, if I were they, and I'd raise a row about it, too." "Nonsense. They can't object to your making a neighborly call, can they? And if they do, let 'em. A healthy row won't do a bit of harm over there. Give 'em the devil, it's what they need.... See here, will you go?" "Yes." "Good! And, remember, you are appointed to this job this minute if you want it. Or you may take it at any time during the week; don't bother to speak to me first. Fifteen hundred a year, live with Cahoon or whoever you like, precious little to do except be generally responsible for the Fair Harbor--oh, how I hate that syrupy, sentimental name!--financially and in a business way.... Easy berth, as you sailors would say, eh? Ha, ha!... Well, good day, Cap'n. Can you find your way out? If not call that eternally-lost woman of mine and she'll pilot you.... Ah.... yes.... And just hand me that water glass once more.... Thanks.... I shall hope to hear you've accepted next time I see you. We'll talk details and sign papers then, eh?... Oh, yes, we will. You won't be fool enough to refuse. Easy berth, you know, Kendrick. And don't forget Egbert; eh? Ha, ha.... Umph--ah, yes.... Where's that damned housekeeper?" Mike Callahan asked no questions as he drove his passenger back to the General Minot place--no direct questions, that is--but it was quite evident that his curiosity concerning the reasons for Captain Kendrick's visit was intense. "Well, the ould judge seen you at last, Cap'n," he observed. "Yes." "I expect 'twas a great satisfaction to him, eh?" "Maybe so. Looks as if it was smurrin' up for rain over to the west'ard, doesn't it?" Mr. Callahan delivered his passenger at the Minot back door and departed, looking grumpy. Then Mr. Cahoon took his turn. "Well, Cap'n Sears," he said, eagerly, "you seen him." "Yes, Judah, I saw him." "Um-hm. Pretty glad to see you, too, wan't he?" "I hope so." "Creepin' prophets, don't you _know_ so? Ain't he been sendin' word by Emmeline Tidditt that he wanted to see you more'n a million times?" "Guess not. So far as I know he only wanted to see me once." "No, no, no. You know what I mean, Cap'n Sears.... Well--er--er--you seen him, anyway?" "Yes, I saw him." "Um-hm ... so you said." "Yes, I thought I did." "Oh, you did--yes, you did.... Um-hm--er--yes." So Judah, too, was obliged to do without authentic information concerning Judge Knowles's reason for wishing to meet Sears Kendrick. He hinted as far as he dared, but experience gained through years of sea acquaintanceship with his former commander prevented his doing more than hint. The captain would tell just exactly what he wished and no more, Judah knew. He knew also that attempting to learn more than that was likely to be unpleasant as well as unprofitable. It was true that his beloved "Cap'n Sears" was no longer his commander but merely his lodger, nevertheless discipline was discipline. Mr. Cahoon was dying to know why the judge wished to talk to the captain, but he would have died in reality rather than continue to work the pumps against the latter's orders, expressed or intimated. Judah was no mutineer. CHAPTER VI Sears put in a disagreeable day or two after his call upon the judge. He was dissatisfied with the ending of their interview. He felt that he had been foolishly soft-hearted in promising to call at the Fair Harbor, or, to consider for another hour the preposterous offer of management of that institution. He must say no in the end. How much better to have said it then and there. Fifteen hundred a year looked like a lot of money to him. It tempted him, that part of the proposition. But it did not tempt him sufficiently to overcome the absurdities of the remaining part. How could _he_ manage an old woman's home? And what would people say if he tried? Nevertheless, he had promised to visit the place and look it over and the promise must be kept. He dreaded it about as much as he had ever dreaded anything, but--he had promised. So on the morning of the third day following that of his call upon Judge Knowles he hobbled painfully and slowly up the front walk of the Fair Harbor to the formidable front door, with its great South Sea shells at each end of the granite step--relics of Captain Sylvanus's early voyages--and its silver-plated name plate with "SEYMOUR" engraved upon it in Gothic lettering. To one looking back from the view-point of to-day such a name plate may seem a bit superfluous and unnecessary in a village where every one knew not only where every one else lived, but how they lived and all about them. The fact remains that in Bayport in the '70's there were many name plates. Sears gave the glass knob beside the front door a pull. From the interior of the house came the resultant "_JINGLE_; _jingle_; jingle, jing, jing." Then a wait, then the sound of footsteps approaching the other side of the door. Then a momentary glimpse of a reconnoitering eye behind one of the transparent urns engraved in the ground glass pane. Then a rattle of bolt and latch and the door opened. The woman who opened it was rather good looking, but also she looked--well, if the captain had been ordered to describe her general appearance instantly, he would have said that she looked "tousled." She was fully dressed, of course, but there was about her a general appearance of having just gotten out of bed. Her hair, rather elaborately coiffured, had several loose strands sticking out here and there. She wore a gold pin--an oval brooch with a lock of hair in it--at her throat, but one end was unfastened. She wore cotton gloves, with holes in them. "Good mornin'," said the captain. The woman said "Good morning." There was no "r" in the "morning" so, remembering what he had heard concerning Mrs. Isaac Berry's rearing, Kendrick decided that this must be she. "This is Mrs. Berry, isn't it?" he inquired. "Yes." The lady's tone was not too gracious, in fact there was a trace of suspicion in it, as if she was expecting the man on the step to produce a patent egg-beater or the specimen volume of a set of encyclopedias. "How do you do, Mrs. Berry," went on the captain. "My name is Kendrick. I'm your neighbor next door, and Judge Knowles asked me to be neighborly and cruise over and call some day. So I--er--so I've cruised, you see." Mrs. Berry's expression changed. She seemed surprised, perhaps a little annoyed, certainly very much confused. "Why--why, yes, Mr. Kendrick," she stammered. "I'm so glad you did.... I am so glad to see you.... Ah--ah---- Won't you come in?" Captain Sears entered the dark front hall. It smelt like most front halls of that day in that town, a combination smell made up of sandal-wood and Brussels carpet and haircloth and camphor and damp shut-up-ness. "Walk right in, do," urged Mrs. Berry, opening the parlor door. The captain walked right in. The parlor was high-studded and square-pianoed and chromoed and oil-portraited and black-walnutted and marble-topped and hairclothed. Also it had the fullest and most satisfying assortment of whatnot curios and alum baskets and whale ivory and shell frames and wax fruit and pampas grass. There was a majestic black stove and window lambrequins. Which is to say that it was a very fine specimen of a very best parlor. "Do sit down, Mr. Kendrick," gushed Mrs. Berry, moving about a good deal but not, apparently, accomplishing very much. There had been a feather duster on the piano when they entered, but it, somehow or other, had disappeared beneath the piano scarf--partially disappeared, that is, for one end still protruded. The lady's cotton dusting-gloves no longer protected her hands but now peeped coyly from behind a jig-sawed photograph frame on the marble mantelpiece. The apron she had worn lay on the floor in the shadow of the table cloth. These habiliments of menial domesticity slid, one by one, out of sight--or partially so--as she bustled and chatted. When, after a moment, she raised a window shade and admitted a square of sunshine to the grand apartment, one would scarcely have guessed that there was such drudgery as housework, certainly no one would have suspected the elegant Mrs. Cordelia Berry of being intimately connected with it. She swept--in those days the breadth of skirts made all feminine progress more or less of a sweep--across the room and swished gracefully into a chair. When she spoke she raised her eyebrows, at the end of the sentence she lowered them and her lashes. She smiled much, and hers was still a pretty smile. She made attractive little gestures with her hands. "I am _so_ glad you dropped in, Mr. Kendrick," she declared. "So very glad. Of course if we had known when you were coming we might have been a little better prepared. But there, you will excuse us, I know. Elizabeth and I--Elizabeth is my daughter, Mr. Kendrick.... But it is _Captain_ Kendrick, isn't it? Of course, I might have known. You look the sea--you know what I mean--I can always tell. My dear husband was a captain. You knew that, of course. And in the old days at my girlhood home so many, _many_ captains used to come and go. Our old home--my girlhood home, I mean--was always open. I met my husband there.... Ah me, those days are not these days! What my dear father would have said if he could have known.... But we don't know what is in store for us, do we?... Oh, dear!... It's such charming weather, isn't it, Captain Kendrick?" The captain admitted the weather's charm. He had not heard a great deal of his voluble hostess's chatter. He was there, in a way, on business and he was wondering how he might, without giving offence, fulfill his promise to Judge Knowles and see more of the interior of the Fair Harbor. Of the matron of that institution he had already seen enough to classify and appraise her in his mind. Mrs. Berry rambled on and on. At last, out of the tumult of words, Captain Sears caught a fragment which seemed to him pertinent and interesting. "Oh!" he broke in. "So you knew I was--er--hopeful of droppin' in some time or other?" "Why, yes. Elizabeth knew. Judge Knowles told her you said you hoped to. Of course we were delighted.... The poor dear judge! We are _so_ fond of him, my daughter and I. He is so--so essentially aristocratic. Oh, if you knew what that means to me, raised as I was among the people I was. There are times when I sit here in this dreadful place in utter despair--utter.... Oh--oh, of course, Captain Kendrick, I wouldn't have you imagine that Elizabeth and I don't like this house. We _love_ it. And dear 'Belia Seymour is my _closest_ friend. But, you know----" She paused, momentarily, and the captain seized the opportunity---- "So Judge Knowles told you I was liable to call, did he?" he queried. He was somewhat surprised. He wondered if the Judge had hinted at a reason for his visit. "Why, yes," replied Mrs. Berry, "he told Elizabeth. She said---- Oh, here you are, dearie. Captain Kendrick, our next door neighbor, has run in for a little call. Isn't it delightful of him? Captain Kendrick, this is my daughter, Elizabeth." She had entered from the door behind the captain's chair. Now she came forward as he rose from it. "How do you do, Cap'n Kendrick?" she said. "I am very glad to see you again. Judge Knowles told me you were planning to call." She extended her hand and the captain took it. She was smiling, but it seemed to him that the smile was an absent-minded one. In fact--of course it might be entirely his imagination--he had a feeling that she was troubled about something. However, he had no time to surmise or even reply to her greeting. Mrs. Berry had caught a word in that greeting which to her required explanation. "Again?" she repeated. "Why, Elizabeth, have you and Captain Kendrick met before?" "Yes, Mother, that day when our hens got into Mr. Cahoon's garden. You remember I told you at the time." "I don't remember any such thing. I remember Elvira said that she and Aurora met him one afternoon, but I don't remember your saying anything about it." "I told you. No doubt you have forgotten it." "Nonsense! you know I never forget. If there is one thing I can honestly pride myself on it is a good memory. You may have thought you told me, but---- Why, what's that noise?" The noise was a curious babble or chatter, almost as if the sound-proof door--if there was such a thing--of a parrot cage had been suddenly opened. It came from somewhere at the rear of the house and was, apparently, produced by a number of feminine voices all speaking very fast and simultaneously. Elizabeth turned, glanced through the open door behind her, and then at Mrs. Berry. There was no doubt now concerning the troubled expression upon her face. She was troubled. "Mother--" she began, quickly. "Excuse us, Cap'n Kendrick, please--mother, have Elvira and Susan Brackett been talking to you about buying that collection of--of what they call garden statuary at Mrs. Seth Snowden's auction in Harniss?" And now Mrs. Berry, too, looked troubled. She turned red, stammered and fidgetted. "Why--why, Elizabeth," she said, "I--I don't see why you want to discuss that now. We have a visitor and I'm sure Captain Kendrick isn't interested." Her daughter did not seem to care whether the visitor was interested or not. "Tell me, mother, please," she urged. "_Have_ they been talking with you about their plan to buy that--those things?" Mrs. Berry's confusion increased. "Why--why, yes," she admitted. "Elvira did tell me about it, something about it. She said it was beautiful--the fountain and the--the deer and--and how pretty they would look on the lawn and----" "Mother, you didn't give them the least encouragement, did you? They say--Elvira and Mrs. Brackett say you told them you thought it a beautiful idea and that you were in favor of what they call their committee going to the sale next Monday and buying those--those cast-iron dogs and children with the Fair Harbor money? I am sure you didn't say that, did you, mother?... I'm awfully sorry, Cap'n Kendrick, to bring this matter into the middle of your call, but really it is very important and it can't be postponed, because.... Tell me, Mother, they will be here in a moment. You didn't say any such thing, did you?" Mrs. Berry's fine eyes--they had been called "starlike" twenty years before, by romantic young gentlemen--filled with tears. She wrung her hands. "I--I only said--" she stammered, "I---- Oh, I don't think I said anything except--except that---- Well, they were so sure they were lovely and a great bargain--and you know Captain Snowden's estate in Harniss was perfectly _charming_. You know it was, Elizabeth!" "Mother, you didn't tell them they might buy them?" "Why--why, no, I--I don't think I did. I--I couldn't have because I never do anything like that without consulting you.... Oh, Elizabeth, _please_, don't let us have a scene here, with Captain Kendrick present. What _will_ he think? Oh, dear, dear!" Her handkerchief was called into requisition. Sears Kendrick rose from his chair. Obviously he must go and, just as obviously, he knew that in order to fulfill his promise to the judge in spirit as well as letter he ought to stay. This was just the sort of situation to shed light upon the inner secrets of the Fair Harbor and its management.... Nevertheless, he was not going to stay. His position was much too spylike to suit him. But before he could move there were other developments. While Miss Berry and her mother had been exchanging hurried questions and answers the parrot-cage babble from the distant places somewhere at the end of the long entry beyond the door had been continuous. Now it suddenly grew louder. Plainly the babblers were approaching along that entry and babbling as they came. A moment more and they were in the room, seven of them. In the lead was the dignified Miss Elvira herself, an impressive figure of gentility in black silk and a hair breast pin. Close behind her, of course, was the rotund Mrs. Aurora Chase, and equally close--yes even a little in advance of Aurora, was a solidly built female with gray hair, a square chin, and a very distinct mustache. The others were in the rear, but as they came in one of these, a little woman in a plain gingham dress, who wore steel spectacles upon a sharp little nose, left the group and took a stand a little apart, regarding the company with lifted chin and a general air of determination and uncompromising defiance. Later on Captain Sears was destined to learn that the little woman was Mrs. Esther Tidditt, and the lady with the mustache Mrs. Susanna Brackett. And that the others were respectively Mrs. Hattie Thomas, Miss Desire Peasley, and Mrs. Constance Cahoon. Each of the seven was, of course, either a captain's widow or his sister. Just at the moment the captain, naturally, recognized nobody except Miss Snowden and Mrs. Chase. Nor did he notice individual peculiarities except that something, excitement or a sudden jostle or something, had pushed Aurora's rippling black locks to one side, with the result that the part which divided the ripples, instead of descending plumb-line fashion from the crown of the head to a point directly in the center of the forehead, now had a diagonal twist and ended over the left eye. The effect was rather astonishing, as if the upper section of the lady's head had slipped its moorings. He had scarcely time to notice even this, certainly none in which to speculate concerning its cause. Miss Snowden, who held a paper in her hand, stepped forward and began to speak, gesticulating with the paper as she did so. She paid absolutely no attention to the masculine visitor. She was trembling with excitement and it is doubtful if she even saw him. "Mrs. Berry," she began, "we are here--we have come here, these ladies and I--we have come here--we---- Oh, what _is_ it?" This last was addressed to Mrs. Chase, who was tugging at her skirt. "Talk louder," cautioned Aurora, in a stage whisper. "I can't hear you." With an impatient movement Miss Snowden freed her garment and began again. "Mrs. Berry," she repeated, "we are here, these ladies and I, to--to ask a question and to express our opinion on a very important matter. We are all agreed----" Here she was again interrupted, this time by Mrs. Esther Tidditt, the little woman in the gingham dress. Mrs. Tidditt's tone was brisk and sharp. "No, we ain't agreed neither," she announced, with a snap of her head which threatened shipwreck to the steel spectacles. "_I_ think it's everlastin' foolishness. Don't you say _I'm_ agreed to it, Elvira Snowden." Elvira drew her thin form erect and glared. "We are practically agreed," she proclaimed crushingly. "You are the only one who doesn't agree." "Humph! And I'm the only one that is practical. Of all the silly----" "Esther Tidditt, was you appointed to do the talking for this committee or was I?" "You was, but that don't stop me from talkin' when I want to. I ain't on the committee, thank the good lord. I'm my own committee." This declaration of independence was received with an outburst of indignant exclamations, in the midst of which Mrs. Chase could be heard demanding to be told what was the matter and who said what. Elizabeth Berry stilled the hubbub. "Hush, hush!" she pleaded. "Don't, Esther, please. You can say your word later. I want mother--and Cap'n Kendrick--to hear this, all of it." The captain was still standing. He had risen when the "committee" entered the room. Its members, most of them, had been so intent upon the business which had brought them there that they had ignored his presence. Now, of course, they turned to look at him. There was curiosity in their look but by no means enthusiastic approval. Miss Snowden's nod was decidedly snippy. She looked, sniffed and turned again to Mrs. Berry. "We want your mother to hear it," she declared. "We've come here so she shall hear it--all of it. If--if _others_--who may not be 'specially interested want to hear they can, I suppose. I don't know why not.... _We_ haven't anything to hide. _We_ ain't ashamed--are not, I should say. Are we?" turning to those behind and beside her. Mrs. Brackett announced that she certainly should say not, so did several others. There was a general murmur of agreement. Every one continued to look at the captain. He was embarrassed. "I think perhaps I had better be goin'," he said, addressing Miss Berry. "I ought to be gettin' home, anyway." But the young lady would not have it. "Cap'n Kendrick," she said, earnestly, "I hope you won't go. Judge Knowles told me you were going to call. I was very glad when I found you had called now--at this time. And I should like to have you stay. You can stay, can't you?" Sears hesitated. "Why--why, yes, I presume likely I can," he admitted. "And will you--please?" He looked at her and she at him. Then he nodded. "I'll stay," he said, and sat down in his chair. "Thank you," said Elizabeth. "Now, Elvira.... Wait, mother, please." Miss Snowden sniffed once more. "Now that that important matter is settled I _suppose_ I may be allowed to go on," she observed, with sarcasm. "Very good, I will do so in spite of the presence of--of those not--ahem--intimately concerned. Mrs. Berry, on behalf of this committee here, a committee of the whole----" "No such thing," this from Mrs. Tidditt. "I'm part of the whole but I ain't part of that committee. Stick to the truth, Elviry--pays better." "Hush, Esther," begged Miss Berry. "Let her go on, please. Go on, Elvira." The head of the committee breathed fiercely through her thin nostrils. Then she made another attempt. "I address you, Mrs. Cordelia Berry," declaimed Elvira, "because you are supposed--I say _supposed_--to be officially the managing director--or directress, to speak correct--of this institution. Not," she added, hastily, "that it is an institution in any sense of the word--like a home or any such thing. We all know that, I hope and trust. Although," with a venomous glance in the direction of Mrs. Esther, "there appear to be _some_ that know precious little. I mention no names." "You don't need to," retorted the Tidditt lady promptly. "Never mind, I know enough not to vote to buy a lot of second-handed images and critters just because they belong to one of your relations. I know that much, Elviry Snowden." This was a body blow and Elvira visibly winced. For just an instant Captain Sears thought she was contemplating physical assault upon her enemy. But she recovered and, white and scornful, proceeded. "I shan't deign to answer such low--er--insinuations," she declared, her voice shaking. "I scorn them and her that makes them. I scorn them--both. _BOTH!_" This last "Both" was fired like a shot from a "Big Bertha." It should have annihilated the irreverent little female in the gingham gown. It did not, however; she merely laughed. The effect of the blast was still further impaired by Mrs. Chase, who although listening with all her ears, such as they were, had evidently heard neither well nor wisely. "That's right, Elviry," proclaimed Aurora, "that's just what I say. Why, the lion alone is worth the money." Mrs. Brackett touched the Snowden arm. "Never mind, Elvira," she said. "Don't pay any attention. Go right ahead and read the resolutions." Elvira drew a long breath, two long breaths. "Thank you, Susanna," she said, "I shall. I'm going to. Mrs. Berry," she added, turning to that lady, who was quite as much agitated as any one present and was clutching her chair arm with one hand and her daughter's arm with the other. "Mrs. Berry," repeated Miss Snowden, "this resolution drawn up and signed by the committee of the whole here present--signed with but one exception, I should say, one _trifling_ exception--" this with a glare at Mrs. Tidditt--"is, as I said, addressed to you because you are supposed--" a glare at Elizabeth this time--"to be in charge of the Fair Harbor and what goes on and is done within its--er--porticos. Ahem! I will now read as follows." And she proceeded to read, using both elocution and gestures. The resolutions made a rather formidable document. They were addressed to "Mrs. Cordelia Imogene Berry, widow of the late Captain Isaac Stephens Berry, in charge of the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women at Bayport, Massachusetts, United States of America. Madam: Whereas----" There were many "Whereases." Captain Kendrick, listening intently, found the path of his understanding clogged by them and tangled by Miss Elvira's flowers of rhetoric. He gathered, nevertheless, that the "little group of ladies resident at the Fair Harbor, having been reared amid surroundings of culture, art and refinement" were, naturally, desirous of improving their present surroundings. Also that a "truly remarkable opportunity" had come in their way by which the said surroundings might be improved and beautified by the expenditure of a nominal sum, seventy-five dollars, no more. With this seventy-five dollars might be bought "the entire collection of lawn statuary and the fountain which adorned the grounds of the estate of the late lamented deceased Captain Seth Snowden at Harniss and now the property of his widow, namely to wit, Mrs. Hannah Snowden." "And I'll say this," put in Elvira, before reading further, "although hints and insinuations have been cast at me in the hearing of those present to-day about my being a relation--relative, that is--of Captain Seth, and he was my uncle on my father's side, nevertheless it's just because I am a relation--relative--that we are able to buy all those elegant things for as cheap a price as seventy-five dollars when they cost at least five hundred and.... But there! I will proceed. "'The said statuary, etcetera, consisting of the following, that is to say: "'No. 1. Item ... 1 Lawn Fountain. Hand painted iron. Representing two children beneath umbrella.'" "And it's the cutest thing," put in the hitherto silent Desire Peasley, with enthusiastic suddenness. "There's them two young ones standin' natural as life under that umbrella--just same as anybody _would_ stand under an umbrella if 'twas rainin' like fury--and the water squirts right down over top of 'em and drips off the ribs--off the ribs of the umbrella, I mean--and there they stand and--and---- _Well_, when I see _that_ I says, 'My glory!' I says, 'what'll they contrive next?' That's what I said. All hands heard me.... What's that you're mutterin', Esther Tidditt?" "I wasn't mutterin', 'special. I just said I bet they heard you if they was anywheres 'round." "Is that so? Do tell! Well, I'll have you to understand----" Elvira and Miss Berry together intervened to calm this new disturbance. Then the former went on with the reading of the "resolutions." "'No. 2. Item ... 1 Hand painted lion. Iron....' Hush, Aurora!... Yes, 'lion,' that's right.... I did say 'iron.' It's an iron lion, isn't it?... Oh, _do_ be quiet! We'll never get through if everybody keeps interrupting. 'No. 2 ... Item ... 1 Hand painted lion iron'--iron lion, I mean.... Oh, my soul and body! If everybody keeps talking I shan't know what I mean.... 'A very wonderful piece of statuary. In perfect condition. Paint needs touching up, that's all. "'No. 3--Item.... 1 Deer. Hand painted iron. Perfectly lovely--'" "Stuff!" This from the irrepressible Mrs. Tidditt, of course. "One horn is broke off and it looks like the Old Harry. No, I'll take that back; the Old Harry is supposed to have two horns. But that deer image is a sight, just the same. Why, it ain't got any paint left on it." "Nonsense! It may need a little paint, here and there, but----" "Humph! A little here and a lot there and a whole lot more in between. Elvira Snowden, that image looks as if 'twas struck with leprosy, like Lazarus in the Bible; you know it well as I do." Sears Kendrick enjoyed the reading of these resolutions. If it were not for certain elements in the situation he would have considered the morning's performance the most amusing entertainment he had witnessed afloat or ashore. He managed not to laugh aloud, although he was obliged to turn his head away several times and to cough at intervals. Once or twice he and Elizabeth Berry exchanged glances and the whimsical look of resignation and humorous appreciation in her eyes showed that she, too, was keenly aware of the joke. But at other times she was serious enough and it was her expression at these times which prevented the captain's accepting the whole ridiculous affair as a hilarious farce. Then she looked deeply troubled and careworn and anxious. He began to realize that this affair, funny as it was, was but one of a series, a series of annoyances and trials and petty squabbles which, taken in the aggregate, were anything but funny to her. For it was obvious, the truth of what Judah Cahoon had said and Judge Knowles intimated, that this girl, Elizabeth Berry, was bearing upon her young shoulders the entire burden of responsibility for the conduct and management of affairs in the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women at Bayport. Her mother was supposed to bear this burden, but it was perfectly obvious that Cordelia Berry was incapable of bearing any responsibilities, including her own personal ones. Miss Snowden solemnly read the concluding paragraph of the resolutions. It summed up those preceding it and announced that those whose names were appended, "being guests at the Fair Harbor, the former home of our beloved benefactress and friend Mrs. Lobelia Phillips, _née_ Seymour, are unanimously agreed that as a simple matter of duty to the institution and those within its gates, not to mention the beautifying of Bayport, the collection of lawn statuary and fountain now adorning the estate of the late deceased Captain Seth Snowden be bought, purchased and obtained from that estate at the very low price of seventy-five dollars, this money to be paid from the funds in the Fair Harbor treasury, and the said statuary and fountain to be erected and set up on the lawns and grounds of the Fair Harbor. Signed----" Miss Elvira read the names of the signers. They included, as she took pains to state, the names of every guest in the Fair Harbor with one--ahem--exception. "And I'm it, praise the lord," announced Mrs. Tidditt, promptly. "I ain't quite crazy yet, nor I ain't a niece-in-law of Seth Snowden's widow neither." "Esther Tidditt, I've stood your hints and slanders long enough." "Nobody's payin' _me_ no commissions for gettin' rid of their old junk for 'em." "Esther, be still! You shouldn't say such things. Elvira, stop--stop!" Miss Berry stepped forward. Mrs. Tidditt was bristling like a combative bantam and Elvira was shaking from head to feet and crooking and uncrooking her fingers. "There mustn't be any more of this," declared Elizabeth. "Esther, you must apologize. Stop, both of you, please. Remember, Cap'n Kendrick is here." This had the effect of causing every one to look at the captain once more. He felt unpleasantly conspicuous, but Elizabeth's next speech transferred the general gaze from him to her. "There isn't any use in saying much more about this matter, it seems to me," she said. "It comes down to this: You and the others, Elvira, think we should buy the--the statues and the fountain because they would, you think, make our lawns and grounds more beautiful." "We don't think at all--we know," declared Elvira. Mrs. Brackett said, "Yes indeed, we do," and there was a general murmur of assent. Also a loud sniff from the Tidditt direction. "And your mother thinks so, too," spoke up Miss Peasley, from the group. "She told me herself she thought they were lovely. Didn't you, Cordelia? You know you did." Before Mrs. Berry could answer--her embarrassment and distress seemed to be bringing her again to the verge of tears--her daughter went on. "It doesn't make a bit of difference what mother and I think about their--beauty--and all that," she said. "The whole thing comes down to the matter of whether or not we can afford to buy them. And we simply cannot. We haven't the money to spare. Spending seventy-five dollars for anything except the running expenses of the Harbor is now absolutely impossible. I told you that, Elvira, when you first suggested it." Miss Snowden, still trembling, regarded her resentfully. "Yes, _you_ told me," she retorted. "I know you did. You are always telling us we can't do this or that. But why should _you_ tell us? That is what we can't understand. _You_ ain't--aren't--manager here, so far as we know. We never heard of your appointment. _We_ always understood your mother was the manager, duly appointed. Isn't she?" "Of course she is, but----" "Yes, and when we have spoken to _her_--two or three of us at different times--she has said she thought buying these things was a lovely idea. I shouldn't be surprised if she thought so now.... Cordelia, don't you think the Fair Harbor ought to buy those statues and that fountain?" This pointed appeal, of course, placed Mrs. Berry directly in the limelight and she wilted beneath its glare. She reddened and then paled. Her fingers fidgetted with the pin at her throat. She picked up her handkerchief and dropped it. She looked at Elvira and the committee and then at her daughter. "Why--why, I don't know," she faltered. "I think--of course I think the--the statuary is very beautiful. I--I said so. I--I am always fond of pretty things. You know I am, Elizabeth, you----" "Wait a minute, Cordelia. Didn't you tell me you thought the Fair Harbor ought to buy them? Didn't you tell Suzanna and me just that?" Mrs. Berry squirmed. She did not answer but, so far as Sears Kendrick was concerned, no answer was necessary. He was as certain as if she had sworn it that she had told them just that thing. And, looking at Elizabeth's face, he could see that she, too, was certain of it. "Didn't you, Cordelia?" persisted Miss Snowden. "Why--why, I don't know. Perhaps I did, but--but what difference does it make? You heard what Elizabeth said. She says we can't afford it. She always attends to such matters, you know she does." "Yes," with sarcastic emphasis, "we do, but we don't know _why_ she should. And in this case we aren't going to stand it. You are supposed to be managing this place, Cordelia Berry, and if you are willing to turn your duties over to a--a mere child we aren't willing to let you. Once more I ask you----" Elizabeth interrupted. "There, there, Elvira," she said, "what _is_ the use? It isn't a question of mother's opinion or what she has said before. It is just a matter of money. We can't afford it." Miss Snowden ignored her. "We shall not," she repeated, "permit our future and--and all like that to be ruined by the whims of a mere child. _That_ is final." She pronounced the last sentence with solemn emphasis. The pause which followed should have been impressive but Mrs. Tidditt spoiled the effect. "Mere child!" she repeated, significantly. "Well, I presume likely she _is_ a mere child compared to some folks. Only she just looks childish and they act that way." There was another outburst of indignant exclamations from the committee. The head of that body turned to her followers. "It is quite evident," she declared, furiously, "that this conference is going to end just as the others have. But this time we are not going to sit back and be trampled on. There are those higher up to be appealed to and we shall appeal to them. Come!" She stalked majestically to the door and marched out and down the hall, the committee following her. Only Mrs. Tidditt remained, and she but for a moment. "They're goin' to the back room to have another meetin'," she whispered. "If there's anything up that amounts to anything, 'Lizabeth, I'll come back and let you know." Elizabeth did not answer, but Kendrick offered a suggestion. "You don't belong to this committee," he observed. "Perhaps they won't let you into the meetin'." The eyes behind the steel spectacles snapped sparks. "I'd like to see 'em try to keep me out," declared Mrs. Esther, and hurried after the others. Elizabeth turned to her mother. "Mother," she said, earnestly, "we must be very firm in this matter. We simply can't afford to spend any money just now except for necessities. If they come to you again you must tell them so. You will, won't you?" And now Mrs. Berry's agitation reached its climax. She turned upon her daughter. "Oh, I suppose so," she cried hysterically, "I suppose so! I shall have to go through another scene and be spoken to as if--as if I were dirt under these women's feet instead of being as far above them in--in position and education and refinement as the clouds. Why can't I have peace--just a little peace and quiet? Why must I _always_ have to undergo humiliation after humiliation? I----" "Mother, mother, please don't----" But her mother was beyond reason. "And you--" she went on, "you, my own daughter, why must you always take the other side, and put me in such positions, and--and humiliate me before--before---- Oh, why can't I die? I _wish_ I were dead! I do! I do!" She burst into a storm of hysterical sobs and hurried toward the door. Elizabeth would have gone to her but she pushed her aside and rushed into the front hall and up the stairs. They heard her sobs upon the upper landing. Sears Kendrick, feeling more like an interloper than ever, looked in embarrassment at the flowered carpet. He did not dare look at the young woman beside him. He had never in his life felt more sorry for any one. Judge Knowles had said he hoped that he--Kendrick--might obtain a general idea of the condition of affairs in the Fair Harbor. The scenes he had just witnessed had given him a better idea of that condition than anything else could have done. And, somehow or other, it was the last of those scenes which had affected him most. Elizabeth Berry had faced the sarcasms and sneers of the committee, had never lost her poise or her temper, had never attempted to shift the responsibility, had never reproached her mother for the hesitating weakness which was at the base of all the trouble. And, in return, her mother had accused her of--all sorts of things. And yet when Elizabeth spoke it was in defence of that mother. "I hope, Cap'n Kendrick," she said, "that you won't misunderstand my mother or take what she just said too seriously. She is not very well, and very nervous, and, as you see, her position here is a trying one sometimes." The captain could not keep back the speech which was at his tongue's end. "_Your_ position is rather tryin', too, isn't it?" he observed. "It sort of would seem that way--to me." She smiled sadly. "Why, yes--it is," she admitted. "But I am younger and--and perhaps I can bear it better." It occurred to him that the greatest pity of all was the fact that she should be obliged to bear it. He did not say so, however, and she went on, changing the subject and speaking very earnestly. "Cap'n Kendrick," she said, "I am very glad you heard this--this disagreement this morning. Judge Knowles told me you were going to call at the Harbor here and when he said it he--well, I thought he looked more than he said, if you know what I mean. I didn't ask any questions and he said nothing more, but I guess perhaps he wanted you to--to see--well, to see what he wasn't well enough to see--or something like that." She paused. The captain was embarrassed. He certainly felt guilty and he also felt as if he looked so. "Why--why, Miss Berry," he stammered, "I hope you--you mustn't think----" She waved his protestations aside. "It doesn't make a bit of difference," she said. "No matter why you came I am very glad you did. This ridiculous statuary business is just one--well, symptom, so to speak. If it wasn't that, it might be something else. It comes, you see, from my position here--which really isn't any position at all--and their position, Elvira Snowden's and the rest. They pay a certain sum to get here in the first place and a small sum each year. There is the trouble. They think they pay for board and lodging and are guests. Of course what they pay amounts to almost nothing, but they don't realize that, or don't want to, and they expect to have their own way. Mother is--well, she is nervous and high strung and she hates scenes. They take advantage of her, some of them--no doubt they don't consider it that, but it seems to me so--and so I have been obliged to take charge, in a way. They don't understand that and resent it. I don't know that I blame them much. Perhaps I should resent it if I were in their place. Only.... But never mind that now. "This is only one of a good many differences of opinion we have had," she went on. "In the old days--and not older than a year ago, for that matter--if the differences were too acute I used to go to Judge Knowles. He always settled everything, finally and sensibly. But now, since he has been so sick, I--well, I simply can't go to him. He has been very kind to us, to mother and me, and I am very fond of him. He was a great friend of my father's and I think he likes me for father's sake. And now I will not trouble him in his sickness with my troubles--I will _not_." She raised her head as she said it and Captain Sears, regarding her, was again acutely conscious of the fact that it was a very fine head indeed. "I understand," he said. "Yes, I knew you would. And I know I could fight this out by myself. And shall, of course. But, nevertheless, I am glad you were here as--well, as a witness, if it ever comes to that. You heard what Elvira--Miss Snowden--said about appealing to those higher up. I suppose she means Mrs. Phillips, the one who founded the Harbor. If they should write to her I---- What is it, Esther?" Mrs. Tidditt had rushed into the room, bristling. She waved her arms excitedly. "'Lizbeth, 'Lizbeth," she whispered, "they're goin' to tell him. They're makin' up the yarn now that they're goin' to tell him." "Tell him? Tell who?" "Judge Knowles. They've decided to go right straight over to the judge's house and--and do what they call appeal to him about them images. Elviry she's goin', and Susanna, and Desire Peasley, too, for what I know. What do you want me to do? Ain't there any way I can help stop 'em?" For the first time in that distressing forenoon Captain Kendrick saw Miss Berry's nerve shaken. She clasped her hands. "Oh dear!" she cried. "Oh, dear, that is the very thing they mustn't do! I wouldn't have Judge Knowles worried or troubled about this for the world. I have kept everything from him. He is _so_ ill! If those women go to him and---- Oh, but they mustn't, they mustn't! I can't let them." Mrs. Tidditt, diminutive but combative, offered a suggestion. "Do you want me to go out and stop 'em?" she demanded. "I'll go and stand in the kitchen doorway, if you want me to. They won't get by if I'm there, not in a hurry, anyway." "Oh no, no, Esther, of course not." "I tell you what I'll do. I'll go and tell Emmeline not to let 'em in the judge's house. She's my cousin and she'll do what I ask--sometimes--if I don't ask much." "No, that wouldn't do any good, any permanent good. But they must not go to the judge. They must not. He has been so kind and forbearing and he is so very sick. The doctor told me that he.... They shan't go. They can say anything they please to me, but they shan't torment him." She started toward the door through which Mrs. Tidditt had entered. At the threshold she paused for an instant and turned. "Please excuse me, Cap'n Kendrick," she said. "I almost forgot that you were here. I think I wouldn't wait if I were you. There will be another scene and I'm sure you have had scenes enough. I have, too, but.... Oh, well, it will be all right, I'm sure. Please don't wait. Thank you for calling." She turned again but the captain stopped her. As she faced him there in the doorway their eyes had met. Hers were moist--for the first time she was close to the breaking point--and there was a look in them which caused him to forget everything except one, namely, that the crowd in the "parrot cage" at the other end of that hall should not trouble her further. It was very seldom that Captain Sears Kendrick, master mariner, acted solely on impulse. But he did so now. "Stop," he cried. "Miss Elizabeth, don't go. Stay where you are.... Here--you--" turning to Mrs. Tidditt. "You go and tell those folks I want to see 'em. Tell 'em to come aft here--now." There was a different note in his voice, a note neither Elizabeth nor the Tidditt woman had before heard. Yet if Judah Cahoon had been present he would have recognized it. He had heard it many times, aboard many tall ships, upon many seas. It was the captain's quarter-deck voice and it meant business. Mrs. Tidditt and Elizabeth had not heard it, and they looked at the speaker in surprise. Captain Sears looked at them, but not for long. "Lively," he commanded. "Do you hear? Go for'ard and tell that crew in the galley, or the fo'castle, or wherever they are, to lay aft here. I've got somethin' to say to 'em." It was seldom that Esther Tidditt was at a loss for words. As a usual thing her stock was unlimited. Now she merely gasped. "You--you--" she stammered. "You want me to ask--to ask Elviry and Susanna and them to come in here?" "Ask? Who said anything about askin'? I want you to tell 'em I say for them to come here. It's an order, and you can tell 'em so, if you want to." Mrs. Tidditt gasped again. "Well!" she exclaimed. "Well, my good lordy, if this ain't---- A-ll right, _I'll_ tell 'em." She hastened down the corridor. Elizabeth ventured a faint protest. "But, Cap'n Kendrick--" she began. He stopped her. "It is all right, Miss Elizabeth," he said. "I'm handlin' this matter now. All you've got to do is look on.... Well, are they comin' or must I go after 'em?" Apparently he had forgotten that his lameness made going anywhere a slow proceeding. As a matter of fact he had. He had forgotten everything except the business of the moment and the joy of being once more in supreme command. The message borne by Mrs. Tidditt had, presumably, been delivered. The messenger had left the dining room door open and through it came a tremendous rattle of tongues. Obviously the captain's order had created a sensation. Elizabeth listened. "Well?" repeated Sears, again. "Are they goin' to come?" Miss Berry smiled faintly. "I think they will come," she answered. "If they are as--as curious as I am they will." They were. At any rate they came. Miss Snowden, Mrs. Brackett and Mrs. Chase in the lead, the others following. Mrs. Tidditt brought up the rear, marshaling the stragglers, as it were. Elvira was, of course, the spokeswoman. She was the incarnation of dignified and somewhat resentful surprise. "We have been told," she began, loftily, "we have been _told_, Cap'n Kendrick, that you wished to speak to us. We can't imagine why, but we have came--come, I should say. _Do_ you wish to speak to us?" Kendrick nodded. "Yes," he said crisply, "I do. I want to tell you that you mustn't go to Judge Knowles about buyin' those iron statues of Cap'n Seth's or about anything else. He is sick and mustn't be worried. Miss Berry says so, and I agree with her." He paused From the committee came a gasp, or concert of gasps and muttered exclamations, indicating astonishment. Elvira voiced the feeling. "You agree with her!" she exclaimed. "_You_ agree? Why--I never did!" "Yes. And I agree with her, too, about buyin' those--er--lions and dogs and--hogs, or whatever they are. I don't say they aren't worth seventy-five dollars or more--or less--I don't know. But I do say that, until I have had time to look into things aboard here, I don't want any money spent except for stores and other necessities. There isn't a bit of personal feelin' in this, you must understand, it is business, that's all." He paused once more, to let this sink in. It sank apparently and when it again came to the surface an outburst of incoherent indignation came with it. Every committee-woman said something, even Mrs. Chase, although her observations were demands to know what was being said by the rest. Elizabeth was the only one who remained silent. She was gazing, wide-eyed, at the captain, and upon her face was a strange expression, an expression of eagerness, dawning understanding, and--yes, of hope. Miss Snowden was so completely taken aback that she was incapable of connected speech. Mrs. Susanna Brackett, however, was of a temperament less easily upset. She stepped forward. "Cap'n Kendrick," she demanded, "what are you talkin' about? What right have you got to say how the Fair Harbor money shall be spent? What are you interferin' here for I'd like to know?" "I'm not interferin'. I'm taking charge, that's all. "Takin' _charge_?... My land of love!... Charge of what?" "Of this craft here, this Fair Harbor place. Judge Knowles offered me the general management of it three days ago." Even the Brackett temperament was not proof against such a shock. Susanna herself found difficulty in speaking. "You--you--" she sputtered. "My soul to heavens! Do you mean---- Are you crazy?" "Um--maybe. But, anyhow, crazy or not, I'm in command aboard here from now on. Miss Elizabeth here--and her mother, of course--will be captain and mate, same as they've always been, but I'll be--well, commodore or admiral, whichever you like to call it. It's a queer sort of a job for a man like me," he added, with a grim smile, "but it looks as if it was what we'd all have to get used to." For a moment there was silence, absolute silence, in the best parlor of the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women. Then that silence was broken. "What is he sayin'?" wailed Mrs. Aurora Chase. "Elviry Snowden, why don't you tell me what he's a-sayin'?" CHAPTER VII The bomb had burst, the debris had fallen, the smoke had to some extent cleared, the committee, still incoherent but by no means speechless, had retired to the dining room to talk it over. Mrs. Tidditt had accompanied them; and Sears Kendrick and Elizabeth Berry were saying good-by at the front door. "Well," observed the captain, dubiously, "I'm glad you don't think I'm more than nine tenths idiot. It's some comfort to know you can see one tenth of common-sense in the thing. It's more than I can, and that's honest. I give you my word, Miss Elizabeth, when I set sail from Judah's back entry this mornin' I hadn't any more idea that I should undertake the job of handlin' the Fair Harbor than--well, than that Snowden woman had of kissin' that little spitfire that was flyin' up in her face every minute or two while she was tryin' to read that paper.... Ha-ha! that was awfully funny." Elizabeth smiled. "It was," she agreed. "And it looks so much funnier to me now than it did then, thanks to you, Cap'n Kendrick. You have taken a great load off my mind." "Um--yes, and taken it on my own, I shouldn't wonder. I do hope you'll make it clear to your mother that all I intend doin' is to keep a sort of weather eye on money matters, that's all. She is to have just the same ratin' aboard here that she has always had--and so will you, of course." "But I haven't had any real rating, you know. And now I will be more of a fifth wheel than ever. You and mother can manage the Harbor. You won't need me at all. I can take a vacation, can't I? Won't that be wonderful!" He looked at her in unfeigned alarm. "Here, here!" he exclaimed. "Lay to! Come up into the wind! Don't talk that way, Miss Berry, or I'll jump over the rail before I've really climbed aboard this craft. I'm countin' on you to do three thirds of the work, just as I guess you've been doin' for a good while. All I shall be good for--if anything--is to be a sort of reef in the channel, as you might say, something for committees like this one to run their bows on if they get too far off the course." "And that will be the most useful thing any one can do, Cap'n Kendrick. Oh, I shall thank Judge Knowles--in my mind--so many, many times a day for sending you here, I know I shall. I guessed, when he told me you were going to call, that there was something behind that call. And there was. What a wise old dear he is, bless him." "Is he? Well I wish I was surer of the wisdom in trappin' me into takin' this command. However, I have taken it, so I'll have to do the best I can for a while, anyhow. Afterwards--well, probably I won't last _but_ a little while, so we won't worry about more than that. And you'll have to stand by the wheel, Miss Elizabeth. If it hadn't been for you--I mean for the way that committee lit into you--I don't think I should ever have taken charge." "I know. And I sha'n't forget. You may count on me, Cap'n Kendrick, for anything I can do to help." His face brightened. "Good!" he exclaimed. "That's as good as an insurance policy on the ship and cargo. With you to pilot and me to handle the crew she ought to keep somewhere in deep water.... Well, I'll be gettin' back to port. Judah's dinner will be gettin' cold and he won't like that. And to-morrow mornin' I'll come again and we'll have a look at the figures." "Yes. I'll have the books and bills and everything ready.... Oh, be careful! Can't I help you down the step?" He shook his head. "I can navigate after a fashion," he said, grimly. "I get along about as graceful as a brick sloop in a head tide, but, by the Lord Harry, I'll get along somehow.... No, don't, please. I'd rather you didn't help me, if you don't mind." Slowly, painfully, and with infinite care he lowered himself down the step. On level ground once more, leaning heavily on his cane, he turned to her and smiled a somewhat shame-faced apology. "It's silly, I know," he said, panting a little, "but I've always been used to doin' about as I pleased and it--somehow it plagues me to think I can't go it alone still. Just stubborn foolishness." She shook her head. "No, it isn't," she said, quickly. "I understand. And I do hope you will be better soon. Of course you will." "Will I?... Well, maybe. Good mornin', Miss Berry. Be sure and tell your mother she's to be just as much cap'n as she ever was." He hobbled along the walk to the gate. As he passed beneath the sign he looked back. She was still standing in the doorway and when he limped in at the entrance of the General Minot place she was there yet, watching him. He said no word to Judah of his acceptance of the post of commander of the Fair Harbor. He felt that Judge Knowles should be the first to know of it and that he, himself, should be the one to tell him. So, after dinner was over, and Judah had harnessed the old horse to go to the Minot wood lot for a load of pine boughs and brush for kindling, he asked his ex-cook to take him across to the judge's in the wagon, leave him there, and come for him later. Mr. Cahoon, of course, was delighted to be of service but, of course also, he was tremendously curious. "Hum," he observed, "goin' to see the judge again, be you, Cap'n Sears?" "Yes." "Hum.... Ain't heard that he's any sicker, nor nothin' like that, have you?" "No." "I see.... Yus, yus.... Just goin' to make a--er--sort of--what you might call a--er--a call, I presume likely." "I shouldn't wonder." "Um-hm.... I see.... Yus, yus, I see.... Um-hm.... Well, I suppose we might as well--er--start now as any time, eh?" "Better, I should say, Judah. Whenever you and the Foam Flake are ready, I am." The Foam Flake was the name with which Judah had rechristened the old horse. The animal's name up to the time of the rechristening had been Pet, but this, Mr. Cahoon explained, he could _not_ stand. "'Whatever else he is,' says I to young Minot, 'he ain't no pet--not of mine. The only way I ever feel like pettin' that oat barrel,' I says, 'is with a rope's end.' 'Well, why don't you give him a new name?' says he. 'What'll I call him?' says I. 'Anything you can think of,' he says. 'By Henry,' says I. 'I have called him about everything I can think of, already.' Haw, haw! That was a pretty good one, wan't it Cap'n Sears?" "But where did you get 'Foam Flake' from?" the captain had wanted to know. "Oh, it just come to me, as you might say, same as them things do come sometimes. I was tellin' the Methodist minister about it one day and he said 'twas a--er--one of them--er--inflammations. Eh? Don't seem as if it could have been 'inflammation,' but 'twas somethin' like it." "Inspiration, maybe." "That's the ticket, inspiration's what 'twas. Well, I was kind of draggin' a seine through my head, so to speak, tryin' to haul aboard a likely name for the critter, and fetchin' the net in empty every time, when one day that--er--what-d'ye-call-it?--inflammation landed on me. I'd piloted 'Pet' and the truck wagon over to Harniss--and worked my passage every foot of the way--and over there to Brett's store I met Luther Wixon, who was home from a v'yage to the West Indies. Lute and me had been to sea together half a dozen times, and we got kind of swappin' yarns about the vessels we'd been in. "'Have you heard about the old _Foam Flake_?' says Lute. 'She was wrecked on the Jersey coast off Barnegat,' he says, 'and now they've made a barge out of her hull and she's freightin' hay in New York harbor,' he says. "Well, sir, I hauled off and fetched the broadside of my leg a slap you could have heard to Jericho. 'By the creepin', jumpin',' says I. 'I've got it!' 'Yes,' he says, 'you act as if you had. But what do you take for it?' 'I wouldn't take a dollar note for it right now,' I told him. And I wouldn't have, nuther. The old _Foam Flake_--maybe you remember her, Cap'n Sears--was the dumdest, lop-sidedest, crankiest old white tub of a bark that ever carried sail. When I was aboard of her she wouldn't steer fit to eat, always wanted to go to port when you tried to put her to starboard, walloped and slopped along awkward as a cow, was the slowest thing afloat, and all she was ever really fit for was what they are usin' her for now, and that was to stow hay in. If that wan't that old horse of Minot's all over then I hope I'll never smoke a five-cent cigar again. 'You ain't "Pet" no more,' says I to the critter; 'your name's "Foam Flake!"' Haw, haw! See now, don't you, Cap'n Sears?" Foam Flake and the truck-wagon landed the captain at the Knowles gate and, a few minutes later, Kendrick was, rather shamefacedly, announcing to the judge his acceptance of the superintendency of the Fair Harbor. The invalid, as grimly sardonic and indomitable as ever, chuckled between spasms of pain and weakness. "Good! Good!" he exclaimed. "I thought you wouldn't say no if you once saw how things were over there. Congratulations on your good sense, Kendrick." Sears shook his head. "Don't be any more sarcastic than you can help, Judge," he said. "No sarcasm about it. If you hadn't stepped in to help that girl I should have known you didn't have any sense at all. By the way, I didn't praise her too highly when we talked before, did I? She is considerable of a girl, Elizabeth Berry, eh, Cap'n?" The captain nodded. "She is," he admitted. "And she was so confoundedly plucky, and she stood up against that crowd of--of----" "Mariners' women. Yes. Ho, ho! I should like to have been there." "I am glad you wasn't. But when I saw how she stood up to them, and then when her mother----" "Yes. Um ... yes, I know. Isaac Berry was my friend and his daughter is a fine girl. We'll remember that when we talk about the family, Kendrick.... Whew! Well, I feel better. With you and Elizabeth to handle matters over there, Lobelia's trust will be in good hands. Now I can go to the cemetery in comfort." He chuckled as if the prospect was humorous. Captain Sears spoke quickly and without considering exactly how the words sounded. "Indeed you can't," he protested. "Judge Knowles, I'm goin' to need you about every minute of every day from now on." "Nonsense! You won't need me but a little while, fortunately. And--for that little while, probably--I shall be here and at your disposal. Come in whenever you want to talk matters over. If the doctor or that damned housekeeper try to stop you, hit 'em over the head. Much obliged to you, Cap'n Kendrick. He, he! We'll give friend Egbert a shock when he comes to town.... Oh, he'll come. Some of these days he'll come. Be ready for him, Kendrick, be ready for him." That evening the captain told Judah of his new position and Judah's reception of the news was not encouraging. Somehow Sears felt that, with the voice of Judah Cahoon was, in this case, speaking the opinion of Bayport. Judah had been scrubbing the frying-pan. He dropped it in the sink with a tremendous clatter. "_No!_" he shouted. "You're jokin', ain't you, Cap'n Sears?" "It's no joke, Judah." "My creepin' Henry! You can't mean it. You ain't really, honest to godfreys, cal'latin' to pilot that--that Fair Harbor craft, be you?" "I am, Judah. Wish me luck." "Wish you _luck_! Jumpin', creepin', crawlin', hoppin'---- Why, there ain't no luck _in_ it. That ain't no man's job, Cap'n Sears. That's a woman's job, and even a woman'd have her hands full. Why, Cap'n, they'll--that crew of--of old hens in there they'll pick your eyes out." "Oh, I guess not, Judah. I've handled crews before." "Yes--yes, you have--men crews aboard ship. But this ain't no men crew, this is a woman crew. You can't lam _this_ crew over the head with no handspike. When one of those fo'mast hands gives you back talk you can't knock _her_ into the scuppers. All you can do is just stand and take it and wait for your chance to say somethin'. And you won't _git_ no chance. What chance'll you have along with Elviry Snowden and Desire Peasley and them? Talk! Why, jumpin' Henry, Cap'n Sears, any one of them Shanghais in there can talk more in a minute than the average man could in a hour. Any one of 'em! Take that Susanna Brackett now. Oh, I've heard about _her_! She had a half-brother one time. Where is he now? Ah ha! Where is he? Nobody knows, that's where he is. Him and her used to live together. Folks that lived next door used to hear her tongue a-goin' at him all hours day or night. Wan't no 'watch and watch' in that house--no sir-ee! She stood _all_ the watches. She----" "There, there, Judah. I guess I can stand the talk. If it gets too bad I'll put cotton in my ears." "Huh! Cotton! Cotton won't do no good. Have to solder your ears up like--like a leaky tea-kittle, if you wanted to keep from hearin' Susanna Brackett's clack. Why, that brother of hers--Ebenezer Samuels, seems to me his name was. Seems to me they told me that Susanna's name was Samuels afore she married Brackett. Maybe twan't Samuels. Seems to me, now I think of it, as if 'twas Schwartz. Yet it don't hardly seem as if it could be, does it? I guess likely I'm gettin' him mixed with a feller name of Samuel Schwartz that I knew on South Street in New York one time. Run a pawn shop, he did. I remember _that_ Schwartz 'cause he used to _take_ stuff, you know--er--er--same as a Chinaman. One of them oakum eaters, that s what he was--an oakum eater. Why one time he----" Sears never did learn what happened to Mrs. Brackett's brother. Judah's reminiscent fancy, once started, wandered far and wide, and in this case it forgot entirely to return to the missing Samuels--or Schwartz. But Mr. Cahoon expressed himself freely on the subject of his beloved ex-captain and present lodger taking charge of the establishment next door. Sears' explanations and excuses bore little weight. Time and time again that evening Mr. Cahoon would come out of a dismal reverie to exclaim: "Skipper of the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women! You! Cap'n Sears Kendrick, skipper of _that_ craft! Don't seem possible, somehow, does it?" "Look here Judah," the captain at last said, in desperation, "if you feel so almighty bad about it, perhaps you won't want me here. I can move, you know." Judah turned a horrified face in his direction. "Move!" he repeated "_Don't_ talk so, Cap'n Sears. That's the one comfort I see in the whole business. Livin' right next door to 'em the way you and me do, you can always run into port here if the weather gets too squally over yonder. Yes, sir there'll always be a snug harbor under my lee when the Fair Harbor's too rugged. Eh? Ha, ha!" Just before retiring Sears said, "There's just one thing I want you to do, Judah. You may feel--as I know you do feel--that my takin' this job is a foolish thing. But don't you let any one else know you feel that way." Judah snorted. "Don't you worry, Cap'n Sears," he said. "If any one of them sea lawyers down to Bassett's store gets to heavin' sass at me about your takin' the hellum at the Harbor I'll shut their hatches for 'em. I'll tell 'em the old judge and Lobelia was ondecided between you and Gen'ral Grant for the job, but finally they picked you. Don't mistake me now, Cap'n. Your goin' over there is the best thing for the--the henroost that ever was or ever will be. It's you I'm thinkin' about. It ain't--well, by the crawlin' prophets, 'tain't the kind of berth you've been used to. Now is it, Cap'n Sears?" Kendrick smiled, a one-sided smile. "Maybe not, Judah," he admitted. "It is a queer berth, but it's a berth, and, unless these legs of mine get well a lot quicker than I think they will, I may be mighty thankful to have any berth at all." He told his sister this when she called to learn if the rumor she had heard was true. She shook her head. "Perhaps it is all right, Sears," she said. "I suppose you know best. But, somehow, I--well, I hate to think of your doin' it." "I know. You're proud, Sarah. Well, I used to be proud too, before the ship-chandlery business and the Old Colony railroad dismasted me and left me high and dry." She put a hand on his arm. "Don't, Sears," she pleaded. "You know why I hate to have you do it. It don't seem--it don't seem--you know what I mean." "A man's job. I know. Judah said the same thing. I took Judge Knowles' offer because it seemed the only way I could earn my salt. If I didn't take it you and Joel might have had a poor relation to board and lodge. And you've got enough on your hands already, Sarah." She sighed. "Of course I knew that was why you took it," she said. Yet, even as he said it, he realized that the statement was not the whole truth. The fifteen hundred a year salary had tempted him, but if he had not gone to the Fair Harbor on that forenoon and seen Elizabeth Berry brave the committee and her mother, it is extremely doubtful if he would have yielded. In all probability he would have declined the judge's offer and have risked the prospect of the almost hopeless future, for a time longer at least. But, having accepted, he characteristically cast doubts, misgivings and might-have-beens over the side, as he had cast wreckage over the rails of his ships after storms, and, while Bayport buzzed with gossip and criticism and surmise concerning him, took up his new duties and went ahead with them. The morning following that of his dramatic scene with the committee he limped to the door of the Fair Harbor and, for the first time, entered that door as general manager. He anticipated, and dreaded, a perhaps painful and surely embarrassing scene with Mrs. Berry, but was pleasantly disappointed. Elizabeth, true to her promise, had evidently broken the news to her mother and, also, had reconciled the matron to her partial deposing. Mrs. Berry was, of course, a trifle martyrlike, a little aggrieved, but on the whole resigned. "I presume, Captain Kendrick," she said, "that I should have expected something of the sort. Dear 'Belia is abroad and Judge Knowles is ill, and, from what I hear, his mind is not what it was." Sears, repressing a smile, agreed that that might be the case. "But, of course, Mrs. Berry," he explained, "I did not take the position with the least idea of interferin' with you. You will be--er--er--well, just what you have been here, you know. I've shipped to help you and the judge and Miss Elizabeth in any way I can, that's all." With the situation thus diplomatically explained Mrs. Berry brightened, restored her handkerchief to her pocket--in the '70's ladies' gowns had pockets--and announced that she was sure that she and the captain would get on charmingly together. "And, after all, Captain Kendrick," she gushed, "a man's advice is so often _so_ necessary in business, you know, and all that. Just as a woman's advice helps a man at times. Why, Captain Berry--my dear husband--used to say that without my advice he would have been absolutely at sea, yes, absolutely." According to Bayport gossip, as related by Judah, Captain Isaac Berry had been, literally, during the latter part of his life, absolutely at sea as much as he possibly could. "And mighty thankful to be there, too," so Mr. Cahoon was wont to add. Elizabeth heard a portion of Sears interview with her mother, but she made no comment upon it, to him at least. When he announced his intention of interviewing Miss Snowden, however, she was greatly surprised and said so. "You want to speak with Elvira, Cap'n Kendrick?" she repeated. "You do, really? Do you--of course I am not interfering, please don't think I am--but do you think it a--a wise thing to do, just now?" The captain nodded. "Why, yes, I do," he said. "Oh, it's all right, Miss Elizabeth, I'm not goin' to start any rows. You wouldn't think it to look at me, probably, but I've got an idea in my head and I'm goin' to try it out on this Elvira." It was some time before he was able to catch Miss Snowden alone, but at last he did and, as it happened, in that same summer-house, the Eyrie, where he had first seen her. The interview began, on her part, as frostily as a February morning in Greenland, but ended like a balmy evening in Florida. The day following he laid his plans to meet and speak with Mrs. Brackett and the militant Susanna thereafter became as peaceful, so far as he was concerned, as a dovecote in spring. Elizabeth Berry, noticing these changes, and surmising their cause, regarded him with something like awe. "Really, Cap'n Kendrick," she said, "I'm beginning to be a little afraid of you. When you first spoke of interviewing Elvira Snowden alone I--well, I was strongly tempted to send for the constable. I didn't know what might happen. She was saying--so Esther Tidditt told me--the most dreadful things about you and I was frightened for your safety. And Mrs. Brackett was just as savage. And now--why, Elvira this very morning told me, herself, that she considered your taking the management here a blessing. I believe she did call it a blessing in disguise, but that doesn't make any real difference. And Susanna--three days ago--was calling upon all our--guests here to threaten to leave in a body, as a protest against the giving over of the management of their own Harbor to a--excuse me--man like you. I don't know she meant by that, but it is what she said. And now----" "Just a minute, Miss Elizabeth. Called me a man, did she? Well, comin' from her that's a compliment, in a way. She ought to know she's the nearest thing, herself, to a man that I've about ever seen in skirts. But that's nothin'. What interests me is that idea of all the crew aboard here threatenin' to leave. They could, I suppose, if they wanted to same as anybody aboard a ship could jump overboard. But in both cases the question would be the same, wouldn't it? Where would they go to after they left?" Miss Berry smiled. "They have no idea of leaving," she said. "But they like to think--or pretend to think--that they could if they wanted to and that the Fair Harbor would go to rack and ruin if they did. It comes, you see, of to paying that hundred dollars a year. That, to their mind--and I imagine Mrs. Phillips had it in her mind too, when she planned this place--prevents it being a 'home' in the ordinary sense of the word. But Susanna's threatening to leave amounts to nothing. What I am so much interested in is to know how you changed her attitude and Elvira's from war to peace? How did you do it, Cap'n Kendrick?" The captain's left eyelid drooped. He smiled. "Well," he said, slowly, "I tell you. I've sailed in all sorts of weather and I've come to the conclusion that when you're in a rough sea the first thing to do, if you can, is to smooth it down. If you can't--why, then fight it. The best treatment I know for a rough sea is to sling a barrel of oil over the bows. It's surprisin' what a little bit of oil will do to make things smoother for a vessel. It's always worth tryin', anyway, and that's how I felt in this case of Elvira and Susanna. When I started to beat up into their neighborhood I had a barrel of oil slung over both my port and starboard bows. I give you my word, Miss Elizabeth, I was the oiliest craft afloat in these waters, I do believe." His smile broadened. Elizabeth smiled too, but her smile was a bit uncertain. "I--I _think_ I understand you, Cap'n Kendrick," she said. "But I'm not quite sure. How did you---- Would you mind being just a little more clear? Won't you explain a little more fully?" "Surely. Easiest thing in the world. Take Sister Snowden. I cast anchor under her lee--and 'twas like tyin' up to an iceberg at first. Ha, ha!--and I began by sayin' that I had been waitin' for a chance to speak with her alone. There were a few things I wanted to explain, I said. I told her that of course I realized she was not like the average, common run of females here in the Harbor. I knew that so far as brains and refinement and--er--beauty were concerned she was far, far ahead, had all the rest of 'em hull down, so to speak." "Cap'n Kendrick, you didn't!" "Eh! Well, maybe I left out the 'beauty,' but otherwise than that I told her just that thing. The ice began to melt a little and when I went on to say that I realized how much the success of the Fair Harbor depended on her sense and brains and so on she was obliged to give in that she agreed with me. It was what she had thought all the time, you see; so when I told her I thought so too, we began to get on a common fishin' ground, so to speak. And the more I hinted at how wonderful I thought she was the smarter she began to think _I_ was. It ended in a sort of understandin' between us. I am to do the best I can as skipper here and she is to help along in the fo'castle, as you might say. When I need any of her suggestions I'm to go and ask her for 'em. And we aren't either of us goin' to tell the rest of the crew--or passengers, or whatever you call 'em--a word. When she and I separated there was a puddle of oil all around that Eyrie place, but there wasn't a breaker in sight. Ha, ha! Oh, dear!" He laughed aloud. Miss Berry laughed, too, but she still seemed somewhat puzzled. "But, Cap'n Kendrick," she said, "you're not going to ask for her suggestions, are you?" "Only when I need 'em. The agreement was that I was to ask when I needed 'em. I have a pretty strong feelin' that I shan't need 'em much." "But it was her idea, the buying of that ridiculous statuary." "Yes, I know. We talked about that. I told her that I was sure the iron menagerie that belonged to her uncle, or whoever it was, would have made this place look as lovely as the Public Garden in Boston. I said you and your mother thought so, too, but that the trouble was we couldn't afford 'em at present. If ever another collection hove in sight that we could afford, I'd let her know. But, whatever happened, she must always feel that I was dependin' on her. She said she was glad to know that and that I _could_ depend on her. So it'll be fair weather in her latitude for a while." "And Susanna--Mrs. Brackett? What did you say to her?" "Oh, exactly what I said to Elvira. I can depend on her, too, she said so. And I can have _her_ advice--when I need it. The main thing, Miss Elizabeth, was, it seemed to me, to smooth down the rough water until I could learn a little of my new job, at least enough to be of some help to you. Because it is plain enough that if this Fair Harbor is to keep afloat and on an even keel, you will keep it so--just as you have been keepin' it for the last couple of years. I called myself the admiral here the other day, when I was talkin' to that committee. I realize that all I really am, or ever will be, is a sort of mate to you, Miss Elizabeth. And a good deal of a lubber even at that, I am afraid." The lubber mate was, at least, a diligent student. Each morning found him hobbling to the door of the Fair Harbor--the side door now, not the stately and seldom-used front door--and in the room which Cordelia Berry called her "study" he and Elizabeth studied the books and accounts of the institution. These were in good condition, surprisingly good condition, and he of course realized that that condition was due to the capability and care of the young woman herself. Mrs. Berry professed a complete knowledge of everything pertaining to the Fair Harbor, but in reality her knowledge was very superficial. In certain situations she was of real help. When callers came during hours when Elizabeth and Sears were busy Cordelia received and entertained them and was in her element while doing so. At dinner--on one or two occasions the captain dined at the Harbor instead of limping back to Judah's kitchen--she presided at the long table and was the very pattern of the perfect hostess. A stranger, happening in by chance, might have thought her the owner of palaces and plantations, graciously dispensing hospitality to those less favored. As an ornament--upon the few occasions when the Fair Harbor required social ornamentation--Cordelia Berry left little to be desired. But when it came--as it usually did come--to the plain duties of housekeeping and managing, she left much. And that much was, so Sears Kendrick discovered, left to the willing and able hands of her daughter. As, under Elizabeth's guidance, Captain Sears plodded through the books and accounts, he was increasingly impressed with one thing, which was how very close to the wind, to use his own seafaring habit of thought and expression, the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women was obliged to sail. The income from the fifty thousand dollar endowment fund was small, the seven hundred dollars paid yearly by the guests helped but a little, and expenses, even when pared down as closely as they had been, seemed large in comparison. Mrs. Berry's salary as matron was certainly not a big one and Elizabeth drew no salary at all. He spoke to her about it. "Don't they pay you any wages for all the work you do here?" he queried. She shook her head. "Of course not," she replied. "How could they? Where would the money come from?" "But--why, confound it, you run the whole craft. It isn't fair that you should do it for nothin'." "I do it to help mother. Her salary as matron here is practically all she has. She needs me. And, of course, the Fair Harbor is our home, just as it is Elvira's and Esther Tidditt's, and the rest." He glanced at her quickly to see if there was any trace of bitterness or resentment in her expression. He had detected none in her voice. But she was, apparently, not resentful, not as resentful as he, for that matter. "Yes," he said, and if he had paused to think he would not have said it, "it is your home now, but it isn't goin' to be always, is it? You're not plannin' to stay here and help your mother for the rest of your life?" She did not reply at once, when she did the tone was decisive and final. "I shall stay as long as I am needed," she said. "Here are the bills for the last month, Cap'n Kendrick." That evening the captain employed Judah and the Foam Flake to carry him to and from Judge Knowles'. The call was a very brief one. Sears had determined to trouble the judge as little as was humanly possible. "Judge," he said, coming to the point at once, "I've been lookin' over the books and runnin' expenses of that Harbor place and for the life of me I can't see how it can carry another cent and keep afloat. As it is, that Berry girl ought to draw at least a hundred a month, and she doesn't get a penny." Knowles nodded. "I know it," he agreed. "But you say yourself that the Fair Harbor can't spare another cent. How could we pay her?" "I don't know. And what I don't know a whole lot more is how I'm goin' to be paid fifteen hundred a year. Where's that comin' from; can you tell me?" From the bed--the invalid was in bed most of the time now--came a characteristic chuckle. "He, he, he," laughed the judge. "So you've got on far enough to wonder about that, eh?" "I certainly have. And I want to say right here that----" "Hold on! Hold on, Kendrick! Don't be a fool. And don't make the mistake of thinkin' I'm one, either. I may have let you guess that the Fair Harbor was to pay your salary. It isn't because it can't. _I'm_ paying it and I'm going to pay it--while I'm alive and after I'm dead. You're my substitute and so long as you keep that job you'll get your pay. It's all arranged for, so don't argue." "But, Judge, why----" "Shut up. I want to do it and I can afford to do it. Let a dead man have a little fun, can't you. You'll earn your money, I tell you. And when that Egbert comes I'll get the worth of mine--dead or alive, I'll get it. Now go home and let me alone, I'm tired." But Sears still hesitated. "That's all right, Judge," he said. "You've got the right to spend your own money, I presume likely, so I won't say a word; although I may have my own opinion as to your judgment in spendin' it. But there's one more thing I can't quite get over. Here am I, about third mate's helper aboard that Harbor craft, bein' paid fifteen hundred a year, and that girl--as fine, capable, sensible--er--er--nice girl as ever lived, I do believe--workin' her head off and runnin' the whole ship, as you might say, and bein' paid nothin' at all. It isn't right. It isn't square. I won't stand it. I'll heave up my commission and you pay her the fifteen hundred. _She_ earns it." Silence. Then another slow chuckle from the bed. "Humph!" grunted Judge Knowles. "'Fine, capable, sensible, nice--' Getting pretty enthusiastic, aren't you, Kendrick? He, he, he!" Taken by surprise, and suddenly aware that he had spoken very emphatically, the captain blushed, and felt, himself a fool for so doing. "Why--I--I--" he stammered, then laughed, and declared stoutly, "I don't care if I am. That girl deserves all the praise anybody's got aboard. She's a wonder, that's what she is. And she isn't bein' treated right." The answer was of a kind quite unexpected. "Well," rasped the judge, "who said she was?" "Eh? What----" "Who said she was? Not I. Don't you suppose I know what Elizabeth Berry is worth to Lobelia Seymour's idiot shop over yonder? And what she gets--or doesn't get? And didn't I tell you that her father was my best friend? Then.... Oh, well! Kendrick, you go back to your job. And don't you fret about that girl. What she doesn't get now she.... Humph! Clear out, and don't worry me any more. Good night." So the captain departed. In a way his mind was more at rest. He was nearer to being reconciled to the fifteen hundred a year now that he knew it was not to come from the funds of the Fair Harbor. Judge Knowles was reputed to be rich. If he chose to pay a salary to gratify a whim--why, let him. He, Kendrick, would do his best to earn that salary. But, nevertheless, he did not intend to let Elizabeth Berry remain under any misapprehension as to where the salary was coming from. He would tell her the next time they met. A new thought occurred to him. Why not tell her then--that very evening? It was not late, only about nine o'clock. "Judah," he said, "I've got to run in to the Harbor a minute. Drive me around to the side door, will you? And then wait there for me, that's a good fellow." So, leaving the Foam Flake and its pilot to doze comfortably in the soft silence of the summer evening, Sears--after Judah had, as was his custom, lifted him down from the wagon seat and handed him his cane--plodded to the side door of the Harbor and knocked. Mrs. Brackett answered the knock. "Why, how d'ye do, Cap'n Kendrick?" she said, graciously. "Come right in. We wasn't expectin' you. You don't very often call evenin's. Come right in. I guess you know everybody here." He did, of course, for the group in the back sitting room was made up of the regular guests. He shook hands with them all, including Miss Snowden, who greeted him with queenly condescension, and little Mrs. Tidditt, who jerked his arm up and down as if it was a pump handle, and affirmed that she was glad to see him, adding, as an after thought, "Even if I did see you afore to-day." "Now you are just in time, Cap'n Kendrick," said Miss Elvira. "We are going to have our usual little 'sing' before we go to bed. Desire--Miss Peasley--plays the melodeon for us and we sing a few selections, sacred selections usually, it is our evening custom. Do join us, Cap'n Kendrick. We should love to have you." The captain thanked them, but declined. He had run in only for a moment, he said, a matter of business, and must not stop. "Besides, I shouldn't be any help," he added. "I can't sing a note." Miss Snowden would have uttered some genteel protest, but Mrs. Tidditt spoke first. "Humph! _That_ won't make any difference," she announced. "Neither can any of the rest of us--not the right notes." Possibly Elvira, or Susanna, might have retorted. The former looked as if she were about to, but Mrs. Aurora Chase came forward. "And it wasn't more'n ha'f past six neither," she declared with conviction. Just why or when it was half past six, or what had happened at that time, or what fragment of conversation Aurora's impaired hearing had caught which led her to think this happening was being discussed, the captain was destined never to learn. For at that instant Miss Berry came into the room, entering from the hall. "Who is it?" she asked. "Why, good evening, Cap'n Kendrick." She was what two thirds of Bayport would have called "dressed up." That is to say, she was wearing a simple afternoon gown instead of the workaday garb in which he had been accustomed to seeing her. It was becoming, even at the first glance he was sure of that. "Good evening, Cap'n Kendrick," she said, again. "I wasn't expecting you this evening. Is anything the matter?" "Oh no, no! I just ran over for a minute. I--um--yes, that's all." He scarcely knew how to explain his errand. He had referred to it as a matter of business, but it was scarcely that. And he could not explain it at all in the presence of the guests, each one so obviously eager to have him do so. "I just ran in," he repeated. She looked a little puzzled, and it seemed to him that she hesitated, momentarily. Then-- "Won't you come into the parlor?" she asked. Was it the captain's imagination, or did Elvira and Susanna and Desire and the rest--except Aurora, of course, who had not heard--cast significant looks at each other? It seemed to him that they did, but why? A moment later he understood. "Come right in, Cap'n," she urged. "George is here, but you know him, of course." They had walked the length of the hall and were almost at the door when she made this announcement. He paused. "George?" he repeated. "Why, yes, George Kent. But that doesn't make a bit of difference. Come in." "But, Miss Elizabeth, I didn't realize you had company. I----" "No, no. Stop, Cap'n Kendrick. George isn't company. He is--just George. Come in." So he went in and George Kent, tall and boyish and good looking, rose to shake hands. He appeared very much at home in that parlor, more so than Sears Kendrick did just then. The latter knew young Kent well, of course, had met him first at Sarah Macomber's and had, during his slow convalescence there, learned to like him. They had not seen much of each other since the captain became Judah Cahoon's lodger, although Kent had dropped in once for a short call. But Sears had not expected to find him there, that evening, in the best parlor of the Fair Harbor. There was every reason why he should have expected it. Judah had told him that George was a regular visitor and had more than hinted at the reason. But, in the whirl of interest caused by his acceptance of his new position and the added interest of his daily labors with Elizabeth, the captain had forgotten about everything and every one else, Kent included. But there he was, young, broad-shouldered, handsome, optimistic, buoyant. And there, too, was Elizabeth, also young, and pretty and gayly chatty and vivacious. And there, too, was he, Sears Kendrick, no longer young, even in the actual count of years, and feeling at least twice that count--there he was, a cripple, a derelict. His call was very brief. The contrast between himself and those two young people was too great, and, to him, at least, too painful. He did not, of course, mention the errand which had brought him there. He could tell Elizabeth the facts concerning the payment of his wages at some other time. He gave some more or less plausible reason for his running in, and, at the end of fifteen minutes or so, ran out. Kent shook hands with him at parting and declared that he was going to call at the Minot place at an early date. "We've all missed you there at the Macombers', Cap'n," he said. "Your sister says it doesn't seem like the same place. And I agree with her, it doesn't. I'm coming to see you within a day or two, sure. May I?" Sears said of course he might, and tried to make his tone cordial, but the attempt was not too successful. Elizabeth accompanied him to the side door. This meant a return trip through the back sitting room, where, judging by the groans of the melodeon and the accompanying vocal wails, the "sing" had been under way for some minutes. But, when Captain Sears and Miss Berry entered the room, there was absolute silence. Something had stopped the sing, had stopped it completely and judging by the facial expressions of the majority of those present, painfully. Miss Snowden sat erect in her chair, frigidly, icily, disgustedly erect. Beside her Mrs. Brackett sat, scorn and mental nausea plain upon her countenance. Every one looked angry and disgusted except Mrs. Chase, who was eagerly whispering questions to her next neighbor, and Mrs. Tidditt, who was grinning broadly. Elizabeth looked in astonishment at the group. "Why what is it?" she asked. "What is the matter?" Several began speaking, but Miss Elvira raised a silencing hand. "We were having our sing," she said. "I say 'we _were_'. We are not now, because," her eyes turned to and dwelt upon the puzzled face of Captain Sears Kendrick, "we were interrupted." "Interrupted?" Elizabeth repeated the word. "Interrupted was what I said. And _such_ interruptions! Captain Kendrick, I presume you are not responsible for the--ahem--_manners_ of your--ahem--friend, or landlord, or cook or whatever he may be, but whoever _is_ responsible for them should be.... But there, listen for yourself." Warned by the raised Snowden hand, every one, including the captain and Elizabeth, listened. And, from the yard without so loud that the words were plainly understandable although the windows were closed and locked, came the voice of Judah Cahoon, uplifted in song. "'Whisky is the life of man, Whisky, Johnny! Whisky from an old tin can, Whisky for my Johnny! "'I drink whisky and my wife drinks gin, Whisky, Johnny! The way we drink 'em is a sin, Whisky for my Johnny!'" The singer paused, momentarily, and Elvira spoke. "Of course," she said, "I make no comment upon the lack of common politeness shown by interrupting our evening sing by such--ah--_noises_ as that. But when one considers the morals of the person who chooses such low, disgraceful----" "'I had a girl, her name was Lize, Whisky, Johnny! She put whisky in her pies, Whisky for my Johnny!'" Captain Sears hobbled, as fast as his weak legs would permit, to the door. He flung it open. "'Whisky stole my brains away, Whisky, Johnny! Just one more pull and then belay, Whisky for----'" "Judah! _Judah!_" "Eh? Aye, aye, Cap'n Sears. What is it?" "Shut up!" "Eh? Oh! Aye, aye, Cap'n." He swung his former skipper to the seat of the truck-wagon. The captain spoke but little during the short trip home. What he did say, however, was to the point. "Judah," he ordered, "the next time you sing anywhere within speakin'-trumpet distance of that Fair Harbor place, don't you dare sing anything but psalms." "Eh? But which?" "Never mind. What in everlastin' blazes do you mean by sittin' up aloft here and bellowin' about--rum and women?" "Hold on, now, Cap'n Sears! Ho-ld on! That wan't no rum and woman song, that was the old 'Whisky, Johnny' chantey. Why, I've heard that song aboard your own vessels mo-ore times, Cap'n Sears. Why----" "All right. But don't let me ever hear it sung near the Fair Harbor again. If you must sing, when you're over there sing--oh, sing the doxology." Judah did not speak for a minute or two. Then he stirred rebelliously. "What's that?" asked the captain. "What are you mumblin' about?" "Eh? I wan't mumblin'. I was just sayin' I didn't have much time to learn new-fangled songs, that's all.... Whoa, you--you walrus! Don't you know enough to come up into the wind when you git to your moorin's?" As his boarder took his lamp from the kitchen table, preparatory to going to his room, Mr. Cahoon spoke again. "George Kent was over there, wan't he?" he observed. "Eh? Oh ... yes." "Um-hm. I cal-lated he would be. This is his night--one of 'em. Comes twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, they tell me, and then heaves in a Sunday every little spell, for good measure. Gettin' to be kind of settled thing between them two, so all hands are cal'latin'.... Hey? Turnin' in already, be you, Cap'n? Well, good night." Sears Kendrick found it hard to fall asleep that night. He tossed and tumbled and thought and thought and thought. At intervals he cursed himself for a fool and resolved to think no more, along those lines at least, but to forget the foolishness and get the rest he needed. And each time he was snatched back from the brink of that rest by a vision of George Kent, tall, young, good-looking, vigorous, with all the world, its opportunities and rewards, before him, and of himself almost on the verge of middle age, a legless, worthless, hopeless piece of wreckage. He liked Kent, George was a fine young fellow, he had fancied him when they first met. Every one liked him and prophesied his success in life and in the legal profession. Then why in heaven's name shouldn't he call twice a week at the Fair Harbor if he wished to? He should, of course. That was logic, but logic has so little to do with these matters, and, having arrived at the logical conclusion, Captain Sears Kendrick found himself still fiercely resenting that conclusion, envying young Kent his youth and his hopes and his future, and as stubbornly rebellious against destiny as at the beginning. Nevertheless--and he swore it more than once before that wretched night was over--no one but he should know of that envy and rebellion, least of all the cause of it. From then on he would, he vowed, take especial pains to be nice to George Kent and to help or befriend him in every possible way. CHAPTER VIII It was Kent himself who put this vow to the test. He called at the Minot place the very next evening. It was early, only seven o'clock; Judah, having begged permission to serve an early supper because it was "lodge night," had departed for Liberty Hall, where the local branch of the Odd Fellows met; and Sears Kendrick was sitting on the settee in the back yard, beneath the locust tree, smoking. Kent came swinging in at the gate and again the captain felt that twinge of envy and rebellion against fate as he saw the active figure come striding toward him. But, and doubly so because of that very twinge, his welcome was brimming with cordiality. Kent explained that his call must be a brief one, as he must hurry back to his room at the Macombers' to study. It was part of his agreement with Eliphalet Bassett that his duties as bookkeeper at the latter's store should end at six o'clock each night. Sears asked how he was getting on with his law study. He replied that he seemed to be getting on pretty well, but missed Judge Knowles' help and advice very much indeed. "I read with Lawyer Bradley over at Harniss now," he said. "Go over two evenings a week, Mondays and Thursdays. The other evenings--most of them--I put in by myself, digging away at _Smith on Torts_ and _Chitty on Bills_, and stuff of that kind. I suppose that sounds like pretty dull music to you, Cap'n Kendrick." The captain shook his head. "I don't know about the music part," he observed. "It's a tune I never could learn to play--or sing, either, I'm sure of that. But you miss the judge's help, do you?" "Miss it like blazes. He could do more in five minutes to make me see a point than Bradley can in an hour. Bradley's a pretty good lawyer, as the average run of small lawyers go, but Judge Knowles is away above the average. Bradley will hem and haw and 'rather think' this and 'it would seem as if' that, but the judge will say a hundred words, and two of 'em swear words, and there is the answer, complete, plain and demonstrated. I do like Judge Knowles. I only hope he likes me half as well." They discussed the judge, his illness and the pity of it. This led to a brief talk concerning Sears' hurt and his condition. Kent seemed to consider the latter much improved. "Your sister says so, too," he declared. "I heard her telling Macomber yesterday at dinner that she thought you looked and acted very much more like a well man than when you left our house. And your legs must be better, too, Cap'n. I'm sure you get around easier than you did." The captain shrugged. "I get around," he said, "but that's about all you can say. Whether I'll ever.... But there, what's the use of talkin' about my split timbers? Tell me some of the Bayport news. Now that it seems to be settled I'm goin' to tie up here for a good while I ought to know somethin' about my fellow citizens, hadn't I? What is goin' on?" There was not very much going on, so Kent said. Captain Lorenzo Taylor's ship was due in New York almost any week or day now, and then the captain would, of course, come home for a short visit. Mrs. Captain Elkanah Wingate had a new silk dress, and, as it was the second silk gown within a year, there was much talk at sewing circle and at the store concerning it and Captain Elkanah's money. One of Captain Orrin Eldridge's children was ill with scarlet fever. The young people of the Universalist society were going to give some amateur theatricals at the Town Hall some time in August, and the minister at the Orthodox meeting-house had already preached a sermon upon the sin of theater going. "There," concluded George Kent, with another laugh. "That's about all the local excitement, Cap'n. It won't keep you awake to-night, I hope." Sears smiled. "Guess I'll drop off in spite of it," he observed. "But it is kind of interestin', too, some of it. Hope Cap'n Lorenzo makes a good voyage home. He's in the _Belle of the Ocean_, isn't he? Um-hm. Well, she's a good able vessel and Lorenzo's a great hand to carry sail, so, give him good weather, he'll bring her home flyin'. So the Universalists have been behavin' scandalous, have they? Dear, dear! But what can you expect of folks so wicked they don't believe in hell? Humph! I mustn't talk that way. I forgot that you were a Universalist yourself, George." Kent smiled. "Oh, I'm as wicked as anybody you can think of," he declared. "Why, I'm going to take a part in those amateur theatricals, myself." "Are you? My, my! You'll be goin' to dancin'-school next, and then you _will_ be bound for that place you don't believe in. When is this show of yours comin' off? I'd like to see it, and shall, if Judah and the Foam Flake will undertake to get me to the Town Hall and back." "I think we'll give it the second week in August. We had a great argument trying to pick a play. For a long time we were undecided between 'Sylvia's Soldier' or 'Down by the Sea' or 'Among the Breakers.' At last we decided on 'Down by the Sea.' It's quite new, been out only four or five years, and it rather fits our company. Did you ever see it, Cap'n?" "No, I never did. I've been out _on_ the sea so much in my life that when I got ashore I generally picked out the shows that hadn't anything to do with it--'Hamlet,' or 'Lydia Thompson's British Blondes,' or somethin' like that," with a wink. Then he added, more soberly, "The old salt water looks mighty good to me now, though. Strange how you don't want a thing you can have and long for it when you can't.... But I'm not supposed to preach a sermon, at least I haven't heard anybody ask me to. What's your part in this--what d'ye call it?--'Out on the Beach,' George?" "'Down by the Sea.' Oh, I'm 'March Gale,' and when I was a baby I was cast ashore from a wreck." "Humph! When you were a baby. Started your seafarin' early, I should say. Who else is in it?" "Oh, Frank Crosby, he is 'Sept Gale,' my brother--only he isn't my brother. And John Carleton--the schoolteacher, you know--he is 'Raymond,' the city man; he's good, too. And Sam Ryder, and Erastus Snow. There was one part--'John Gale,' an old fisherman chap, we couldn't seem to think of any one who could, or would, play it. But at last we did, and who do you think it was? Joel Macomber, your sister's husband." "What? Joel Macomber--on the stage! Oh, come now, George!" "It's a fact. And he's good, too. Some one told one of us that Macomber had done some amateur acting when he was young, and, in desperation, we asked him to try this part. And he is good. You would be surprised, Cap'n Kendrick." "Um-hm, I am now. I certainly am. What sort of a part is it Joel's got? What does this--er--Gale do; anything but blow?" "Why--why, he doesn't really do much, that's a fact. He is supposed to be a fisherman, as I said, but--well, about all he does in the play is to come on and off and talk a good deal, and scold at Frank and me--his sons, you know--and fuss at his wife and----" Captain Sears held up his hand. "That's enough, George," he interrupted. "That'll do. Don't do much of anything, talks a lot, and finds fault with other folks. No wonder Joel Macomber can act that part. He ought to be as natural as life in it. Aren't there any womenfolks in this play, though? I don't see how much could happen without them aboard." "Oh, yes, of course there are women. Three of them. Mrs. Cora Bassett, Eliphalet's brother's wife, she is 'Mrs. Gale,' my mother, only she turns out not to be; and Fannie Wingate, she is the rich city girl; and Elizabeth. That makes the three." "Yes, yes, so it does. But which Elizabeth are you talkin' about?" "Why, Elizabeth Berry. My--our Elizabeth, over here at the Fair Harbor." The quick change from "my" to "our" was so quick as to be almost imperceptible, but the captain noticed it. He looked up and Kent, catching his eye, colored slightly. Sears noticed the color, also, but his tone, when he spoke, was quite casual. "Oh," he said. "So Elizabeth's in it, too, is she? Well, well! What part does she take?" "She's 'Kitty Gale,' my sweetheart." "You don't say. She's good, I'll bet." "Wonderful!" Kent's enthusiasm was unrestrained. "You wouldn't believe any untrained girl could act as she does. She might have been born for the part, honestly she might." "Um-hm.... Well, maybe she was." "Eh? I beg your pardon." "Nothin', nothin'. I'll have to see that play, even if the Foam Flake founders and Judah has to carry me there pig-back. And how are you gettin' on in it yourself? You haven't told me that." "Oh, I'm doing well enough. Trying hard, at least. But, Cap'n Sears, you should see Elizabeth. She is splendid. But she is a wonderful girl, anyway. Don't you think she is?" "Yes." "You couldn't help thinking so. No one could. Why----" The remainder of the conversation was, for the most part, a chant, sung as a solo by George Kent, and having as its subject, the wonders of Miss Berry. Captain Sears joined occasionally in the chorus, and smiled cordial and complete agreement. His caller was charmed. "I've had a bully good time, Cap'n," he declared, at parting. "I came intending to stay only a few minutes and I've been here an hour and a half. You are one of the most interesting talkers I ever heard in my life, if you don't mind my saying so." Sears, whose contributions to the latter half of the conversation had been about one word in twenty, laughed. "I'm afraid you haven't heard many good talkers," he said. "Oh, yes, I have. But there are precious few of them in this town. It does a fellow good to know a man like you, who has been everywhere and met so many people and done so many things worth while. And, you and I agree so on almost every point. I don't know whether you noticed it or not, but our opinions seemed so exactly alike. It's remarkable, I think. I like you, Cap'n Kendrick; you don't mind my saying so, do you?" "Oh, not a bit, not a bit. Glad of it, of course." "Yes. I liked you down there at your sister's, but you were so sick I didn't have the chance to know you as well as I wanted to. But I had seen enough of you to know I should like you a lot when I knew you better. And Elizabeth, she was sure I would." "Oh, she was, eh?" "Yes. Oh, yes. She likes you very much. We talk about you almost every time I call--I mean when we are together, you know. Well, good-by. I'm coming for another talk--and soon, too. May I?" "Hope you do, son. Come aboard any day. The gangplank is always down for you." Which was all right, except that as Sears watched his caller swinging buoyantly to the gate, the same unreasonable twinge came back to him, bringing with it the keen sense of depression and discouragement, the realization of his approaching middle age and his crippled condition. It did not last long, he would not permit it to linger, but it was acute while it lasted. He heard a great deal concerning the approaching production of "Down by the Sea" as the weeks passed and the time for that production drew nearer. As he and Elizabeth worked and took counsel together concerning the affairs of the Fair Harbor they spoke of it. She was enjoying the rehearsals hugely and the captain gathered that they furnished the opportunity for change of thought and relaxation which she had greatly needed. They spoke of George Kent, also; Sears saw to that. He brought the young man's name into their conversation at frequent intervals and took pains to praise him highly and to declare repeatedly his liking for him. All part of his own self-imposed penance, of course. And Elizabeth seemed to enjoy these conversations and agreed with him that George was "a nice boy" and likely to succeed in life. "I'm so glad you like him, Cap'n Kendrick," she said. "He likes you so much and is so sure that you are a wise man." Sears turned to look at her. "Sure that I'm what?" he demanded. "A wise man. He says that, next to Judge Knowles, he had rather have your opinion than any one else in Bayport." The captain shook his head. "Dear, dear!" he sighed. "And just as I had come to the conclusion that George was so smart. Me a wise man? _Me!_ Tut, tut! George, you disappoint me." But she would not be turned aside in that way. "There is no reason for disappointment that I can see," she said. "I think he is quite right. You _are_ a wise man, Cap'n Kendrick. Of course I know you must be or Judge Knowles would not have selected you to take charge here. But since you and I have been working together I have found it out for myself. In fact I don't see how we ever got along--mother and I--before you came. And we didn't get on very well, that is a fact," she added, with a rueful smile. "Rubbish! You got on wonderfully. And as for the worth of my opinions--well, you ask Northern Lights what she thinks of 'em. She'll tell you, I'll bet." "Northern Lights" was Captain Sears's pet name for Mrs. Aurora Chase. Elizabeth asked why Aurora should hold his opinions lightly. The captain chuckled. "Well," he explained, "she asked me yesterday what I thought of the Orthodox minister's sermons about the Universalist folks play-actin'. I said I hadn't heard 'em first hand, but that I understood they were hot. I thought she sailed off with her nose pretty well aloft, but I couldn't see why. To-day Esther Tidditt told me that she had understood me to say the sermons were 'rot.' That's what comes of bein' hard of hearin'. Ho, ho! But truth will out, won't it?" The afternoon preceding the evening when "Down by the Sea" was to be publicly presented upon the stage of the town hall was overcast and cloudy. Judah, with one eye upon the barometer swinging in its gimbals in the General Minot front entry, had gloomily prophesied rain. Captain Sears, although inwardly agreeing with the prophecy, outwardly maintained an obstinate optimism. "I don't care if the glass is down so low that the mercury sticks out of the bottom and hits the deck," he declared. "It isn't goin' to rain to-night, Judah. You mark my words." "I'm a-markin' 'em, Cap'n Sears. I'm a-markin' of 'em. But what's the use of words alongside of a fallin' glass like that? And, besides, ain't I been watchin' the sky all the afternoon? Look how it's smurrin' up over to the west'ard. Look at them mare's tails streakin' out up aloft. 'Mack'rel skies and mares' tails Make lofty ships to douse their sails.' You know that's well's I do, Cap'n Sears." "Yes, yes, so I do, Judah. But do you know this one? 'Hi, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon.' What have you got to say to that, eh?" Judah stared at him. His chin quivered. "Wh--wh--" he stammered. "What have I got to say to that? Why, I ain't got nawthin' to say to it. There ain't no sense to it. That's Mother Goose talk, that's all that is, What's that got to do with the weather?" "It would have somethin' to do with it if a cow jumped over the moon, wouldn't it?" "Eh? But---- Oh, creepin' prophets, Cap'n Sears, what's the use of you and me wastin' our breath over such foolishness? You're just bein' funny, that's all." His expression changed, and he smiled broadly. "Why, by Henry," he declared, "I ain't heard you talk that way afore since you shipped aboard this General Minot craft along of me. That's the way you used to poke fun at me aboard the old _Wild Ranger_ when we was makin' port after a good v'yage. What's happened to spruce you up so? Doctor ain't told you any special good news about them legs of yours, has he, Cap'n? Limpin' Moses, I wisht that was it." Sears shook his head. "No, Judah," he replied. "No such luck as that. It's just my natural foolishness, I guess. And I'm goin' to the theater to-night, too, all by myself. Think of it. Do you wonder I feel like a boy in his first pair of long trousers?" Mr. Cahoon's whisker-framed face expressed doubt and foreboding. "I ain't sure yit that I'm doin' right in lettin' you pilot yourself down to that town hall," he declared. "It ain't that I'm scart of the horse runnin' away, or nothin' like that, you understand, but----" His lodger burst into a roar of laughter. "Runnin' away!" he repeated. "Judah, foam flakes drift away pretty often and sometimes they blow away, but I never saw one run away yet. And if this Foam Flake of yours ever started to run I should die of surprise before anything else could happen to me. Don't worry about me. You'll be here to help me aboard the buggy, when I'm ready to leave port, and there'll be plenty of folks at the hall to help me out of it when I get there. So I'll be all right and to spare." "Um--well, maybe so. But it seems to me like takin' risks just the same. Now, Cap'n Sears, why don't you let me drive you down, same as I always do drive you? What makes you so sot on goin' alone?" The captain did not answer for a moment. Then he said, "Judah, for a good many long weeks--yes, and months--I've been havin' somebody drive me or steer me or order me. To-night, by the Lord A'mighty, _I'm_ goin' to drive and give my own orders." "But the doctor----" "The doctor doesn't know. And if you tell him I'll--well, you'll need him, that's all. Every dog has its day, Judah, and this is my night." "But it's goin' to rain and----" "It isn't.... And, if it does, haven't you and I seen enough water not to be afraid of it?" "Salt water--yes; but----" "There aren't any buts. That'll do, Judah. Go for'ard." So Mr. Cahoon, obeying orders, went for'ard; that is, he went into the kitchen, and Sears Kendrick was left upon the seat beneath the locust tree to smoke and cast rebellious glances at the deepening gloom of the sky. He had not been entirely truthful in his replies to his landlord's questions. Although he scarcely dared admit it, even to himself, his damaged legs were better than they had been. Doctor Sheldon told him that they were and seemed more hopeful after each examination. And he knew that the doctor's hope was not mere pretending, something assumed but not felt. Yes, he knew it. And, for the first time since the accident which wrecked the Old Colony train and his own life, he began to think that, perhaps--some day, perhaps--he might again be a man, a whole, able-bodied man among men. When he submitted this thought to the cold light of reason, it was transparent and faint enough, but it was there, and it was one cause of his high spirits. And there was another, a cause which was even less worthy of reason--which was perfectly childish and absurd but not the less real on that account. It was connected with his stubborn determination to be his own pilot to the hall that evening. He had, when he first determined to risk the trip in that way, refused to permit Judah to accompany him because he knew, if he did, that the latter would be a sort of safety valve, a life preserver--to mix similes--the real driver who would be on hand to take charge if necessary. Under such circumstances his own responsibility ceased to be a responsibility and his self-reliance _nil_. No, sink or swim, survive or perish, he would make the voyage alone. So, although there was plenty of room on the buggy seat, he stubbornly refused to permit Judah to sit there. Mr. Cahoon was going to the play, of course--the entire constabulary force of Ostable County could not have prevented his doing so--but he was to walk, not ride behind the Foam Flake. And Captain Sears Kendrick was supposed to be riding alone. Yet he was not to ride alone, although only one person, and that not Judah Cahoon, knew of that fact. The day before, while he and Miss Berry were busy, as usual, with the finances and managerial duties of the Fair Harbor, she had happened to mention that there were some stage properties, bits of costumes, and the like, which must be gotten early to the hall on the evening of the performance and he had offered to have Judah deliver them for her. Now he told her of his intention of driving the Foam Flake unassisted and that he would deliver them himself. "Or any other light dunnage you might want taken down there," he added. "Glad to, no trouble at all." She looked at him rather oddly he thought. "You are going all alone?" she asked. "Um-hm. All alone. I'm goin' to have my own way this time in spite of the Old Harry--and the doctor--and Judah." "And you are sure there will be plenty of room?" "What? With only me in the buggy? Yes, indeed. Room enough for two sea chests and a pork barrel, as old Cap'n Bangs Paine used to say when I sailed with him. Room and to spare." "Room enough for--me?" "For you? Why, do you mean----" "I mean that if there _is_ room I should like to ride down with you very much. I want to get to the hall early and I have these things to carry. Mother and the rest of the Harbor people are going later, of course.... So, if you are sure that I and my bundles won't be nuisances----" He was sure, emphatically and enthusiastically sure. But his surprise was great and he voiced it involuntarily. "I supposed, of course," he said, "that your passage was booked long ago. I supposed George had attended to that." Her answer was brief, but there was an air of finality about it which headed off further questions. "I am not going with him," she said. So this was his second cause for good spirits, the fact that Elizabeth Berry was to ride with him to the hall that evening. It was a very slight inconsequential reason surely, but somehow he found it sufficient. She was going with him merely because he and the Foam Flake and the buggy furnished the most convenient method of transportation for her and her packages, but she was going--and she was not going with George Kent. There was a certain wicked pleasure in the last thought. He was ashamed of it, but the pleasure was there in spite of the shame. Kent had so much that he had not, but here was one little grain of advantage to enter upon the Kendrick side of the ledger; Elizabeth Berry was not going to the town hall with Kent, but with him. He made but one protest and that only because his conscience goaded him into making it. "I don't know as I ought to let you, Miss Elizabeth," he said. "I'm takin' a chance, I suppose, that perhaps you shouldn't take. This is my first voyage under my own command since I ran on the rocks. I may strike another reef, you can't tell." She looked at him and smiled. "I am not afraid," she said. So, in spite of the gathering clouds and the falling barometer, Captain Sears was cheerful as he smoked beneath the locust tree. After a time he rose and limped down to the gate. Doctor Sheldon's equipage was standing by the Knowles hitching post just beyond across the road. The doctor himself came out of the house and the captain hailed him. "How is the judge?" he asked. Doctor Sheldon shook his head. "No better," he replied. "He is weaker every day and last week he had an attack that was so severe I was afraid it was the end. He weathered it, though." "Why, yes. I saw him on Sunday and he was as full of jokes and spunk as ever, seemed to me. His voice wasn't quite as strong, that's all. He is a great man, Judge Knowles. Bayport will miss him tremendously when he goes. So shall I, for that matter, and I haven't known him very long." "We'll all miss him." "There isn't a chance, I suppose? In the long run----" The doctor's look caused him to stop the sentence in the middle. "There isn't any question of long runs," said Sheldon, gravely. "The next one of these seizures will end it. He has been a great fighter and he never gives up; that is why he is here. But the fight is practically over. The next attack will be the last." Sears was deeply concerned. "Dear, dear," he said. "I didn't realize it was quite so bad. And that attack may come--next month, or even next week, I presume likely?" "Yes." The captain's good spirits were dashed for the time. His regard and admiration for the old judge had grown steadily during their brief acquaintance. He pictured the rugged, determined face as he had seen it Sunday, and heard again the voice, weak but drily humorous or indomitably pugnacious. It did not seem as if a spirit like that could be so near surrender. Doctor Sheldon must be over apprehensive. It was but seven o'clock when he drove the Foam Flake up to the side door of the Fair Harbor and his passenger stowed her various bundles about his feet in the bottom of the buggy and then climbed in herself. The drive to the town hall was made in good time, the Foam Flake considered, and--to the captain at any rate--it was a most pleasant excursion. There was the unaccustomed sensation of once more being free from orders or domination. There was little conversation during the drive. Sears attempted it, but his passenger was not talkative. She seemed to be thinking of something else and her answers were brief and absent-minded. Nevertheless Sears Kendrick enjoyed their drive and was almost sorry when the Foam Flake halted, snorting, or sneezing, violently, by the hall platform. The building was as yet but dimly lighted and Asaph Tidditt, the janitor, was the only person about. Asaph, hearing the Foam Flake's sneeze, came to the door. "Well, I swan!" he exclaimed. "Is that you, 'Liz'beth? You're good and early, ain't you? Evenin', George. Why, 'tain't George. Who is it? Well, well, well, Cap'n Sears, this _is_ a surprise!" He helped the captain from the buggy and, at Sears' request, led the Foam Flake around the corner to the hitching rail. When he returned Miss Berry had gone upstairs to the dressing-room to leave her packages. Asaph was still surprised. "Mighty glad to see you out again, Cap'n," he declared. "I heard you was better, but I didn't hardly cal'late to see you takin' your girl to ride so soon. Hey? He, he, he!" Sears-laughed long enough to seem polite. Asaph laughed longer. "And 'tain't _your_ girl you're takin' nuther, is it?" he said. "When I looked in that buggy just now I don't know when I've been more sot back. 'Evenin', George,' says I. And 'twan't George Kent at all, 'twas you. Ain't been to work and cut George out, have you, Cap'n Sears? He, he, he! That's another good one, ain't it!" The captain smiled--more politeness--and inquired if he and Miss Berry were the first ones at the hall. "Is any one else here?" he asked. "Yus," said Mr. Tidditt. "Who?" "Me. He, he, he! Kind of caught you that time, didn't I, Cap'n? Wasn't expectin' that, was you? Except me, you and 'Liz'beth's the fust ones. Be plenty more in half an hour, though. 'Bout all hands in Bayport's comin' to this time, everybody but the Orthodox and the Methodists and the Come-Outers. They cal'late goin' to a play-actin' time is same as goin' to Tophet. I tell 'em I'd ruther go to the show, 'cause I'd have a little fun out of it, and from what I hear there ain't much fun in t'other place. He, he, he! But say, how'd it happen George Kent ever let 'Liz'beth Berry go anywheres without him? Where _is_ George?" Sears was rather glad when the arrival of Sam Ryder and Carleton, two other members of the cast of "Down by the Sea" attracted the attention of the garrulous Asaph and led the latter, in their company, upstairs. A moment or so later another figure approached from the blackness to the circle of light cast by the big ship's lantern over the hall door. "Why, hello, George!" hailed Sears. Young Kent looked up, recognized the speaker and said "Good evening." He did not seem surprised as Mr. Tidditt had been to find the captain there. The latter remarked upon it. "Why, George," he observed, "I must say you take my bein' here all alone pretty calmly. Ase Tidditt all but capsized when he saw me bring the Foam Flake into dock." Kent nodded. "I knew you were here," he said. "Elizabeth came down with you, I suppose." "Why, yes. Did she tell you she was goin' to risk life and limb aboard my vessel?" "No," briefly. "Oh. Then how did you know?" "I stopped at the Harbor. Her mother said she had gone with you.... Where is she; upstairs?" "Up in the dressin' room, I guess. She had to come so early because there were things to bring and some work for her to do before you and the others got here, she said." "What? Did she say before _I_ got here?" "Eh? Why, no, didn't mention you in particular. She just said----" Kent interrupted. "I see," he said, shortly. "All right, never mind." He was walking toward the other end of the platform. His manner was so very peculiar that Sears could not help noticing it. He looked after him in perplexity. "Here ... George!" he called. Kent turned and came back, rather reluctantly it seemed. The older man looked at him keenly. "George," he asked, "what's the matter with you?" "Matter? With me?" "Yes, with you. You're short as Aunt Nabby's pie crust. Have I done anything you don't like? If I have I'll apologize before I know what it is. It wasn't done on purpose, you can be sure of that." Kent started, colored, and was much perturbed. "I didn't realize I was short, Cap'n Kendrick," he declared. "I beg your pardon. I am mighty sorry. No--no, of course you haven't done anything I don't like. I don't believe you could." "You never can tell. But so far I haven't tried. Not sick, are you?" "No ... I'm just--oh, nothing. I'm in a little trouble, that's all. My own fault, maybe, I don't know." "Probably it is. Most of our troubles are our own fault, in one way or another. Well, if there's anything I can do to help out, just give me a hail." "Thanks. But I'm afraid there isn't." He turned and walked down the platform once more. Mrs. Captain Orrin Eldridge, who was to sell tickets, came, and, after greeting the captain cordially, went in to open and light the ticket-office at the foot of the stairs. Two more members of the cast, Erastus Snow and Mrs. Bassett, arrived and went up to prepare. Suddenly Kent, who had been standing at the farther end of the platform, came back. "Captain Kendrick," he said, "would you mind answering a question?" "Eh? Why, not a bit, George. But perhaps yours may be one of those questions I can't answer." "I think you can. Say--er--Cap'n Kendrick----" "Yes, George." "You see, I.... This sounds awfully foolish, but--but I don't know what I ought to do." "Um-hm. Well, a good many of us get that way every once in a while." "Do you?" "You bet!" "Humph! Somehow you seem to me like a man who would know exactly what to do at any time." "Yes? Well, my looks must belie me. Heave ahead, George. The folks are beginning to come." "Well, I---- Oh, hang it, Cap'n, when you've made a mistake--done something that you didn't think was wrong--that wasn't wrong, really--and--and.... Say, I'm making an awful mess of this. And it's such a fool thing, anyhow." "Um-hm. So many things are. Chuck it overboard, George; that is, if you really want to ask me about it." "I do. That is, I want to ask you this: Suppose you had done something that you thought was all right and--and somebody else had thought was wrong--would you--would you go and tell that other person that you _were_ wrong? Even if you weren't, you know." Kendrick was silent. The question was ridiculous enough, but he did not laugh, nor feel like laughing. Nor did he want to answer. "Oh, I know that it's a child's question," put in Kent, disgustedly. "Never mind answering. I am a child sometimes, feel like one, anyhow. And I've got to fight this out with myself, I suppose, so what's the use?" He turned on his heel, but the captain laid a hand on his shoulder. "George," he said, slowly, "of course, the way you put this thing makes it pretty foggy navigatin' for a stranger; but--humph!--well, in cases somethin' like yours, when I've cared anything about the--er--friendship of the other fellow, I've generally found 'twas good business to go and say I was sorry first, and then, if 'twas worth while, argue the point of who was right or wrong later. You never can do much fishin' through the ice unless somebody chops the hole." The young man was silent. He seemed to be reflecting and to find his reflections not too pleasant. Before they were at an end the first group of townspeople came up the steps. Some of them paused to greet Kendrick and at their heels was another group. The captain was chatting with them when he heard Kent's voice at his ear. "Excuse me, Cap'n," he whispered. "I'll see you by and by. I'm going to chop the ice." "Eh?... Oh, all right, George. Good luck." George hurried up the stairs. A minute or two later Captain Sears slowly limped after him and sought a secluded corner on one of the settees at the rear of the hall. There was still a full half hour before the rising of the curtain, and as yet there was but a handful of people present. He turned his face away from the handful and hoped that he might not be recognized. He did not feel like talking. His good spirits had left him. He was blue and despondent and discouraged. And for no reason--that was the worst of it--no earthly, sensible, worth while reason at all. Those two children--that is what they were, children--had quarreled and that was why Elizabeth had asked to ride to the hall with him that evening. It was not because she cared for his company; of course he knew that all the time, or would have known it if he permitted himself to reason. She had gone with him because she had quarreled with George. And that young idiot's conscience had troubled him and, thanks to his own--Kendrick's--advice, he had gone to her now to beg pardon and make up. And they would make up. Children, both of them. And they ought to make up; they should, of course. He wanted them to do so. What sort of a yellow dog in the manger would he be if he did not? He liked them both, and they were young and well--and he was--what that railway accident had made of him. The audience poured in, the settees filled, the little boys down in front kicked the rounds, and pinched each other and giggled. Mr. Asaph Tidditt importantly strode down the aisle and turned up the wicks of the kerosene foot-lamps. Mrs. Sophronia Eldridge, Captain Orrin's sister-in-law, seated herself at the piano and played the accompaniments while Mrs. Mary Pashy Foster imparted the information that she could not sing the old songs now. When she had finished, most people were inclined to believe her. The delegation from the Fair Harbor, led by Mrs. Berry and Elvira Snowden, arrived in a body. The Universalist minister and his wife came, and looked remarkably calm for a couple leading a flock of fellow humans to perdition. Captain Elkanah Wingate and Mrs. Wingate came last of all and marched majestically to the seats reserved for them by the obsequious Mr. Tidditt. The hall lights were dimmed. The curtain rose. And George Kent, very handsome and manly as "March Gale," was seen and heard, singing: "Oh, my name was Captain Kidd As I sailed, as I sailed." And these were the opening lines of the play, "Down by the Sea." That performance was a great success, everybody said so. Mr. Tidditt expressed the general opinion when he declared that all hands done about as fine as the rest but some of 'em done finer. John Carleton, the schoolteacher, shone with particular brilliancy as he delivered himself of such natural, everyday speeches as: "I have dispatched a messenger to town with the glad tidings," or "We will leave this barren spot and hie to the gay scenes of city life." And Frank Crosby, as "September Gale," the noble young fisherman, tossed the English language about as a real gale might toss what he would have called "a cockle shell," as he declared, "With a true heart and a stout arm, who cares for danger?... To be upon the sea when the winds are roaring and the waves are seething in anger; ... to have a light bark obedient to your command, braving the fury of the tempest...." Bayport was fairly well acquainted with fishermen, numbering at least thirty among its inhabitants, but no one of the thirty could talk like that. Sam Ryder's performance of "Captain Dandelion," the city exquisite, was, so the next issue of the _Item_ said, "remarkable"; there is little doubt that the _Item_ selected the right word. Joel Macomber was good, when he remembered his lines; Miss Wingate was very elegant as "a city belle"; Mrs. Bassett made a competent fisherman's wife. But everybody declared that Elizabeth Berry and George Kent, as "Kitty Gale" and "March Gale," were the two brightest stars in that night's firmament. Captain Kendrick, between the acts, could hear whispered comments all about him. "Isn't Elizabeth fine!" "Don't they do well!" "Ain't she a good-lookin' girl, now--eh?" "Yes, and, my soul and body, if that George Kent ain't a match for her then _I_ don't know!" "Oh, don't they make a lovely couple!" And, from a seat two rows in front, the penetrating voice of Mrs. Noah Baker made proclamations: "Lovers on the stage and off the stage, too, I guess. Ha, ha!" And there was a general buzz of agreement and many pleased titters. Sears tried very hard to enjoy the performance, but his thoughts would wander. And, when the final curtain fell and the applause subsided, he rose to hobble to the door, glad that the evening was over. He was one of the last to reach the landing and, at the top of the stairs, Judah met him. Mr. Cahoon's manner was a combination of dismay and triumph. "Oh, there you be, Cap'n Sears," he exclaimed. "Well, I told you! You can't say I never, that's one comfort." "Told me what, Judah?" "That 'twas goin' to rain. I told you the glass was fallin'. It's a pourin'-down rainstorm now, that's what 'tis." Judah, his faith rooted in the prophecy of the falling barometer, had come to the hall with oilskins upon his arm. Now he was arrayed in them and weather-proof. "I'll fetch the Foam Flake around to the platform, Cap'n," he said. "You'll want to wait for 'Liz'beth, I presume likely, so take your time navigatin' them stairs. No, no, I'll walk. I won't get wet. _I_ knew what was comin'. Aye, aye, sir. I'll fetch the horse. Cal'late the critter has gnawed off and swallowed two fathoms of fence by this time." The Foam Flake and the buggy were made fast by the platform when Sears reached that point. It was raining hard. The greater part of the audience had already started on their homeward journey, but a few still lingered, some lamenting the absence of umbrellas and rubbers, others awaiting the arrival of messengers who had been sent home to procure those protections. The captain, of course, was awaiting Elizabeth, and she having to change costume and get rid of make-up, he knew his wait was likely to be rather lengthy. He did not mind that so much, but he did not desire to talk or be talked to, so he walked to the dark end of the platform--the same end, by the way, where George Kent had stood when pondering his problem before asking advice--and stood there, staring into the splashy blackness. The last group left the lighted portals of the hall and started homeward, exclamations and little screams denoting spots where progress had been delayed by puddles or mud holes. Mrs. Eldridge, in the ticket office, packed up her takings, pennies and "shin-plasters," in a pasteboard box and departed for home. Mr. Tidditt accompanying her as guard and umbrella holder. "I'll be back to lock up, Cap'n Sears," called Asaph, reassuringly. "Stay right where you be. You won't be in my way at all." For some minutes longer Sears stood there alone on the platform, facing the dismal darkness and his own dismal thoughts. They were dismal, and no less so because his common-sense kept prodding him with the certainty that there was no more reason for discouragement now than there had been two hours before. The obvious offset to this was the equal certainty that there had been no more reason for optimism two hours before than at present. So he stared into the darkness, listened to the splashing waterspouts, and, for the millionth time at least, eternally condemned the Old Colony railroad and his luck. A springy, buoyant step came down the stairs. A voice called from the doorway: "Cap'n Kendrick! Cap'n, are you there?" Sears turned. "Right here, George," he said. Kent hastened toward him. His hand was outstretched and his face was beaming. "It worked," he exclaimed, eagerly. "It worked in great shape. Cap'n, you're a brick." His friend did not, momentarily, catch his meaning. "Glad you think so, George," he said; "but why are you so sure of it just now?" "Why, because if it hadn't been for you I should have, more than likely, not tried to chop the ice at all." "Chop the---- Oh, yes, yes; I remember. So you and Elizabeth have made up, eh?" "Yes, I.... How on earth did you know she was the one? I didn't tell you, did I?" "No. It's just another proof of my tremendous wisdom. Well, I'm glad, George." "I knew you would be. Mind you, I'm not sure yet I was wrong, but I---- Good Lord, look at the rain! I had no idea!... Well, at any rate, Elizabeth will be all right. She's going with you in the buggy." There was a slight, a very slight note of regret, almost of envy, in the young fellow's tone. The captain noticed it. "No, she isn't, George," he said, quietly. "What! She isn't?" "No, she's goin' with you. You take the horse and buggy and drive her up to the Harbor. Then you can send Judah back with it after me, if you will." "But, Cap'n, I wouldn't think of it. Why----" "No need to think. Do it. Look here, George, you know perfectly well you haven't finished that ice-choppin' business. There are lots of things you want to tell her yet, I know. Come now, aren't there?" Kent hesitated. "Why--why, yes, I suppose there are," he admitted. "But it seems mean to take advantage of you, you know. To leave you standing here and waiting while she and I----" "That's all right. I'm better fitted for waiting than I am for anything else nowadays. Don't argue any more. She'll be here in a minute." "Well ... well. You're sure you don't mind, really?" "Not a bit. And she'd rather ride with you, of course." "Oh, I wouldn't say that. Of course she did tell me she came with you because I--because we had that--that little row--and---- But she likes you, Cap'n. Honest, she does, a lot. By George, nobody could help liking you, you know." Sears' smile was gray, but his companion did not notice. He was too full of his own happiness. "I'll run up and tell her," he said. "It's mighty good of you, Cap'n Kendrick. Sure you don't care? You _are_ a brick." He hastened up the stairs. Sears was left once more with the black wetness to look at. It looked blacker than ever. Elizabeth, accompanied by George, came down soon afterward. She was still protesting. "Really, I don't think this is right at all, Cap'n Kendrick," she declared. "Why should you wait here? If you insist upon George's going in the buggy, why don't you come too? I'm sure there will be room enough. Won't there, George?" Kent said, "Yes, of course," but there might have been more enthusiasm in his tone. Sears spoke next. "I can't go now," he lied, calmly. "I want to see Ase Tidditt and he's gone to see Cap'n Orrin's wife home. Won't be back for twenty minutes or so. No, no, you and George heave right ahead and go, and then send Judah and the Foam Flake back for me." So, after a few more protests on Elizabeth's part, it was settled in that way. She and her packages and bags were tucked in the buggy and George unhitched the placid Foam Flake. On his way he stopped to whisper in the captain's ear. "Cap'n Kendrick," he whispered, "I shan't forget this. And, say, if ever I get into real trouble I'll know who to come to." The "plash-plash" of the Foam Flake's hoofs and the squeak and grind of buggy wheels died away along the invisible main road. Captain Sears stared at the ropes of rain laced diagonally across the lighted window of the town hall. After a time, a surprisingly short time, he heard the hoofs returning. It seemed almost incredible that George could have driven to the Harbor, then to the Minot place, and started Judah on the return trip so soon. It was not Judah. It was Mike, Judge Knowles' man, and he was driving Doctor Sheldon's horse attached to the doctor's chaise. "Cap'n Kendrick," he hailed, as the equipage splashed up to the platform, "is that you there?" "Yes, Mike. What's the matter?" "I was just after goin' to the Minot place after ye and I met Cahoon and he tould me you was down here. Git in, git in; the doctor says you must come." "Come? Come where?" "Home. To the judge's house. The ould man is dyin' and he wants to see you afore he goes. Ye'll have to hurry. The doctor says it's a matter of any time now." CHAPTER IX Sears Kendrick never forgot that drive from the town hall. The pouring rain, the lurch and roll and bounce of the old chaise, the alternate thud and splash of the horse's hoofs, the black darkness--and the errand upon which he was going. Mike told him a little concerning the seizure. Judge Knowles had been, so Emmeline Tidditt and the doctor thought, appreciably easier during the day. "He was like himself, the ould man was," said Mike. "I went in to see him this mornin'--he sent for me, you understand--and he give me the divil and all for not washin' the front room windows. 'Dom ye,' says he, 'I've only got a little while to look out of thim windows; don't you suppose I want thim so I _can_ look out of thim?' And the windows clean as clean all the time, mind ye. Sure, I didn't care: 'Twas just his way of bein' dacint to me. He give me a five dollar bill before I left, God rest him. And now----" Mike was tremendously upset. The captain learned that the attack had developed about six, and the judge had grown steadily worse since. The upper windows of the Knowles house were bright with lights as they drove in at the yard gate. Mrs. Tidditt met them at the door. Her thin, hard face was tear-streaked and haggard. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come, Cap'n Kendrick," she cried. "He's been askin' for you." In the hall at the foot of the stairs Doctor Sheldon was waiting. They shook hands and Sears looked a question. "Not a chance," whispered the doctor. "Barring miracles, he will go before morning. He shouldn't see any one, but he insisted on seeing you. I'll give you five minutes, no more. Don't excite him." The judge looked up from the pillow as Sears tiptoed into the room. His face was flushed with fever, but otherwise he looked very much as when the captain last visited him. It did not seem possible that this could really be the end. "Hello, Kendrick," whispered Judge Knowles. "Sit down. Sorry I can't shake hands with you." The voice was weak, of course, but not much weaker than when he had last heard it. No, it did not seem possible. Captain Sears murmured something about his sorrow at finding the judge ill again. "That's all right, that's all right," was the testy rejoinder. "You didn't expect to find me any other way, did you? Kendrick, I wasn't so far off when I talked about that graveyard trip, eh?... Umph--yes. How much time did Sheldon say you might have with me?... Don't fool around and waste any of it. How many minutes--come?" "Five." "Humph! He might have made it ten, blast him! Well, then listen. When I'm gone you're going to be the head of that Fair Harbor place. You're going to keep on being the head, I mean. I've fixed it so you'll get your salary." "But, Judge----" "Hush! Let me do the talking. Good Lord, man," with an attempt at a chuckle, "you wouldn't grudge me any of the little talk I have left, would you? You are to keep on being the head of the Fair Harbor--you _must_ for a year or so. And Elizabeth Berry is to be the manager and head, under you--if she wants to be. Understand?" "Why, yes. But, Judge, how----" "I've fixed it, I tell you. Wait a little while and you'll know how. But that isn't what I want to say to you. Lobelia is dead." "What?" "Don't keep asking me what. Listen. Lobelia Seymour--hanged if I'll call her Lobelia Phillips!--is dead. She died over a month ago. I got a letter this afternoon mailed in Florence by that husband of hers. There it is, on that table, by the tumbler.... Yes, that's it. Don't stop to read it now. Put it in your pocket. You will have time to read it. Time counts with me. Now listen, Kendrick." He paused and asked for water. The captain put the glass to his lips. He swallowed once or twice and then impatiently jerked his head aside. "There are two things you've got to promise me, Kendrick," he whispered, earnestly. "One is that, so long as you can fight, that condemned Egbert Phillips shan't have a cent of the Fair Harbor property, endowment fund, land or anything else. Will you fight the scamp for me, Kendrick?" "Of course. The best I know how." "You know more than most men in this town. I shouldn't have picked you for your job if you didn't. That's one thing--spike Egbert's guns. Here's the other: Look out for Elizabeth Berry." The captain was not expecting this. He leaned back so suddenly that his chair squeaked. The sick man did not notice, or, if he did, paid no attention. "She's Isaac Berry's daughter," he went on, "and Ike Berry was my best friend. More than that, she's a good girl, a fine girl. Her mother is more or less of a fool, but that isn't the girl's fault. Keep an eye on her, will you, Kendrick?" "Why--why, I'll do what I can, of course." "Like her, don't you?" "Yes. Very much." "You couldn't help it. She is pretty thick with that young Kent, I believe. He's a bright boy." "Yes." "All right.... But there's time enough for that; they're both young.... Watch her, Kendrick. See that she doesn't make too big mistakes. She--she's going to have a little money of her own pretty soon--just a little. Don't let that--that Phillips or--or anybody else get hold of it. I.... Oh, here you are! Confound you, Sheldon, you're a nuisance!" The doctor opened the door and entered. He nodded significantly to Kendrick. The latter understood. So, too, did Judge Knowles. "Time's up, eh?" he panted. "Well, all right, I suppose. Good luck to you, Kendrick. And good night." He smiled cheerfully. One might have thought he expected to see his caller the next morning. The captain simply could not believe this was to be the last time. "Good night, Judge," he said. "I'll drop in to-morrow, early." The judge did not answer. His last word had to do with other things. "Don't you forget, Kendrick," he whispered. "I've banked on you." The feeling of the absolute impossibility of the situation still remained with Sears as Mike drove him to his own door and Judah helped him down from the chaise. It was not possible that a brain like that, a bit of machinery capable of thinking so clearly and expressing itself so vigorously, could be so near its final breakdown. A personality like Judge Knowles' could not end so abruptly. He would not have it so. The doctor must be mistaken. He was over pessimistic. He sat in the rocking chair until nearly half-past one thinking of the judge's news, that Lobelia Phillips was dead, and of the charge to him. Fight Egbert--there was an element of humor in that; Knowles certainly did hate Phillips. But for him, Kendrick, to assume a sort of guardianship over the fortunes of Elizabeth Berry! The fun in that was too sardonic to be pleasant. He thought of many things before he retired, but the way ahead looked foggy enough. And behind the fog was--what? Why, little sunshine for him, in all human probability. Before blowing out his lamp he peered out of the window at the Knowles house. The lights there were still burning. The next morning when he came out for breakfast, Judah met him with a solemn face. "Bad news for Bayport this mornin', Cap'n Sears," said Judah. "Judge Knowles has gone. Slipped his cable about four o'clock, so Mike told me. There's a good man gone, by Henry! Don't seem hardly as if it could be, does it?" That was exactly what Bayport said when it heard the ill tidings. It did not seem as if it could be. The judge had been so long a dominant figure in town affairs, his strong will had so long helped to mould and lead opinion and his shrewd common sense had so often guided the community, and individuals, through safe channels and out of troubled waters, that it was hard to comprehend the fact that he would lead and guide no more. He had many enemies, no man with his determined character could avoid that, but they were altogether of a type whose enmity was, to decent people, preferable to their friendship. During his life it had seemed as if he were a lonely man, but his funeral was the largest held in Bayport since the body of Colonel Seth Foster, killed at Gettysburg, was brought home from the front for burial. It was a gloomy, drizzly day when the long line of buggies and carryalls and folk on foot followed the hearse to the cemetery amid the pines. Captain Sears, looking back at the procession, thought of the judge's many prophecies and grim jokes concerning this very journey, and he wondered--well, he wondered as most of us wonder on such occasions. Also he realized that, although their acquaintanceship had been brief, he was going to miss Judge Knowles tremendously. "I wish I had been lucky enough to know him sooner," he told Judah that evening. Judah pulled his nose reflectively. "It kind of surprised me," he observed, "to hear what the minister said about him. 'Twas the Orthodox minister, and he's pretty strict, too, but you heard him say that the judge was one of the best men in Ostable County. Yet he never went to meetin' what you'd call reg'lar and he did cuss consider'ble. He did now, didn't he, Cap'n Sears?" Sears nodded. He was thinking and paying little attention to the Cahoon moralizing. "Um-hm," went on Judah. "He sartin did. He never said 'sugar' when he meant 'damn.' But I don't know, I cal'late I'd ruther been sworn at by Judge Knowles than had a blessin' said over me by some others in these latitudes. The judge's cussin' would have been honest, anyhow. And he never put one of them swear words in the wrong place. They was always just where they belonged; even when he swore at me I always agreed with him." Feeling, somehow, that the death of the man who had chosen and employed him for the position increased his responsibility in that position, Captain Sears worked harder than ever to earn his salary as general manager of the Fair Harbor. He had already made some improvements in systematizing and thereby saving money for the institution. The groceries, flour, tea, sugar, and the rest, had heretofore been purchased at Bassett's store in the village. He still continued to buy certain articles of Eliphalet, principally from motives of policy and to retain the latter's good will, but the bulk of supplies he contracted for in Boston at the houses from which he had so often bought stores for his ships. He could not go to the city and negotiate by word of mouth, more was the pity, and so was obliged to make his trades by mail, but he got bids from several firms and the results were quite worth while. Besides groceries he bought a hogshead of corned beef, barrels of crackers, a barrel of salt pork, and, from one of the local fishermen, a half dozen kegs of salt mackerel. The saving altogether was a very appreciable amount. The Fair Harbor property included, besides the land upon which the house was situated, several acres of wood lot timbered with pine and oak. Mrs. Berry--or her daughter--had been accustomed to hire a man to cut and haul such wood as was needed, from time to time, for the stoves and fireplaces. Also, when repairs had to be done, they hired a carpenter to make them. Sears, when he got around to it, devoted some consideration to the wood and repair question and, after much haggling, affected a sort of three-cornered swap. Benijah Black, the carpenter, was a brother-in-law of Burgess Paine, who owned the local coal, wood, lumber and grain shop by the railway station. The captain arranged that Black should do whatever carpenter work might be needed at the Harbor and take his pay in wood at the wood lot, selling the wood--or a part of it--to Paine, for whom he was in debt for coal and lumber; and, also, for whom he, Black, was building a new storage shed. It was a complicated process, but it resulted in the Fair Harbor's getting its own firewood cut, hauled and split for next to nothing, its repair costs cut in half, its coal bills lessened, while Black and Paine seemed to be perfectly satisfied. Altogether it was a good deal of a managerial triumph, as even the manager himself was obliged to admit. Elizabeth was loud in her praises. "I don't see how you ever did it, Cap'n Kendrick," she declared. "And Benijah and Mr. Paine are just as contented as we are. It is a miracle." Sears grinned. "I don't know quite how I did it, myself," he said. "'Twas the most complicated piece of steerin' I ever did, and if we come out without shipwreck it _will_ be a miracle! I'm goin' to tackle that hay question next. There's hay enough on that lower meadow of ours to pay for corn for the hens for quite a spell. I'll see if I can't make a dicker there somehow. Then if I can fix up a deal with the hens to trade corn for eggs, we'll come out pretty well, won't we?" This sort of thing interested him and made him a trifle more contented with his work. His talents as a diplomat, such as they were, were needed continually. The interior of the Fair Harbor was a sort of incubator for petty squabbles, jealousies, prejudices and complaints, some funny, many ridiculous, and almost all annoying. The most petty he refused to be troubled with, bidding the complainants go to Mrs. Berry. His refusals were good-natured but determined. "Well, I tell you, Miss Peasley," he said, when that lady had come to him with a long, involved wail concerning the manner in which Mrs. Constance Cahoon, who occupied the seat next her at table, insisted on keeping the window open all through meals, "so's I sit there with a draft blowin' right down my neck the whole time." "I tell you, Miss Peasley," said the captain, "if I were you I would shut the window." "But I do shut it," declared Desire. "And every time I jump up and shut it, up she bounces and opens it again." "Humph! I see.... Well, exercise helps digestion, so they say. You can jump as long as she can bounce, can't you?" Miss Peasley was disgusted. "Well," she snapped, "I don't call that much help. I supposed if I went to the _manager_ he'd put his foot down." "He's goin' to--and then take it up and put it down again. I've got to hobble out to see to mowin' the meadow. You tell Mrs. Berry all about it." As a part of his diplomacy he made it a point to spend half an hour each morning in consultation with Cordelia Berry. The matron of the Fair Harbor was at first rather suspicious and ready to resent any intrusion upon her rights and prerogatives. But at each conference the captain listened so politely to her rambling reports, seemed to receive her suggestions so eagerly and to ask her advice upon so many points, that her suspicions were lulled and she came to accept the new superintendent's presence as a relief and a benefit. "He is so very gentlemanly, Elizabeth," she told her daughter. "And so willing to learn. At first, as you know, I couldn't see why the poor dear judge appointed him, but now I do. He realized that I needed an assistant. In many ways he reminds me of your father." "But, mother," exclaimed her daughter, in surprise, "Cap'n Kendrick isn't nearly as old as father was." "Oh it isn't the age that reminded me. It's the manner. He has the same quick, authoritative way of making decisions and saying things. And it is so very gratifying to see how he defers to my judgment and experience." Captain Sears did defer, that is he seldom opposed. But, when each conference was over, he went his own sweet way, using his own judgment and doing what seemed to him best. With Elizabeth, however, he was quite different. When she offered advice--which was seldom--he listened and almost invariably acted upon it. He was daily growing to have a higher opinion of her wisdom and capabilities. Whether or not it was the wisdom and capabilities alone which influenced that opinion he did not attempt to analyze. He enjoyed being with her and working with her, that he knew. That the constant companionship might be, for him, a risky and perhaps dangerous experience, he did not as yet realize. When he was with her, and busy with Fair Harbor affairs, he could forget the slowness with which his crippled legs were mending, and the increasing longing--sometimes approaching desperation--for the quarter deck of his own ship and the sea wind in his face. He worked hard for the Harbor and did his best to justify his appointment as manager, but, work as he might, he knew perfectly well that such labors would scarcely earn his salary. But, on the other hand, he knew that the man who appointed him had not expected them to do so. He had been put in charge of the Fair Harbor for one reason alone and that was to be in command of the ship when the redoubtable Egbert came alongside. Judge Knowles had as much as told him that very thing, and more than once. Egbert Phillips had been, evidently, the judge's pet aversion and, in his later days illness and fretfulness had magnified and intensified that aversion. When Sears attempted to find good and sufficient reasons for belief that the husband of Lobelia Seymour was any such bugbear he was baffled. He asked Judah more questions and he questioned citizens of Bayport who had known the former singing teacher before and after his marriage. Some, like Judah, declared him "slick" or "smooth." Others, and those the majority, seemed to like him. He was polite and educated and a "perfect gentleman," this was the sum of feminine opinion. Captain Sears was inclined to picture him as what he would have called a "sissy," and not much more dangerous than that. The judge's hatred, he came to believe, was an obsession, a sick man's fancy. He had, of course, read the Phillips letter, that which Judge Knowles bade him take away and read that night of his death. He hurriedly read it on that occasion before going to bed; he had reread it several times since. It was a well-written letter, there was no doubt of that, a polite letter, almost excessively so, perhaps. In fact, if Sears had been obliged to find a fault with it it would have been that it was a little too polite, a little too polished and flowery. It was not the sort of letter that he, himself, would have written under stress of grief, but he realized that it was not the sort of letter he could have written at all. Taken as a whole it was hard to pick flaws which might not be the result of prejudice, and taken sentence by sentence it stood the test almost as well. "Our life together has been so happy," wrote Phillips, "so ideal, that the knowledge of its end leaves me stunned, speechless, wordless." That was exaggeration, of course. He was not wordless, for the letter contained almost a superfluity of words; but people often said things they did not mean literally. "My dear wife and I spoke of you so often, Judge, her affection for you was so great--an affection which I share, as you know----" Judge Knowles had not returned the writers affection, quite the contrary. But it was possible that Phillips did not know this and that he was fond of the judge. Possible, even if not quite probable. "She and I never had a difference of opinion, never a thought which was not shared. This, in my hour of sorrow--" Phillips had written "my stricken hour" first, and then altered it to "hour of sorrow"--"is my greatest, almost my only consolation." Yet, as Judge Knowles had expressly stated, Lobelia herself had told him that her husband did not know of the endowment at the Fair Harbor and she had at least hinted that her married life was not all happiness. But, yet again, the judge was ill and weak, he had never liked Phillips, had always distrusted and suspected him, and might he not have fancied unhappiness when there was none? The letter said nothing concerning its writer's plans. It told of Mrs. Phillips' death, her burial at Florence, and of the widower's grief. The only hint, or possible hint, concerning a visit to Bayport was contained in one line, "When I see you I can tell you more." The captain puzzled over the letter a good deal. He showed it to Elizabeth. He found that Judge Knowles had not discussed Egbert with her at all. To her the ex-singing teacher was little more than a name; she remembered him, but nothing in particular concerning him. She thought the letter a very beautiful one--very sad, of course, but beautiful. Plainly she did not have the feeling which Sears had, but which he was inclined to think might be fathered by prejudice that it was a trifle too beautiful, that its beauty was that of a painting by a master, each stroke carefully touched in at exactly the right place for effect. There was no demand for money in it, no hint at straitened circumstances; so why should there be any striving for effect? He gave it up. If the much talked of Egbert was what Judge Knowles had declared him to be, then neither the judge nor any one else had exaggerated his smoothness. Emmeline Tidditt, for so many years the Knowles housekeeper, made one remark which contained possible food for thought. "So he buried her over there amongst them foreigners, did he?" observed Emmeline. "That seems kind of funny. When she and him was visitin' here the last time she told me herself--and he was standin' right alongside and heard her--that when she died she wanted to be fetched back here to Bayport and buried in the Orthodox cemetery alongside her father and mother and all her folks. Said, dead or alive, it wasn't really home for her anywheres else. She must have changed her mind since, though, I cal'late." Bayport talked a good deal about Lobelia Phillips and what would become of the Fair Harbor now that its founder and patroness was dead. It was surmised, of course, that Mrs. Phillips had provided for her pet institution in her will, but that will had not yet been offered for probate. Neither had the will of Judge Knowles, for that matter. Lawyer Bradley, over at Orham, the attorney with whom George Kent was reading law, was known to be the judge's executor. And Judge Knowles and Mr. Bradley were co-executor's for Lobelia Phillips, having been duly named by Lobelia on her last visit to Bayport. So, presumably, both wills were in Bradley's possession. But why had they not been probated? Bradley himself made the explanation. "The judge had a nephew in California," he said. "He was the nearest relative--although that isn't very near. Of course he couldn't get on for the funeral, but he is coming pretty soon. I thought I would wait until he came before I opened the will. As for Mrs. Phillips' will, I expect that her husband must be on his way here now. I haven't heard from him, but I take it for granted he is coming. I shall wait a while for him, too. There is no pressing hurry in either case." So Bayport talked about the wills and the expected arrival of the heirs, but as time passed and neither nephew nor husband arrived, began to lose interest and to talk of other things. Sears Kendrick, remembering his last conversation with Judge Knowles, was curious to learn exactly what the latter meant by his hints concerning "fixing things" for the Fair Harbor and Elizabeth having "money of her own," but he was busy and did not allow his curiosity to interfere with his schemes and improvements. He and Miss Berry saw each other every day, worked together and planned together, and the captain's fits of despondency and discouragement grew less and less frequent. He had an odd feeling at times, a feeling as if, instead of growing older daily, he was growing younger. He mentioned it to Elizabeth on one occasion and she did not laugh, but seemed to understand. "It is true," she said. "I have noticed it. You _are_ getting younger, Cap'n Kendrick." "Am I? That's good. Be better yet if I didn't have such a tremendous long way to go." "Nonsense! You aren't old. When I first met you I thought--it sounds dreadful when I say it--I thought you were fifty, at least. Now I don't believe you are more than--well, thirty-five." "Oh, yes, I am. I am--humph!--let's see, I am--er--thirty-eight my next birthday. And I suppose that sounds pretty ancient to you." "No, indeed it doesn't. Why, thirty-eight isn't old at all!" The interesting discussion of ages was interrupted just then, but Sears found pleasure in the thought that she, too, had noticed that he looked and acted younger. It was being at work again, he believed, which was responsible for the rejuvenation; this and the now unmistakable fact that, although the improvement was still provokingly slow, his legs were better, really better. He could, as he said, navigate much more easily now. Once, at supper time, he walked from his room to the table without a cane. It was a laborious journey, and he was glad when it was over, but he made it. Judah came in just in time to see the end. "Jumpin', creepin', hoppin' hookblocks, Cap'n Sears!" cried Judah. "Is that you, doin' that?" "What's left of me, Judah. I feel just this minute as if there wasn't much left." "Well, creepin' prophets! I couldn't believe it. Thinks I, 'There's fog in my deadlights and I can't see through 'em right.' Well, by Henry! And a little spell ago you was tellin' me you'd never be able to cruise again except under jury rig. Humph! You'll be up to the town hall dancin' 'Hull's Victory' and 'Smash the Windows' fust thing we know." After supper the captain, using the cane but whistling a sprightly air, strolled out to the front gate, where, leaning over the fence, he looked up and down the curving, tree-shaded road, dozing in the late summer twilight. And up that road came George Kent, also whistling, to swing in at the Fair Harbor gate and stride to the side door. Before that object lesson of real youth Sears' fictitious imitation seemed cheap and shoddy. He leaned heavily upon his cane as he hobbled back to the kitchen. The next day something happened. Sears had been busy all the forenoon superintending the carting in and stowing of the Fair Harbor share of oak and pine from the wood-lot. Thirteen cords of it, sawed and split in lengths to suit the Harbor stoves and fireplaces, were to be piled in the sheds adjoining the old Seymour barn at the rear of the premises. Judah had been engaged to do the piling. The captain had hesitated about employing him for several reasons, one being that he was drawing wages--small but regular--as caretaker at the General Minot place; another, that there might be some criticism--or opportunity for criticism--because of the relationship, landlord and lodger, which existed between them. Judah himself scorned the thought. "Mean to tell me I can't work for you just because you're boardin' along of me, Cap'n Sears?" he protested. "I've cooked for you a good many years and I worked for you then, didn't I?" "Ye--es, but you had signed up to work for me then. That's what they paid you for." "Well, it's what _you_ pay me for now, ain't it? And Ogden Minot he pays me to be stevedore aboard his house yonder. And the Fair Harbor's cal'latin' to pay me for pilin' this wood, ain't it? You ain't payin' for that, nor Ogden nuther. Well, then!... Oh, don't let's waste time arguin' about it now, Cap'n Sears. Let's do the way Abe Pepper done when the feller asked him to take a little somethin'. Abe had promised his wife he'd sign the pledge and he was on his way to temp'rance meetin' where he was goin' to meet her and sign it. And on the way he ran acrost this feller--Cornelius Bassett 'twas--and Cornelius says, 'Come have a drink with me, Abe,' he says. Well, time Abe got around to meet his wife the temp'rance meetin' hall was all dark and Abe was all--er--lighted up, as you might say. 'Why didn't you tell that Bassett man you was in a hurry and couldn't stop?' his wife wanted to know. 'Didn't have time to tell him nothin',' explains Abe. 'I knew I was late for meetin' as 'twas.' 'Then why didn't you come right on _to_ meetin'?' she wanted to know. 'If I'd done that I'd lost the drink,' says he." The captain laughed, but looked doubtful. "I don't quite see where that yarn fits in this case, Judah," he observed. "Don't ye? Well, I don't know's it does. But anyhow, don't let's waste time arguin'. Let me pile the wood fust and then we can argue afterwards." So he was piling busily, carrying the wood in huge armfuls from the heaps where the carts had left it into the barn, and singing as he worked. But, bearing in mind his skipper's orders concerning the kind of song he was to sing, his chantey this time dealt neither with the eternal feminine nor the flowing bowl. Suggested perhaps by the nature of his task, he bellowed of "Fire Down Below." "'Fire in the galley, Fire in the house, Fire in the beef-kid Burnin' up the scouce. Fire, _fire_, FIRE down below! Fetch a bucket of water! Fire! down BELOW!'" Captain Sears, after watching and listening for a few minutes, turned to limp up the hill, past the summer-house and the garden plots, to the side entrance of the Fair Harbor. The mystery of these garden patches, their exact equality of size and shape, had been explained to him by Elizabeth. The previous summer the Fair Harbor guests, or a few of them, led, as usual, by Miss Snowden and Mrs. Brackett, had suddenly been seized with a feverish desire to practice horticulture. They had demanded flower beds of their own. So, after much debate and disagreement on their part Elizabeth and her mother had had the slope beneath the Eyrie laid out in plots exactly alike, one for each guest, and the question of ownership had been settled by drawing lots. Each plot owner might plant and cultivate her own garden in her own way. These ways differed widely, hence the varied color schemes and diversifications of design noted by Sears on his first visit. The most elaborate--not to say "whirliggy"--design was the product of Miss Snowden's labor. The captain would have guessed it. The plot which contained no flowers at all, but was thickly planted with beets, onions and other vegetables, belonged to Esther Tidditt. He would have guessed that, too. He had stopped for an instant to inspect the plots, when he heard a footstep. Looking up, he saw a man descending the slope along the path by the Eyrie. The man was a stranger, that was plain at first glance. The captain did not know every one in Bayport, but he had at least a recognizing acquaintance with most of the males, and this particular male was not one of them. And Sears would have bet heavily that neither was he one of the very few whom he did not know. He was not a Bayport citizen, he did not look Bayport. He was very tall and noticeably slim. He wore a silk hat what Bayport still called a "beaver" in memory of the day's when such headpieces were really covered with beaver fur. There was nothing unusual in this fact; most of Bayport's prosperous citizens wore beavers on Sundays or for dress up. But there was this of the unusual about this particular hat: it had an air about it, a something which would have distinguished it amid fifty Bayport tiles. And yet just what that something was Sears Kendrick could not have told he could not have defined it, but he knew it was there. There was the same unusual something about the stranger's apparel in general, and yet there was nothing loud about it or queer. He carried a cane, but so did Captain Elkanah Wingate, for that matter, although only on Sundays. Captain Elkanah, however, carried his as if it were a club, or a scepter, or a--well, a marlinspike, perhaps. The stranger's cane was a part of his arm, and when he twirled it the twirls were graceful gestures, not vulgar flourishes. Sears's reflections concerning the newcomer were by no means as analytical as this, of course. His first impressions were those of one coming upon a beautiful work of art, a general wonder and admiration, not detailed at all. Judah, standing behind him with an armful of wood, must have had similar feelings, for he whispered, hoarsely, "Creepin' Moses, Cap'n Sears, is that the Prince of Wales, or who?" The man, standing in the path above the gardens, stopped to look about him. And at that moment, from the vine-covered Eyrie emerged Miss Elvira Snowden. She had evidently been there for some time, reading--she had a book in her hand--and as she came out she and the stranger were brought face to face. Sears and Judah saw them look at each other. The man raised his hat and said something which they could not hear. Then Miss Snowden cried "Oh!" She seemed intensely surprised and, for her, a good deal flustered. There was more low-toned conversation. Then Elvira and the stranger turned and walked back up the path toward the house. He escorted her in a manner and with a manner which made that walk a sort of royal progress. "Who was that?" asked Sears, as much of himself as of Judah. But Mr. Cahoon had, by this time, settled the question to his own satisfaction. "It's one of them slick critters peddlin' lightnin' rods," he declared, with conviction. "When you sight somebody that looks like a cross between a minister and one of them stuffed dummies they have outside of the stores in Dock Square to show off clothes on, then you can 'most generally bet he's peddlin' lightnin' rods. Either that or paintin' signs on fences about 'Mustang Liniment' or 'Vegetine' or somethin'. Why, a feller like that hove alongside me over in our yard one time--'twas afore you come, Cap'n Sears--and I give you my word, the way he was togged up I thought----" The captain did not wait to hear the Cahoon thought. He walked away. In a few minutes he had forgotten the stranger, having other and more important matters on his mind. There was a question concerning the Fair Harbor cooking range which was perplexing him just at this time. It looked as if they might have to buy a new one, and Sears, as superintendent of finances, hated to spend the money that month. He limped up the slope and along the path to the side door. And when he entered that door he became aware that something unusual was going on. The atmosphere of the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women was, so to speak, electrified, it was vibrant with excitement and mystery. There was no one in the dining room, and no one in the sitting room. Yet in each of these apartments were numerous evidences that people had been there very recently and left in a great hurry. A cloth partially laid and left hanging. Drawers of the buffet left open. A broom lying directly in the middle of the floor where it had been dropped. An upset work-basket, disgorging spools, needle packets, and an avalanche of stockings awaiting darning. A lamp with the chimney standing beside it on the table. These were some of the signs denoting sudden and important interruption of a busy forenoon. Captain Sears, wondering much, turned from the sitting room into the hall leading to the parlor. Then he became aware that, ahead of him, was the center and core of excitement. From the parlor came a murmur of voices, exclamations, giggles--the sounds as of a party, a meeting of the sewing-circle, or a reception. He could not imagine what it was all about. He reached the parlor door and stood there for an instant looking in. Every inmate of the Harbor was in that room, including Elizabeth and her mother and even Caroline Snow, who, because it was Monday, was there to help with the washing. And every one--or almost every one--was talking, and the majority were crowded about one spot, a spot where stood a man, a man whom Sears recognized as the stranger he had seen in the garden. And then Mrs. Berry, who happened to be facing the door, saw him. She broke through the ring of women and hurried over. Her face was aglow, her eyes were shining, there were bright spots in her cheeks, and, altogether, she looked younger and handsomer than the captain had ever seen her, more as he would have imagined she must have looked in the days when Cap'n Ike came South a-courting. "Oh, Captain Kendrick," she cried, "I am so _very_ glad you have come. We have just had such a surprise! Such a very unexpected surprise, but a very delightful one. Come! You must meet him." She took his hand and led him toward the stranger. The latter, seeing them approach, politely pushed through the group surrounding him and stepped forward. Sears noticed for the first time that the sleeve of his coat was encircled by a broad band of black. His tie was black also, so were his cuff buttons. He was in mourning. An amazing idea flashed to the captain's brain. "Captain Kendrick," gushed Mrs. Berry, "I have the honor to present you to Mr. Phillips, husband of our beloved founder." Mr. Phillips smiled--his teeth were very fine, his smile engaging. He extended a hand. "I am delighted to meet Captain Kendrick," he said. The captain's stammered answer was conventional, and was not a literal expression of his thought. The latter, put into words, would have been: "Egbert! I might have known it." But there was no real reason why he should have known it, for this Egbert was not at all like the Egbert he had been expecting to see. CHAPTER X Sears Kendrick left the Fair Harbor, perhaps fifteen minutes later, with that thought still uppermost in his mind. This was not at all the Egbert Phillips he had expected. From Judge Knowles' conversation, from Judah Cahoon's stories, from fragmentary descriptions he had picked up here and there about Bayport, he had fashioned an Egbert who had come to be in his mind a very real individual. This Egbert of his imagining was an oily, rather flashily dressed adventurer, a glib talker, handsome in a stage hero sort of way, with exaggerated politeness and a toothsome smile. There should be about this individual a general atmosphere of brilliantine, clothes and jewelry. On the whole he might have been expected to look a bit like the manager the captain had seen standing beside the ticket wagon at the circus, twirling his mustache with one hand and his cane with the other. Not quite as showy, not quite as picturesque, but a marked resemblance nevertheless. And the flesh and blood Egbert Phillips was not that kind at all. One was not conscious of his clothes, except that they were all that they should be as to fit--and style. He wore no jewelry whatever save his black cuff buttons and studs. His black tie was not of Bayport's fashion, certainly. It was ample, flowing and picturesque, rather in the foreign way. No other male in Bayport could have worn that tie and not looked foolish, yet Mr. Phillips did not look foolish, far from it. He did not wear a beard, another unusual bit of individuality, but his long, drooping mustache was extraordinarily becoming and--yes, aristocratic was the word. His smile was pleasant, his handshake was cordial, but not overdone, and his voice low and pleasant. Above all he had a manner, a manner which caused Sears, who had sailed pretty well over the world and had met all sorts of people in all sorts of places, to feel awkward and countrified. Yet one could tell that Mr. Phillips would not have one feel that way for the world; it was his desire to put every one at his or her ease. He greeted the captain with charming affability. He had heard of him, of course. He understood they were neighbors, as one might say. He looked forward to the pleasure of their better acquaintance. He had gotten but little further than this when Mrs. Berry, Miss Snowden and the rest again swooped down upon him and Sears was left forgotten on the outside of the circle. He went home soon afterward and sat down in the Minot kitchen to think it over. Egbert had come.... Well? Now what? He spent the greater part of the afternoon superintending the stowage of the wood and did not go back to the Harbor at all. But he was perfectly certain that he was not missed. The Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women fairly perspired excitement. Caroline Snow, her washing hung upon the lines in the back yard, found time to scurry down the hill and tell Judah the news. The captain had limped up to his room for a forgotten pipe, and when he returned Judah was loaded with it. He fired his first broadside before his lodger entered the barn. "Say, Cap'n Sears," hailed Mr. Cahoon, breathlessly, "do you know who that feller was me and you seen along of Elviry this forenoon? The tall one with the beaver and--and the gloves and the cane? The one I called the Prince of Wales or else a lightnin'-rod peddler? Do you know who he is?" Sears nodded. "Yes," he said, shortly. Judah stared, open-mouthed. "You _do_?" he gasped. "Yes." "You mean to tell me you know he's that--ah--er-what's-his-name--Eg Phillips come back?" "Yes, Judah." "My hoppin' Henry! Why didn't you say so?" "I didn't know it then, Judah. I found it out afterward, when I went up to the house." "Yes--but--but you knew it when you and me was eatin' dinner, didn't you? Why didn't you say somethin' about it then?" "Oh I don't know. It isn't important enough to interfere with our meals, is it?" Judah slowly shook his head. "It's a dum good thing you wan't around time of the flood, Cap'n Sears," he declared. "'Twould have been the thirty-eighth day afore you'd have cal'lated 'twas sprinklin' hard enough to notice. Afore that you'd have called it a thick fog, I presume likely. If you don't think this Phillips man's makin' port is important enough to talk about you take a cruise down to the store to-night. You'll hear more cacklin' than you'd hear in a henhouse in a week--and all account of just one Egg, too," he added, with a chuckle. "Caroline told you he had come, I suppose? Well, what does she think of him?" Judah snorted. "She?" he repeated. "She thinks he's the Angel Gabriel dressed up." He would have liked to discuss the new arrival the remainder of the afternoon, but the captain was not in the mood to listen. Neither was he more receptive or discussive at supper time. Judah wanted to talk of nothing else and to speculate concerning the amount of wealth which Mr. Phillips might have inherited, upon the probable date of the reading of Lobelia's will, upon whether or not the fortunate legatee might take up his residence in Bayport. "Say Cap'n" he observed, turning an inflamed countenance from the steam of dishwashing, "don't you cal'late maybe he may be wantin' to--er--sort of change things aboard the Fair Harbor? He'll be Admiral, as you might say, now, won't he?" "Will he?" "Well--won't he?" "Don't know, Judah. I haven't thrown up my commission yet, you know." "No, course you ain't, course you ain't. I don't mean he'd think of disrating you, Cap'n Sears. Nobody'd be fool-head enough for that.... But, honest, I would like to look at him and hear him talk. Caroline Snow, she says he's the finest, highest-toned man ever _she_ see." "Yes? Well, that's sayin' somethin'." "Yus, but 'tain't sayin' too much. She lives down to Woodchuck Neck and the highest thing down there is a barrel of cod-livers. They're good and high when the sun gets to 'em." When the dishes were done he announced that he guessed likely he might as well go down to Eliphalet's and listen to the cackling. The captain did not object, and so he put on his cap and departed. But he was back again in less than a minute. "He's comin', Cap'n," he cried, excitedly. "Creepin' Moses! He's comin' here." Sears remained calm. "He is, eh?" he observed. "Well, is he creepin' now?" "Hey? Creepin'? What are you talkin' about?" "Why, Moses. You said he was comin', didn't you?" "I said that Egbert man was comin'. He was just onlatchin' the gate when I see him.... Hey? That's him knockin' now. Shall I--shall I let him in, Cap'n Sears?" "I would if I were you, Judah. If you don't I shall have to." So Judah did. Mr. Phillips entered the kitchen, removing his silk hat at the threshold. Mr. Cahoon followed, too overcome with excitement and curiosity to remember to take off his own cap. Sears Kendrick would have risen from the armchair in which he was seated, but the visitor extended a gloved hand. "Don't. Don't rise, I beg of you," he said, earnestly. "Pray keep your seat, Captain Kendall. I have just learned of your most unfortunate accident. Really, I must insist that you remain just as you are. You will distress me greatly if you move on my account. Thank you, thank you. I suppose I should apologize for running in in this informal way, but I feel almost as if I had known you for a long time. Our mutual friends, the Berrys, have told me so much concerning you since my arrival that I did not stand upon ceremony at all." "That's right," declared the captain, heartily. "I'm glad you didn't. Sit down, Mr. Phillips. Put your hat on the table there." Judah stepped forward. "Give it to me; I'll take care of it," he said, taking the shining beaver from the visitor's hand. "I'll hang it up yonder in the back entry, then 'twon't get knocked onto the floor.... No, no, don't set in that chair, that's got a spliced leg; it's liable to land you on your beam ends if you ain't careful. Try this one." He kicked the infirm chair out of the way and pushed forward a substitute. "There," he added, cheerfully, "that's solid's the rock of Giberaltar. Nothin' like bein' sure of your anchorage. Set down, set down." He beamed upon the caller. The latter did not beam exactly. His expression was a queer one. Sears came to the rescue. "Mr. Phillips," he said, "this is Mr. Cahoon." Judah extended a mighty hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Phillips," he declared. "I've heard tell of you considerable." Egbert looked at the hand. His expression was still queer. "Oh--ah--how d'ye do?" he murmured. "Mr. Cahoon and I are old friends," explained Sears. "I am boardin' here with him." "Yus," put in Judah. "And afore that I shipped cook aboard Cap'n Sears's vessels for a good many v'yages. The cap'n and I get along fust rate. He's all right, Cap'n Sears is, _I_ tell ye!" Mr. Phillips murmured something to the effect that he was sure of it. He did not seem very sure of Judah. Mr. Cahoon did not notice the uncertainty, he pushed his hand nearer to the visitor's. "I'm real glad to meet you," he said. Egbert gingerly took the proffered hand, moved it up and down once and then dropped it, after which he looked at his glove. Judah looked at it, too. "Kind of chilly outdoor to-night, is it?" he asked. "Didn't seem so to me." Again his lodger came to the rescue. "Well, Mr. Phillips," he said, "you gave us all a little surprise, didn't you? Of course we expected you in a general sort of way, but we didn't know when you would make port." Egbert bowed. "I scarcely knew myself," he said. "My plans were somewhat vague and--ah--rather hurriedly made, naturally. Of course my great sorrow, my bereavement----" He paused, sighed and then brushed the subject away with a wave of his glove. "You won't mind, I'm sure," he said, "if I don't dwell upon that just now. It is too recent, the shock is too great, I really cannot.... But I am so sorry to hear of your disability. A railway wreck, I understand. Outrageous carelessness, no doubt. Really, Captain Kendrick, one cannot find excuses for the reckless mismanagement of your American railways.... Why, what is it? Don't you agree with me?" The captain had looked up momentarily. Now he was looking down again. "Don't you agree with me?" repeated Egbert. "Surely you, of all people, should not excuse their recklessness." Sears shook his head. "Oh, I wasn't tryin' to," he replied. "I was only wonderin' why you spoke of 'em as 'your' railroads. They aren't mine, you know. That is, any more than they are Judah's--or yours--or any other American's. No such luck." Mr. Phillips coughed, smiled, coughed again, and then explained that he had used the word 'your' without thinking. "I have been so long an--ah--shall I say exile, Captain Kendall," he observed, "that I have, I presume, fallen somewhat into the European habit of thinking and--ah--speaking. Habit is a peculiar thing, is it not?" Mr. Cahoon, intensely interested in the conversation, evidently felt it his duty to contribute toward it. "You're right there, Mr. Phillips," he announced, with emphasis. "Don't talk to me about habits! When a man's been to sea as long's I have he runs afoul of pretty nigh every kind of habit there is, seems so. Why, I knew a feller one time--down to Surinam 'twas--I was cook and steward aboard the old _Highflyer_--and this feller--he wan't a white man, nor he wan't all nigger nuther, kind of in between, one of them--er--er--octoreens, that's what he was--well, this feller he had the dumdest habit. Every day of his life, about the middle of the dog watch he'd up and----" "Judah." "Aye, aye, Cap'n Sears?" "You'll be late down at the store, won't you?" "Hey? Oh, I don't care how late I be. I don't know's I'm so dreadful partic'lar about goin' down there to-night, anyhow. Don't know but I'd just as live stay here." "I'd go." "Hey? Oh, I----" "I'd go, if I were you. You know there's likely to be a good deal goin' on." "Think so, do you?" Judah was evidently on the fence. "Course, I---- Well, maybe I had better, come to think of it. Good night, Mr. Phillips. I'll tell you about that octoreen feller next time I see you. So long, Cap'n Sears. I'll report about," with a wink, "the cacklin' later. Creepin'! it's most eight now, ain't it?" He hurried out. Egbert looked rather relieved. He smiled tolerantly. "Evidently an eccentric, your--er--man," he observed. "He has his ways, like the majority of us, I guess," declared the captain, crisply. "Underneath he is as square and big-hearted as they make. And he's a good friend of mine." "Oh, yes; yes, I'm sure of it. Captain Kendall----" "Kendrick, not Kendall." Mr. Phillips begged pardon for the mistake. It was inexcusable, he admitted. He had heard the captain's name mentioned so frequently since his arrival in Bayport, especially by Mrs. Berry and her daughter, "so favorably, even enthusiastically mentioned," that he certainly should have remembered it. "I am not quite myself, I fear," he added. "My recent bereavement and the added shock of the death of my dear old friend the judge have had their effect. My nerves are--well, you understand, I am sure." He made a lengthy call. He talked a great deal, and his conversation was always interesting. He spoke much of his dear wife, of life abroad, of Genoa and Leghorn, ports which the captain had visited, and of the changes in Bayport since his last sojourn in the village. But he said almost nothing concerning his plans for the future, and of the Fair Harbor very little. In fact, Sears had the feeling that he was waiting for him to talk concerning that institution. This the captain would not do and, at last, Mr. Phillips himself touched lightly upon the fringes of the subject. "Do you find your duties in connection with the--ah--retreat next door arduous, Captain Kendrick?" he inquired. "Eh?... Oh, no, I don't know as I'd call 'em that, exactly." "I imagine not, I imagine not. You are--you are, I gather, a sort of--oh---- What should I call you, captain; in your official capacity, you know?" He laughed pleasantly. Sears smiled. "Give it up," he replied. "I told Elizabeth--Miss Berry, I mean--when I first took the berth that I scarcely knew what it was." "Ha, ha! Yes, I can imagine. Miss Berry--charming girl, isn't she, captain--intimated to me that your position was somewhat--ah--general. You exercise a sort of supervision over the finances and management, in a way, do you not?" "In a way, yes." "Yes. Of course, my dear sir, you understand that I am not unduly curious. I don't mean to be. This--ah--Fair Harbor was, as you know, very dear to the heart of Mrs. Phillips and, now that she has been taken from me, I feel, of course, a sense of trust, of sacred responsibility. We had understood, she and I, that our dear friend--Judge Knowles--was in supreme charge--nominally, I mean; of course Mrs. Berry was in actual charge--and, therefore, I confess to a natural feeling of--shall I say surprise, on learning that the judge had appointed another person, an understudy, as it were?" "Well, you couldn't be any more surprised than I was when the judge asked me to take the job. And Elizabeth and her mother know that I hesitated considerable before I did take it. Judge Knowles was in his last sickness, he couldn't attend to things himself." Mr. Phillips raised a protesting hand. "Please don't misunderstand me," he said. "Don't, I beg of you, think for a moment that I am objecting to the judge's action, or even criticizing it. It was precisely the thing he should have done, what Mrs. Phillips and I would have wished him to do. And as for his choice of--ah--appointee----" Captain Sears interrupted. "As to that," he said, "you can criticize as much as you please. You can't object any more than I did when me made me the offer." The protesting hand was again raised. "Criticism or objection was the very farthest from my mind, I assure you," Egbert declared. "I was about to say that Judge Knowles showed his usual--ah--acumen when he selected a man as well known and highly esteemed as yourself, sir. The mention of the name of Captain Kendall----" "Kendrick." "Kendrick, of course. I apologize once more. But, if you will permit me to say so, a man as well and favorably known to us all as you are, sir, is certainly the ideal occupant of the--ah--place." "Thanks. You knew of me, then? I don't think you and I have ever met before, have we?" "No; no, I believe I have never before had the pleasure." "Thanks. I was pretty sure I hadn't. I've been away from Bayport a good deal. I wasn't here when you and your wife came back--about five years ago, wasn't it? And, of course, I didn't know you when you used to live here. Let's see; you used to teach singin'-school, didn't you?" This question was asked in the most casual fashion. Mr. Phillips did not answer at once. He coughed, changed his position, and then smiled graciously. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I--I did something of the sort, for a time. Music has always been a--one might call it a--ah--hobby of mine. But, regarding your duties as--well, whatever those duties are, Captain Kendrick: You say they are not arduous. And your--ah--compensation? That, I understand, is not large? Pardon my referring to it, but as Mrs. Phillips was the owner and benefactress of the Fair Harbor, and as I am--shall I say heir--to her interests, why, perhaps my excuse for asking for information is--ah--a reasonable one." He paused, and with another smile and wave of the hand, awaited his host's reply. Sears looked at him. "I guess you know what my wages are, Mr. Phillips," he observed. "Don't you?" "Why--why--ah--ah----" "Didn't Cordelia tell you? She knows. So does Elizabeth." "Why--why, Mrs. Berry did mention a figure, I believe. I seem to recall--ah--ah--something." "If you remember fifteen hundred a year, you will have it right. That is the amount I'm paid for bein' in general command over there. As you say, it isn't very large, but perhaps it's large enough for what I do." "Oh--ah, _don't_ misunderstand me, Captain Kendrick, please don't. I was not questioning the amount of your salary." "Wasn't you? My mistake. I thought you was." "No; indeed no. My only feeling in regard to it was its--ah--trifling size. It--pardon me, but it seemed such a small sum for you to accept, a man of your attainments." "My attainments, as you call 'em, haven't got me very far I'm a poor man and, just now at any rate, I'm a cripple, a wreck on a lee shore. Fifteen hundred a year isn't so small to me." Mr Phillips apologized. He was sorry he had referred to the subject. But the captain, he was sure, understood his motive for asking, and, now that so much had been said, might he say just a word more. "Our dear Cordelia--Mrs. Berry--" he went on, "intimated that your--ah--compensation was paid by the judge, himself." "Yes it was. Judge Knowles paid it with his own money. It doesn't come out of the Fair Harbor funds." "Yes, yes, of course, of course. The judge's interest in my beloved wife's--ah--whims--perhaps that is too frivolous a word--was extraordinarily fine. But now the judge has passed on." "Yes. More's the pity." "I heartily agree with you, it is a great pity. An irreparable loss.... But he has gone." "Yes." Just here the dialogue came to a peculiar halt. Mr. Phillips seemed to be waiting for his companion to say something and the captain to be waiting for Phillips himself to say it first. As a consequence neither said it. When the conversation was resumed it was once more of a general nature. It was not until just beyond the end of the call that the Fair Harbor was again mentioned. And, as at first, it was the caller who led up to it. "Captain Kendrick," he observed, "you are, like myself, a man of the world, a man of wide experience." This was given forth as a positive statement, not a question, yet he seemed to expect a reply. Sears obliged. "Oh, I don't know," he demurred. "Pardon me, but I do. I am accustomed to judge persons and characters, and I think I may justly pride myself on making few mistakes. From what I had heard I expected to find you a man of the world, a man of experience and judgment. Judge Knowles' selection of you as the--ah--temporary head of the Fair Harbor would have indicated that, of course, but, if you will permit me to say so, this interview has confirmed it." Again he paused, as if expecting a reply. And again the captain humored him. "Much obliged," he said. The Phillips hand waved the thanks away. There was another perceptible wait. Then said Egbert, "Captain Kendrick, as one man of the world to another, what do you think of the--ah--institution next door?" Sears looked at him. "What do I think of it?" he repeated. "Yes, exactly. It was, as you know, the darling of my dear wife's heart. When she loaned her--shall we say her ancestral home, and--ah--money to the purpose she firmly believed the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women to be an inspiration for good. She believed its founding to be the beginning of a great work. Is it doing that work, do you think? In your opinion, sir, is it a success?" Captain Sears slowly stroked his close-cropped beard. What was the man driving at? "Why--I don't know as I know exactly what you mean by success," he hesitated. "It's takin' care of its--er--boarders and it's makin' a home for 'em. That is what your wife wanted it to do, didn't she?" "Oh, yes, yes, quite so. But that is not precisely what I mean. Put it this way, sir: In your opinion, as a man of affairs----" "Here, here, just a minute. I'm not a man of affairs. I'm a broken-down sea cap'n on shore, that's all." Again the upraised hand. "_I_ know what you are, Captain Kendrick," said Egbert. "That, if you will permit me to say so, is why I am asking your opinion. The success of a--ah--proposition depends, as I see it, upon the amount of success achieved in proportion to the amount of energy, capital--ah--whatnot invested. Now, considering the sum needed to support the Fair Harbor--paid, as doubtless you know, Captain Kendrick, from the interest of an amount loaned and set aside by my dear wife some years ago--considering that sum, I say, added to the amount sunk, or invested, in the house, land, furnishings, et cetera, is it your opinion that the institution's success is a sufficient return? Or, might not the same sums, put into other--ah--charities, reap larger rewards? Rewards in the shape of good to our fellow men and women, Captain Kendrick? What do you think?" Sears crossed his knees. "I don't know," he said. "Of course, of course. One does not know. But it is a question to be considered, is it not?" "Why--why, yes, maybe. Do I understand that you are thinkin' of givin' up the Fair Harbor? Doin' away with it?" "Oh, no, no, no!" Mr. Phillips pushed the surmise deeper into the background with each negative. "I am not considering anything of that sort, Captain Kendrick." "Well--humph! My mistake again. I thought you just said you were considerin' it." "Only as a question, Captain, only as a question. While my wife lived, of course, the Fair Harbor--_her_ Fair Harbor--was a thing fixed, immovable. Now that she has been taken from me, it devolves upon me, the care of her trusts, her benefactions." "Yes. So you said, Mr. Phillips." "I believe I did say so. Yes. And therefore, as I see it, a part of that trust is to make sure that every penny of her--ah--charity is doing the greatest good to the greatest number." "And you think the Fair Harbor isn't gettin' its money's worth?" "Oh, no, no, no. I don't say that. I don't say that at all. I am sure it must be. I am merely considering, that is all, merely considering.... Well, Captain Kendrick, I must go. We shall see each other often, I trust. I have-ah--a suite at the Central House and if you will do me the honor of calling I shall greatly appreciate it. Pray drop in at any time, sir. Don't, I beg of you, stand upon ceremony." Sears promised that he would not. He was finding it hard to keep from smiling. A "suite" at the Central House, Bayport's one hostelry, tickled him. He knew the rooms at that hit or miss tavern. "Good-by, Captain Kendrick," said Mr. Phillips. "Upon one thing I feel sure you may congratulate yourself, that is that your troubles and petty annoyances as--ah--manager of the Fair Harbor are practically over." "Oh," observed the captain. "Yes. I think I shall be able to relieve you of _that_ care very shortly. And the sooner the better, I presume you are saying. Yes? Ha, ha!" "Thanks. Goin' to appoint somebody else, eh?" "Oh, no, no! My _dear_ sir! Why, I--I really--I thought you understood. I mean to say simply that, while I am here in person, and as long as I am here, I shall endeavor to look after the matters myself and consequently relieve you, that is all. Judge Knowles appointed you and paid you--a very wise and characteristic thing for him to do; but he, poor man, is dead. One could scarcely expect you to go on performing your duties gratuitously. That is why I congratulate you upon the lifting of the burden from your shoulders." "Oh, yes. Um-hm. I see. Thank you, Mr. Phillips." "I should thank you, sir, for all you have already done. I do sincerely.... Oh, by the way, Captain Kendrick, perhaps it would be as well that nothing be said concerning this little business talk of ours. One knows how trifles are distorted, mole hills made mountains, and all that, in communities like--well, like dear old Bayport. We love our Bayporters, bless them, but they will talk. Ha, ha! So, captain, if you will consider our little chat confidential----" "I will." "Thank you, sir, thank you. And we shall see each other frequently. I am counting upon it. _Au revoir_, Captain Kendrick. Don't rise, I beg of you." He was gone, the door closed behind him. Sears filled his pipe, lighted it, and leaned back in his chair to review and appraise his impressions. The appraisal was not altogether satisfactory. It was easy to say that he did not like Egbert Phillips, for it was the truth--he did not like him. But to affirm truthfully that that dislike was founded upon anything more substantial than prejudice due to Judge Knowles' detestation was not so easy. The question which continually intruded was this: Suppose he had met Mr. Phillips for the first time, never having heard of him before--would he have disliked and distrusted him under those circumstances? He could not be quite sure. For, leaving aside Egbert's airy condescension and his--to the captain's New England mind--overdone politeness, there was not so much fault to be found with his behavior or words during the interview just ended. He had asked questions concerning the Fair Harbor, had hinted at the possibility of its discontinuance, had more than hinted at the dropping of Kendrick as its manager. Well--always bearing in mind the fact that he was ignorant of his wife's action which gave the Seymour house and land to the Fair Harbor and gave, not loaned, the money for its maintenance--bearing in mind the fact that Egbert Phillips believed himself the absolute owner of all, with undisputed authority to do as he pleased with it--then.... Well, then Captain Sears was obliged to admit that he, himself, might have questioned and hinted very much as his visitor had done. And as for the condescension and the "manner"--these were, after all, not much more than eccentricities, and developed, very likely, during his life abroad. Lobelia Phillips' will would be opened and read soon, probably at once. Whew! Sears whistled as he thought of the staggering disillusionment which was coming to the widower. How would he take it? Was Judge Knowles right in his belief that the rest of the Seymour inheritance had been wasted and lost? If so, the elegant personage who had just bowed himself out of the Minot kitchen would be in a bad way indeed. Sears was sorry for him. And yet he did not like the man. No, he did not.... And he did distrust him. Judah came back from his sojourn at the store brimful of talk and chuckles. As he had prophesied, all Bayport had heard of the arrival of the great man and all Bayport was discussing him. He had the finest rooms at the Central House. He had three trunks--count them--three! Not to mention bags and a leather hat box. He had given the driver of the depot wagon a dollar over and above his regular charge. He remembered Eliphalet Bassett the first time he saw him, and called him by name. There was a lot more of this, but Sears paid little attention to it. Judah summed it all up pretty well in his final declaration, given as his lodger was leaving the kitchen for the "spare stateroom." "By Henry!" declared Judah, who seemed rather disgusted, "I never heard such a powwowin' over one man in my life. Up to 'Liphalet's 'twan't nothin' but 'Egbert Phillips,' 'Egbert Phillips,' till you'd think 'twas a passel of poll-parrots all mockin' each other. Simeon Ryder had been down to deacon's meetin' in the Orthodox vestry and, nigh's I can find out, 'twas just the same down there. 'Cordin' to Sim's tell they talked about the Lord's affairs for ten minutes and about this Egg man's for forty." "But why?" queried the captain. "He isn't the only fellow that has been away from Bayport and come back again." Mr. Cahoon shook his head. "I know it," he admitted, "but none of the rest ever had quite so much fuss made over 'em. I cal'late, maybe, it's on account of the way he's been led up to, as you might say. I went one time to a kind of show place in New York, Barnum's Museum 'twas. There was a great sign outdoor sayin', 'Come on aboard and see the White Whale,' or somethin' similar. Well, I'd seen about every kind of a whale _but_ a white one, so I cal'lated maybe I'd might as well spend a quarter and see that. There was a great big kind of tank place full of water and a whole passel of folks hangin' around the edge of it with their mouths open, gawpin' at nothin'--nothin' but the water, that's all there was to see. And a man up on a kind of platform he was preachin' a sort of sermon, wavin' his arms and hollerin' about how rare and scurce white whales was, and how the museum folks had to scour all creation afore they got this one, and about how the round heads of Europe----" "Crowned heads, wasn't it, Judah?" "Hey? I don't know, maybe so. Cabbage heads it ought to have been, 'cordin' to my notion. Well, anyhow, 'twas some kind of Europe heads, and they had all pretty nigh broke the necks belongin' to 'em gettin' to see this whale, and how lucky we was because we could see it for the small sum of twenty-five cents, and so on, and so on--until all hands of us was just kind of on tiptoe, as you might say. And then, all to once, the water in the tank kind of riz up, you know, and somethin' white--might have been the broadside of a barn for all we had time to see of it--showed for a jiffy, there was a 'Woosh,' and the white thing went under again.' And that was all. The man said we was now able to tell our children that we'd seen a white whale and that the critter would be up to breathe again in about an hour, or week after next, or some such time.... Anyhow, what I'm tryin' to get at is that 'twan't the whale itself that counted so much as 'twas the way that preachin' man led up to him. This Egbert he's been preached about and guessed about and looked for'ard to so long that all Bayport's been on tiptoe, like us folks around that museum tank.... Well, this Phillips whale has made a big 'Woosh' in town so fur. Can he keep it up? That's what I'm wonderin'." The sensation kept up for the next day and the next at least, and there were no signs of its abating. Over at the Fair Harbor Captain Sears found himself playing a very small second fiddle. Miss Snowden, Mrs. Brackett and their following, instead of putting themselves out to smile upon the captain and to chat with him, ignored him almost altogether, or, if they did speak, spoke only of Mr. Phillips. He was the most entertaining man, _so_ genteel, his conversation was remarkable, he had traveled everywhere. Mrs. Berry, of course, was in ecstasies concerning him. He was her ideal of a gentleman, she said, _so_ aristocratic. "So like the men I associated with in the old days," she said. "Of course," she added, "he is an old friend. Dear 'Belia and he were my dearest friends, you know, Captain Kendrick." The captain was curious to learn Elizabeth's opinion of him. He found that opinion distinctly favorable. "He is different," she said. "Different, I mean, from any one I ever met. And at first I thought him conceited. But he isn't really, he is just--well, different. I think I shall like him." Sears smiled. "If you don't you will be rather lonesome here in the Harbor, I judge," he observed. She looked at him quickly. "You don't like him, do you, Cap'n Kendrick?" she said. "Why?" "Why--why, I don't say I don't like him, Elizabeth." "No, you don't say it, but you look it. I didn't think you took sudden dislikes, Cap'n. It doesn't seem like you, somehow." He could not explain, and he felt that he had disappointed her. On the third day the news came that Mr. Phillips had left town, gone suddenly, so Judah said. "He took the afternoon train and bought a ticket for Boston, so they tell me," declared the latter. "He's left his dunnage at the Central House, so he's comin' back, I cal'late; but nobody knows where he's gone, nor why he went. Went over to Orham this mornin'--hired a horse-'n'-team down to the livery stable and went--come back about one o'clock, wouldn't speak to nobody, went up to his room, never et no dinner, and then set sail for Boston on the up train. Cur'us, ain't it? Where do you cal'late likely he's gone, Cap'n Sears?" "Give it up, Judah. And," speaking quickly in order to head off the question he saw the Cahoon lips already forming, "I can't guess why he's gone, either." But, although he did not say so, he could have guessed why Mr. Phillips had gone to Orham. Bradley, the Orham lawyer, had written the day before to say that the will of Lobelia Phillips would be opened and read at his office on Thursday morning. And this was Thursday. Bradley had suggested Sears's coming over to be present at the reading of the will. "As you are so deeply interested in the Fair Harbor," he wrote, "I should think you might--or ought to--be on hand. I don't believe Phillips will object." But the captain had not accepted the invitation. Knowing, as he did, the disappointment which was in store for Egbert, he had no wish to see the blow fall. So he remained at home, but that afternoon Bradley himself drove into the Minot yard. "I just stopped for a minute, Cap'n, he said. I had some other business in town here; that brought me over, but I wanted to tell you that we opened that will this morning." Sears looked a question. "Well?" he queried. Bradley nodded. "It was just about as we thought, and as the judge said," he declared. "The papers were there, of course, telling of the gift of the fifty thousand to the Harbor, of the gift of the land and house, everything. There was one other legacy, a small one, and then she left all the rest, 'stocks, bonds, securities, personal effects and cash' to her beloved husband, Egbert Phillips. That's all there was to it, Kendrick. Short but sweet, eh?" Sears nodded. "Sweet enough," he agreed. "And how did the beloved husband take it?" "Well ... well, he was pretty nasty. In fact he was about as nasty as anybody could be. He went white as a sheet and then red and then white again. I didn't know, for a minute or two, what was going to happen, didn't know but what I should have a fight on my hands. However, I didn't. I don't think he's the fighting kind, not that kind of a fight. He just took it out in being nasty. Said of course he should contest the gift, hinted at undue influence, spoke of thieves and swindlers--not naming 'em, though--and then, when I suggested that he had better think it over before he said too much, pulled up short and walked out of the office. Yes, he was pretty nasty. But, honestly, Cap'n Kendrick, when I think it over, I don't know that he was any nastier than I, or any other fellow, might have been under the circumstances. It was a smash between the eyes for him, that's what it was. Met him, have you?" "Yes." "What do you think of him?" "I don't know--yet." "Neither do I. He's a polite chap, isn't he?" "No doubt about that. Say, Bradley, do you think he's got much left of the 'stocks, bonds,' and all the rest that the will talked about?" "I give it up. Of course we shall talk about that by and by, I suppose, but we haven't yet. You know what Judge Knowles declared; he was perfectly sure that there wouldn't be anything left--that this fellow and Lobelia had thrown away every loose penny of old Seymour's money. And, of course, he prophesied that this Egbert man would be back here as soon as his wife died to sell the Fair Harbor, ship and cargo, and get the money for them. The biggest satisfaction the old judge got out of life along toward the last of it was in knowing that he and Lobelia had fixed things so that that couldn't be done. He certainly hated Phillips, the judge did." "Um-hm. But he might have been prejudiced." "Yes. Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't." "Tell me, Bradley: Did you know this Phillips man when he was skipper of the singin' school here in Bayport? Before he married Lobelia?" "No. Nor I didn't meet him when he and his wife were on here the last time. I was up in the State House serving out my two terms as county representative." "I see.... Oh! You spoke of Lobelia's leavin' another legacy. Who was that to? If it isn't a secret." "It is, so far. But it won't be very long. She left five thousand, in cash and in Judge Knowles's care, for Cordelia Berry over here at the Harbor. She and Lobelia were close friends, you know. Cordelia is to have it free and clear, but I am to invest it for her. She doesn't know her good luck yet. I am going over now to tell her about it.... Oh, by the way, Cap'n: Judge Knowles's nephew, the man from California, is expecting to reach Bayport next Sunday. He can't stay out a little while, and so I shall have to hurry up that will and the business connected with it. Can you come over to my office Monday about ten?" "Why, I suppose likely I could, but what do you want me for?" "I don't, except in the general way of always wanting to see you, Cap'n. But Judge Knowles wanted you especially." "He did! Wanted _me_?" "Yes. Seems so. He left a memorandum of those he wanted on hand when his will was read. You are one, and Elizabeth Berry is another. Will you come?" "Why--why, yes, I suppose so. But what in the world----" "I don't know. But I imagine we'll all know Monday. I'll look for you then, Cap'n." CHAPTER XI The reading of the Knowles will, so Bradley had said, was to take place at the lawyer's office in Orham on Monday. It was Friday when Bradley called at the Minot place, and on Saturday morning Sears and Elizabeth discussed the matter. "Mr. Bradley said your name was on the list of those the judge asked to be on hand when the will was read," said the captain. "He asked me not to speak about the will to outsiders, and of course I haven't, but you're not an outsider. You're goin' over, I suppose?" She hesitated slightly. "Why, yes," she said. "I think I shall." "Yes. Yes, I thought you would." "I shall go because the judge seems to have wished me to be there, but why I can't imagine. Can you, Cap'n Kendrick?" Remembering his last conversation with Judge Knowles, Sears thought he might at least guess a possible reason, but he did not say so. "We're both interested in the Fair Harbor," he observed. "And we know how concerned the judge was with that." She nodded. "Yes," she admitted. "Still I don't see why mother was not asked if that was it. You are going over, of course?" "Why--yes, I shall. Bradley seemed to want me to." That was all, at the time. The next day, however, Elizabeth again mentioned the subject. It was in the afternoon, church and dinner were over, and Sears was strolling along the path below the Fair Harbor garden plots. He could walk with less difficulty and with almost no pain now, but he could not walk far. The Eyrie was, for a wonder, unoccupied, so he limped up to it and sat down upon the bench inside to rest. This was the favorite haunt of the more romantic Fair Harbor inmates, Miss Snowden and Mrs. Chase especially, but they were not there just then, although a book, _Barriers Burned Away_, by E. P. Roe, lay upon the bench, a cardboard marker with the initials "E. S." in cross-stitch, between the leaves. When the captain heard a step approaching the summer-house, he judged that Elvira was returning to reclaim her "Barriers." But it was not Elvira who entered the Eyrie, it was Elizabeth Berry. She was surprised to see him. "Why, Cap'n Sears!" she exclaimed. "I didn't expect to find you here. I was afraid--that is, I did rather think I might find Elvira, but not you. I didn't know you had the Eyrie habit." He smiled. "I haven't," he said. "That is, it isn't chronic yet. I didn't know you had it, either." "Oh I haven't. But I was rather tired, and I wanted to be alone, and so----" "And so you took a chance. Well, you came at just the right time. I was just about gettin' under way." He rose, but she detained him. "Don't go," she begged. "When I said I wanted to be alone I didn't mean it exactly. I meant I wanted to be away from--some people. You are not one of them." He was pleased, and showed it. "You're sure of that?" he asked. "Of course. You know I am. Do sit down and talk. Talk about anything except--well, except Bayport gossip and Fair Harbor squabbles and bills and--oh, that sort of thing. Talk about something away from Bayport, miles and miles away. I feel just now as if I should like to be--to be on board a ship sailing ... sailing." She smiled wistfully as she said it. The captain was seized with an intense conviction that he should like to be with her on that same ship, to sail on and on indefinitely. The kind of ship or its destination would not matter in the least, the only essentials were that she and he were to be on board, and ... Humph! His brain must be softening. Who did he think he was: a young man again?--a George Kent? He came out of the clouds. "Yes," he observed, dryly, "I know. I get that same feelin' every once in a while. I should rather like to walk a deck again, myself." She understood instantly. That was one of the fascinations of this girl, she always seemed to understand. A flash of pity came into her eyes. Impulsively she laid a hand on his coat sleeve. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I'm so sorry. I realize how hard it must be for you, Cap'n Kendrick. A man who has been where you have been and seen what you have seen.... Yes, and done what you have done." He shrugged. "I haven't done much," he said. "Oh, yes, you have. I have heard so many stories about you and your ships and the way you have handled them. There was one story I remember, a story about how your sailors mutinied and how you got them to go to work again. I heard that years ago, when I was a girl at school. I have never forgotten; it sounded so wonderful and romantic and--and far off." He nodded. "It was far off," he said. "Away over in the South Seas. And it was a good while ago, too, for I was in command of my first vessel, and that's the time of all times when a man doesn't want mutiny or any other setback. And I never had any trouble with my crews, before or since, except then. But the water in our butts had gone rancid and we put in at this island to refill. It was a pretty place, lazy and sunshiny, like most of those South Sea corals, and the fo'mast hands got ashore amongst the natives, drinkin' palm wine and traders' gin, and they didn't want to put to sea as soon as the mates and I did." "But you made them?" "Well, I--er--sort of coaxed 'em into it." "Tell me about it, please." "Oh, there isn't anything to----" "Please." So Sears began to spin the yarn. And from that she led him into another and then another. They drifted through the South Seas to the East Indies, and from there to Bombay, and then to Hong Kong, and to Mauritious, from the beaches of which came the marvelous sea shells that Sarah Macomber had in the box in her parlor closet. They voyaged through the Arabian Sea, with the parched desert shores shimmering in the white hot sun. They turned north, saw the sperm whales and the great squid and the floating bergs.... And at last they drifted back to Bayport and the captain looked at his watch. "Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed. "It's almost four o'clock. I believe I've talked steady for pretty nearly an hour. I'm ashamed. Are you awake, Elizabeth? I hope, for your sake, you've been takin' a nap." She did not answer at once. Then she breathed deeply. "I don't know what I have been doing--really doing," she said. "I suppose I have been sitting right here in this old summer-house. But I _feel_ as if I had been around the world. I wanted to sail and sail.... I said so, didn't I? Well, I have. Thank you, Cap'n Kendrick." He rose from the bench. "A man gets garrulous in his old age," he observed. "But I didn't think I was as old as that--just yet. The talkin' disease must be catchin', and I've lived with Judah Cahoon quite a while now." She laughed. "If I had as much to talk about--worth while talking about--as you have," she declared, "I should never want to stop. Well, I must be getting back to the Fair Harbor--and the squabbles." "Too bad. Can I help you with 'em?" "No, I'm afraid not. They're not big enough for you." They turned to the door. She spoke again. "You are going to drive to Orham to-morrow afternoon?" she asked. "Eh? Oh, yes. The Foam Flake and I will make the voyage--if we have luck." "And you are going--alone?" "Yes. Judah thinks I shouldn't. Probably he thinks the Foam Flake may fall dead, or get to walkin' in his sleep and step off the bank or somethin'. But I'm goin' to risk it. I guess likely I can keep him in the channel." She waited a moment. Then she smiled and shook her head. "Cap'n," she said, "you make it awfully hard for me. And this is the second time. Really, I feel so--so brazen." "Brazen?" "Yes. Why don't you invite me to ride to Orham with you? Why must I _always_ have to invite myself?" He turned to look at her. She colored a little, but she returned his look. "You--you mean it?" he demanded. "Of course I mean it. I must get there somehow, because I promised Mr. Bradley. And unless you don't want me, in which case I shall have to hire from the livery stable, I----" But he interrupted her. "Want you!" he repeated. "_Want_ you!" His tone was sufficiently emphatic, perhaps more emphatic than he would have made it if he had not been taken by surprise. She must have found it satisfactory, for she did not ask further assurances. "Thank you," she said. "And when are you planning to start?" "Why--why, right after dinner to-morrow. If that's all right for you. But I'm sorry you had to invite yourself. I--I thought--well, I thought maybe George had--had planned----" To his further surprise she seemed a trifle annoyed. "George works at the store," she said. "Besides, I--well, really, Cap'n Kendrick, there is no compelling reason why George Kent should take me everywhere I want to go." Now Sears had imagined there was--and rumor and surmise in Bayport had long supported his imagining--but he did not tell her that. What he did say was inane enough. "Oh--er--yes, of course," he stammered. "No, there isn't. He and I are friends, good friends, and have been for a long time, but that doesn't---- Well, Cap'n, I shall look for you and the Foam Flake--oh, that _is_ a wonderful name--about one to-morrow. And I'll promise not to keep you waiting." "If the Foam Flake doesn't die in the meantime I'll be on hand. He'll be asleep probably, but Judah declares he walks in his sleep, so that---- Oh, heavens and earth!" This exclamation, although but a mutter, was fervent indeed. The captain and Elizabeth had turned to the vine-shaded doorway of the Eyrie, and there, in that doorway, was Miss Snowden and, peering around her thin shoulder, the moon face of Mrs. Chase. Sears looked annoyed, Miss Berry looked more so, and Elvira looked--well, she looked all sorts of things. As for Aurora, her expression was, as always, unfathomable. Judah Cahoon once compared her countenance to a pink china dish-cover, and it is hard to read the emotions behind a dish-cover. Miss Snowden spoke first. "Oh!" she observed; and much may be expressed in that monosyllable. Elizabeth spoke next. "Your book is there on the seat, Elvira," she said, carelessly. "At least I suppose it is yours. It has your bookmark in it." Elvira simpered. "Yes," she affirmed, "it is mine. But I'm not in a hurry, not a single bit of hurry. I _do_ hope we haven't _disturbed_ you." "Not a bit, not a bit," said Sears, crisply. "Miss Elizabeth and I were havin' a business talk, but we had finished. The coast is clear for you now. Good afternoon." "You're _sure_, Cap'n Kendrick? Aurora and I wouldn't interrupt a _business_ talk for the _world_. And in such a romantic place, too." As Sears and Elizabeth walked up the path from the summer-house the voice of Mrs. Chase was audible--as usual very audible indeed. "Elviry," begged Aurora, eagerly, "Elviry, what did he say to you? He looked awful kind of put out when he said it." The captain was "put out," so was Elizabeth apparently. The latter said, "Oh, dear!" and laughed, but there was less humor than irritation in the laugh. Sears's remark was brief but pointed. "I like four-legged cats first-rate," he declared. The next day at one o'clock he and his passenger, with the placid Foam Flake as motor power, left the Fair Harbor together. And, as they drove out of the yard, both were conscious that behind the shades of the dining-room windows were at least six eager faces, and whispering tongues were commenting, exclaiming and surmising. The captain, for his part, forgot the faces and tongues very quickly. It was a pleasant afternoon, the early fall days on the Cape are so often glorious; the rain of a few days before had laid the dust, at least the upper layer of it, and the woods were beginning to show the first sprinklings of crimson and purple and yellow. The old horse walked or jogged or rambled on along the narrow winding ways, the ancient buggy rocked and rattled and swung in the deep ruts. They met almost no one for the eight miles between Bayport and Orham--there were no roaring, shrieking processions of automobiles in those days--and when Abial Gould, of North Harniss, encountered them at the narrowest section of highway, he steered his placid ox team into the huckleberry bushes and waited for them to pass, waving a whip-handle greeting from his perch on top of his load of fragrant pitch pine. The little ponds and lakes shone deeply blue as they glimpsed them in the hollows or over the tree tops and, occasionally, a startled partridge boomed from the thicket, or a flock of quail scurried along the roadside. They talked of all sorts of things, mostly of ships and seas and countries far away, subjects to which Elizabeth led the conversation and then abandoned it to her companion. They spoke little of the Fair Harbor or its picayune problems, and of the errand upon which they were going--the judge's will, its reading and its possible surprises--none at all. "Don't," pleaded Elizabeth, when Sears once mentioned the will; "don't, please. Judge Knowles was such a good friend of mine that I can't bear to think he has gone and that some one else is to speak his thoughts and carry out his plans. Tell me another sea story, Cap'n Kendrick. There aren't any Elvira Snowdens off Cape Horn, I'm sure." So Sears spun his yarns and enjoyed the spinning because she seemed to so enjoy listening to them. And he did not once mention his crippled limbs, or his despondency concerning the future; in fact, he pretty well forgot them for the time. And he did not mention George Kent, a person whom he had meant to mention and praise highly, for his unreasonable conscience had pestered him since the talk in the summer-house and, as usual, he had determined to do penance. But he forgot Kent for the time, forgot him altogether. Bradley's law offices occupied a one-story building on Orham's main road near the center of the village. There were several rigs standing at the row of hitching posts by the steps as they drove up. Sears climbed from the buggy--he did it much easier than had been possible a month before--and moored the Foam Flake beside them. Then they entered the building. Bradley's office boy told them that his employer and the others were in the private room beyond. The captain inquired who the others were. "Well" said the boy, "there's that Mr. Barnes--he's the one from California, you know, Judge Knowles' nephew. And Mike--Mr. Callahan, I mean--him that took care of the judge's horse and team and things; and that Tidditt woman that kept his house. And there's Mr. Dishup, the Orthodox minister from over to Bayport, and another man, I don't know his name. Walk right in, Cap'n Kendrick. Mr. Bradley told me to tell you and Miss Berry to walk right in when you came." So they walked right in. Bradley greeted them and introduced them to Knowles Barnes, the long-looked-for nephew from California. Barnes was a keen-eyed, healthy-looking business man and the captain liked him at once. The person whom the office boy did not know turned out to be Captain Noah Baker, a retired master mariner, who was Grand Master of the Bayport lodge of Masons. "And now that you and Miss Berry are here, Cap'n Kendrick," said Bradley, "we will go ahead. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the will of our late good friend, Judge Knowles. He asked you all to be here when it was opened and read. Mr. Barnes is obliged to go West again in a week or so, so the sooner we get to business the better. Ahem!" Then followed the reading of the will. One by one the various legacies and bequests were read. Some of them Sears Kendrick had expected and foreseen. Others came as surprises. He was rather astonished to find that the judge had been, according to Cape Cod standards of that day, such a rich man. The estate, so the lawyer said, would, according to Knowles' own figures, total in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Judge Knowles bequeathed: To the Endowment Fund of the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women $50,000 To the Bayport Congregational Church 5,000 To the Building Fund of the Bayport Lodge of Masons 5,000 To Emmeline Tidditt (his housekeeper) 5,000 To Michael Callahan (his hired man) 5,000 To Elizabeth Berry--in trust until she should be thirty years of age 20,000 Other small bequests, about 7,000 The balance, the residue of the estate, amounting to a sum approximating fifty-five thousand, to Henry Knowles Barnes, of San Francisco, California. There were several pages of carefully worded directions and instructions. The fifty thousand for the Fair Harbor was already invested in good securities and, from the interest of these, Sears Kendrick's salary of fifteen hundred a year was to be paid as long as he wished to retain his present position as general manager. If the time should come when he wished to relinquish that position he was given authority to appoint his successor at the same salary. Or should Cordelia Berry, at any time, decide to give up her position as matron, Kendrick and Bradley, acting together, might, if they saw fit, appoint a suitable person to act as manager _and_ matron at a suitable salary. In this event, of course, Kendrick would no longer continue to draw his fifteen hundred a year. The reading was not without interruptions. Mr. Callahan's was the most dramatic. When announcement was made of his five thousand dollar windfall his Celtic fervor got the better of him and he broke loose with a tangled mass of tearful ejaculations and prayers, a curious mixture of glories to the saints and demands for blessings upon the soul of his benefactor. Mrs. Tidditt was as greatly moved as he, but she had her emotions under firmer control. The Reverend Mr. Dishup was happy and grateful on behalf of his parish, so too was Captain Baker as representative of the Masonic Lodge. But each of these had been in a measure prepared, they had been led to expect some gift or remembrance. It was Elizabeth Berry who had, apparently, expected nothing--nothing for herself, that is. When the lawyer announced the generous bequest to the Fair Harbor she caught her breath and turned to look at Sears with an almost incredulous joy in her eyes. But when he read of the twenty thousand which was hers--the income beginning at once and the principal when she was thirty--she was so tremendously taken aback that, for an instant, the captain thought she was going to faint. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and that was all, but the color left her face entirely. Sears rose, so did the minister, but she waved them back. "Don't," she begged. "I--I am all right.... No, please don't speak to me for--for a little while." So they did not speak, but the captain, watching her, saw that the color came back very slowly to her cheeks and that her eyes, when she opened them, were wet. Her hands, clasped in her lap, were trembling. Sears, although rejoicing for her, felt a pang of hot resentment at the manner of the announcement. It should not have been so public. She should not have had to face such a surprise before those staring spectators. Why had not the judge--or Bradley, if he knew--have prepared her in some measure? But when it was over and he hastened to congratulate her, she was more composed. She received his congratulations, and those of the others, if not quite calmly at least with dignity and simplicity. To Mr. Dishup and Bradley and Captain Baker she said little except thanks. To Barnes, whose congratulations were sincere and hearty, and, to all appearances at least, quite ungrudging, she expressed herself as too astonished to be very coherent. "I--I can scarcely believe it yet," she faltered. "I can't understand--I can't think why he did it.... And you are all so very kind. You won't mind if I don't say any more now, will you?" But to Sears when he came, once more, to add another word and to shake her hand, she expressed a little of the uncertainty which she felt. "Oh," she whispered; "oh, Cap'n Kendrick, do you think it is right? Do you think he really meant to do it? You are sure he did?" His tone should have carried conviction. "You bet he meant it!" he declared, fervently. "He never meant anything any more truly; I know it." "Do you? Do you really?... Did--did you know? Did he tell you he was going to?" "Not exactly, but he hinted. He----" "Wait. Wait, please. Don't tell me any more now. By and by, on the way home, perhaps. I--I want to know all about it. I want to be sure. And," with a tremulous smile, "I doubt if I could really understand just yet." The group in the lawyer's office did not break up for another hour. There were many matters for discussion, matters upon which Bradley and Barnes wished the advice of the others. Mike and Mrs. Tidditt were sent home early, and departed, volubly, though tearfully rejoicing. The minister and Captain Noah stayed on to answer questions concerning the church and the lodge, the former's pressing needs and the new building which the latter had hoped for and which was now a certainty. Sears and Elizabeth remained longest. Bradley whispered to the captain that he wished them to do so. When they were alone with him, and with Barnes of course, he took from his pocket two sealed letters. "The judge gave me these along with the will," he said. "That was about three weeks before he died. I don't know what is in them and he gave me to understand that I wasn't supposed to know. They are for you two and no one else, so he said. You are to read yours when you are alone, Cap'n Kendrick, and Elizabeth is to read hers when she is by herself. And he particularly asked me to tell you both not to make your decision too quickly. Think it over, he said." He handed Sears an envelope addressed in Judge Knowles' hand-writing, and to Elizabeth another bearing her name. "There!" he exclaimed, with a sigh of relief. "That is done. Ever since the old judge left us I have been feeling as if he were standing at my elbow and nudging me not to forget. He had a will of his own, Judge Knowles had, and I don't mean the will we have just read, either. But, take him by and large, as you sailors say, Cap'n, I honestly believe he was the biggest and squarest man this county has seen for years. Some of us are going to be surer of that fact every day that passes." It was after four when Elizabeth and Sears climbed aboard the buggy and the captain, tugging heavily on what he termed the port rein, coaxed the unwilling Foam Flake into the channel--or the road. Heavy clouds had risen in the west since their arrival in Orham, the sky was covered with them, and it was already beginning to grow dark. When they turned from the main road into the wood road leading across the Cape there were lighted lamps in the kitchens of the scattered houses on the outskirts of the town. "Is it going to rain, do you think?" asked Elizabeth, peering at the troubled brown masses above the tree tops. Sears shook his head. "Hardly think so," he replied. "Looks more like wind to me. Pretty heavy squall, I shouldn't wonder, and maybe rain to-morrow. Come, come; get under way, Old Hundred," addressing the meandering Foam Flake. "If you don't travel faster than this in fair weather and a smooth sea, what will you do when we have to reef? Well," with a chuckle, "even if it comes on a livin' gale the old horse won't blow off the course. Judah feeds him too well. Nothin' short of a typhoon could heel _him_ down." The prophesied gale held off, but the darkness shut in rapidly. In the long stretches of thick woods through which they were passing it was soon hard to see clearly. Not that that made any difference. Sears knew the Orham road pretty well and the placid Foam Flake seemed to know it absolutely. His ancient hoofs plodded up and down in the worn "horse path" between the grass-grown and sometimes bush-grown ridges which separated it from the deep ruts on either side. Sometimes those ruts were so deep that the tops of the blueberry bushes and weeds on those ridges scratched the bottom of the buggy. Beside his orders to the horse the captain had said very little since their departure. He had been thinking, though, thinking hard. It was just beginning to dawn upon him, the question as to what this good fortune which had befallen the girl beside him might mean, what effect it might have upon her, upon her future--and upon her relations with him, Sears Kendrick. Hitherto those relations had been those of comrades, fellow workers, partners, so to speak, in an enterprise the success of which involved continuous planning and fighting against obstacles. A difficult but fascinating game of itself, but one which also meant a means of livelihood for them both. Elizabeth had drawn no salary, it is true, but without her help her mother could not have held her position as matron, not for a month could she have done so. It was Elizabeth who was the real matron, who really earned the wages Cordelia received and upon which they both lived. And Elizabeth had told the captain that she should remain at the Fair Harbor and work with and for her mother as long as the latter needed her. And now Sears was realizing that the necessity for either of them to remain there no longer existed. Cordelia, thanks to Mrs. Phillips' bequest, had five thousand dollars of her own. Elizabeth had, for the six or seven years before her thirtieth birthday, an income of at least twelve hundred yearly. Cordelia's legacy would add several hundred to that. If they wished it was quite possible for them to retire from the Fair Harbor and live somewhere in a modest fashion upon that income. Many couples--couples esteemed by Bayporters as being in comfortable circumstances--were living upon incomes quite as small. Sears was suddenly brought face to face with this possibility, and was forced to admit it even a probability. And he--he had no income worth mentioning. He could not go to sea again for a long time; he did not add "if ever," because even conservative Doctor Sheldon now admitted that his complete recovery was but a matter of time, but it would be a year--perhaps years. And for that year, or those years, he must live--and he had practically nothing to live upon except his Fair Harbor salary. And then again, as an additional obligation, there was his promise to Judge Knowles to stick it out. But to stick it out alone--without her! For Elizabeth was under no obligation. She might not stay--probably would not. She was a young woman of fortune now. She could do what she liked, in reason. She might--why, she might even decide to marry. There was Kent---- At the thought Sears choked and swallowed hard. A tingling, freezing shiver ran down his spine. She would marry George Kent and he would be left to--to face--to face---- She would marry--_she_---- The shiver lasted but a moment. He shut his teeth, blinked and came back to the buggy seat and reality--and shame. Overwhelming, humiliating shame. He glanced fearfully at her, afraid that she might have seen his face and read upon it the secret which he himself had learned for the first time. No, she did not read it, she was not looking at him, she too seemed to be thinking. There was a chance for him yet. He must be a man, a decent man, not a fool and a selfish beast. She did not know--and she should not. Then, or at any future time. He spoke now and hurriedly. "Well," he began, "I suppose----" But she had looked up and now she spoke. Apparently she had not heard him, for she said: "Tell me about it, Cap'n Kendrick, please. I want to hear all about it. You said you knew? You say Judge Knowles hinted that he was going to do this--for me? Tell me all about it, please. Please." So he told her, all that he could remember of the judge's words concerning his regard for her, of his high opinion of her abilities, of his friendship for her father, and of his intention to see that she was "provided for." "I didn't know just what he meant, of course," he said, in conclusion, "but I guessed, some of it. I do want you to know, Elizabeth," he added, stammering a little in his earnestness, "how glad I am for you, how _very_ glad." "Yes," she said, "I do know." "Well, I--I haven't said much, but I _am_. I don't think I ever was more glad, or could be. You believe that, don't you?" She looked at him in surprise. "Why, of course I believe it," she said. "Why do you ask that?" "Oh, I--I don't know. I hadn't said much about it." "But it wasn't necessary. I knew you were glad. I know you by this time, Cap'n Kendrick, through and through." The same guilty shiver ran down his spine and he glanced sharply at her to see if there was any hidden meaning behind her words. But there was not. She was looking down again, and when she again spoke it was to repeat the question she had asked at the lawyer's office. "I wonder if I ought to take it?" she murmured. "Do you think it is right for me to accept--so much? "Right!" he repeated. "Right? Of course its right. And because it is enough to amount to somethin' makes it all the more right. Judge Knowles knew what he was doin', trust his long head for that. A little would only have made things easier where you were.... Now," he forced himself to say it, "now you can be independent." "Independent?" "Why, yes. Do what you like--in reason. Steer your own course. Live as you want to ... and where ... and _how_ you want to." They were simple sentences these, but he found them hard to say. She turned again to look at him. "Why do you speak like that?" she asked. "How should I want to live? What do you mean?" "I mean--er--you can think of your own happiness and--plans, and--all that. You won't be anchored to the Fair Harbor, unless you want to be. You.... Eh? Hi! Standby! Whoa! _Whoa!_" The last commands were roars at the horse, for, at that moment, the squall struck. It came out of the blackness to the left and ahead like some enormous living creature springing over the pine tops and pouncing upon them. There was a rumble, a roar and then a shrieking rush. The sand of the road leaped up like the smoke from an explosion, showers of leaves and twigs pattered sharply upon the buggy top or were thrown smartly into their faces. From all about came the squeaks and groans of branches rubbing against each other, with an occasional sharp crack as a limb gave way under the pressure. Captain Kendrick and his passenger had been so occupied with their thoughts and conversation that both had forgotten the heavy clouds they had noticed when they left Bradley's office, rolling up from the west. Then, too, the increasing darkness had hidden the sky. So the swoop of the squall took them completely by surprise. And not only them but that genuine antique the Foam Flake. This phlegmatic animal had been enjoying himself for the last half hour. No one had shouted orders at him, he had not been slapped with the ends of the reins, no whip had been cracked in his vicinity. He had been permitted to amble and to walk and had availed himself of the permission. For the most recent mile he had been, practically, a somnambulist. Now out of his dreams, whatever they may have been, came this howling terror. He jumped and snorted. Then the wind, tearing a prickly dead branch from a scrub oak by the roadside, cast it full into his dignified countenance. For the first time in ten years at least, the Foam Flake ran away. He did not run far, of course; he was not in training for distance events. But his sprint, although short, was lively and erratic. He jumped to one side, the side opposite to that from which the branch had come, jerking the buggy out of the ruts and setting it to rocking like a dory amid breakers. He jumped again, and this brought his ancient broadside into contact with the bushes by the edge of the road. They were ragged, and prickly, and in violent commotion. So he jumped the other way. Sears, yelling Whoas and compliments, stood erect upon his newly-mended legs and leaned his weight backward upon the reins. If the skipper of a Hudson River canal boat had suddenly found his craft deserting the waterway and starting to climb Bear Mountain, he might have experienced something of Sears' feelings at that moment. Canal boats should not climb; it isn't done; and horses of the Foam Flake age, build and reputation should not run away. "Whoa! Whoa! What in thunder--?" roared the captain. "Port! Port, you lubber!" He jerked violently on the left rein. That rein was, like the horse and the buggy, of more than middle age. Leather of that age must be persuaded, not jerked. The rein broke just beyond Sears' hand, flew over the dashboard and dragged in the road. The driver's weight came solidly upon the right hand rein. The Foam Flake dashed across the highway again, head-first into the woods this time. Then followed a few long--very long minutes of scratching and rocking and pounding. Sears heard himself shouting something about the Broken rein he must get that rein. "It's all right! It's all right, Elizabeth!" he shouted. "I'm goin' to lean out over his back, if I can and--O--oh!" The last was a groan, involuntarily wrung from him by the pain in his knees. He had put an unaccustomed strain upon them and they were remonstrating. He shut his teeth, swallowed another groan, and leaned out over the dash, his hand clutching for the harness of the rocketing, bumping Foam Flake. Then he realized that some one else was leaning over that dashboard, was in fact almost out of the buggy and swinging by the harness and the shaft. "Elizabeth!" he shouted, in wild alarm. "Elizabeth, what are you doin'? Stop!" But she was back, panting a little, but safe. "I have the rein," she panted. "Give me the other, Cap'n Kendrick. I can handle him, I know. Give me the rein. Sit down! Oh, please! You will hurt yourself again!" But he was in no mood to sit down. He snatched the end of the broken rein from her hand, taking it and the command again simultaneously. "Get back, back on the seat," he ordered. "Now then," addressing the horse, "we'll see who's what! Whoa! Whoa! Steady! Come into that channel, you old idiot! Come _on_!" The Foam Flake was pretty nearly ready to come by this time. And Kendrick's not too gentle coaxing helped. The buggy settled into the ruts with a series of bumps. The horse's gallop became a trot, then a walk; then he stopped and stood still. The captain subsided on the seat beside his passenger. He relaxed his tension upon the reins and the situation. "Whew!" he exclaimed. "That was sweet while it lasted. All right, are you?" She answered, still rather breathlessly, "Yes, I am all right," she declared. "But you? Aren't you hurt?" "Me? Not a bit." "You're sure? I was so afraid. Your--your legs, you know." "My legs are all serene." They weren't, by any means, and were at that moment proclaiming the fact, but he did not mean she should know. "They're first-rate.... Well, I'm much obliged." "Obliged for what?" "For that rein. But you shouldn't have climbed out that way. You might have broken your neck. 'Twas an awful risk." "You were going to take the same risk. And _I_ am not in the doctor's care." "Well, you shouldn't have done it, just the same. And it was a spunky thing to do.... But what a numbskull I was not to be on the lookout for that squall. Humph!" with a grin, "I believe I told you even a typhoon couldn't move this horse. I was wrong, wasn't I?" The squall had passed on, but a steady gale was behind it. And there was a marked hint of dampness in the air. Sears sniffed. "And I'm afraid, too," he said, "that I was wrong about that rain comin' to-morrow. I think it's comin' this evenin' and pretty soon, at that." It came within fifteen minutes, in showery gusts at first. The captain urged the Foam Flake onward as fast as possible, but that quadruped had already over-expended his stock of energy and shouts and slaps meant nothing to him. For a short time Sears chatted and laughed, but then he relapsed into silence. Elizabeth, watching him fearfully, caught, as the buggy bounced over a loose stone, a smothered exclamation, first cousin to a groan. "I knew it!" she cried. "You _are_ hurt, Cap'n Kendrick." "No, no, I'm not," hastily. "It's--it's those confounded spliced spars of mine. They're a little weak yet, I presume likely." "Of course they are. Oh, I'm _so_ sorry. Won't you let me drive?" "I should say not. I'm not quite ready for the scrap heap yet. And if I couldn't steer this Noah's ark I should be.... Hello! here's another craft at sea." Another vehicle was ahead of them in the road, coming toward them. Sears pulled out to permit it to pass. But the driver of the other buggy hailed as the horses' heads came abreast. "Elizabeth," he shouted, "is that you?" Miss Berry's surprise showed in her voice. "Why, George!" she cried. "Where in the world are you going?" The horses stopped. Kent leaned forward. "Going?" he repeated. "Why, I was going after you, of course. Are you wet through?" He seemed somewhat irritated, so the captain thought. "No, indeed," replied Elizabeth. "I am all right. But why did you come after me? Didn't they tell you I was with Cap'n Kendrick?" "_They_ told me--yes. But why didn't _you_ tell me you were going to Orham? I would have driven you over; you know I would." "You were at work at the store." "Well, I could have taken the afternoon off.... But there! no use talking about it out here in this rain. Come on.... Oh, wait until I turn around. Drive ahead a little, will you?" This was the first time he had spoken to Sears, and even then his tone was not too gracious. The captain drove on a few steps, as requested, and, a moment later, Kent's equipage, now headed in their direction, was alongside once more. "Whoa!" he shouted, and both horses stopped. "Come on, Elizabeth," urged the young man, briskly. "Wait, I'll help you." He sprang out of his buggy and approached theirs. "Come on," he said, again. "Quick! It is going to rain harder." Elizabeth did not move. "But I'm not going with you, George," she said quietly. He stared at her. "Not going with me?" he repeated. "Why, of course you are. I've come on purpose for you." "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have done it. You knew I would be all right with Cap'n Kendrick." "I didn't even know you were going with him. You didn't say you were going at all. If you had I----" "You would have taken another afternoon's holiday. And you know what Mr. Bassett said about the last one." "I don't care a--I don't care what he says. I shan't be working very long for him, I hope.... But there, Elizabeth! Come on, come on! I can get you home for supper while that old horse of Cahoon's is thinking about it." But still she did not move. Sears thought that, perhaps, he should take a hand. "Go right ahead, Elizabeth," he said. "George is right about the horses." "Of course I am. Come, Elizabeth." "No, I shall stay with Cap'n Kendrick. He has been kind enough to take me so far and we are almost home. You can follow, George, and we'll get there together." "Well, I like that!" exclaimed Kent. But he did not speak as if he liked it. "After I have taken the trouble----" "Hush! Don't be silly. The cap'n has taken a great deal of trouble, too.... No," as Sears began to protest, "you can't get rid of me, Cap'n Kendrick." "But, Elizabeth----" "No. Do you suppose I am going to leave you--in pain--and.... Drive on, please. George can follow us." "But I'm all right, good land knows! The Foam Flake won't try to fly again. And really, I----" "Drive on, please." So he drove on; there seemed to be nothing else to do. It did not help his feelings to hear, as George Kent was left standing in the road, a disgusted and profane ejaculation from that young gentleman. The remainder of the journey was quickly made. There was little conversation. The rain, the wind, and the sounds of the horses' hoofs and the rattle of the buggies--for Kent's was close behind all the way--furnished most of the noise. Judah was waiting when they came into the yard of the Minot place. He and Elizabeth helped Sears from the buggy. The captain, in spite of his protestations, could scarcely stand. Kent, because Elizabeth asked him to, assisted in getting him into the kitchen and the biggest rocking chair. "Now go ... go," urged Sears. "I'm just a little lame, that's all, and I'll be all right by to-morrow. Go, Elizabeth please. Your supper is waitin' as it is. Now go." She went, but rather reluctantly. "I shall run over after supper to see how you are," she declared. "Thank you very much for taking me to Orham, Cap'n." "Thank you for--for a whole lot of things. And don't you dream of comin' over again to-night. There's no sense in it, is there, George?" If Kent heard he did not answer. His "good night" was brief. Sears did not like it, nor the expression on his face. This was a new side of the young fellow's character, a side the captain had not seen before. And yet--well, he was young, very young. Sears was troubled about the affair. Had he been to blame? He had not meant to be. Ah-hum! the world was full of misunderstandings and foolishness. And was there, in all that world, any being more foolish than himself? Just here, Judah, having returned from stabling the Foam Flake, rushed into the kitchen to demand answers to a thousand questions. For the next hour there was no opportunity for moralizing or melancholy. CHAPTER XII Elizabeth did not visit the Minot place that evening, as she had said she meant to do. It may be that Sears was a trifle disappointed, but even he would have been obliged to confess that that particular evening was not the time for him to receive callers. He ate his supper--a very small portion of the meal which Judah had provided for him--and, soon afterward, retired to the spare stateroom and bed. Undressing was a martyrdom, and he had hard work to keep back the groans which the pain in his legs tempted him to utter. There was no doubt that he had twisted those shaky limbs of his more than he realized. He had wrenched them severely, how severely he scarcely dared think. But they forced him to think all that night, and the next morning Judah insisted on going for the doctor. Doctor Sheldon examined the "spliced timbers," fumed and scolded a good deal, but at last grudgingly admitted that no irreparable harm had been done. "You're luckier than you deserve, Cap'n," he declared. "It's a wonder you aren't ruined altogether. Now you stay right in that bed until I tell you to get up. And that won't be to-day, or to-morrow either. Perhaps the day after that--well, we'll see. But those legs of yours need absolute rest. Judah, you see that they get it, will you? If he tries to get up you knock him back again. Those are orders. Understand?" "Aye, aye, sir," replied Judah, promptly. "I'll have a handspike handy. He won't turn out, I'll see to it." Sears' protestations that he couldn't waste time in bed, that he had too many important things to attend to, went for nothing. According to Sheldon and Judah his legs were the only things of real importance just then and they needed absolute rest. Down inside him the captain realized that this was true, and so grumblingly resigned himself to the two days of imprisonment. With the most recent issues of the _Cape Cod Item_ and one or two books from the shelves in the sitting room closet, books of the vintage of the '40's and '50's, but fortunately of a strong sea flavor, he endeavored to console himself, while Judah attended to the household duties or went down town on errands. Elizabeth called that first forenoon, but did not see him. The doctor had warned Judah to head off visitors. "They may not do any harm, but they certainly won't do any good, and I want him to have absolute rest," said Sheldon. So Judah guarded the outer portal, and, when he went out, hung up a warning placard. "OUT. NO ADMITENTS. DOORS LOKED. KEY UNDER MAT." The information concerning the key was for the doctor's benefit. But Elizabeth sent her good wishes and sympathy. So did her mother. So, too, did Esther Tidditt, and Miss Snowden, and Miss Peasley, and in fact all the Fair Harbor inmates. For the first day Mr. Cahoon was kept busy transmitting messages to the spare stateroom. But about this time Bayport began to rock with a new series of sensations and, except by the very few, Captain Kendrick was forgotten. The news of Judge Knowles' various legacies became known and spread through the village like fire in a patch of dead weeds. The Fair Harbor sat up nearly all of one night discussing and commenting upon the good fortune which had befallen the Berrys. And by no means all of the time was used in congratulations. "Humph!" sniffed Susanna Brackett, her lips squeezed so tightly together that her mustache stood on end. "Humph!" Miss Snowden nodded. "Of course," she said, "I'm not a person to hint, or anything of that sort. But--_but_ if somebody'll tell me _why_ the judge left all that money to her I should like to hear 'em." Mrs. Brackett opened her lips sufficiently to observe that so should she. "Of course," she added, "the five thousand that Lobelia left Cordelia might have been expected, they was real friendly always. But why did Judge Knowles leave it all to Elizabeth and not one cent to her mother? _That_ I _can't_ understand." Miss Peasley smiled. "We used to wonder why Elizabeth kept runnin' to the judge's all the time," she said. "He was sick and feeble and we thought 'twas queer her pesterin' him so. _Now_--well, it pays to hang around sick folks, don't it? They're easier to coax, maybe, than the well kind.... Course I ain't sayin' there was any coaxin' done." Little Mrs. Tidditt's feathers had begun to rise. "Oh, no!" she snapped. "You ain't _sayin'_ anything, any of you. Judge Knowles was business head of this--this old cats' home afore he app'inted Cap'n Kendrick to the job, and you know that. Elizabeth _had_ to go to him about all sorts of money matters, and you know that, too. As for her tryin' to coax him to leave her money, that's just rubbish. He always liked her, thought the world of her ever since she was a little girl, and he left her the twenty thousand because of that and for no other reason. That's why _I_ think he left it to her; but, if some of the rest of you would be better satisfied, I'll tell her what you say--or _ain't_ sayin', Desire--and let her answer it herself." This not being at all what Miss Peasley and the others wished, no more was said about undue influence at the time. But much was said at times when the pugnacious Esther was not present, and there was marked speculation concerning what Miss Berry would do with her money, what Mr. Phillips would do when he returned to Bayport, whether or not Cordelia Berry would continue to be matron at the Harbor, and what Sears Kendrick's plans for the future might be. "Of course," said Mrs. Brackett, "the judge fixed it so he would get his fifteen hundred so long as he stays manager. But will he stay long? There's Mr. Phillips to be considered now, I should think. _He'll_ have somethin' to say about the--er--retreat his wife founded, won't he?" Mrs. Constance Cahoon made a remark. "George Kent'll come in for a nice windfall some of these days, it looks like," she observed, significantly. "What makes you look so funny, Elviry?" Miss Snowden smiled. "Will he?" she inquired. "Well, won't he? When he marries Elizabeth----" "Yes. Yes, _when_ he does." "Well, he's goin' to, ain't he? Why, he's been keepin' comp'ny with her for two years. Everybody cal'lates they're engaged." "Yes. But _they_ don't say they are.... Oh, what is it Aurora?" Mrs. Chase, who had been listening with her hand at her ears, had caught a little of the conversation. "If you mean her and George Kent is engaged, Constance," she declared, "they ain't. I asked Elizabeth if they was, myself, asked her much as a month ago, and she said no. Pretty nigh took my head off, too." Elvira's smile broadened. She nodded, slowly and with mysterious significance. "I'm not so sure about that engagement," she observed. "Some things I've seen lately have set me to thinking. To thinking a good deal.... Um ... yes. It looks to me as if somebody--_somebody_, I mention no names--may have had a hint of what was coming and began to lay plans according.... No, I shan't say any more--now. And I give in that it seems too perfectly ridiculous to believe. But things like that sometimes do happen, and ... Well, we'll wait and see." Happy in the knowledge that she had aroused curiosity as well as envy of her superior knowledge, she subsided. Mrs. Tidditt concluded that portion of the discussion. "Well," she remarked, crisply, "I don't see why we need to sit here talkin' about engagements or folks' gettin' married. Nobody has shown any symptoms of wantin' to marry any of _this_ crowd, so far as I can make out." While the town was at the very height of its agitation concerning the Knowles will, there came another earthquake. Egbert Phillips returned. He alighted from the train at the Bayport depot on the second morning of Sears's imprisonment in the spare stateroom and before night the information that he imparted--confidentially, of course--and the hints he gave concerning his plans for the future, made the Berry legacies and all the other legacies take second place as gossip kindlers. Judah came rushing into the house later that afternoon, his arms full of bundles--purchases at Eliphalet's store--and his mouth full of words. He dropped everything, eggs, salt fish, tea and shoe laces, on the kitchen table and tore pell-mell into his lodger's bedroom. Captain Kendrick, propped up with pillows, was of course stretched out in bed. There was what appeared to be a letter in his hand, a letter apparently just received, for a recently opened envelope lay on the comforter beside him, and upon his face was an expression of bewilderment, surprise and marked concern. Judah was too intent upon his news to notice anything else and Sears hastily gathered up letter and envelope and thrust them beneath the pillow. Then Judah broke loose. Egbert had come back, had come back to Bayport to live, for good. He had come on the morning train. Lots of folks saw him; some of them had talked with him. "And what do you cal'late, Cap'n Sears? You'll never guess in _this_ world! By the crawlin' prophets, he swears he ain't rich, the way all hands figured out he was. No, sir, he ain't! 'Cordin' to his tell he ain't got no money at all, scarcely. All them stocks and--and bonds and--and securitums and such like have gone on the rocks. They was unfort'nate infestments, he says. He says he's in straightened out circumstances, whatever they be, but he's come back here to spend his declinin' days--that's what Joe Macomber says he called 'em, his declinin' days--in Bayport, 'cause he loves the old place, 'count of Lobelia, his wife, lovin' it so, and he can maybe scratch along here on what income he's got, and--and----" And so on, for sentence after sentence. Sears heard some of it, but not all. The letter he had just read--the letter from Judge Knowles which Bradley had handed him before he left Orham--was of itself too startling and disturbing to be dismissed from his thoughts; but he heard some, enough to make him realize that there might be, in all probability was, trouble ahead. Just why Phillips had returned to Bayport, to take up his abode there permanently, was hard to understand, but there certainly must be some reason beside his "love" for the place and its people. Neither place nor people should, so it seemed to the captain, appeal strongly to a citizen of the world, of the fashionable world, like Mr. Egbert Phillips. It is true that he might perhaps live cheaper there than in most communities, but still.... No, Sears was sure that the former singing teacher had returned to the Cape in pursuance of a plan. What that plan might be he could not guess, unless the widower contemplated contesting his wife's gift to the Fair Harbor. That would be a losing fight, was certain to be, for Judge Knowles had seen to that. But if not that--what? He gave very little thought to the matter at the time, for Judge Knowles' letter and its astounding proposition were monopolizing his mental machinery. That letter would have, as he might have expressed it, knocked him on his beam ends even if the Foam Flake's unexpected outbreak had not knocked him there already. The letter was rather long, but it was to the point, nevertheless. Judge Knowles begged him--him, Sears Kendrick--to accept the appointment of trustee in charge of Elizabeth Berry's twenty thousand dollar inheritance. The latter was hers in trust until she was thirty. "I have seen enough of you to believe in you, Kendrick," so the judge had written. "Besides, you know the Berrys, mother and daughter, by this time, better than any one else--even Bradley--and you know my opinion of Cordelia's headpiece. I don't want her soft-headedness or foolishness to get any of Elizabeth's money away from her. Elizabeth is a dutiful daughter and an unselfish girl and she may feel--or be led to feel--that her mother ought to have this money or a large part of it. I don't want this to happen. Of course I expect Elizabeth to share her income with her mother, but I don't want the principal disturbed. After she is thirty she can, of course, do what she likes with it, but that time isn't now by some years. And then there is that Egbert. Look out for him. I say again, look out for him. If _he_ ever got a penny of this money I should turn over in my grave. Perhaps you think I am an old fool and am treating him with more seriousness than he deserves. You won't think so when you know him as well as I do, mark my words. And I think you are the one man around here that has had worldly experience enough, backed by brains and common-sense, to see through him and handle him. I don't mean that there aren't other smart men in town, but most of the smartest are in active service and at sea a good share of the time. You will be right here for a few years at least. And you are honest, and you like Elizabeth Berry, and will look out for her interests.... Of course I can't compel you to take this trusteeship, but I hope you will, as a favor to her and to me. I have written her a letter similar to this, but I have left her a free choice in the matter. If she does not want you for her trustee then that ends it. Being the kind of girl she is, I think she will be mighty glad to have you...." And this was the proposition which was causing the captain so much anxiety and perplexity. It interfered with the sleep which Doctor Sheldon seemed to feel necessary to his patient's complete recovery from the setback. It prevented his keeping those damaged legs of his absolutely quiet. Time and time again Judah, at work in what he always referred to as the "galley," heard his lodger tossing about in the spare stateroom and occasionally muttering to himself. For Sears, facing the problem of accepting or declining the trust, was quite aware that the dilemma upon which the judge had perched him had two very sharp horns. If he declined--always of course supposing that Elizabeth Berry asked him to accept--if he declined he would be acting contrary to her wishes and Judge Knowles'. If he did decline, then Bradley would be the trustee. Knowles, in a part of the letter not quoted, had said that he imagined that would have to be the alternative. And Bradley--a good man, an honest and capable man--was not a resident of Bayport and could not, as he could, keep an eye upon the Berrys nor upon those who might try to influence them. And Bradley did not know Bayport as he, Kendrick, did. But on the other hand, suppose Elizabeth begged him to take the trusteeship and he did take it? To begin with, he dreaded the added responsibility and distrusted his ability to handle investments. His record as a business man ashore was brief enough and not of a kind to inspire self-confidence. And what would people say concerning it and him? He and Elizabeth were in daily contact. Their association in the management of the Fair Harbor was close already. If he should be given charge of her fortune--for it was a fortune, in Bayport eyes--would not his every action be liable to misconstruction? Would not malicious gossip begin to whisper all sorts of things? To misconstrue motives and ...? Perhaps they were already whispering. He had seen Elvira Snowden but once since she and Mrs. Chase surprised him and Elizabeth in the Eyrie, but on that one occasion Elvira had, so it seemed to him, looked queer--and knowing. It was foolish, of course; it was ridiculous, and wicked. He and Elizabeth were friendly, had come to be very good friends indeed, but---- And here his train of thought stopped dead, while the same guilty shiver he had before felt ran up and down his spine.... Good Lord above! _what_ was he thinking of? What could be the matter with him? Why, even if things were as they had been he would be crazy to.... And now she was a rich woman, rich compared to him, at least. No! And over and over again, No! He would decline the trusteeship. And he would make it his business to get well and to sea again as soon as possible. As soon as she came to him to mention the judge's letter and its insane request he would settle that proposal once and for all. But she did not come. On the third day the doctor refused to permit him to leave the bed. "You stay where you are for another two days," commanded Sheldon. "It will do you good, and while I'm boss you shan't take chances. Cahoon and I have got you where we want you now and we'll keep you there till we pipe you on deck. Eh, Judah?" Judah grinned. "Aye, aye," was his rejoinder. "Got the handspike ready to my fist, Doctor. He'll stay put if I have to lash him to the bunk with a chain cable. It's all for your good, Cap'n Sears. That's what my ma used to tell me when she dosed me up every spring with brimstone and molasses." So, reluctantly realizing that it was for his good, Sears "stayed put." He had a few callers, although Judah saw to it that their calls were brief. Elizabeth was not one of these. She came at least once a day to inquire about him, but she did not ask to see him. The captain, trying not to be disappointed, endeavored to console himself with the idea that she was following Judge Knowles' advice, as repeated by Bradley, and meant to take plenty of time before making up her mind concerning the trusteeship. One of his visitors was George Kent. On the fourth day, on his way to the Macombers for dinner, the young fellow called at the Minot place. Judah was out, but Sears heard his visitor's voice and step through the open doors of the dining room and kitchen and shouted to him to come in. His manner when he entered was, so it seemed to the captain, a trifle constrained, but his inquiries concerning the latter's health were cordial enough. As for Sears, he, of course, made it a point to be especially cordial. They talked of many things, but not of their recent encounter on the Orham road. Sears did not like to be the first to mention it and it appeared as if Kent wished to avoid it altogether. But at last, after a short interval of silence, a break in the conversation, he did refer to it. "Cap'n Kendrick," he said, reddening and looking rather nervous and uncomfortable, "I--I suppose you thought I was--was pretty disagreeable the other evening. I mean when we met in the rain and Elizabeth was with you." "Eh? Disagreeable?" "Yes. I wasn't very pleasant, I know. I'm sorry. That--that was one of the things I came to say. I lost my temper, I guess." "Well, if you did I don't know as I blame you, George. A night like that is enough to lose any one's temper. I lost mine. The Foam Flake ran away with it. But he's repentin' in sackcloth and ashes, I guess. Judah says the old horse is lamer than I am." He laughed heartily. Kent's laugh was short. His uneasiness seemed to increase. "Yes," he said, returning to the subject which was evidently uppermost in his mind. "Yes, I did--er--lose my temper, perhaps. But--but it seems almost as if I had a--er--well, some excuse. You see--well, you see, Cap'n Kendrick, I didn't like it very much, the idea of Elizabeth's going over to Orham with--with you, you know." Sears looked at him in surprise. "Why, she went with me because it was the simplest way to get there," he explained. "I was goin' anyhow, and Bradley had asked her to be there, too. So, it was natural enough that we should go together." "Well--well, I don't see why she didn't tell me she was going." "Perhaps she didn't think to tell you." "Nonsense!... I mean.... Well, anyhow, if she had told me I should have looked out for her, of course. I could have hired a rig and driven her over." "But she knew you were at work down at the store. She said that, didn't she? Seems to me I remember hearin' her say that she didn't want you to--to feel that you must take the afternoon off on her account." The young man stirred impatiently. "That's foolishness," he declared. "She seems to think Bassett has a mortgage on my life. He hasn't, not by a long shot. I don't mean to keep his books much longer; I've got other things to attend to. My law is getting on pretty well." "Glad to hear it, George." "Yes. I shall read with Bradley for a while longer, of course, but after that--well, I don't know. I was talking with--with a man who has had a good deal of experience with lawyers--real city lawyers, not the one-horse sort--and he says the thing for an ambitious young fellow to do is to get into one of those city offices. Then you have a chance." "Oh--I see. But isn't it kind of hard to get in, unless you have some acquaintance or influence?" "I don't know as it is. And I guess this man will help me if I want him to." "So? That's good. Did he say he would?" "No-o, not exactly, but I think he will. And he's got the acquaintances, all right enough. He knows almost everybody that's worth while." "That's the kind to tie to. Who is he? Somebody up in Boston?" George shifted again. "I'd rather not mention his name just now," he said. "Our talks have been rather--er--confidential and I don't know that I should have said anything about them. But I've got plans, you see. Then there is my aunt's estate. I am the administrator of that." "Oh? I didn't know. Your aunt, eh?" "Yes, my Aunt Charlotte, mother's sister. She was single and lived up in Meriden, Connecticut. She died about a month ago and left everything to my half-sister and me--my married sister in Springfield, you know. I have charge of--of the estate, settling it and all that." Sears smiled inwardly at the self-satisfaction with which the word "estate" was uttered. But outwardly he was serious enough. "Good for you, George!" he exclaimed. "Congratulations. I hope you've come in for a big thing." His visitor colored slightly. "Well--well, of course," he admitted, "the estate isn't very large, but----" "But it's an estate. I'm glad for you, son." "Yes--er--yes.... But really, Cap'n, I didn't mean to talk about that. I--I just wanted to say that--that I was sorry if I--er--wasn't as polite as I might have been the other night, and--well, I thought--it seemed as if I--I ought to say--to say----" Whatever it was it seemed to be hard to say. The captain tried to help. "Yes, of course, George," he prompted. "Heave ahead and say it." "Well--well, it's just this, Cap'n Kendrick: Elizabeth and you are--are together a good deal, in the Fair Harbor affairs, you know, and--and--she doesn't think, of course--and you _are_ a lot older than she is--but all the same----" Sears interrupted. "Here! Hold on, George!" he put in, sharply. "What's all this?" Kent's embarrassment increased. "Why--why, nothing," he stammered. "Nothing, of course. But you see, Cap'n, people are silly--they don't stop to count ages and things like that. They see you with her so much.... And when they see you taking her to ride--alone----" "Here! That'll do!" All the cordiality had left the captain's voice. "George," he said, after a moment, "I guess you'd better not say any more. I don't think I had better hear it. Miss Elizabeth is a friend of mine. She is, as you say, years younger than I am. I _am_ with her a good deal, have to be because of our Fair Harbor work together. I took her to Orham with me just as I'd take her mother, or you, or any other friend who had to go and wanted a lift. But--_but_ if you or any one else is hintin' that.... There, there! George, don't be foolish. Maybe you'd better run along now. The doctor says I mustn't get excited." His visitor looked remarkably foolish, but the stubbornness had not altogether left his face or tone as he said: "Well, that's all right, Cap'n. I knew you would understand. _I_ didn't mean anything, but--but, you see, in Elizabeth's case I feel a--a sort of responsibility. You--you understand." Even irritated and angry as he was, Sears could not help smiling at the last sentence. "George," he observed, "you've been fairly open and aboveboard in your remarks to me. Suppose I ask you a question. Just what _is_ your responsibility in the case? I have heard said, and more than once, that you and Elizabeth Berry are engaged to be married. Is it so?" The young man grew redder yet, hesitated, and turned to the door. "I--I'm not at liberty to say," he declared. "Wait! Hold on! There is this responsibility business. If you're not engaged--well, honestly, George, I don't quite see where your responsibility comes in." Kent hesitated a moment longer. Then he seemed to make up his mind. "Well, then, we are--er--er--practically," he said. "Practically?... Oh! Well, I--I certainly do congratulate you." George had his hand on the latch, but turned back. "Don't--please don't tell any one of it," he said earnestly. "It--it mustn't be known yet.... You see, though, why I--I feel as if you--as if we all ought to be very careful of--of appearances--and--and such things." "Yes.... Yes, of course. Well, all right, George. Good-by. Call again." Judah, who had been over at the Fair Harbor doing some general chores around the place, came in a little later. His lodger called to him. "Judah," he commanded, "come in here. I want to talk to you." When Mr. Cahoon obeyed the order, he was told to sit down a moment. "I want to ask you some questions," said the captain. "What is the latest news of Egbert Phillips? Where is he nowadays? And what is he doin'?" Judah was quite ready to give the information, even eager, but he hesitated momentarily. "Sure you want me to talk about him, Cap'n?" he asked. "Last time I said anything about him--day afore yesterday 'twas--you told me to shut up. Said you had somethin' more important to think about." "Did I, Judah? Well, 'twas true then, I guess." "Um-hm. And you ordered me not to mention his name again till you h'isted signals, or somethin' like that." "Yes, seems to me I did. Well, the signals are up. What is he doin'?" "Doin'? He ain't doin' nothin'--much. He's roomin' up to the Central House yet, but from what I hear tell he ain't goin' to stay there. He's cal'latin', so the folks down to the store say, to find some nice home place where he can board. He don't call it boardin'. Thoph Black says he said what he wanted was a snug little den where him and his few remainin' household gods could be together. Thoph said he couldn't make out what household gods was, and I'm plaguey sure _I_ can't. Sounds heathenish to me. And I told Thoph, says I, 'That ain't no way to hunt a boardin' house, goin' round hollerin' for a den. If I was takin' in boarders and a feller hove alongside and says, "Can I hire one of them dens of yours?" he'd get somethin' that he wan't lookin' for.' Huh! Den! Sounds like a circus menagerie, don't it? Not but what I've seen boardin'-house rooms that was like dens. Why, one time, over in Liverpool 'twas, me and a feller named----" "Yes, yes, all right, Judah. I've heard about it. But what else is he doin'? Where does he go? Is he makin' friends? Is he talkin' much about his plans? What do folks say about him?" Judah answered the last question first. "They like him," he declared. "All hands are so kind of sorry for him, you see. Course we all cal'lated he was rich, but he ain't. And them bonds and such that him and his wife had all went to nawthin' and he come back here after she died, figgerin', I presume likely, same as anybody would, that he owned the Fair Harbor property and that the fifty thousand was just a sort of--er--loan, as you might say. He told Joe Macomber--or George Kent, I forget which 'twas--he's with George consider'ble; I guess likely 'twas him--that, of course, he wouldn't have disturbed the property or the fifty thousand for the world, not for a long spell anyhow, but ownin' it give him a feelin' of security, like an anchor to wind'ard, you understand, and----" "So folks like him, do they?" "You bet you they do. He don't complain a mite, that's one reason they like him. Says at first, of course, he was kind of took all aback with his canvas flappin', but now he's thought it over and realizes 'twas his dear wife's notion and her wishes is law and gospel to him, so he's resigned." "And he doesn't blame anybody, then?" Mr. Cahoon hesitated. "Why--er--no, not really, fur's I hear. Anyhow, if there was any influence used same as it shouldn't be, he says, he forgives them that used it. And, so far as that goes, he don't repute no evil motives to nobody, livin' or dead." "Repute? Oh, impute, you mean." "I guess so, some kind of 'pute'. He uses them old-fashioned kind of words all the time. That's why he's so pop'lar amongst the Shakespeare Readin' Society and the rest. _They've_ took him up, I tell ye! Minister Dishup and his wife they've had him to dinner, and Cap'n Elkanah and his wife have had him to supper and yesterday noon he was up here to the Harbor for dinner." "Oh, was he?" "Yus. He made 'em a little speech, too. All hands came into the parlor after dinner and he kind of--of preached to 'em. Told about his travelin' in foreign lands and a lot about Lobelia and how she loved the Harbor and everybody in it, and how him and her used to plan for it, and the like of that. Desire Peasley told me that 'twas the most movin' talk ever _she_ listened to. Said about everybody was cryin' some. 'Twas a leaky session, I judged. Oh, they love him over to the Harbor, I tell you!" The captain was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Did I understand you to say he and young Kent were friendly?" "Yes, indeed. He seems to have took quite a fancy to George. Drops in to see him at the store and last night he went home along with him to your sister's--to Sary's. Had supper and spent the evenin', I believe." Judah was dismissed then and the talk ended, but Sears had now something else to think about. There was little doubt in his mind who the "man of experience" was, the person who had advised Kent concerning the getting of a position with a law firm in the city. He wondered what other advice might have been given. Was it Mr. Phillips who had suggested to Kent the impropriety of Elizabeth's being seen so much in his--Kendrick's--company? If so, why had he done it? What was Egbert's little plan? Of course it was possible that there was no plan of any kind. Sears had taken a dislike to Phillips when they met and that fact, and Judge Knowles' hatred of the man, might, he realized, have set him to hunting mares' nests. Well, he would not hunt any more at present. He would await developments. But he would not lie in that bed and wait for them. He had been there long enough. In spite of Judah's protests and with the latter's help, commandeered and insisted upon, he got up, dressed, and spent the rest of that afternoon and evening in the rocking chair in the kitchen. And that evening Elizabeth came to see him. He was almost sure why she had come, and as soon as she entered, sent Judah down town after smoking tobacco. Judah declared there was "up'ards of ha'f a plug aboard the ship somewheres" and wanted to stay and hunt for it, but the captain, who had the plug in his pocket, insisted on his going. So he went and Sears and Elizabeth were alone. He was ready for the interview. If she asked him to accept the trusteeship of her twenty thousand dollars he meant to refuse, absolutely. And she did ask him that very thing. After inquiries concerning his injured limbs and repeated cautions concerning his never taking such risks again, "even with the old Foam Flakes," she came directly to the subject. She spoke of Judge Knowles' letter to her, the letter which Bradley had handed her at the time when he gave Sears his. She had read it over and over again, she said. "You know what he wrote me, Cap'n Kendrick," she went on. "I can't show you the letter, it is too personal, too--too.... Oh, I can't show it to any one--now, not even to mother. But you must know what he asked--or suggested, because he says he has written you a letter asking you to take charge of my money for me, to be my trustee. I suppose you must think it queer that I have let all these days go by without coming to speak with you about it. I hope----" He interrupted. "Now, Elizabeth, before we go any further," he said, earnestly, "don't you suppose any such thing. The judge wrote me he had asked us both not to decide in a hurry, but to take plenty of time to think it over. I have thought it over, in fact, I haven't thought of much else since I opened that letter, and I have made up my mind----" "Wait. Please wait a minute. I haven't been taking time to think over that at all. I have been thinking about the whole matter; whether I should accept the money--so very, very, very much money----" "What! Not accept it? Of course you'll take it. He wanted you to take it. It was what he wanted as much as anybody could want anything. Why, don't you dare----" "Hush! hush! You mustn't be so excited. And you mustn't move from that chair. If you do I shall go home this minute. I am going to accept the money." "Good! Of course you are." "Yes, I am. Because I do believe that he wanted me to have it so much. I know people will say--perhaps they are already saying all sorts of wicked, mean things. I don't--I won't let myself think what some of them may be saying about my influencing the judge, or things like that. But I don't care--that is, I care ever so much more for what _he_ said and what he wished. And he wanted you to take care of the money for me. You will, won't you, Cap'n Kendrick?" Now it was Sears' turn. He had gone over a scene like this, the scene which he had foreseen, many times. He was kind, but he was firm. He told her that he should not accept the trusteeship. He could not. It was too great a responsibility for a man with as little--and that little unfortunate--business experience as he had had. "It needs a banker or a lawyer for that job, Elizabeth," he declared. "What does a sailor know about handlin' money? You go to Bradley; Bradley's the man." But she did not want Bradley. The judge only mentioned Bradley as second choice. "He wanted you, Cap'n Kendrick. He had every confidence in you. You should see what he says about your ability and common-sense and--and honesty in the letter. Please." "No, Elizabeth. As far as honesty goes I guess he's right. I am honest, at least I hope I should be. But for the rest--he's partial there. He seemed to take a fancy to me, and goodness knows I liked him. But you mustn't feel you've got to do this thing. He wrote me it was only a suggestion. You are absolutely free--he wrote me so--to go to Bradley or----" "No." She rose to her feet. "I shan't go to Bradley or anybody but you. I am like him, Cap'n Kendrick; I trust you. I have come to know you and to believe in you. I like you. Why, you don't know how glad I was to find that he wanted you to do this for me. Glad! I--I felt----" "Why, Elizabeth!" He had not meant to speak. The words were forced from him involuntarily. Her tone, her eyes, the eager earnestness in her voice.... He did not say any more, nor did he look at her. Instead he looked at the patchwork comforter which had fallen from his knees to the floor, and fervently hoped that he had not already said too much. He stooped and picked up the comforter. "And you will do it for me, won't you?" she pleaded. "I can't. It wouldn't be right." "Then I shall not take the money at all. _He_ gave it to me, _he_ asked me--the very last thing he asked was that you should do it. He put the trust in your hands. And you won't do it--for him--or for me?" "Well, but--but---- Oh, good Lord! how can I?" "Why can't you?" The real reason he could not tell her. According to Kent--whether inspired by Phillips or not made little difference--people were already whispering and hinting. How much more would they hint and whisper if they knew that he had taken charge of her money? The thought had not occurred to her, of course; the very idea was too ridiculous for her to imagine; but that made but one more reason why he must think for her. "No," he said, again. "No, I can't." "But why? You haven't told me why." He tried to tell her why, but his words were merely repetitions of what he had said before. He was not a good business man, he did not know how to handle money, even his own money. The judge had been very ill when he wrote those letters, if he had been well and himself he never would have thought of him as trustee. She listened for a time, her impatience growing. Then she rose. "Very well," she said. "Then I shall not accept the twenty thousand. To me one wish of Judge Knowles' is as sacred as the other. He wanted you to take that trust just as much as he wanted me to have the money. If you won't respect one wish I shall not respect the other." He could not believe she meant it, but she certainly looked and spoke as if she did. He faltered and hesitated, and she pressed her advantage. And at last he yielded. "All right," he said desperately. "All right--or all wrong, whichever it turns out to be. I'll take the trustee job--try it for a time anyhow. But, I tell you, Elizabeth, I'm afraid we're both makin' a big mistake." She was not in the least afraid, and said so. "You have made me very happy, Cap'n Kendrick," she declared. "I can't thank you enough." He shook his head, but before he could reply there came a sharp knock on the outer door, the back door of the house. "Who on earth is that?" exclaimed Sears. Then he shouted, "Come in." The person who came in was George Kent. "Why, George!" said Elizabeth. Then she added. "What is it? What is the matter?" The young man looked as if something was the matter. His expression was not at all pleasant. "Evenin', George," said the captain. "Glad to see you. Sit down." Kent ignored both the invitation and the speaker. "Look here," he demanded, addressing Miss Berry: "do you know what time it is? It is ten o'clock." His tone was so rude--so boyishly rude--that Sears looked up quickly and Elizabeth drew back. "It's nearly ten o'clock," repeated Kent. "And you are over here." "George!" exclaimed Sears, sharply. "You are over here--with him--again." It was Elizabeth who spoke now. She said but one word. "Well?" she asked. There was an icy chill about that "Well?" which a more cautious person that George Kent might have noticed and taken as a warning. But the young man was far from cautious at that moment. "_Well?_" he repeated hotly. "I don't think it's well at all. I come see you and--I find you over here. And I find that every one else knows you are here. And they think it queer, too; I could see that they did.... Of course, I don't say----" "I think you have said enough. I came here to talk with Cap'n Kendrick on a business matter. I told mother where I was going when I left the house. The others heard me, I suppose; I certainly did not try to conceal it. Why should I?" "Why should you? Why, you should because--because---- Well, if you don't know why you shouldn't be here, he does." "He? Cap'n Kendrick?" "Yes. I--I told him why, myself. Only this noon I told him. I was here and I told him people were beginning to talk about you and he being together so much and--and his taking you to ride, and all that sort of thing. I told him he ought to be more careful of appearances. I said of course you didn't think, but he ought to. I explained that----" "Stop!" Her face was crimson and she was breathing quickly. "Do you mean to say that--that people are talking--are saying things about--about.... What people?" "Oh--oh, different ones. Of course they don't say anything much--er--not yet. But if we aren't careful they will. You see----" "Wait. Are they--are they saying that--that---- Oh, it is _too_ wicked and foolish to speak! Are they saying that Cap'n Kendrick and I----" Sears spoke. "Hush, hush, Elizabeth!" he begged. "They aren't sayin' anything, of course. George is--is just a little excited over nothin', that's all. He has heard Elvira or some other cat over there at the Harbor, probably. They're jealous because you have had this money left you." "It is nothing to do with the money," Kent asserted. "Didn't I tell you this noon that you--that we had to be careful of appearances? Didn't I say----" Again Elizabeth broke in. "You have said all I want to hear--in this room, now," she declared. "There are a good many things for us both to say--and listen to, but not here.... Good night, Cap'n Kendrick. I am sorry I kept you up so late, and I hope all this--I hope you won't let this wicked nonsense trouble you. It isn't worth worrying about. Good night." "But, Elizabeth," urged Sears, anxiously, "don't you think----" "Good night. George, you had better come with me. I have some things to say to you." She went out. Kent hesitated, paused for a moment, and then followed her. When Judah returned with the tobacco and a fresh cargo of rumors concerning Egbert Phillips he found his lodger not the least interested in either smoke or gossip. CHAPTER XIII So Judah was obliged to postpone the telling of his most important news item. But the following morning when, looking heavy-eyed and haggard, as if he had slept but little, Captain Kendrick limped into the kitchen for breakfast, Mr. Cahoon served that item with the salt mackerel and fried potatoes. It was surprising, too--at least Sears found it so. Egbert Phillips, so Judah declared, had given up his rooms at the Central House and had gone, household goods and all, to board and lodge at Joel Macomber's. He was occupying, so Judah said, the very room that Sears himself had occupied when he was taken to his sister's home after the railway accident. The captain could scarcely believe it. He had not seen Sarah Macomber since the day following the Foam Flake's amazing cut-up on the Orham road, when she had come, in much worriment and anxiety, to learn how badly he was hurt. Her call had been brief, and, as he had succeeded in convincing her that the extra twist to his legs would have no serious effect, she had not called since. But Sarah-Mary, the eldest girl, had brought a basket containing a cranberry pie, a half-peck, more or less, of molasses cookies, and two tumblers of beach-plum jelly, and Sarah-Mary had said nothing to her Uncle Sears about the magnificent Mr. Phillips coming to live with them. "I guess not, Judah," said the captain. "Probably you've got it snarled some way. He may have gone there to supper with George Kent and the rest of the yarn sprouted from that." But Judah shook his head. "No snarl about it, Cap'n Sears," he declared. "Come straight this did, straight as a spare topmast. Joe Macomber told me so himself. Proud of it, too, Joe was; all kind of swelled up with it, like a pizened shark." "But why on earth should he pick out Sarah's? Why didn't he go to Naomi Newcomb's; she keeps a regular boardin'-house? Sarah can't take any more boarders. Her house is overloaded as it is. That was why I didn't stay there. No, I don't believe it, Judah. Joel was just comin' up to blow, that's all. He's a regular puffin'-pig for blowin'." But Sarah called that very forenoon and confirmed the news. She had agreed to take Mr. Phillips into her home. Not only that, but he was already there. "I know you must think it's sort of funny, Sears," she said, looking rather embarrassed and avoiding her brother's eye. "If anybody had told me a week ago that I should ever take another boarder I should have felt like askin' 'em if they thought I was crazy. I suppose you think I am, don't you?" "Not exactly, Sarah--not yet." "But you think I most likely will be before I'm through? Well, maybe, but I'm goin' to risk it. You see, I--well, we need the money, for one thing." Sears stirred in his chair. "I could have let you have a little money every once in a while, Sarah," he said. "It's a shame that it would have to be so little. If those legs ever do get shipshape and I get to sea again----" She stopped him. "I haven't got so yet awhile that I have to take anybody's money for nothin'," she said sharply. "There, there, Sears! I know you'd give me every cent you had if I'd let you. I'll tell you why I took Mr. Phillips. He came to supper with George the other night and stayed all the evenin'. He's one of the most interestin' men I ever met in my life. Not any more interestin' than you are, of course," she added, loyally, "but in--in a different way." "Um ... yes. I shouldn't wonder." "Yes, he is. And he liked my supper, and said so. Ate some of everything and praised it, and was just as--as common and everyday and sociable, not a mite proud or--like that." "Why in the devil should he be?" "Why--why, I don't know why he shouldn't. Lots of folks who know as much as he does and have been everywhere and known the kind of people he knows--they would be stuck up--yes, and are. Look at Cap'n Elkhanah Wingate and his wife." "I don't want to look at 'em. How do you know how much this Phillips knows?" "How do I _know_? Why, Sears, you ought to hear him talk. I never heard such talk. The children just--just hung on his words, as they say. And he was so nice to them. And Joel and George Kent they think he's the greatest man they ever saw. Oh, all hands in Bayport like him." "Humph! When he was here before, teachin' singin' school, he wasn't such a Grand Panjandrum. At least, I never heard that he was." "Sears, you don't like him, do you? I'm real surprised. Yes, and--and sorry. Why don't you like him?" Her brother laughed. "I didn't say I didn't like him, Sarah," he replied. "Besides, what difference would one like more or less make? I don't know him very well." "But he likes you. Why, he said he didn't know when he had met a man who gave him such an impression of--of strength and character as you did. He said that right at our supper table. I tell you I was proud when he said it about my brother." So Sears had not the heart to utter more skepticism. He encouraged Sarah to tell more of her arrangements with the great man. He was, it appeared, to have not only the bedroom which Sears had occupied, but also the room adjoining. "One will be his bedroom," explained Mrs. Macomber, "and the other his sittin' room, sort of. His little suite, he calls 'em. He is movin' the rest of his things in to-day." Seers looked at her. "Two rooms!" he exclaimed. "He's to have _two_ rooms in your house! For heaven sakes, Sarah, where do the rest of you live; in the cellar? Goin' to let the children sleep in the cistern?" She explained. It was a complicated process, but she had worked it out. Lemuel and Edgar had always had a room together, but now Bemis was to have a cot there also. "And Joey, of course, is only a baby, his bed is in our room, Joel's and mine. And Sarah-Mary and Aldora, they are same as they have been." "Yes, yes, but that doesn't explain the extra room, his sitting room. Where does that come from?" She hesitated a moment. "Well--well, you see," she said, "there wasn't any other bedroom except the one George hires, and he is goin' to stay for a while longer anyway. At first it didn't seem as if I could let Mr. Phillips have the sittin' room he wanted. But at last Joel and I thought it out. We don't use the front parlor hardly any, and there is the regular sittin' room left for us anyway, so----" "Sarah Kendrick Macomber, do you mean to tell me you've let this fellow have your _front parlor_?" "Why--why, yes. We don't hardly ever use it, Sears. I don't believe we've used that parlor--really opened the blinds and used it, I mean--since Father Macomber's funeral, and that was--let me see--over six years ago." Her brother slowly shook his head. "The judge was right," he declared. "He certainly was right. Smoothness isn't any name for it." "Sears, what are you talkin' about? I can't understand you. I thought you would be glad to think such a splendid man as he is was goin' to live with us. To say nothin' of my makin' all this extra money. Of course, if you don't want me to do it, I won't. I wouldn't oppose you, Sears, for anything in this world. But I--I must say----" He laid his hand on hers. "There, Sarah," he broke in. "Don't pay too much attention to me. I'm crochetty these days, have a good deal on my mind. If you think takin' this Phillips man aboard is a good thing for you, I'm glad. How much does he pay you a week?" She told him. It was more than fair rate for those days. "Humph!" he observed. "Well, Sarah, good luck to you. I hope you get it." "Get it! Why, of course I'll get it, Sears. Its all arranged. And I want you and Mr. Phillips to know each other real well. I'm goin' to tell him he must call again to see you." "Eh?... Oh, all right, Sarah. You can tell him, if you want to." After she had gone he thought the matter over. Surely Mr. Egbert Phillips was a gentleman of ability along certain lines. His sister Sarah was a sensible woman, she was far far from being a susceptible sentimentalist. Yet she was already under the Phillips spell. Either Judge Knowles was right--very, very much right--or he was overwhelmingly wrong. If left to Bayport opinion as a jury there was no question concerning the verdict. Egbert would be triumphantly acquitted. Sears, however, did not, at this time, spare much thought to the Phillips riddle. He had other, and, it seemed to him, more disturbing matters to deal with. The quarrel between Elizabeth Berry and young Kent was one of those, for he felt that, in a way, he was the cause of it. George had, of course, behaved like a foolish boy and had been about as tactless as even a jealous youth could be, but there was always the chance that some one else had sowed the seeds of jealousy in his mind. He determined to see Kent, explain, have a frank and friendly talk, and, if possible, set everything right--everything between the two young people, that is. But when, on his first short walk along the road, he happened to meet Kent, the latter paid no attention to his hail and strode past without speaking. Sears shouted after him, but the shout was unheeded. Elizabeth was almost as contrary. When he attempted to lead the conversation to George, she would not follow. When he mentioned the young man's name she changed the subject. At last when, his sense of guilt becoming too much for him, he began to defend Kent, she interrupted the defense. "Cap'n Kendrick," she said, "I understand why you take his part. And it is like you to do it. But when you begin to blame yourself or me then I shan't listen." "Blame _you_! Why, Elizabeth, I had no idea of blamin' you. The whole thing is just a--a misunderstandin' between you and George, and I want to straighten it out, that's all. If anybody is to blame I really think I am. I should have thought more about--about, what he calls appearances; that is, perhaps I should." She lost patience. "Oh, do stop!" she cried. "You know you are talking nonsense." "Well but, Elizabeth, I feel--wicked. I wouldn't for the world be the cause of a break between you two. If that should happen because of me I couldn't rest easy." This conversation took place in the smaller sitting room of the Fair Harbor, the room which she and her mother used as a sort of office. She had been standing by the window looking out. Now she turned and faced him. "Cap'n Kendrick," she asked, "just what do you mean by a 'break' between George Kent and me? Are you under the impression that he and I were--were engaged?" "Why--why, weren't you?" "No. Why should you think we were?" "Well--why, there seemed to be a sort of general idea that--that you were. People--Bayport folks seemed to think--seemed to think----" She stamped her foot. "They don't think, most of them, they only talk," she declared. "_I_ certainly never said we were. And he didn't either, did he?" Kent had said that he and Elizabeth were engaged--practically--whatever that might mean. But the captain thought it wisest just then to forget. "Why--no, I guess not," he answered. "Of course he didn't ... Cap'n Kendrick. I--oh, you might as well understand this clearly. I have known George for a long time. I liked him. For a time I thought--well I thought perhaps I liked him enough to--to like him a lot more But I was mistaken. He--he kept doing things that I didn't like. Oh, they had nothing to do with me. They were things that didn't seem--what you would call square and aboveboard. Little things that.... It was about one of these that we disagreed just before the 'Down by the Sea' theatricals. But he explained that and--and--well, he can be so nice and likable, that I forgave him. But lately there have been others. He has changed. And now all this foolishness, and.... There, Cap'n Kendrick, I didn't mean to say so much. But I want you to understand, and to tell every one else who talks about George Kent and me being engaged, that there never was any such engagement." It would be rather difficult to catalogue all of Sears Kendrick's feelings as he listened to this long speech. They were mixed feelings, embarrassment, sorrow, relief--and a most unwarranted and unreasonable joy. But he repressed the relief and joy and characteristically returned to self-chastisement. "Yes--oh--I see," he faltered. "I guess likely I didn't understand exactly. But just the same I don't know but George was right in some things he said. I shouldn't wonder if I had been careless about--about appearances. I don't know but--but my seein' you so much--and our goin' to Orham together might set some folks talkin'. Of course it doesn't seem hardly possible that anybody could be such fools, considerin' you--and then considerin' me--but----" She would not hear any more. "I don't propose to consider _them_," she declared with fierce indignation. "I shall see you or any one else just as often as I please. Now that you are to take care of my money for me I have no doubt I shall see you a great deal oftener than I ever did. And if those--those talkative persons don't like it, they may do the next best thing.... No, that is enough, Cap'n Kendrick. It is settled." And it did appear to be. If anything, she saw him oftener than before, seemed to take a mischievous delight in being seen with him, in running to the Minot place on errands connected with the Harbor business, and in every way defying the gossips. And gossip accepted the challenge. From the time when it became known that Sears Kendrick was to be the trustee of Elizabeth Berry's twenty-thousand dollar legacy the tide of public opinion, already on the turn, set more and more strongly against him. And, as it ebbed for Captain Sears, it rose higher and higher for that genteel martyr, Mr. Egbert Phillips. Sears could not help noticing the change. It was gradual, but it was marked. He had never had many visitors, but occasionally some of the retired sea dogs among the town-folk would drop in to swap yarns, or a younger captain, home from a voyage, would call on him at the Minot place. The number of those calls became smaller, then they ceased. Doctor Sheldon was, of course, as jolly and friendly as ever, and Bradley, when he drove over from Orham on a legal errand, made it a point to come and see him. But, aside from those, and Sarah Macomber, and, of course, Elizabeth Berry, no one came. When he walked, as he did occasionally now that his legs were stronger--they had quite recovered from the strain put upon them by the Foam Flake's outbreak--up and down the sidewalk from Judge Knowles' corner to the end of the Fair Harbor fence, the people whom he met seldom stopped to chat with him. Or, if they did, the chat was always brief and, on their part, uneasy. They acted, so it seemed to him, guilty, as if they were doing something they should not do, something they were not at all anxious to have people see them do. And when he drove with Judah down to the store the group there no longer hailed him with shouts of welcome. They spoke to him, mentioned the weather perhaps, grinned in embarrassed fashion, but they did not ask him to sit down and join them. And when his back was turned, when he left the store, he had the feeling that there were whispered comments--and sneers. It was all impalpable, there was nothing openly hostile, no one said anything to which he could take exception--he only wished they would; but he felt the hostility nevertheless. And among the feminine element it was even more evident. When he went to church, as he did semi-occasionally, as he walked down the aisle he felt that the rustle of Sunday black silks and bonnet strings which preceded and followed him was a whisper of respectable and self-righteous disapproval. It was not all imagination, he caught glimpses of sidelong looks and headshakes which meant something, and that something not applause. Once the Reverend Mr. Dishup took for his text Psalm xxxix, the sixth verse, "He heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them." The sermon dealt with, among others, the individual who in his lifetime amassed wealth, not knowing that, after his death, other individuals scheming and unscrupulous would strive to divert that wealth from the rightful heirs for their own benefit. It was a rather dull sermon and Sears, his attention wandering, happened to turn his head suddenly and look at the rest of the congregation. It seemed to him that at least a quarter of the heads in that congregation were turned in his direction. Now, meeting his gaze, they swung back, to stare with noticeable rigidity at the minister. Over at the Fair Harbor his comings and goings were no longer events to cause pleasurable interest and excitement. The change there was quite as evident. Miss Snowden and Mrs. Brackett, leaders of their clique, always greeted him politely enough, but they did not, individually or collectively, ask his advice or offer theirs. There were smiles, significant nods, knowing looks exchanged, especially, he thought or imagined, when he and Miss Berry were together. Cordelia Berry was almost cold toward him. Yet, so far as he knew, he had done nothing to offend her. He spoke to Elizabeth about her mother's attitude toward him. She said it was his imagination. "It may be," she said, "that you don't consult her quite enough about Fair Harbor matters, Cap'n Kendrick. Mother is sensitive, she is matron here, you know; perhaps we haven't paid as much deference to her opinion as we should. Poor mother, she does try so hard, but she isn't fitted for business, and knows it." That Sunday, after his return from church, the captain asked Judah a point blank question. "Judah," he said, "I want you to tell me the truth. What is the matter with me, nowadays? The whole ship's company here in Bayport are givin' me the cold shoulder. Don't tell me you haven't noticed it; a blind man could notice it. What's wrong with me? What have I done? Or what do they say I've done?" Judah was very much embarrassed. His trouble showed in his face above the whiskers. He had been bending over the cookstove singing at the top of his lungs the interminable chantey dealing with the fortunes of one Reuben Ranzo. "'Ranzo was no sailor, Ranzo, boys, Ranzo! Ranzo was a tailor, Ranzo, boys, Ranzo! "'Oh, poor Reuben Ranzo! _Ranzo_, boys, Ranzo! Hurrah for Reuben Ranzo! _Ranzo_, boys, _Ranzo_! "'Ranzo was no sailor, Ranzo, boys, Ranzo! He shipped on board a whaler, Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!'" And so on, forever and forever. Judah had reached the point where: "They set him holy-stonin', Ranzo, boys, Ranzo! And cared not for his groanin', Ranzo, boys, Ranzo! "_'Oh_, poor Reuben Ranzo! _Ranzo_, boys, Ranzo! Hurrah for----' "Eh? Did you say somethin', Cap'n Sears?" Sears repeated his question, and then, as no answer seemed to be forthcoming, repeated it once more, with an order to "step lively." Judah groaned and shook his head. "I've been sort of afraid you might think somethin' was queer, Cap'n Sears," he admitted. "I was hopin' you wouldn't, though, not till it begun to blow over. All them kind of things do blow over, give 'em time. One voyage I took--to Shanghai, seems to me 'twas, either that or Rooshy somewheres--there was a ship's carpenter aboard and word got spread around that he had a wooden leg. Now he didn't, you know; matter of fact, all he had out of the way with him was a kind of--er--er--sheet-iron stove lid, as you might call it, riveted onto the top of his head. He was in the Mexican war, seemed so, and one of them cannon balls had caved in his upper deck, you understand, and them doctors they----" "Here, here, Judah! I didn't ask you about any iron-headed carpenters, did I?" "No; no, you never, Cap'n Sears. But what I started to say was that----" "All right, but you stick to what I want you to say. Tell me what's the matter with me in Bayport?" Judah groaned again. "It 'tain't so much that there's any great that's wrong along of you, Cap'n," he said, "as 'tis that there ain't nothin' but what's so everlastin' right with another feller. That's the way I size it up, and I've been takin' observations for quite a spell. Bayport folks are spendin' seven days in the week lovin' this Egbert Phillips. Consequentially they ain't got much time left to love you in. Fools? Course they be, and I've told some of 'em so till I've got a sore throat hollerin'. But, by the creepin'----" "Judah! Has Phillips been saying things about me?" "Hey? Him? No, no, no! He don't say nothin' about nobody no time, nothin' out of the way, that is. He's always praisin' of you up, so they tell me, and excusin' you and forgivin' you." "Forgivin' me? What do you mean by that?" "Hold on! don't get mad at _me_, Cap'n Sears. I mean when they say what a pity 'tis that he, the man whose wife owned all this Seymour property and the fifty thousand dollars and such--when they go to poorin' him and heavin' overboard hints about how other folks have the spendin' of that money and all--he just smiles, sad but sort of sweet, and says it's all right, his dear Lobelia done what seemed to her proper, and if he has to suffer a little grain, why, never mind.... That's the way he talks." "But where do I come in on that?" "Well--well, you don't really, Cap'n Sears. Course you don't. But you--you have got the handlin' of that money, you know. And you are gettin' wages for skipperin' the Fair Harbor. I've heard it said--not by him, oh, creepin', no!--but by others, that _he_ ought to have that skipper's job, if anybody had. Lots of folks seem to cal'late he'd ought to _own_ the Harbor. But instead of that he don't own nothin', they say, and scratches along in two rooms, down to Joe Macomber's, and, underneath all his sufferin', he's just as sweet and uncomplainin' and long-endurin' and--and high-toned and sociable and--and----" "Yes, yes. I see. Do they say anything more? What about my bein' Elizabeth Berry's trustee?" Mr. Cahoon paused before replying. "Well, they do seem to hold that against you some, I'm afraid," he admitted reluctantly. "I don't know why they do. And they don't say much in front of me no more, 'cause, they realize, I cal'late, that I'm about ready to knock a few of 'em into the scuppers. But it--it just don't help you none, Cap'n, takin' care of that money of Elizabeth's don't. And it does help that Eg man.... Why? Don't ask me. I--I'm sick and disgusted. _I_ shan't go to no church vestry to hear him lecture on Eyetalian paintin' or--or glazin', or whatever 'tis. And have you noticed how they bow down and worship him over to the Fair Harbor? Have you noticed Cordelia Berry? She's makin' a dum fool of herself, ain't she? Not that that's a very hard job." Judah's explanations did not explain much, but they did help to increase Sears' vague suspicions. He had noticed--no one could help noticing--the ever-growing popularity of Mr. Phillips. It was quite as evident as the decline of his own. What he suspected was that the two were connected and that, somehow or other, the smooth gentleman who boarded and lodged with the Macombers was responsible, knowingly, calculatingly responsible for the change. Yet it seemed so absurd, that suspicion. He and Phillips met frequently, sometimes at church, or oftenest at the Harbor--Egbert's visits there were daily now, and he dined or supped with the Berrys and the "inmates" at least twice a week. And always the Phillips manner was kind and gracious and urbane. Always he inquired solicitously concerning the captain's health. There was never a hint of hostility, never a trace of resentment or envy. And always, too, Sears emerged from one of those encounters with a feeling that he had had a little the worst of it, that his seafaring manners and blunt habit of speech made him appear at a marked disadvantage in comparison with this easy, suave, gracefully elegant personage. And so many of those meetings took place in the presence of Elizabeth Berry. Elizabeth liked Egbert, there was no doubt of that. Once when she and the captain were together in the Fair Harbor office Phillips entered. Sears and Elizabeth were bending over the ledger and Egbert opened the door. Sears and the young lady were not in the least embarrassed--of course there was not the slightest reason why they should be--but, oddly enough, Phillips seemed to be. He stepped back, coughed, fidgeted with the latch, and then began to apologize. "I--I really beg your pardon," he said. "I am sorry.... I didn't know--I didn't realize--I'm _so_ sorry." Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. "But there is nothing for you to be sorry about," she declared. "What is it? I don't understand." Egbert still retained his hold upon the latch with one hand. His hat, gloves and cane were in the other. It is perhaps the best indication of his standing in the community, the fact that, having lived in Bayport for some weeks and being by his own confession a poor man, he could still go gloved and caned on week days as well as Sundays and not be subject to ridicule even by the Saturday night gang in Eliphalet Bassett's store. He fidgeted with the latch and turned as if to go. "I should have knocked, of course," he protested. "It was most careless of me. I do hope you understand. I will come--ah--later." "But I don't understand," repeated the puzzled Elizabeth. "It was perfectly all right, your coming in. There is no reason why you should knock. The cap'n and I were going over the bills, that's all." Mr. Phillips looked--well, he looked queer. "Oh!" he said. "Yes--yes, of course. But one doesn't always care to be interrupted in--even in business matters--ah--sometimes." Elizabeth laughed. "I'm sure I don't mind," she said. "Those business matters weren't so frightfully important." "I'm so glad. You ease my conscience, Elizabeth. Thank you.... But I am afraid the captain minds more than you do. He looks as if he didn't like interruptions. Now do you, Captain Kendrick?" Sears was ruffled. The man always did rub him the wrong way, and now, for the first time, he heard him address Miss Berry by her Christian name. There was no real reason why he should not, almost every one in Bayport did, but Sears did not like it nevertheless. "You don't fancy interruptions, Captain," repeated the smiling Egbert. "Now do you? Ha, ha! Confess." For the moment Sears forgot to be diplomatic. "That depends, I guess," he answered shortly. "Depends? You see, I told you, Elizabeth. Depends upon what? We must make him tell us the whole truth, mustn't we, Elizabeth? What does it depend upon, Captain Kendrick; the--ah--situation--the nature of the business--or the companion? Now which? Ha, ha!" Sears answered without taking time to consider. "Upon who interrupts, maybe," he snapped. Then he would have given something to have recalled the words, for Elizabeth turned and looked at him. She flushed. Egbert's serenity, however, was quite undented. "Oh, dear me!" he exclaimed, in mock alarm. "After that I shall _have_ to go. And I shall take great pains to close the door behind me. Ha, ha! _Au revoir_, Elizabeth. Good-by, Captain." He went out, keeping his promise concerning the closing of the door. Elizabeth continued to look at her companion. "Now why in the world," she asked, "did you speak to him like that?" Sears frowned. "Oh, I don't know," he answered. "He--he riles me sometimes." "Yes.... Yes, I should judge so. I have noticed it before. You don't like him for some reason or other. What is the reason?" He hesitated. Aside from Judge Knowles' distrust and dislike--which he could not mention to her--there was no very valid reason, nothing but what she would have called prejudice. So he hesitated and reddened. She went on. "_I_ like him," she declared. "He is a gentleman. He is always polite and considerate--as he was just now about breaking in on our business talk. What did you dislike about that?" "Well, I--well--oh, nothin', perhaps." "I think nothing certainly. He is an old friend of mother's and of the people here in the Harbor. They all like him very much. I am sorry that you don't and that you spoke to him as you did. I didn't think you took unreasonable dislikes. It doesn't seem like you, Cap'n Kendrick." So once more Sears felt himself to have been put in a bad position and to have lost ground while Phillips gained it. And, brooding over the affair, he decided that he must be more careful. If he were not so much in Elizabeth's company there would be no opportunity for insinuations--by Egbert Phillips, or any one else. So he put a strong check upon his inclination to see the young woman, and, overconscientious as he was so likely to be, began almost to avoid her. Except when business of one kind or another made it necessary he did not visit the Harbor. It cost him many pangs and made him miserable, but he stuck to his resolution. She should not be talked about in connection with him if he could help it. He had had several talks with Bradley and with her about her legacy from Judge Knowles. The twenty-thousand was, so he discovered, already well invested in good securities and it was Bradley's opinion, as well as his own, that it should not be disturbed. The bonds were deposited in the vaults of the Harniss bank, and were perfectly safe. On dividend dates he and Miss Berry could cut and check up the coupons together. So far his duties as trustee were not burdensome. Bradley had invested Cordelia's five thousand for her, so the Berry family's finances were stable. In Bayport they were now regarded as "well off." Cordelia was invited to supper at Captain Elkhanah Wingate's, a sure sign that the hall-mark of wealth and aristocracy had been stamped upon her. At that supper, to which Elizabeth also was invited but did not attend, Mr. Egbert Phillips shone resplendent. Egbert was not wealthy, a fact which he took pains to let every one know, but when he talked, as he did most of the evening, Mrs. Wingate and her feminine guests sat in an adoring trance and, after these guests had gone, the hostess stood by the parlor window gazing wistfully after them. Her husband was unlocking the door of a certain closet upon the shelf of which was kept a certain bottle and accompanying glasses. The closet had not been opened before that evening, as the Reverend and Mrs. Dishup had been among the dinner guests. "Elkhanah," observed Mrs. Wingate, dreamily, "I do think Mr. Phillips is the most elegant man I ever saw in my life. His language--and his manners--they are perfect." Captain Elkhanah nodded. "He's pretty slick," he agreed. If he expected by thus agreeing to please his wife, he must have been disappointed. "Oh, _don't_ say 'slick'!" she snapped. "I do wish you wouldn't use such countrified words." "Eh?" indignantly. "Countrified! Well, I am country, ain't I? So are you, so far as that goes. So was he once--when he was teachin' a one-horse singin' school in this very town." "Well, perhaps. But he has got over it. And it would pay you to take lessons from him, and learn not to say 'slick' and 'ain't'." Her husband grunted. "Pay!" he repeated. "I'll wait till he pays me the twenty dollars he borrowed of me two weeks ago. He wasn't too citified to do that." Mrs. Wingate stalked to the stairs. "I'm ashamed of you," she declared. "You know what a struggle he is having, and how splendid and uncomplaining he is. And you a rich man! Any one would think you never saw twenty dollars before." Captain Elkhanah poured himself a judicious dose from the bottle. "Maybe I never _will_ see _that_ twenty again," he observed with a chuckle. "Oh, you--you disgust me!" "Oh, go----" "_What?_ What are you trying to say to me?" "Go to bed," said the captain, and took his dose. CHAPTER XIV If Elizabeth noticed that Sears was not as frequent a visitor at the Fair Harbor as he had formerly been she said nothing about it. She herself had ceased to run in at the Minot place to ask this question or that. Since the occasion when Mr. Phillips interrupted the business talk in the office and his apologies had brought about the slight disagreement--if it may be called that--between the captain and Miss Berry, the latter had, so Sears imagined, been a trifle less cordial to him than before. She was not coldly formal or curt and disagreeable--her mother was all of these things to the captain now, and quite without reason so far as he could see--Elizabeth was not like that, but she was less talkative, less cheerful, and certainly less confidentially communicative. At times he caught her looking at him as if doubtful or troubled. When he asked her what was the matter she said "Nothing," and began to speak of the bills they had been considering. On one occasion she asked him a point blank question, one quite irrelevant to the subject at hand. "Cap'n Kendrick," she asked, "how do you think Judge Knowles came to appoint you to be manager here at the Harbor?" He was taken by surprise, of course. "Why," he stammered, "I--why, I don't know. That is, all I know about it is what he told me. He said he felt he ought to have some one, and I was near at home, and--and so he thought of me, I suppose." "Yes, I know. You told me that.... But--but how did he know you wanted the position?" "Wanted it? Good heavens and earth, I didn't want it! I fought as hard as I could not to take it. Why, I told you--you remember, that day when I first came over here; that time when Elvira and the rest wanted to buy the cast-iron menagerie; I told you then----" "Yes," she interrupted again. "Yes, I know you did. But.... And the judge had never heard from you--had never...." "Heard from me! Do you mean had I sent in an application for the job?" "Oh, no, no! Not that. But you and he had never been--er--close friends in the old days, when you were here before?" He could not guess what she was driving at. "Look here, Elizabeth," he said, "I've told you that I scarcely knew Judge Knowles before he sent for me and offered me this place. No man alive was ever more surprised than I was then. Why, I gathered that the judge had talked about me to you before he sent for me. Not as manager here, of course, but as--well, as a man. He told you that I was goin' to call, you said so, and I _know_ you and he had talked and laughed together about my fight with the hens in Judah's garden." The trouble, whatever its cause, seemed to vanish. She smiled. "Yes, yes," she said. "Of course we had. He did like you, Judge Knowles did, and that was all--of course it was." "All what?" "Oh, nothing, nothing. How is Judah? I haven't seen him for two days." She would not mention Judge Knowles again, but for the remainder of their session with the accounts she was more like her old self than she had been for at least a week, or so it seemed to him. This was but one of those queer and disconcerting flare-ups of hers. One day, a week or so after she had questioned him concerning his appointment, he happened to be in the Harbor kitchen, and alone--of itself a surprising thing. Elvira Snowden and her group were holding some sort of committee meeting in the sitting room. Elvira was continually forming committees or circles for this purpose or that, purposes which fizzled out at about the third meeting of each group. Esther Tidditt was supposed to be in charge of the kitchen on this particular morning, but she had gone into the committee meeting in order to torment Elvira and Mrs. Brackett, a favorite amusement with her. So Sears, wandering into the kitchen, happened to notice that the door of the store closet had been left open, and he was standing in front of it idly looking in. He was brought out of his day dream, which had nothing to do with the closet or its contents, by Elizabeth's voice. She had entered from the dining room and he had not heard her. "Well," she asked, "I trust you find everything present or accounted for?" Her tone was so crisply sarcastic that he turned in astonishment. "Why--what?" he faltered. "I said I trusted that you found everything in that closet as it should be. Have you measured the flour? My mother is matron here, Cap'n Kendrick, and she will be glad to have you take any precautions of that kind, I am sure. So shall I. But don't you think it might as well be done while she or I are here?" He was bewildered. "I don't know what you mean, Elizabeth," he said. "Don't you?" "No, I don't. I came in just now by the back door, and there was no one in the kitchen, so--so I waited for a minute." "Why did you come by the back door? You didn't use to. Mother and I are usually in the office, or, at least, we are always glad to come there when you call." He was still bewildered, but irritated, too. "Why did I come by the back door?" he repeated. "Why, I've come that way a dozen times in the last fortnight. Don't you want me to come that way?" Now she looked a trifle confused, but the flush was still on her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye. "I'm sure I don't care how often you come that way," she said. "But--well, mother is matron here, Cap'n Kendrick. She may not be--perhaps she isn't--the most businesslike and orderly person in the world, but she is my mother. If you have any complaints to make, if you want to find out how things are kept, or managed, or----" "Here!" he broke in. "Wait! What do you mean? Do you suppose I sneaked into this kitchen by myself to peek into that closet, and--and spy on your mother's managin'?... You don't believe anything of that kind. You can't." She was more embarrassed now. "Why--why, no, I don't, Cap'n Kendrick," she admitted. "Of course I know you wouldn't sneak anywhere. But--but I have been given to understand that you and--well, Mr. Bradley--have not been--are not quite satisfied with the management--with mother's management. And----" "Wait! Heave to!" Sears was excited now, and, as usual when excited, drifted into nautical phraseology. "What do you mean by sayin' I am not satisfied? Who told you that?" "Why--well, you are not, are you? You questioned her about the coal a week ago, about how much she used in a week. And then you asked her about keeping the fires overnight, if she saw how many were kept, and if there was much waste. And two or three times you have been seen standing by the bins--figuring." "Good Lord!" His exclamation this time was one of sheer amazement. "Good Lord!" he said again. "Why, I have been tryin', now winter is comin' on, to figure out how to save coal cost for this craft--for the Fair Harbor. You know I have. I asked your mother about the fires because I know how much waste there is likely to be when a fire is kept carelessly. And as for Bradley and I not bein' satisfied with your mother that is the wildest idea of all. I never talked with Bradley about the management here. It isn't his business, for one reason." She was silent. Her expression had changed. Then she said, impulsively, "I'm sorry. Please don't mind what I said, Cap'n Kendrick. I--I am rather nervous and--and troubled just now. Of course, you are not obliged to come over here as--as often as you used.... But things I have heard---- Oh, I shouldn't pay attention to them, I suppose. I--I am very sorry." But he was not quite in the mood to forgive. And one sentence in particular occupied his attention. "Things you have heard," he repeated. "Yes.... I should judge you must have heard a good deal. But who did you hear it from?... Look here, Elizabeth; how did you know I was here in the kitchen now? Did you just happen to come out and find me by accident?" She reddened. "Why--why----" she stammered. "Or did some one tell you I was out here--spyin' on the pickles?" His tone was a most unusual one from him to her. She resented it. "No one told me you were 'spying'," she replied; coldly. "I have never thought of you as--a spy, Cap'n Kendrick. I have always considered you a friend, a disinterested friend of mother's and mine." "Well?... What does that 'disinterested' mean?" "Why, nothing in particular." "It must mean somethin' or you wouldn't have said it. Does it mean that you are beginnin' to doubt the disinterested part?... I'd like to have you tell me, if you don't mind, how you knew I was alone here in the kitchen? Who took the pains to tell you that?" Her answer now was prompt enough. "No one took particular pains, I should imagine," she said, crisply. "Mr. Phillips told me, as it happened. Or rather, he told mother and mother told me. He is to speak to the--to Elvira's 'travel-study' committee in the sitting room, and, as he often does, he walked around by the garden path. When he passed the window he saw you standing by the closet, that was all." Sears did not speak. He turned to the door. She called to him. "Wait--wait, please," she cried. "Mr. Phillips did not say anything, so far as I know, except to mention that you were here." The captain turned back again. "Somebody said somethin'," he declared. "Somebody said enough to send you out here and make you speak to me like--like that. And somebody has been startin' you to think about how I got the appointment as manager. Somebody has been whisperin' that I am not satisfied with your mother's way of doin' things and am schemin' against her. Somebody has been droppin' a hint here and a hint there until even you have begun to believe 'em.... Well, I can't stop your belief, I suppose, but maybe some day I shall stop Commodore Egbert, and when I do he'll stop hard." "You have no right to say I believe anything against you. I have always refused to believe that. Do you suppose if I hadn't believed in and trusted you absolutely I should have.... But there! You know I did--and do. It is only when--when----" "When Egbert hints." "_Oh!_ ... How you do hate Mr. Phillips, don't you?" "Hate him?... Why, I--I don't know as you'd call it hate." "I know. It is plain to see. You have hated him ever since he came. But why? He has never--you won't believe this, but it is true--he has never, to me at least, said one word except in your praise. He likes and admires you. He has told me so." "Does he tell your mother the same thing?" She looked at him. "Why do you couple my mother's name with his?" she demanded quickly. "Why should he tell her anything that he doesn't tell me?" It was a question which Sears could not answer. For some time he had noticed and guessed and feared, but he could not tell her. So he was silent, and to remain silent was perhaps the worst thing he could have done. "What do you know against Mr. Phillips?" she asked. "Tell me. Do you know _anything_ to his discredit?" Again he did not answer. She turned away. "I thought not," she said. "Oh, envy is such a _mean_ trait. Well, I suppose I shouldn't expect to have many friends--lasting friends." "Here! hold on, Elizabeth. Don't say that." "What else can I say? I am sorry I spoke to you as I did, but--I think you have more than paid the debt.... Yes, mother, I am coming." She went out of the room and Sears limped moodily home, reflecting, as most of mankind has reflected at one time or another, upon the unaccountableness of the feminine character. So far as he could see he had said much less than he would have been justified in saying. She had goaded him into saying even that. He pondered and puzzled over it the greater part of the night and then reached the conclusion which the male usually reaches under such circumstances, namely, that he had better ask her pardon. So when they next met he did that very thing and she accepted the apology. And at that meeting, and others immediately following it, no word was said by either concerning "spying" or Mr. Egbert Phillips. Yet the wall between them was left a little higher than it had been before, their friendship was not quite the same, and an experienced person, not much of a prophet at that, could have foretold that the time was coming when that friendship was to end. It was little Esther Tidditt who laid the coping of the dividing wall. Elvira Snowden built some of the upper tiers, but Esther finished the job. Almost unbelievable as it may seem, she did not like Mr. Phillips. Of course with her tendency to take the off side in all arguments and to be almost invariably "agin the government," the fact that the rest of feminine Bayport adored the glittering Egbert might have been of itself sufficient to set up her opposition. But he had, or she considered that he had, snubbed her on several occasions and she was a dangerous person to snub. Judah expressed it characteristically when he declared that anybody who "set out" to impose on Esther Tidditt would have as lively a time as a bare-footed man trying to dance a hornpipe on a wasp's nest. "She'll keep 'em hoppin' high, _I_ tell ye," proclaimed Judah. Little Mrs. Tidditt would have liked to keep Mr. Phillips hopping high, and did administer sly digs to his grandeur whenever she could. In the praise services among the "inmates" which were almost sure to follow a call of the great man at the Fair Harbor it was disconcerting and provoking to the worshipers to have Esther refer to the idol as "that Eg." Mrs. Brackett took her to task for it. "You ought to have more respect for his wife's memory, if nothin' else," snapped Susanna. "If it hadn't been for her and her generosity you wouldn't be here, Esther Tidditt." "Yes, and if it hadn't been for her _he_ wouldn't be here. He'd have been teachin' singin' school yet--if he wasn't in jail. _You_ can call him Po-or de-ar Mr. Phillips,' if you want to; _I_ call him 'Old Eg.' And he is a bad egg, too, 'cordin' to my notion. Prob'ly that's why his wife and Judge Knowles hove him out of the nest." And, as Egbert climbed in popularity while Captain Sears Kendrick slipped back, it followed naturally that Mrs. Tidditt became more and more the friend and champion of the latter. She went out of her way to do him favors and she made it her business to keep him posted on the happenings and gossip at the Fair Harbor. He did not encourage her in this, in fact he attempted tactfully to discourage her, but Esther was not easily discouraged. It was she who first called his attention to Miss Snowden's fondness for the Phillips society. "Elviry's set her cap for him," declared Mrs. Tidditt. "The way she sets and looks mushy at him when he's preachin' about Portygee pictures and such is enough to keep a body from relishin' their meals." But of late, according to Esther, Elvira was no longer the first violin in the Phillips orchestra. "She's second fiddle," announced the little woman. "There's another craft cut acrost her bows. If you ask me who 'tis I can tell you, too, Cap'n Sears." And Sears made it a point not to ask. Once it was Elvira herself who more than hinted, and in the presence of Elizabeth and the captain. The latter pair were at the desk together when Miss Snowden passed through the room. "Where is mother?" asked Elizabeth. "Have you seen her, Elvira?" Elvira's thin lips were shut tight. "Don't ask _me_," she snapped, viciously. "She's out trapping, I suppose." "Trapping!" Elizabeth stared at her. "What are you talking about? Trapping what?" "I don't know. _I'm_ not layin' traps to catch anything--or any_body_ either." She sailed out of the room. Miss Berry turned to Sears. "Do you know what she means, Cap'n Kendrick?" she asked. Sears did know, or would have bet heavily on his guess. But he shook his head. Elizabeth was not satisfied. "Why do you look like that?" she persisted. "_Do_ you know?" "Eh?... Oh, no, no; of course not.... I--I think I saw your mother goin' out of the gate as I came across lots. She--I presume likely she was goin' to the store or somewhere." "She didn't tell me she was going. Was she alone?" "Why--why, no; I think--seems to me Mr. Phillips was with her." For the next few minutes the captain devoted his entire attention to the letter he was writing. He did not look up, but he was quite conscious that her eyes were boring him through and through. During the rest of his stay she was curt and cool. When he went she did not bid him good-by. So the fuse was burning merrily and the inevitable explosion came three days later. The scene was this time not the Fair Harbor office, but the Minot kitchen. Judah was out and the captain was alone, reading the _Item_. The fire in the range was a new one and the kitchen was very warm, so Sears had opened the outer door in order to cool off a bit. It was a beautiful late October forenoon. The captain was deep in the _Item's_ account of the recent wreck on Peaked Hill Bars. A British bark had gone ashore there and the crew had been rescued with difficulty. He was himself dragged, metaphorically speaking, from the undertow by a voice just behind him. "Well, you're takin' it easy, ain't you, Cap'n Sears?" observed Mrs. Tidditt. "I wish _I_ didn't have nothin' to do but set and read the news." "Oh, good mornin', Esther," said the captain. He was not particularly glad to see her. "What's wrong; anything?" "Nothin' but my batch of gingerbread, and a quart of molasses'll save that. Can you spare it? Oh, don't get up. I know where Judah keeps it; I've been here afore." She went to the closet, found the molasses jug, and filled her pitcher. Then she came back and sat down. She had not been invited to sit, but Esther scorned ceremony. "No, sir," she observed, as if carrying on an uninterrupted conversation, "_I_ can't set and read the newspapers. And I can't go to walk neither, even if 'tis such weather as 'tis to-day. Some folks can, though, and they've gone." Sears turned the page of the _Item_. He made no comment. His silence did not in the least disturb his caller. "Yes, they've gone," she repeated. "Right in the middle of the forenoon, too.... Oh, well! when the Admiral of all creation comes to get you to go cruisin' along with him, you go, I suppose. That is, some folks do. I'd like to see the man _I'd_ make such a fool of myself over." The captain was reading the "Local Jottings" now. Mrs. Tidditt kept serenely on. "I wouldn't let any man make such a soft-headed fool of me," she declared. "'Twould take more than a mustache and a slick tongue to get _my_ money away from me--if I had any." Sears was obliged to give up the Jottings. He sighed and put down the paper. "What's the matter, Esther?" he asked. "Who's after your money?" "Nobody, and good reason why, too. And I ain't out cruisin' 'round the fields with an Eg neither." "With an egg? Who is?" "Who do you think? Cordelia Berry, of course. Him and her have gone for what he calls a little stroll. He said she was workin' her poor brain too hard and a little fresh air would do her good. Pity about her poor brain, ain't it? Well, if 'twan't a poor one he'd never coax her into marryin' _him_, that's sartin." "Esther, don't talk foolish." "Nothin' foolish about it. If them two ain't keepin' company then I never saw anybody that was. He's callin' on her, and squirin' her 'round, and waitin' on her mornin', noon and night. And she--my patience! she might as well hang out a sign, 'Ready and Willin'.' She says he's the one real aristocrat she has seen since she left her father's home. Poor Cap'n Ike, he's all forgotten." Sears stirred uneasily. Barring Tidditt exaggeration, he was inclined to believe all this very near the truth. It merely confirmed his own suspicions. His visitor went gayly on. "I'm sorry for Elizabeth," she said. "I don't know whether the poor girl realizes how soon she's liable to have that Eg for a step-pa. I shouldn't wonder if she suspected a little. I don't see how she can help it. But, Elviry Snowden--oh, dear, dear! If _she_ ain't the sourest mortal these days. I do get consider'ble fun out of Elviry. She's the one thing that keeps me reconciled to life." The captain thought he saw an opportunity to shift Mrs. Berry from the limelight and substitute some one else. "I thought Elvira Snowden was the one you said meant to get Egbert," he suggested. "So I did, and so she was. But she don't count nowadays." "Why doesn't she?" "Well, if you ask me I shall give you an answer. Elviry Snowden ain't fell heir to five thousand dollars and Cordelia Berry has. That's why." Sears uneasily shifted again. This conversation was following much too closely his own line of reasoning. "Five thousand isn't any great fortune," he observed, "to a man like Phillips." The little woman nodded. "It's five thousand dollars to a man just _like_ Phillips--now," she said, significantly. "And, more'n that, Cordelia's matron at the Harbor. The Fair Harbor ain't a Eyetalian palace maybe, but it's a nice, comf'table place where the matron's husband might live easy and not pay board.... That's _my_ guess. Other folks can have theirs and welcome." "But----" "There ain't no buts about it, Cap'n Kendrick. You know it's so. Eg Phillips is goin' to marry Cordelia Berry. My name ain't Elijah nor Jeremiah--no, nor Deuteronomy nuther--but I can prophesy that much." She rose with a triumphant bounce, turned to the open door behind her, and saw Elizabeth Berry standing there. Sears Kendrick saw her at the same time. There are periods in the life of each individual when it seems as if Fate was holding a hammer above that individual's head and, at intervals, as the head ventures to lift itself, knocking it down again. Each successive tap seems a bit harder, and the victim, during the interval of its falling, wonders if it is to be the final and finishing thump. Sears did not wonder this time, he knew. His thought, as he saw her there, saw the expression upon her face and realized what she must have heard, was: "Here it is! This is the end." Yet he was the first of the two to speak. Elizabeth, white and rigid, said nothing, and even Mrs. Tidditt's talking machinery seemed to be temporarily thrown out of gear. So the captain made the attempt, a feeble one. "Why, Elizabeth," he faltered, "is that you?... Come in, won't you?" She did come in, that is, she came as far as the door mat. Then she turned, not to him, but to his companion. "What do you mean by speaking in that way of my mother?" she demanded. Esther was still a trifle off balance. Her answer was rather incoherent. "I--I don't know's I--as I said--as I said much of anything--much," she stammered. "I heard you. How dare you tell such--such _lies_?" "Lies?" "Yes; mean, miserable lies. What else are they? How dare you run to--to _him_ with them?" Mrs. Tidditt's hand, that grasping the handle of the molasses pitcher, began to quiver. Her eyes, behind her steel-rimmed spectacles, winked rapidly. "Elizabeth Berry," she snapped, with ominous emphasis, "don't you talk to me like that!" "I shall talk to you as--as.... Oh, I should be ashamed to talk to you at all. My mother--my kind, trustful, unsuspecting mother! And you--you and he _dare_----" Kendrick, in desperation, tried to put in a word. "Elizabeth," he begged, "don't misunderstand. Esther hasn't been runnin' here to tell me things. She came over to borrow some molasses from Judah, that's all." "Oh, stop! I tell you I heard what she said. And you were listening. Listening! Without a word of protest. I suppose you encouraged her. Of course you did. No doubt this isn't the first time. This may be her usual report. Not content with--with prying into closets and--and coal bins and--and----" "Elizabeth!" "Doing these things for yourself was not enough, I suppose. You must encourage her--pay her, perhaps--to listen and whisper scandal and to spy----" "Stop! Stop right there!" The captain was not begging now. Even in the midst of her impassioned outburst the young woman paused, halted momentarily by the compelling force of that order. But she halted unwillingly. "I shall not stop," she declared. "I shall say----" "You have said a whole lot too much already. And you don't mean what you have said." "I do! I do! Oh, I can't tell you what I think of you." "Well," dryly, "you have made a pretty fair try at tellin' it. If it is what you really think of me it'll do--it will be quite enough. I shan't need any more." He was looking at her gravely and steadily and before his look her own gaze wavered. If they had been alone it is barely possible that ... but they were not alone. Mrs. Tidditt was there and, by this time, as Judah would have said, "her neck-feathers were on end" and her spurs sharpened for battle. She hopped into the pit forthwith. "_I_ need consider'ble more," she cackled, defiantly. "I've been called a spy and a scandal whisperer and the Lord knows what else. Now I'll say somethin'." "Esther, be still." "I shan't be still till I'm ready, not for you, Sears Kendrick, nor for her nor nobody else. I ain't a spy, 'Liz'beth Berry, and I ain't paid by no livin' soul. But I see what I see with the eyes the Almighty give me to see with, and after I've seen it--not alone once but forty dozen times--I'll talk about it if I want to, when I want to, to anybody I want to. Now that's that much." Elizabeth, scornfully silent, was turning to the door, but the little woman hopped--that seems the only word which describes it--in her way. "You ain't goin'," she declared, "till I've finished. 'Twon't take me long to say it, but it's goin' to be said. I told Cap'n Sears that Eg Phillips was chasin' 'round with your mother. He is. And if she ain't glad to have him chase her then I never see anybody that was. I said them two was cal'latin' to get married. Well ... well, if they ain't then they'd ought to be, that's all I'll say about _that_. And don't you ever call me a spy again as long as you live, 'Liz'beth Berry." She hopped again, to the doorway this time. There she turned for a farewell cackle. "One thing more," she said. "I told the cap'n I believed the reason that that Eg man wanted to marry Cordelia was on account of her bein' able to give him five thousand dollars and the Fair Harbor to live in. I do believe it. And you can tell her so--or him so. But afore I told anybody I'd think it over, if I was you, 'Liz'beth Berry. And I'd think _him_ over a whole lot afore I'd let him and his 'ily tongue make trouble between you and your _real_ friends.... There! Good-by." She went away. Kendrick pulled at his beard. "Elizabeth," he began, hastily, "I'm awfully sorry that this happened. Of course you know that I----" She interrupted him. "I know," she said, "that if I ever speak to you again it will be because I am obliged to, not because I want to." She followed Mrs. Tidditt. Sears Kendrick sat down once more in the rocking chair. He did a great deal of hard and unpleasant thinking before he rose from it. When he did rise it was to go to the drawer in the bureau of the spare stateroom where he kept his writing materials, take therefrom pen, ink and paper and sit down at the table to write a letter. The letter was not long of itself, but composing it was a rather lengthy process. It was addressed to Elizabeth Berry and embodied his resignation as trustee and guardian of her inheritance from Judge Knowles. * * * * * "As I see it [he wrote] I am not the one to have charge of that money. I took the job, as you know, because the judge asked me to and because you asked me. I took it with a good deal of doubt. Now, considering the way you feel towards me, I haven't any doubt that I should give it up. I don't want you to make the mistake of thinking that I feel guilty. So far as I know I have not done anything which was not square and honest and aboveboard, either where you were concerned, or your mother, or what I believed to be the best interests of the Fair Harbor. And I am not giving up my regular berth as general manager of the Harbor itself. Judge Knowles asked me to keep that as long as I thought it was necessary for the good of the institution. I honestly believe it is more necessary now than it ever was. And I shall stay right on deck until I feel the need is over. I shan't bother you with my company any more than I can help, but you will have to put up with it about every once in so often while we go over business affairs. So much for that. The trusteeship is different and I resign it to Mr. Bradley, who was the judge's second choice." * * * * * He paused here, deliberated for a time, and then added another paragraph. * * * * * "I feel sure Bradley will take it [he wrote]. If he should refuse I will not give it up to any one else. At least not unless I am perfectly satisfied with the person chosen. This is for your safety and for no other reason." * * * * * He sent the letter over by Judah. Two days later he received a reply. It, too, was brief and to the point. * * * * * "I accept your resignation [wrote Elizabeth]. It was Judge Knowles' wish that you be my trustee, and, as you know, it was mine also. Apparently you no longer feel bound by either wish, and of course I shall not beg you to change your mind. I have no right to influence you in any way. I have seen Mr. Bradley and he has consented to act as trustee for me. He will see you in a day or two. As for the other matters I have nothing to say. Whenever you wish to consult with me on business affairs I shall be ready." * * * * * There was a postscript. It read: "I feel that I should thank you for what you have already done. I do thank you sincerely." * * * * * So that ended it, and ended also what had been a happy period for Sears Kendrick. He made no more informal daily visits to the Fair Harbor. Twice a week, at stated times, he and Elizabeth met in the office and conferred concerning bills, letters and accounts. She was calm and impersonal during these interviews, and he tried to be so. There was no reference to other matters and no more cheerful and delightful chats, no more confidences between them. It did seem to him that she was more absent-minded, less alert and attentive to the business details than she had been, and at times he thought that she looked troubled and careworn. Perhaps, however, this was but his imagining, a sort of reflection of his own misery. For he was miserable--miserable, pessimistic and pretty thoroughly disgusted with life. His health and strength were gaining always, but he found little consolation in this. He could not go to sea just yet. He had promised Judge Knowles to stick it out and stick he would. But he longed--oh, how he longed!--for the blue water and a deck beneath his feet. Perhaps, a thousand miles from land, with a gale blowing and a ship to handle, as a real deep-sea skipper he could forget--forget a face and a voice and a succession of silly fancies which could not, apparently, be wholly forgotten by the middle-aged skipper of an old women's home. One morning, after a troubled night, on his way to a conference with Elizabeth at the Fair Harbor office, he met Mr. Egbert Phillips. The latter, serene, benign, elegant, was entering at the gateway beneath the swinging sign which proclaimed to the other world that within the Harbor all was peace. Of late Captain Kendrick had found a certain flavor of irony in the wording of that sign. Kendrick and Phillips reached the gate at the same moment. They exchanged good mornings. Egbert's was sweetly and condescendingly gracious, the captain's rather short and brusque. Since the encounter in the office where, in the presence of Elizabeth, Phillips' polite inuendoes had goaded Sears into an indiscreet revelation of his real feeling toward the elegant widower--since that day relations between the two had been maintained on a basis of armed neutrality. They bowed, they smiled, they even spoke, although seldom at length. Kendrick had made up his mind not to lose his temper again. His adversary should not have that advantage over him. But this morning to save his life he could not have appeared as unruffled as usual. The night had been uncomfortable, his waking thoughts disturbing. His position was a hard one, he was feeling rebellious against Fate and even against Judge Knowles, who, as Fate's agent, had gotten him into that position. And the sight of the tall figure, genteelly swinging its cane and beaming patronage upon the world in general, was a little too much for him. So his good morning was more of a grunt than a greeting. It may be that Egbert noticed this. Or it may be that with his triumph so closely approaching a certainty he could not resist a slight gloat. At all events he paused for an instant, a demure gleam in his eye and the corner of his lip beneath the drooping mustache lifting in an amused smile. "A beautiful day, Captain," he said. Kendrick admitted the day's beauty. He would have passed through the gateway, but Mr. Phillips' figure and Mr. Phillips' cane blocked the way. "It seems to me that we do not see as much of you here at the Harbor as we used, Captain Kendrick," observed Egbert. "Or is that my fancy merely?" The captain's answer was noncommittal. Again he attempted to pass and again the Phillips' walking-stick casually prevented. "I trust that nothing serious has occurred to deprive us of your society, Captain?" queried the owner of the stick, solicitously. "No accident, no further accident, or anything of that sort?" "No." "And you are quite well? Pardon me, but I fancied that you looked--ah--shall I say disturbed--or worried, perhaps?" "No. I'm all right." "I am so glad to hear it. I gathered--that is, I feared that perhaps the cares incidental to your--" again the slight smile--"your labors as general supervisor of the Harbor might be undermining your health. I am charmed to have you tell me that that is not the case." "Thanks." "Of course--" Mr. Phillips drew a geometrical figure with the cane in the earth of the flower bed by the path--"of course," he said, "speaking as one who has had some sad experience with illness and that sort of thing, it has always seemed to me that one should not take chances with one's health. If the cares of a particular avocation--situation--position--whatever it may be--if the cares and--ah--disappointments incidental to it are affecting one's physical condition it has always seemed to me wiser to sacrifice the first for the second. And make the sacrifice in time. You see what I mean?" Kendrick, standing by the post of the gateway, looked at him. "Why, no," he said, slowly, "I don't know that I do. What do you mean?" The cane was drawn through the first figure in the flower bed and began to trace another. Again Mr. Phillips smiled. "Why, nothing in particular, my dear sir," he replied. "Perhaps nothing at all.... I had heard--mere rumor, no doubt--that you contemplated giving up your position as superintendent here. I trust it is not true?" "It isn't." "I am delighted to hear you say so. We--we of the Harbor--should miss you greatly." "Thanks. Do you mind telling me who told you I was goin' to give up the superintendent's position?" "Why, I don't remember. It came to my ears, it seemed to be a sort of general impression. Of course, now that you tell me it is not true I shall take pains to deny it. And permit me to express my gratification." "Just a minute. Did they say--did this general impression say why I was givin' up the job?" "No-o, no, I think not. I believe it was hinted that you were not well and--perhaps somewhat tired--a little discouraged--that sort of thing. As I say, it was mere rumor." Sears smiled now--that is, his lips smiled, his eyes were grave enough. "Well," he observed, deliberately, "if you have a chance, Mr. Phillips, you can tell those mere rumorers that I'm not tired at all. My health is better than it has been for months. So far from bein' discouraged, you can tell 'em that--well, you know what Commodore Paul Jones told the British cap'n who asked him to surrender; he told him that he had just begun to fight. That's the way it is with me, Mr. Phillips, I've just begun to fight." The cane was lifted from the flower bed. Egbert nodded in polite appreciation. "Really?" he said. "How interesting, Captain!" Kendrick nodded, also. "Yes, isn't it?" he agreed. "Were you goin' into the Harbor, Phillips? So am I. We'll walk along together." But that night he went to his bed in better spirits. Egbert's little dig had been the very thing he needed, and now he knew it. He had been discouraged; in spite of his declaration in his letter to Elizabeth Berry, he had wished that it were possible to run away from the Fair Harbor and everything connected with it. But now--now he had no wish of that kind. If Judge Knowles could rise from the grave and bid him quit he would not do it. Quit? Not much! Like Paul Jones, he had just begun to fight. CHAPTER XV But there was so little that was tangible to fight, that was the trouble. If Mr. Egbert Phillips was the villain of the piece he was such a light and airy villain that it was hard to take him seriously enough. Even when Kendrick was most thoroughly angry with him and most completely convinced that he was responsible for all his own troubles, including the loss of Elizabeth Berry's friendship--even then he found it hard to sit down and deliberately plan a campaign against him. It seemed like campaigning against a butterfly. The captain disliked him extremely, but he never felt a desire to knock him down. To kick him--yes. Perhaps to thump the beaver hat over his eyes and help him down the brick path of the Harbor with the judicious application of a boot, grinning broadly during the process--that was Sears Kendrick's idea of a fitting treatment for King Egbert the Great. The captain had done his share of fighting during an adventurous lifetime, but his opponents had always been men. Somehow Phillips did not seem to him like a man. A creature so very ornamental, with so much flourish, so superlatively elegant, so overwhelmingly correct, so altogether and all the time the teacher of singing school or dancing school--how could one seriously set about fighting such a bundle of fluff? A feather-duster seemed a more fitting weapon than a shotgun. But the fluff was flying high and in the sunshine and was already far out of reach of the duster. Soon it would be out of reach of the shotgun. Unless the fight was made serious and deadly at once there would be none at all. Unless having already lost about all that made life worth living, Sears Kendrick wished to be driven from Bayport in inglorious rout, he had better campaign in earnest. Passive resistance must end. As a beginning he questioned Judah once more concerning Phillips' standing in the community. It was unchanged, so Judah said. He was quite as popular, still the brave and uncomplaining martyr, always the idol of the women and a large proportion of the men. "Did you hear about him down to the Orthodox church fair last week?" asked Mr. Cahoon. "You didn't! Creepin'! I thought everybody aboard had heard about that. Seems they'd sold about everything there was to sell, but of course there was a few things left, same as there always is, and amongst 'em was a patchwork comforter that old Mrs. Jarvis--Capn' Azariah Jarvis's second wife she was--you remember Cap'n Azariah, don't ye, Cap'n Sears? He was the one that used to swear so like fury. Didn't mean nothin' by it, just a habit 'twas, same as usin' tobacco or rum is with some folks. Didn't know when---- Eh? Oh, yes, about that comforter. Why, old Mrs. Jarvis she made it for the fair and it wan't sold. 'Twas one of them log-cabin quilts, you know. I don't know why they call 'em log cabins, they don't look no more like a log cabin than my head does. I cal'late they have to call 'em somethin' so's to tell 'em from the risin' sun quilts and the mornin'-glory quilts and--and the Lord-knows-what quilts. The womenfolks make mo-ore kinds of them quilts and comforters, seems so, than---- "Eh? Oh, yes, I'm beatin' up to Egbert, Cap'n Sears; I'll be alongside him in a minute, give me steerage way. Well, the log-cabin quilt wan't sold and they wanted to sell it, partly because old Mrs. Jarvis would feel bad if nobody bought it, and partly because the meetin'-house folks would feel worse if any money got away from 'em at a fair. So Mr. Dishup he says, 'We'll auction of it off,' he says, 'and our honored and beloved friend, Mr. Phillips, will maybe so be kind enough to act as auctioneer.' So Eg, he got up and apologized for bein' chose, and went on to say what a all-'round no-good auctioneer he'd be but how he couldn't say no to the folks of the church where his dear diseased wife had worshiped so long, and then he started in to sell that comforter. Did he _sell_ it? Why, creepin', crawlin', hoppin' ... Cap'n Sears, he could have sold a shipload of them log-cabins if he'd had 'em handy. He held the thing up in front of 'em, so they tell me, and he just praised it up same as John B. Gough praises up cold water at a temp'rance lecture. He told how the old woman had worked over it, and set up nights over it, and got her nerves all into a titter and her finger ends all rags, as you might say, and how she had done it just to do somethin' for the meetin'-house she thought so much of, the church that her loved and lost husband used to come to so reg'lar. _That_ was all fiddlesticks, 'cause Cap'n Az never went to church except for the six weeks after he was married, and pretty scattern' 'long the last three of _them_. "Well, he hadn't talked that way very long afore he had that whole vestry as damp as a fishin' schooner's deck in a Banks fog. All hands--even the men that had been spendin' money for the fair things, tidies and aprons and splint work picture-frames and such, even they was cryin'. And then old Mrs. Jarvis--and she was cryin', too--she went and whispered to the minister and he whispered to Phillips and Phillips, he says: 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he says, 'I have just learned that a part of this quilt was made from a suit of clothes worn by Cap'n Jarvis on his last v'yage,' he says. '_Just_ think of it,' says he, 'this blue strip here is a part of the coat worn by him as he trod the deck of his ship homeward bound--bound home to his wife, bound home to die.' "Well, all hands cried more'n ever at that, and Mrs. Jarvis got up, with the tears a-runnin', and says she: 'It wan't his coat,' she says. 'I sold the coat and vest to a peddler. 'Twas his----' But Egbert cut in afore she could tell what 'twas, and then he got 'em to biddin'. Creepin' Henry, Cap'n Sears! that log-cabin quilt sold for nine dollars and a half, and the man that bought it was Philander Comstock, the tailor over to Denboro. And Philander told me himself that he didn't know why he bought it. '_I_ made that suit of clothes for Cap'n Azariah, myself,' he says, 'and he died afore I got half my pay for it. But that Phillips man,' he says, 'could sell a spyglass to a blind man.'" The captain asked Judah if he had heard any testimony on the other side; were there any people in Bayport who did not like Mr. Phillips. Judah thought it over. "We-ll," he said, reflectively, "I don't know as I've ever heard anybody come right out and call him names. Anybody but Esther Tidditt, that is; she's down on him like a sheet anchor on a crab. Sometimes Elviry snaps out somethin' spiteful, but most of that's jealousy, I cal'late. You see, Elviry had her cap all set for this Egbert widower--that is, all hands seems to cal'late she had--and then she began to find her nose was bein' put out of j'int. You know who they're sayin' put it out, Cap'n Sears? There seems to be a general notion around town that----" Kendrick interrupted; this was a matter he did not care to discuss with Judah or any one else. There had been quite enough said on that subject. "Yes, yes, all right, Judah," he said, hastily. "But the men? Do the men like him as well as the women?" "Why--why, yes, I guess so. Not quite so well, of course. That wouldn't be natural, would it, Cap'n Sears?" "Perhaps not. But have you ever heard any man say anything against him, anything definite? Does he pay his bills?" "Eh? Why, I don't know. I ain't never----" "All right. Who does he chum around with mostly? Who are his best friends?" Mr. Cahoon gave a list of them, beginning of course with the Wingates and the Dishups and the members of the Shakespeare Reading Society and ending with George Kent. "He cruises along with George a whole lot," declared Judah. "Them two are together about half the time. George don't work to the store no more. You knew that, didn't you?" If Sears had heard it, he had forgotten. Judah went on to explain. "He hove up his job at Eliphalet's quite a spell ago," he said "He's studyin' law along with Bradley same as ever, but 'he's busy lawin' here in Bayport, too. Some of his relations died and left a lot of money, so folks tell, and George is what they call administer of the estate. It's an awful good thing for him, all hands cal'late. Some say he's rich." The captain vaguely remembered Kent's disclosure to him concerning his appointment as administrator of his aunt's estate. He had not exchanged a word with the young man since the evening of the latter's call and Elizabeth's interruption. It seemed a long while ago. Much--and so much that was unpleasant--had happened since then. Kent and he had met, of course, and on the first two or three occasions, Kendrick had spoken. The young fellow had not replied. Now, at the mention of his name, Kendrick felt an uneasy pang, almost of guilt. He had done nothing wrong, of course yet if it had not been for him perhaps the two young people might still have been friends or even more than friends. It was true that Elizabeth had told him but there, what difference did it make what she told him? She had told him other things since, things that he could not forget. "Well, all right, Judah," he said. "It wasn't important. Run along." Judah did not run along. He remained, looking at his lodger with a troubled expression. The latter noticed it. "What is it, Judah?" he asked. "Anything wrong?" Mr. Cahoon's fingers moved uneasily through the heavy foliage upon his chin. "Why--why, Cap'n Sears," he stammered, "can I ask you somethin'?" "Certain. Fire away." "Well--well--it--it ain't true, is it, that you done anything to set Elizabeth Berry against that young Kent feller? You never told her nothin'--or did nothin'--or--or----" He seemed to find it hard to finish his sentence. The captain did not wait, but asked a question of his own. "Who said I did, Judah?" he asked. "Hey?... Oh, I--I don't know. Why--why, some of them sculpin'-mouths down to the store they say that you--that you told Elizabeth a lot of things--or did somethin' or 'nother to spite George with her. Of course _I_ knew 'twan't so, but--but----" "But they said it was, eh? Well, it isn't true. I haven't done anything of that kind, Judah." The Cahoon fist descended upon the kitchen table with a thump. "I knew it!" roared Judah. "I knew dum well 'twas a cargo of lies. Now just wait. Let one of them swabs just open his main hatch and start to unload another passel of that cargo. If I don't----" "Shh, shh! Don't do that. I tell you what to do. If you want to help me, Judah, you say nothin', but try and find out who told them these things. Some one has been pretty busy tellin' things to my discredit for some time. Don't let any one know what you're after, but see if you can find out who is responsible. Will you?" "Sartin sure I will. And when I do find out----" "When you do, let me know. And Judah, one thing more: Find out all that you can find out about this Phillips man. See if he owes anybody money. See if he pays his debts. See if he--well, find out all you can about him; but don't let any one know you're tryin' to find out, that's all. Do you understand?" "Eh?... Why, I guess likely I do.... But--but.... Eh? Cap'n Sears, do you mean to say you cal'late that that Eg Phillips is at the back of all this talk against you in Bayport? Do you mean that?" "Humph! So there is talk against me; a lot of it, I suppose?" Judah forgot to be discreet. "Talk!" he shouted. "There's more underhand, sneakin' lies about you goin' around this flat-bottomed, leaky, gurry-and-bilgewater tub of a town than there is fiddlers in Tophet. I've denied 'em and contradicted 'em till I'm hoarse from hollerin'. I've offered to fight anybody who dast to say they was true, but, by the hoppin' Henry, nobody ever said any more than that they'd heard they was. And I never could find out who started 'em. And do you mean to say you believe that long-legged critter with the beaver hat and the--the mustache like a drowned cat's tail is responsible?" Captain Kendrick hesitated for an instant. Then he nodded. "I think he is, Judah," he said, solemnly. "Then, by the creepin', crawlin'----" "Wait! I don't know that he is. I don't know much about him. But I mean to find out all about him, if I can. And I want you to help me." "I'll help. And when you find out, Cap'n?" "Well, that depends. If I find out anything that will give me the chance, I'll--I'll smash him as flat as that." _He_ struck the table now, with his open palm. Mr. Cahoon grinned delightedly. "I bet you will, Cap'n Sears!" he vowed. "And if he ain't flat enough then I'll come and jump on him. And I ain't no West Injy hummin'-bird neither." Kendrick's next move was to talk with his sister. Her visits at the Minot place had not been quite as frequent of late. She came, of course, but not as often, or so it seemed to the captain, and when she came she carefully avoided all reference to her new boarder. Sears knew the reason, or thought he did. He had hurt her feelings by intimating that Mr. Phillips might not be as altogether speckless as she thought him. He had not enthused over her giving up the best parlor to his Egbertship and Sarah was disappointed. But, loyal and loving soul that she was, she would not risk even the slightest disagreement with her brother, and so when she called, spoke of everything or everybody but the possible cause of such disagreement. Yet the cause was there and between brother and sister, as between Elizabeth and Sears, lay the slim, lengthy, gracefully undulating shadow of Judge Knowles' pet bugbear, who was rapidly becoming Sears Kendrick's bugbear as well. The captain had not visited the Macomber home more than twice since Judah carted him away from it in the blue truck-wagon. One fine day, however, he and the Foam Flake made the journey again, although with the buggy, not the wagon. He chose a time when he knew Kent was almost certain to be over at Bradley's office in Orham and when Phillips was not likely to be in his rooms. Of course there was a chance that he might encounter the latter, but he thought it unlikely. His guess was a good one and Egbert was out, had gone for a ride, so Mrs. Macomber said. Mrs. Cap'n Elkanah Wingate had furnished the necessary wherewithal for riding. "The Wingates let him use their horse and team real often," said Sarah. "They're awful fond of him, Mrs. Wingate especial. I don't know as Cap'n Elkanah is so much; he is kind of cross-grained sometimes and it's hard for him to like anybody very long." She was hard at work, ironing this time, but she would have put the flatiron back on the stove and taken her brother to the sitting room if he had permitted. "The idea of a man like you, Sears, havin' to sit on an old broken-down chair out here in the wash-shed," she exclaimed. "It ain't fittin'." The captain sniffed. "I guess if it's fittin' for you to be workin' out here I shouldn't complain at sittin' here," he observed. "Is that Joel's shirt? He's gettin' awfully high-toned--and high collared, seems to me." Mrs. Macomber was slightly confused. "Why, no," she said, "this isn't Joe's shirt. It's Mr. Phillips's. Ain't it lovely linen? I don't know as I ever saw any finer." Her brother leaned back in the broken chair. "Do you do his washin' for him, Sarah?" he demanded. "Why--why, yes, Sears. You see, he's real particular about how it's done, and of course you can't blame him, he has such lovely things. He tried two of the regular washwomen, Elsie Doyle and Peleg Carpenter's wife, and they did 'em up just dreadful. So, just to help him out one time, I tried 'em myself. And they came out real nice, if I do say it, and he was so pleased. So ever since then I have been doin' 'em for him. It's hardly any trouble--any extra trouble. I have to do our own washin', you know." Sears did know, also he knew the size of that washing. "Does he pay you for it?" he asked, sharply. "Pay you enough, I mean?" "Why--why, yes. Of course he doesn't pay a whole lot. Not as much maybe as if he was a stranger, somebody who didn't pay me regular board, you know." "Humph! Do you get your money?" "Why, yes. Of course I do." "He doesn't owe you anything, then, for board or lodgin' or anything?" Mrs. Macomber hesitated. "Nothin' much," she replied, after a moment. "Of course he gets a little behind sometimes, everybody does that, you know. But then his dividend payments or somethin' come to him and he pays right up in a lump. It's kind of nice havin' it come that way, seems more, you know." "Yes. So long as it keeps on comin'. His dividends, you say? I thought the story was that he hadn't any stocks left to get dividends from. I thought he told all hands that he was poverty-stricken, that when he was cut out of the Harbor property and the fifty thousand he hadn't a copper." "Oh no not as bad as that. He had some stocks and bonds, of course. Why, if he hadn't where would he get _any_ money from? How could he live?" "I don't know. He seems to be livin', though, and pretty well. Has he got the parlor yet?" "Yes, and it's fixed up so pretty. He's got his pictures and things around. Wouldn't you like to see it? He's out, you know." They went into the parlor and the bedroom adjoining, that which the captain had occupied during his stay. Both rooms were as neat as wax--Sears expected that, knowing his sister's housekeeping--but he had scarcely expected to find the rooms so changed. The furniture was the same, but the wall decorations were not. "What's become of the alum basket and the wax wreath and the Rock of Ages chromo?" he asked. "Oh, he took 'em down. That is, he didn't do it himself, of course, but he had Joel do it. They're up attic. Mr. Phillips said they was so like the things that his wife used to have in the dear old home that he couldn't bear to see 'em. They reminded him so of her. He asked if we would mind if they was removed and we said no, of course." "Humph! And the Macomber family coffin plates, those you had set out on black velvet with all Joel's dead relations names on 'em, in the plush and gilt frame? Are those up attic, too?" "Yes." "I should have thought 'twould have broken Joel's heart to part with _them_!" "Sears, you're makin' fun. I don't blame you much. I always did hate those coffin plates, but Joel seemed to like 'em. They were in his folks' front parlor, he says." "Yes. That 'Death of Washin'ton' picture and the rounder-case thing with the locks of hair in it were there, too, you told me once. That must have been a lively room. Those--er--horse pictures are Egbert's, I suppose?" "Yes. He is real fond of horses." The "horse pictures" were colored plates of racers. "That's a portrait of his wife over there," explained Sarah. "She had it painted in Italy on purpose for him." "Is that so? Well, I'm glad it was for him. I shouldn't think it was hardly fittin' for anybody outside the family. Of course Italy's a warm climate, but----" "_Sears!_" Mrs. Macomber blushed. "Of course I didn't mean _that_ picture," she protested. "And you know I didn't. I wouldn't have that one up at all if I had _my_ way. But he says it's an old master and very famous and all like that. Maybe so, but I'm thankful the children ain't allowed in here. That's Lobelia over there." In the bedroom were other pictures, photographs for the most part. Many of them were autographed. "They're girl friends of his wife's," said Sarah. "She met 'em over abroad. Real pretty, some of them, ain't they?" They were, and the inscriptions were delightfully informal and friendly. Lobelia Phillips' name was not inscribed, but her husband's was occasionally. Upon the table, by a half-emptied cigar box, lay a Boston paper of the day before. It was folded with the page of stock market quotations uppermost. Sears picked it up. One item was underscored with a pencil. It was the record of the day's sales of "C. M.," a stock with which the captain was quite unfamiliar. His unfamiliarity was not surprising; he had little acquaintance with the stock market. Back in the wash-shed, brother and sister chatted while the ironing continued. Sears led the conversation around until it touched upon George Kent. George was still boarding with them, so Sarah said. Yes, he had given up his place as bookkeeper at Bassett's store. "He's administrator of his aunt's estate," she went on. "You knew that, Sears? It's a pretty responsible position for such a young man, I guess. I'm afraid it's a good deal of worry for him. He's seemed to me kind of troubled lately. I thought at first it might be on account of Elizabeth Berry--everybody knows they've had some quarrel or somethin'--but I'm beginnin' to be afraid it may be somethin' else. He and Mr. Phillips are together about all the time. They're great friends, and I'm so glad, because if George _should_ be in any trouble--about business or anything--a man of Mr. Phillips' experience would be a wonderful friend to have." "What makes you think it may be a business trouble?" asked the captain, casually. Mrs. Macomber hesitated. "Why," she said, "I heard somethin' yesterday that made me think so. It wasn't meant for me to hear, but I just happened to. I don't know as I'd ought to say anything about it--I shouldn't to anybody but you, Sears--yet it has worried me a good deal. Mr. Phillips and George were standin' together in the hall as I went by. They didn't see me, and I heard George say, 'Somethin' _must_ be done about it,' he says. 'It can't go on for another week.' And Mr. Phillips said, kind and comfortin'--nice as he always is, but still it did seem to me a little mite impatient--'I tell you it is all right,' he said. 'Wait a while and it will be all right.' Then George said somethin' that I didn't catch, and Mr. Phillips said, 'But I can't, I tell you. I'm in exactly the same boat.' And George said, 'You've _got_ to! you've got to! If you don't it'll be the end of me.' That was what he said--'It will be the end of me.' And oh, Sears, he did sound _so_ distressed. It has troubled me ever since. What do you suppose it could be that would be the end of him?" Her brother shook his head. "Give it up," he said. "Humph!... And Egbert said he was in the same boat, did he? That's interestin'. It must be a pretty swell liner; he wouldn't be aboard anything else." But Mrs. Macomber declined to joke. "You wouldn't laugh," she declared, "if you had heard George talk. He's just a boy, Sears, a real kind-hearted, well-meanin' boy, and I hate to think of him as in any more trouble." "Any more? What do you mean by more?" "Why--why--oh, well, everybody knows he and Elizabeth ain't keepin' company any longer. And--and----" "And everybody thinks I am to blame. Well, I'm not, Sarah. Not intentionally, anyhow. And, if George would let me, I should be glad to be a friend of his. Not as grand and top-lofty a friend as Admiral Egbert, of course, but as good as my rank and ratin' in life will let me be." "Sears," reproachfully, "I hate to hear you speak in that sarcastic way. And I can't see why you mistrust Mr. Phillips so." "Can't you? Well, I don't know as I can, myself; but if I live long enough I may find a reason.... As for Kent--well, I tell you, Sarah: You keep an eye on the boy. If he still seems worried, or more worried, and you think it advisable, you might give him a message from me. You remind him that one time he told me if he ever got into real trouble he should come to me for help. You can say--if you think it advisable--that I am just as willin' to give that help now as ever I was." "Oh, Sears, do you mean it? Why, I thought--I was afraid that you and he----" "That's all right. I am the young fellow's friend--if he wants me to be. And, although I'm a thousand sea miles from guaranteein' to be able to help him, I'm willin' to try my hardest.... But there! the chances are he won't listen if you do tell him, so use your own judgment in the matter. But, Sarah, will you do me a favor?" "Sears! How can you! As if I wouldn't do anything for you!" "I know you would. And this isn't so very much, either. I'm kind of interested in this Phillips man's dividends and things. I'd like to know how he makes his money. I noticed that that newspaper in his room was folded with the stock price page on top. Is he interested in stock and such things?" "Why, yes, he is. I've heard him and George talkin' about what they call the 'market.' That means stocks, doesn't it?" "Um-hm, usually. Well, Sarah, if he happens to mention any particular stock he owns, or anything like that, try and remember and let me know, will you?" "Yes, of course, if you want me to. But why, Sears? There's nothing wrong in a man like Mr. Phillips bein' interested in such things, is there? I should think it would be--well, sort of natural for a person who has been rich as he used to be to keep up his interest." "I presume likely it is." "Then why do you want to know about it?" The captain picked up his hat. "Oh, for no particular reason, maybe, Sarah," he replied. "Perhaps _I_ shall be rich sometime--if I live to be a hundred and eighty and save a dollar a day as I go along--and then I shall want to know how to invest my money. Let me know if you hear anything worth while, won't you, Sarah?" "Yes, Sears. And if I get a chance I am goin' to tell George what you said about bein' his friend and willin' to help him. Good-by, Sears. I'm _so_ glad you came down. Come again soon, won't you? You're the only brother I've got, you know." Kendrick drove the Foam Flake back to the Minot place, reflecting during the journey upon what he had seen and heard while visiting his sister. It amounted to very little in the way of tangible evidence against Egbert Phillips. Sporting prints and dashing photographs were interesting perhaps, and in a way they illuminated the past; but they did not illumine the present, they shed no light upon their owner's means of living, nor the extent of those means. Egbert occupied the best rooms at the Macomber's, but, apparently, he paid for his board and lodging--yes, and his washing. He might be interested in stocks, but there was nothing criminal in that, of itself. The Kendrick campaign was, so far, an utter failure. Another week dragged by with no developments worth while. Judah, much inflated with the importance of his commission as a member of the Kendrick secret service, made voluminous and wordy reports, but they amounted to nothing. Mr. Phillips had borrowed five dollars of Caleb Snow. Had he paid the debt? Oh, yes, he had paid it. He smoked "consider'ble many" cigars, "real good cigars, too; cost over ten cents a piece by the box," so he told Thoph Black. But, so far as Black or Judah knew, he had paid for them. He owed a fair-sized bill at the livery-stable, but the stable owner "wan't worried none." There was little of interest here. No criminal record, rather the contrary. Esther Tidditt dropped in from time to time, loaded, as Judah said, "to the guards" with Fair Harbor gossip. Captain Sears did not encourage her visits. Aside from learning what he could concerning the doings of Egbert Phillips, he was little interested in petty squabbles and whispers among the "mariners' women." Except by Esther he was almost entirely ignored by the inmates. Elizabeth he saw daily for a short time, but for her sake he made those times as brief as he could. Her mother he saw occasionally; she spoke to him only when necessary. Elvira, Mrs. Brackett, Desire Peasly and the rest gave him the snippiest of bows when they met and whispered and giggled behind his back. It had seemed to him that Elizabeth looked more careworn of late. He did not mention it to her, of course, but it troubled him. He speculated concerning the cause and was inclined, entirely without good reason, to suspect Egbert, just as he was inclined to suspect him of being the cause of most unpleasantness. Something that Mrs. Tidditt said during one of her evening "dropping-ins" supplied a possible base for suspicion in this particular case. "Elizabeth and her mother has had some sort of a rumpus," declared Esther. "They ain't hardly on speakin' terms with one another these days. That is," she added, "Cordelia ain't. I guess likely Elizabeth would be as nice as she always is if her ma would give her the chance. Cordelia goes around all divided up between tears and joy, as you might say. When she's nigh her daughter she looks as if she was just about ready to cry--lee scuppers all awash, as my husband used to say when I was in the same condition; which wan't often, for cryin' ain't much in my line. Yes, when Elizabeth's lookin' at her she's right on the ragged edge of tears. But you let that dratted Eg heave in sight with all sail sot and signals flyin' and she's all smiles in a minute. Oh, what a fool a fool woman can be when she sets out to be!... Hey? What did you say, Cap'n Kendrick?" "I didn't say anything, Esther." "Oh, didn't you? I thought you did. There's one ray of comfort over acrost, anyhow. Elizabeth ain't in love with old Eggie, even if her mother is. She and he have had a run-in or I miss my guess." The captain was interested now. "What makes you think that?" he asked. "Oh, from things I've seen. He's all soft soap and sweet ile to her same as he always was--little more so, if anything--but she is cold as the bottom of a well to him. No, they've had a row and of course the reason's plain enough. That night over here when she called me a spy and a lot more names I told her a few things for her own good. I told her she had better think over what I said about that Eg's schemin' to get her mother and the five thousand dollars. I told her to think that over and think Eg over, too. She was terribly high and mighty then, but I bet you she's done some thinkin' since. Yes, and come to the conclusion that, spy or no spy, I was tellin' the plain truth.... Hey, Cap'n Kendrick?" "Eh?... Oh, yes, yes; I shouldn't wonder, Esther." "I shouldn't wonder, neither. But it won't have no effect on Cordelia. She'd put her best Sunday bonnet on the ground and let that Eg dance the grand fandango on it if he asked her to. Poor, soft-headed critter." "Yes, yes.... Humph! Any other news? How is Elvira?" "Oh, she's full of spite and jealousy as a yeast jug is full of pop. She pretends that the idea of anything serious between Cordelia and Phillips is just silliness. Might as well talk about King Solomon in all his glory marryin' the woman that done his washin'--that's what she pretends to believe. It's all Cordelia and not Eg at all, that's what she says. But she knows better, just the same. She's got somethin' else to think about now. That aunt of hers over to Ostable, the one that owns them iron images she wanted the Harbor to buy--she's sick, the aunt is. Elviry's pretty worried about her; she's the old woman's only relation." Kendrick had heard nothing further from his sister in the matter of young Kent and his trouble, whatever the latter might be. Sears had pondered a good deal concerning it and tried to guess in what possible way the boy could be "in the same boat" with Egbert. There was little use in guessing, however, and he had given up trying. And another week passed, another fruitless, dreary, hopeless week. Judah's lodge night came around again and Mr. Cahoon, after asking his skipper's permission, departed for the meeting, leaving Sears Kendrick alone. It was a beastly November evening, cold and with a heavy rain beating against the windows of the Minot kitchen, and a wind which shrieked and howled about the corners and gables of the old house, rattled every loose shingle, and set the dry bones of the wisteria vine scratching and thumping against the walls. The water was thrown in bucketfuls against the ancient panes and poured from the sashes as if the latter were miniature dams in flood time. Sears sat by the kitchen stove, smoking and trying to read. He could make a success of the smoking, but the attempt at reading was a failure. It was so much easier to think, so much easier to let his thoughts dwell upon his own dismal, wretched, discouraging story than to follow the fortunes of Thaddeus of Warsaw through the long succession of printed pages. And he had read Thaddeus's story before. He knew exactly how it would end. But how would his own story end? He might speculate much, but nowhere in all his speculations was there a sign of a happy ending. His pipe went out, he tossed the book upon the table among the supper dishes--Judah had been in too great a hurry to clear away--and leaned back in his chair. Then he rose and walked--he could walk pretty well now, the limp was but slight--to the window and, lifting the shade, peered out. He could see nothing, or almost nothing. The illumined windows made yellow pools of light upon the wet bricks below them, and across the darkness above were shining ribbons of rain. Against the black sky shapes of deeper blackness were moving rapidly, the bare thrashing branches of the locust tree. It was a beastly night, so he thought as he looked out at it; a beastly night in a wretched world. Then above the noises of screeching wind and splashing water he heard other sounds, sounds growing louder, approaching footsteps. Some one was coming up the walk from the road. He thought of course that it was Judah returning. He could not imagine why he should return, but it was more impossible to imagine any one else being out and coming to the Minot place on such a night. A figure, bent to the storm, passed across the light from the window. Captain Kendrick dropped the shade and strode through the little entry to the back door. He threw it open. "Come in, Judah," he ordered. "Come in quick, before we both drown." But the man who came in was not Judah Cahoon. He was George Kent. CHAPTER XVI The young man plunged across the threshold, the skirts of his dripping overcoat flapping about his knees and the water pouring from the brim of his hat. He carried the ruin of what had been an umbrella in his hand. It had been blown inside out, and was now but a crumpled tangle of wet fabric and bent and bristling wire. He stumbled over the sill, halted, and turning, addressed the man who had opened the door. "Cap'n," he stammered, breathlessly, "I--I--I've come to see you. I--I know you must think--I don't know what you can think--but--but----" Kendrick interrupted. He was surprised, but he did not permit his astonishment to loosen his grip on realities. "Go in the other room," he ordered. "In the kitchen there by the fire. I'll be with you soon as I shut this door. Go on. Don't wait!" Kent did not seem to hear him. "Cap'n," he began, again, "I----" "Do as I tell you. Go in there by the stove." He seized his visitor by the shoulder and pushed him out of the entry. Then he closed and fastened the outer door. This was a matter of main strength, for the gale was fighting mad. When the latch clicked and the hook dropped into the staple he, too, entered the kitchen. Kent had obeyed orders to the extent of going over to the stove, but he had not removed his hat or coat and seemed to be quite oblivious of them or the fire or anything except the words he was trying to utter. "Cap'n Kendrick," he began again, "I----" "Sshh! Hush! Take off your things. Man alive, you're sheddin' water like a whistlin' buoy. Give me that coat. And that umbrella, what there is left of it. That's the ticket. Now sit down in that rocker and put your feet up on the hearth.... Whew! Are you wet through?" "No. No, I guess not. I----" "Haven't got a chill, have you? Can't I get you somethin' hot to drink? Judah generally has a bottle of some sort of life-saver hid around in the locker somewhere. A hot toddy now?... Eh? Well, all right, all right. No, don't talk yet. Get warm first." Kent refused the hot toddy and would have persisted in talking at once if his host had permitted. The latter refused to listen, and so the young man sat silent in the rocking chair, his soaked trouser legs and boots steaming in the heat from the open door of the oven, while the captain bustled about, hanging the wet overcoat on a nail in the corner, tossing the wrecked umbrella behind the stove and pretending not to look at his caller. He did look, however, and what he saw was interesting certainly and might have been alarming had he been a person easily frightened or unduly apprehensive. Kent's wet cheeks had dried and they were flushed now from the warmth, but they were haggard, his eyes were underscored with dark semicircles, and his hands as he held them over the red-hot stove lids were trembling. He looked almost as if he were sick, but a sick man would scarcely be out of doors in such a storm. He had, apparently, forgotten his desire to talk, and was now silent, his gaze fixed upon the wall behind the stove. Kendrick quietly placed a chair beside him and sat down. "Well, George?" he asked. Kent started. "Oh!" he exclaimed. And then, "Oh, yes! Cap'n Kendrick, I--I know you must think my coming here is queer, after--after----" He hesitated. The captain helped him on. "Not a bit, George," he said. "Not a bit. I'm mighty glad to see you. I told you to come any time, you remember. Well, you've come, haven't you? Now what is it?" Kent's gaze left the wall and turned toward his companion. "Cap'n Kendrick," he began, then stopped. "Cap'n Kendrick," he repeated, "I--Mrs. Macomber said--she told me you said that--that----" "All right, George, all right. I told her to remind you that one time you promised to come to me if you was in any--er--well, trouble, or if you had anything on your mind. I judge that's what you've come for, isn't it?" Kent started violently. His feet slipped from the hearth and struck the floor with a thump. "How did you know I was in trouble?" he demanded. "Who told you? Did they tell you what----" "No, no, no. Nobody told me anything especial. Sarah did say you hadn't looked well lately and she was afraid you was worried about somethin'. That's all. I've been worried myself durin' my lifetime and I've generally found it helped a little to tell my worries to somebody else. At any rate it didn't do any harm. What's wrong, George? Nothin' serious, I hope." Kent breathed heavily. "Serious!" he repeated. "I--I...." Then in a sudden outburst: "Oh, my God, Cap'n Kendrick, I think they'll put me in jail." Sears looked at him. Then, leaning forward, he laid a hand on the boy's knee. "Nonsense, George," he exclaimed, heartily. "Stuff and nonsense! They don't put fellows like you in jail. You're scared, that's all. Tell me about it." "But they will, they will. You don't know Ed Stedman. He doesn't like me. He always has had it in for me. He's prejudiced Clara against me and she hates me, too. They're pressing me for the money now. The last letter I had from them Stedman said he wouldn't wait another fortnight. And a week is gone already. He'll----" "Hold on. Who's Stedman?" "Oh, I thought you knew. He's my half-sister's husband up in Springfield. When my aunt died.... But I told you I was administrator of her estate. I remember I told you. That day when----" "Yes, yes, I remember; that is, I remember a little. Tell me the whole of it. What's happened?" "Yes--yes, I want to. I'm going to. Oh, if you _can_ help me I'll--I'll never forget it. I'll do anything for you, Cap'n Kendrick. I know I shouldn't have done it. I had no right to take the risk. But Mr. Phillips said--he said----" "Eh?" Sears' interruption this time was quite unpremeditated. "Phillips?" he repeated, sharply. "Egbert, you mean? Oh, yes.... Humph.... Is he mixed up in this?" "Why--why, yes. If it hadn't been for him it wouldn't have happened. I don't mean that he is to blame, exactly. I guess nobody is to blame but myself. But when I think---- Oh, Cap'n Kendrick, do you suppose you can help me out of it? If you can, I----" Here followed another outburst of agonized entreaty. The boy's nerves were close to breaking, he was almost hysterical. Slowly and with the exercise of much patience and tact the captain drew from him the details of his trouble. It was, as he told it, a long and complicated story, but, boiled down, it amounted to something like this: Kent and Phillips had been very friendly for some time, their intimacy beginning even before the latter came to board at Sarah Macomber's. Egbert's polished manners, his stories of life abroad, his easy condescending geniality, had from the first made a great impression upon George. The latter, already esteeming himself above the average of mentality and enterprise in what he considered the "slow-poke" town of Bayport, found in the brilliant arrival from foreign parts the personification of his ideals, a satisfying specimen of that much read of _genus_, "the complete man of the world." He fell on his knees before that specimen and worshiped. Such idolatry could not but have some effect, even upon as _blasé_ an idol as Mr. Phillips, so the latter at first tolerated and then even encouraged the acquaintanceship. He began to take this young follower more and more into his confidence, to speak with him concerning matters more intimate and personal. George soon gathered that Egbert had been much in moneyed circles. He spoke casually of the "market" and referred to friends who had made and remade fortunes in stocks, as well as of others whose horses had brought them riches, or who had brought off what he called _coups_ at foreign gaming tables. The young man, who had been brought up in a strict Puritanical household, was at first rather shocked at the thought of gambling or racing, but Mr. Phillips treated his prejudices in a condescendingly joking way, and Kent gradually grew ashamed of his "insularity" and _bourgeois_ ideas. Egbert habitually read the stock quotations in the Boston _Advertiser_ and the mails brought him brokers' circulars and letters. Kent was led to infer that he still took a small "flyer" occasionally. "Nothing of consequence, my boy, nothing to get excited about; haven't the wherewithal since our dear friend Knowles and his--ah--satellites took to drawing wills and that sort of thing. But if my friends in the Street send me a bit of judicious advice--as they do occasionally, for old times' sake--why, I try to cast a few crumbs upon the waters, trusting that they may be returned, in the shape of a small loaf, after not too many days. Ha, ha! Yes. And sometimes they do return--yes, sometimes they do. Otherwise how could I rejoice in the good, but sometimes tiresome, Mrs. Macomber's luxurious hospitality?" It seemed an easy way to turn one's crumbs into loaves. Kent, now the possessor of the little legacy left him by his aunt, wished that the eight hundred dollars, the amount of that legacy, might be raised to eight thousand. He was executor of the small estate, which was to be equally divided between his half-sister and himself. There had been a little land involved, that had been sold and the money, most of it, paid him. So he had in his possession about sixteen hundred dollars, half his and half Mrs. Stedman's. If he could do no better than double his own eight hundred it would not be so bad. He wished that _he_ had friends in the Street. He hinted as much to Phillips. The latter was, as always, generously kind. "If I get the word of another good thing, my boy, I shall be glad to let you in. Mind, I shan't advise. I shall take no responsibility--one mustn't do that. I shall only pass on the good word and tell you what I intend doing myself." George, very grateful, felt that this was indeed true friendship. The chance at the good thing came along in due season. The New York brokerage firm wrote Phillips concerning it. It appeared that there was a certain railway stock named Central Midland Common. According to the gossip on the street, Central Midland--called C. M. for short--was just about due for a big rise. Certain eminent financiers and manipulators were quietly buying and the road was to be developed and exploited. Only a few, a select few, knew of this and so, obviously, now was the time to get aboard. Kent asked questions. Was Egbert going to get aboard? Egbert smilingly intimated that he was thinking of it. Would it be possible for him, Kent, to get aboard at the same time? Well, it might be; Egbert would think about that, too. He did think about it and, as a result of his thinking, he and Kent bought C. M. Common together. Of course to buy any amount worth while would be impossible because of the small amount of ready cash possessed by either. "But," said Phillips, "I seldom buy outright. The latest quotation of C. M. is at 40, or thereabouts. I intend buying about two hundred shares. That would be eight thousand dollars if I paid cash, but of course I can't do that. I shall buy on a ten per cent margin, putting up eight hundred. If it goes up twenty points I make two thousand dollars. If it goes up fifty points, as they say it will, why----" And so on. It ended--or began--by Phillips and Kent buying, as partners, four hundred shares of C. M. on a ten per cent margin. George turned over to Egbert the eight hundred dollars in cash, and Egbert sent to the brokers six hundred of those dollars and a bond, which he had in his possession, for one thousand dollars. Yes, Kent, had seen the broker's receipt. Yes, the bond was a good one; at least the brokers were perfectly satisfied. Where did Egbert get the bond? Kent did not know. It was one he owned, that is all he knew about it. For a week or so after the purchase was made C. M. Common did continue to rise in price. At one time they had a joint profit of nearly two thousand dollars. Of course that seemed trifling compared with the thousands they expected, and so they waited. Then the market slumped. In two days their profit had gone and C. M. Common was selling several points below the figure at which they purchased. By the end of the fourth day, unless they wished to be wiped out altogether, additional margin--another ten per cent--must be deposited immediately. And to George Kent this seemed an impossibility because he had not another eight hundred, or anything like it, of his own. Why, oh, why, had he been such a fool? In his chagrin, disappointment and discouragement he asked himself that question a great many times. But when he asked it of his partner in the deal that partner laughed at him. According to Phillips he had not been a fool at all. The slump was only temporary; the stock was just as good as it had ever been; all this was but a part of the manipulation, the insiders were driving down the price in order to buy at lower figures. And letters from the brokers seemed to bear this out. Nevertheless the fact remained that more margin must be deposited and where was Kent's share of that margin coming from? The rest of the story was exactly like fifty thousand similar stories. In order to save the eight hundred dollars of his own George put up as margin with the New York brokers the eight hundred dollars belonging to Mrs. Stedman, his half sister. Again he paid the eight hundred to Phillips, who sent to New York another one thousand dollar bond and six hundred in cash. And C. M. Common continued to go down, went down until once more the partners were in imminent danger of being wiped out. Then it rose a point or so, and there the price remained. All at once every one seemed to lose interest in the stock; instead of thousands of shares bought and sold daily, the sales dropped to a few odd lots. And instead of the profits which were to have been theirs by this time, the firm of Phillips and Kent owned together a precarious interest in four hundred shares of Central Midland Common which if sold at present prices would return them only a minimum of their investment, practically nothing when brokerage commissions should be deducted. And then Edward Stedman, Kent's brother-in-law, demanded an immediate settlement of the estate. The land had been sold, the estate had been settled--he knew it--now he and his wife wanted their share. So that was the situation which was driving the young fellow to desperation. _What_ could he do? He could not satisfy Stedman because he had not eight hundred dollars and he could not confess it, at least not without answering questions which he did not dare answer. As matters stood he was a thief; he had taken money which did not belong to him. He and Stedman had not been friendly for a long time. According to George his brother-in-law would put him in jail without the slightest compunction. And, even if he managed--which he was certain he could not--to avoid imprisonment, there was the disgrace and its effect upon his future. Why, if the affair became known, at the very least his career as a lawyer would be ruined. Who would trust him after this? He would have to go away; but where could he go? He had counted on his little legacy to help him get a start, to--to help him to all sorts of things. Now---- Oh, what _should_ he do? Suicide seemed to be the sole solution. He had a good mind to kill himself. He should--yes, he was almost sure that he should do that very thing. It was pitiful and distressing enough, and Kendrick, although he did not take the threat of self-destruction very seriously--somehow he could scarcely fancy George Kent in the role of a suicide--was sincerely sorry for the boy. He did his best to comfort. "There, there, George," he said, "we won't talk about killin' ourselves yet awhile. Time enough to hop overboard when the last gun's fired, and we haven't begun to take aim yet. Brace up, George. You'll get through the breakers somehow." "But, Cap'n Kendrick, I can't--I can't. I've got only a week or so left, and I haven't got the money." "Sshh! Sshh! Because you haven't got it now doesn't mean you won't have it before the week's out--not necessarily it doesn't.... Humph! Let's take an observation now, and get our bearin's, if we can. You've talked this over with Egbert--with Phillips, of course. After all, he was the fellow that got you into it. What does he say?" It appeared that Mr. Phillips said little which was of immediate solace. He professed confidence unbounded. C. M. was a good stock, it was going higher, all they had to do was wait until it did. "Yes," put in Sears, "that's good advice, maybe, but it's too much like tellin' a man who can't swim to keep up till the tide goes out and he'll be in shallow water. The trouble is neither that man nor you could keep afloat so long. Is that all he said? He understands your position, doesn't he, George?" Yes, Mr. Phillips understood, but he could do nothing to help. He had no money to lend--had practically nothing except the two one thousand dollar bonds, and those were deposited as collateral with the brokers. "Um--ye-es," drawled Kendrick. "Those bonds are interestin' of themselves. We'll come to those pretty soon. But hasn't he got _any_ ready money? Seems as if he must have a little. Why, you paid him sixteen hundred in cash and, accordin' to your story, he sent only twelve hundred along with the bonds. He must have four hundred left, at least. That is, unless he's been heavin' overboard more 'crumbs' that you don't know about." Kent knew nothing of his partner's resources beyond what the latter had told him. And, at any rate, what good would four hundred be to him? Unless he could raise eight hundred within the week---- "Yes, yes, yes, I know. But four hundred is half of eight hundred and seems to me if I was in his shoes and had been responsible for gettin' you into a clove hitch like this I'd do what I could to get you out. And he couldn't--or wouldn't--do anything; eh?" "He can't, Cap'n Kendrick. He can't. Don't you see, he hasn't got it. He's poor, himself. Of course he came here to Bayport, after his wife's death, thinking that he owned the Fair Harbor property and--and a lot more. Why, he thought he was rich. _He_ didn't know that old Knowles had used his influence with Mrs. Phillips when she was half sick and tricked her into----" "Here, here!" The captain's tone was rather sharp this time. "Never mind that. Old Knowles, as you call him, was a friend of mine.... I thought he was your friend, too, George, for the matter of that." George was embarrassed. "Well, he was," he admitted. "I haven't got anything against him; in fact he was very good to me. But that is what Mr. Phillips says, you know, and everybody--or about everybody--seems to believe it. At least they are awfully sorry for Phillips." "So I judged. But about you, now. Do _you_ believe in--er--Saint Egbert as much as you did?" "Why--why, I don't know. I---- Of course it seems almost as if he ought to do something to help me, but if he can't he can't, I suppose." "I suppose not. Look here, he won't tell anybody about your scrape, will he?" The junior partner in the firm of Phillips and Kent was indignant. "Of course not," he declared. "He told me he should not breathe a word. And he is really very much disturbed about it all. He told me himself that he felt almost guilty. Mr. Phillips is a gentleman." "Is that so? Must be nice to be that way. But tell me a little more about those bonds, George. There were two of 'em, you say, a thousand dollars each." "Yes." "And you don't know what sort of bonds they were?" His visitor's pride was touched. "Why, of course I know," he declared. "What sort of a business man would I be if I didn't know that, for heaven's sake?" Sears did not answer the question. For a moment it seemed that he was going to, but if so, he changed his mind. However, there was an odd look in his eye when he spoke. "Beg your pardon, George," he said. "I must have misunderstood you. What bonds were they?" "They were City of Boston bonds. Seems to me they were--er--er--well, I forget just what--er--issue, you know, but that's what they were, City of Boston bonds." "I see ... I see.... Humph! Seems kind of odd, doesn't it?" "What?" "Oh, nothin'. Only Phillips, accordin' to his tell, is pretty close to poverty. Yet he hung on to those two bonds all this time." "Well, he had to hang on to something, didn't he? And he probably has a _little_ more; if he hasn't what has he been living on?" "Yes, that's so--that's so. Still.... However, we won't worry about that. Now, George, sit still a minute and let me think." "But, Cap'n Kendrick, do you think there is a chance? I'm almost crazy. I--I----" "Sshh! shh! I guess likely we'll get you off the rocks somehow. Let me think a minute or two." So Kent possessed his soul in such patience as it could muster, while the wind howled about the old house, the wistaria vine rattled and scraped, the shutters groaned and whined, and the rain dashed and poured and dripped outside. At length the captain sat up straight in his chair. "George," he said, briskly, "as I see it, first of all we want to find out just how this affair of yours stands. You write to those New York brokers and get from them a statement of your account--yours and Egbert's. Just what you've bought, how much margin has been put up, how much is left, about those bonds--kind, ratin', numbers and all that. Ask 'em to send you that by return mail. Will you?" "Why--why, yes, I suppose so. But I have seen all that. Mr. Phillips----" "We aren't helpin' out Phillips now. He isn't askin' help, at least I gather he's satisfied to wait. You get this statement on your own hook, and don't tell him you're gettin' it. Will you?" "I'll write for it to-night." "Good! That'll get things started, anyhow. Now is there anything else you want to tell me?" "No--no, I guess not. But, Cap'n Kendrick, do you honestly think there is a chance for me?" For an instant his companion lost patience. "Don't ask that again," he ordered. "There is a chance--yes. How much of a chance we can't tell yet. You go home and stop worryin'. You've turned the wheel over to me, haven't you? Yes; well, then let me do the steerin' for a spell." Kent rose from his chair. He drew a long breath. He looked at the captain, who had risen also, and it was evident that there was still something on his mind. He fidgeted, hesitated, and then hurried forth a labored apology. "I--I am awfully ashamed of myself, Cap'n Kendrick," he began. "That's all right, George. We all make mistakes--business mistakes especially. If I hadn't made one, and a bad one, I might not be stranded here in Judah's galley to-night." "I didn't mean business. I meant I was ashamed of treating you as I have. Ever since that time when--when Elizabeth was here and I came over and--and said all those fool things to you, I--I've been ashamed. I _was_ a fool. I am a fool most of the time, I guess." "Oh, I guess not, George. We're all taken with the foolish disease once in a while." "But I was such a fool. The idea of my being jealous of you--a man pretty nearly old enough to be my father. No, not so old as that, of course, but--older. I don't know what ailed me, but whatever it was, I've paid for it.... She--she has hardly spoken to me since." "I'm sorry, George." "Yes.... Has she--has she said anything about me to you, Cap'n?" "Why--er--no, George, not much. She and I are not--well, not very confidential, outside of business matters, that is." "No, I suppose not. Mr. Phillips told me she had--well, that she and you were not--not as----" "Yes, all right, all right, George; I understand. Outside of Fair Harbor managin' we don't talk of many things." "No, that's what he said. He seemed to think you two had had some sort of quarrel--or disagreement, you know. But I never took much stock in that. After all, why should you and she be interested in the same sort of things? She isn't much older than I am, about my age really, and of course you----" "Yes, yes," hastily. "All right.... Well, I guess your coat is middlin' dry, George. Here it is." "Thanks. But that wasn't all I meant to say. You see, Cap'n Kendrick, I did treat you so badly and yet all the time I've had such confidence in you. Ever since you gave me that advice the night of the theatricals I've--well, somehow I've felt as if a fellow could depend on you, you know--always, in spite of everything. Eh, why, by George, _she_ said that very thing about you once, said it to me. She said you were so dependable. Say, that's queer, that she and I should both think the very same thing about you." "Um-m. Yes, isn't it?" "Yes. It shows, after all, how closely alike our minds, hers and mine, work. We"--he hesitated, reddened, and then continued, with a fresh outburst of confidence: "You see, Cap'n," he said, "I have felt all the time that this--this trouble between Elizabeth and me, wasn't going to last. I was to blame--at least, I guess I probably was, and I meant to go to her and tell her so. But I waited until--until I had pulled off this stock deal. I meant to go to her with two or three thousand dollars that I had made myself, you see, and--and ask her pardon and--well, then I hoped she would--would.... You understand, don't you, Cap'n Kendrick?" "Why--er--yes, I guess likely, George, in a way." "Yes. I wanted to show her that I _was_ good for something, and then--and then, maybe it would be all right again. You see?" "Surely, George. Yes, yes.... Ready for your coat?" Kent ignored the coat. He did not seem to realize that his companion was holding it. "Yes," he stammered, eagerly. "I think if I went to her in that way it would be all right again. I was hasty and--and silly maybe, but perhaps I had some excuse. And, Cap'n Kendrick, I'm sure she does--er--like me, you know. I'm sure of it.... But now--" as reality came once more crashing through his dream, "I--I---- Oh, think of me now! I may be put in prison. And then.... Oh, but Cap'n Kendrick, that's why I came to you. I knew you'd stand by me, I knew you would. I treated you damnably, but--but you know, it was on account of her, really. I knew you'd understand that. You won't hold a grudge against me? You really will help me? If you don't----" Kendrick seized his arm. "Shut up, George," he commanded brusquely. "Shut up. I'll get you out of this, I promise it." "You will? You promise?" "Yes. That is, I'll see that you don't go to jail. If we can't get the eight hundred of your sister's from these brokers I'll get it somehow--even if I have to borrow it." "Oh, Great Scott, that's great! That's wonderful. I can hardly believe it. I'll make it up to you somehow, you know. You're the best man I ever knew. And--and--if she and I--that is, when she and I are--are as we used to be--well, then I shall tell her and she'll be as grateful as I am, I know she will." "All right, George, all right. Run along. The rain's easin' up a little, so now's your time. Don't forget to write to those brokers.... Good night." "Good night, Cap'n. I shall tell your sister how good you've been to me. She told me to come to you. Of course she doesn't know why I came, but----" "No, and she mustn't know. Don't you tell her or anybody else. Don't you do it." "I--why, I won't if you say so, of course. Good night." Kendrick closed the door. Then he came back to his seat before the stove. When Judah returned home he found that his lodger had gone to the spare stateroom, but he could hear his footsteps moving back and forth. "Ahoy, there, Cap'n Sears!" hailed Judah. "What you doin', up and pacin' decks this time of night? It's pretty nigh eight bells, didn't you know it?" The pacing ceased. "Why, no, is it?" replied the captain's voice. "Guess I'd better be turnin' in, hadn't I? How's the weather outside?" "Fairin' off fast. Rain stopped and it's clear as a bell over to the west'ard. Clear day and a fair wind to-morrer, I cal'late." Kendrick made no further comment and Judah prepared for bed, singing as he did so. He sang, not a chantey this time, but portions of a revival hymn which he had recently heard and which, because of its nautical nature, had stuck in his memory. The chorus commanded some one or other to "Pull for the shore, sailor, Pull for the shore. Leave that poor old stranded wreck And pull for the shore." Mr. Cahoon sang the chorus over and over. Then he ventured to tackle one of the verses. "Light in the darkness, sailor, Day is at hand." "Judah!" This from the spare stateroom. "Aye, aye, Cap'n Sears." "Better save the rest of that till the day gets here, hadn't you?" "Eh? Oh, all right, Cap'n. Just goin' to douse the glim this minute. Good night." Three days after this interview in the Minot kitchen George Kent again came to call. He came after dark, of course, and his visit was brief. He had received from the New York brokers a detailed statement of his and Phillips' joint account. The statement bore out what he had already told Sears. Four hundred shares of Central Midland Common had been purchased at 40. Against this the partners deposited sixteen hundred dollars. Later they had deposited another sixteen hundred. The New York firm were as confident as ever that the stock was perfectly good and the speculation a good one. They advised waiting and, if possible, buying more at the present low figure. All this was of little help. The only information of any possible value was that concerning the bonds which Egbert had contributed as his share of the margin. Those, according to the brokers, were two City of Boston 4-1/2s, of one thousand dollars each, numbered A610,312 and A610,313. Kent would have stayed and talked for hours if Kendrick had permitted. He was as nervous as ever, even more so, because the days were passing and the time drawing near when his brother-in-law would demand settlement. The captain comforted him as well as he could, bade him write his sister or her husband that he would remit early in the following week, and sent him home again more hopeful, but still very anxious. "I don't see how I'm going to get the money, Cap'n Kendrick," he kept repeating. "I don't see how all this helps us a bit. I don't see----" Kendrick interrupted at last. "You don't have to see," he declared. "You've left it to me, now let me see if _I_ can see. I told you that, somehow or other, I'd tow you into deep water. Well, give me a chance to get up steam. You write that letter to your brother-in-law and hold him off till the middle of next week. That's all you've got to do. I'll do the rest." So Kent had to be satisfied with that. He departed, professing over and over again his deathless gratitude. "If you do this, Cap'n Kendrick," he proclaimed, "I never, never will forget it. And when I think how I treated you I can't see why you do it. I never heard of such----" "Sshh! shhh!" The captain waved him to silence. "I don't know why I am doin' it exactly, George," he said. "I do. You're doing it for my sake, of course, and----" "Sshh! I don't know as I am--not altogether. Maybe I'm doin' it to try and justify my own judgment of human nature--mine and Judge Knowles'. If that judgment isn't right then I'm no more use than a child in arms, and I need a guardian as much as--as----" "As I do, you mean, I suppose. Well, I do need one, I guess. But I don't understand what you mean by your judgment of human nature. Who have you been judging?" "Never mind. Now go home. Judah's out again and that's a mercy. I don't want him or any one else to know you come here to see me." George went, satisfied for the time, but Sears Kendrick, left face to face with his own thoughts, knew that he had told the young man but a part of the truth. It was not for Kent's sake alone that he had made the rash promise to get back eight hundred of the sixteen hundred, or another eight hundred to take its place. Neither was it entirely because he hoped to confirm his judgment in the case of Egbert Phillips. The real reason lay deeper than that. Kent had declared that he still loved Elizabeth Berry and that he had reason to think she returned that love. Perhaps she did; in spite of some things she had said after their quarrel, it was possible--yes, probable that she did. If, by saving her lover from disgrace, he might insure her future and her happiness, then--then--Sears would have made rasher promises still and have undertaken to carry them out. The brokers' letter helped but little, if any. He entered the names and numbers of the bonds in his memorandum book. Those bonds still perplexed him. He could not explain them, satisfactorily. It might be that Egbert had more left from his wife's estate than Judge Knowles expected him to have or that Bradley was inclined to think he had. Lobelia's will bequeathed to her beloved husband "all stocks, bonds, securities, etc.," remaining. But Knowles had more than intimated that none remained. The pictures of the horses and the ladies in Egbert's room at Sarah Macomber's confirmed the captain's belief that the Phillips past had been a hectic one. It seemed queer that, out of the ruin, there should have been preserved at least two thousand dollars in good American--yes, City of Boston--bonds. In the back of the Kendrick head was a theory--or the ghost of a theory--concerning those bonds. He did not like to believe it, he would not believe it yet, but it was a possibility. Elizabeth had been bequeathed twenty thousand dollars. She and Egbert had been close friends for a time. She had liked him, had trusted him. Of late, so Esther Tidditt said, that friendship had been somewhat strained. Was it possible that.... Humph! Well, Bradley might know. He was Elizabeth's guardian, he would know if her investments had been disturbed. Then, too, if worst came to the worst and he had to raise the eight hundred, which he had promised Kent, by borrowing it, he could, he thought, arrange to get from Bradley an advance of that amount, or a part of it, against his salary as manager of the Fair Harbor. So he determined, as the next move, to go to Orham and visit the lawyer. On Saturday morning, therefore, he and the Foam Flake once more journeyed along the wood road to Orham. CHAPTER XVII The trip was cold and long and tedious. The oaks and birches were bare of leaves and the lakes and little ponds looked chill and forbidding. Judah's prophecy of a clear day was only partially fulfilled, for there were great patches of clouds driving before the wind and when those obscured the sun all creation looked dismal enough, especially to Kendrick, who was in the mood where any additional gloom was distinctly superfluous. But the Foam Flake jogged on and at last drew up beside the Bradley office. Another horse and buggy were standing there and the captain was somewhat surprised to recognize the outfit as one belonging to the Bayport livery man. A gangling youth in the latter's employ was on the buggy seat and he recognized the Foam Flake first and his driver next. "Why, good mornin', Cap'n," hailed the youth. "You over here, too?" Sears, performing the purely perfunctory task of hitching the Foam Flake to a post, smiled grimly. "No, Josiah," he replied. "I'm not here. I'm over in South Harniss all this week. Where are you?" "Eh?... Where be I?... Say, what----" "Yes, yes, Josiah, all right. Just keep a weather eye on this post, will you, like a good fellow?" "On the post? On the horse, you mean?" "No, I mean on the post. If you don't this--er--camel of mine will eat it. Thanks. Do as much for you some time, Josiah." He went into the building, leaving the bewildered Josiah in what might be described as a state of mind. "Is the commodore busy?" he asked of the boy at the desk. "Yes, he is," replied the boy. "But he won't be very long, I don't think." "Humph! That's what you don't think, eh? Well, now just between us, what do you think?... Never mind, son, never mind, I'm satisfied if you are. I'll wait. By the way, somebody from my home port is in there with him, I judge." "Um--hm. Miss Berry, she's there." "Miss Berry! Elizabeth Berry?... Is she there now?" The boy nodded. "Um-hm," he declared, "she's there, but I guess they're 'most done. I heard her chair scrape a minute or two ago, so I think she's comin' right out." Kendrick rose from his own chair. "I'll wait outside," he said, and went out to the platform again. Josiah, evidently lonely and seeking conversation, hailed him at once. "Say, that old horse of yours _is_ a cribbler, ain't he," he observed. "He's took one chaw out of that post already." Sears paid no attention. He walked around to the rear of the little building and, leaning against its shingled side, waited, gazing absently across the fields to the spires and roofs of Orham village. He was sorry that Elizabeth was there just at this time. True they met almost daily at the Fair Harbor office, but those meetings were obligatory, this was not. And meeting her at all, relations between them being what they were, was very hard for him. Since George Kent's disclosure of his feelings and hopes those meetings were harder still. Each one made his task, that of helping the boy toward the realization of those hopes, so much more difficult. He was ashamed of himself, but so it was. No, in his present frame of mind he did not want to meet her. He would wait there, out of sight, until she had gone. But he was not allowed to do so. He heard the office door open, heard her step--he would have recognized it, he believed, anyway--upon the platform. He heard her speak to Josiah. And then that pest of an office boy began shouting his name. "Cap'n Kendrick," yelled the boy. "Cap'n Kendrick, where are you?" He did not answer, but the other imbecile, Josiah, answered for him. "There he is, out alongside the buildin'," volunteered Josiah. "Cap'n Kendrick, they want ye." Then both began shrieking "Cap'n Kendrick" at the top of their voices. To pretend not to hear would have been too ridiculous. There was but thing to do and he did it. "Aye, aye," he answered, impatiently. "I'm comin'!" When he reached the platform Elizabeth was still there. She was surprised to see him, evidently, but there was another expression on her face, an expression which he did not understand. He bowed gravely. "Good mornin'," he said. She returned his greeting, but still she continued to look at him with that odd expression. "Mr. Bradley's all ready for you," announced the office boy, who was holding the door open. Sears' foot was at the 'threshold when Elizabeth spoke his name. He turned to her in surprise. "Yes?" he replied. For an instant she was silent. Then, as if obeying an uncontrollable impulse, she came toward him. "Cap'n Kendrick," she said. "May I speak with you? In private? I won't keep you but a moment." "Why--why, yes, of course," he stammered. He turned to the office boy. "Go and tell Mr. Bradley I'll be right there," he commanded. The boy went. Elizabeth spoke to her charioteer, who was leaning forward on the buggy seat, his small eyes fixed upon the pair and his large mouth open. "Drive over to that corner, Josiah," she said. "To that store there--yes, that's it. And wait there for me. I'll come at once." Josiah reluctantly drove away. Elizabeth turned again to Kendrick. "Cap'n Kendrick," she began. "I shan't keep you long. I realize that you must be surprised at my asking to speak with you--after everything. And, of course, I realize still more than you can't possibly wish to speak with me." He attempted to say something, to protest, but she did not give him the chance. "No, don't, don't," she said, hurriedly. "Don't pretend. I know how you feel, of course. But I have been wanting to tell you this for a long time. I hadn't the courage, or I was too much ashamed, or something. And this is a strange place to say it--and time. But when I saw you just now I--I felt as if I must say it. I couldn't wait another minute. Cap'n Kendrick, I want to beg your pardon." To add to his amazement and embarrassed distress he saw that she was very close to tears. "Why--why--" he stammered. "Don't say anything. There isn't anything for _you_ to say. I don't ask you to forgive me--you couldn't, of course. But I--I just had to tell you that I am so ashamed of myself, of my misjudging you, and the things I said to you. I know that you were right and I was all wrong." "Why--why, here, hold on!" he broke in. "I don't understand." "Of course you don't. And I can't explain. Probably I never can and you mustn't ask me to. But--but--I had to say this. I had to beg your pardon and tell you how ashamed I am.... That's all.... Thank you." She turned and almost ran from the platform, down the steps and across the street to the waiting buggy. Sears Kendrick stared after her, stared until that buggy disappeared around the bend in the road. Then he breathed heavily, straightened his cap, slowly shook his head, and entered the lawyer's office. He was still in a sort of trance when he sat down in the chair in the inner room and heard Bradley bid him good morning. He returned the good morning, but he heard, or understood, very little of what the lawyer said immediately afterward. When he did begin vaguely to comprehend he found the latter was speaking of Elizabeth Berry. "I wish I knew what her trouble is," Bradley was saying. "She won't tell me, won't even admit that there is any trouble, but that doesn't need telling. The last half dozen times I have seen her she has seemed and looked worried and absent-minded. And this morning she drove way over here to ask me some almost childish questions about her investments, the money the judge left her. Wanted to know if it was safe, or something like that. She didn't admit that was it, exactly, but that was as near as I could get to what she was driving at. Do you know what's troubling her, Kendrick?" Sears shook his head. "No-o," he replied. "I've heard--but no, I don't know. She wanted to be sure her money was safe, you say?" "Why, not safely invested, I don't think that was it. She seemed to want to know what I'd done with the bonds themselves and the other securities of hers. I told her they were in the deposit vaults over at the Bayport bank; that is, some of them were there and some of them were in the bank at Harniss. Then she asked if any one could get them, anybody except she or I. Of course I told her no, and not even I without an order from her. She seemed a little relieved, I thought, but when _I_ asked questions she shut up like a quahaug. But that seemed a silly errand to come away over here on. Don't you think so, Cap'n? ... Eh? What's the matter? What are you looking at me like that for?" The captain _was_ looking at him, was looking with an expression of intense and eager interest. He did not answer Bradley's question, but asked one, himself. "Did she ask anything more about--well, about her bonds?" he demanded. "Think now; I'll tell you why by and by." The lawyer considered. "No-o," he said. "Nothing of importance, surely. She asked--she seemed to want to know particularly if it was possible for any one except the owner or a duly accredited representative to get at securities in the vaults of those banks. That seemed to be the information she was after.... Now what have you got up your sleeve?" "Nothin'--nothin'. I guess. Or somethin', maybe; I don't know. Bradley, would you mind tellin' me this much: Of course I'm not Elizabeth's trustee any more, but would it be out of the way if you told me whether or not you reinvested any of her twenty thousand in City of Boston bonds? City of Boston 4-1/2s; say?" Bradley did not answer for a moment. Then from a pigeon hole in his desk he took a packet of papers and selected one. "Yes," he said, gravely. "I put ten thousand of her money in those very bonds. My brokers up in Boston recommended them strongly as being a safe and good investment.... And now perhaps you'll tell us why you asked about that?" Sears' brows drew together. Here was his vague theory on the way, at least, to confirmation. "You tell me somethin' more first," he said. "'Tisn't likely you've got the numbers of those bonds on that piece of paper, is it?" "Likely enough. I've got the numbers and the price I paid for 'em. Why?" Kendrick took his memorandum book from his pocket. "Were two of those numbers A610,312 and A610,313?" he asked. Bradley consulted his slip of paper. "No," he replied. "Nothing like it." "Eh? You're sure?" "Of course I'm sure. Say, what sort of a trustee do you think I am?" Sears did not answer. If the lawyer was sure, then his "theory," instead of being confirmed, was smashed flat. "Humph!" he grunted, after a moment. "Do you mind my lookin' at that paper of yours?" Bradley pushed the slip across the desk. The captain looked at it carefully. "Humph!" he said again. "You're right. And those are five hundred dollar bonds, all of 'em. Well, that settles that. And now it's all fog again.... Humph! In a way I'm glad--but---- Pshaw!" "Yes. And _now_ maybe you'll tell me what you're after? Don't you think it's pretty nearly time?" "Why, perhaps, but I'm afraid that's what I can't tell--you or anybody else.... Bradley, just one more thing. Do you happen to know whether there was any of those Boston bonds in Lobelia Phillips' estate? That is, did any of 'em come to her husband from her?" The lawyer's answer was emphatic enough. "Yes, I do know," he said. "There wasn't any. Those bonds are a brand new issue. They have been put out since her death." Here was another gun spiked. Kendrick whistled. Bradley regarded him keenly. "Cap'n," he demanded, "are you on the trail of that Eg Phillips? Do you really think you've got anything on him? Because if you have and you don't let me into the game I'll never forgive you. Of all the slick, smooth, stuck-up nothings that---- Say, have you?" Kendrick shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Squire," he observed. "And, at any rate, I couldn't tell you, if I had. ... Eh? And _now_ what?" For the lawyer had suddenly struck the desk a blow with his hand. He was fumbling in another pigeon-hole and extracting therefrom another packet of papers. "Cap'n Kendrick," he said, "I know where there are--or were, anyhow--more of those Boston 4-1/2s." "Eh? You do?" "Yes. And they were thousand dollar bonds, too.... Yes, and.... Give me those numbers again." Sears gave them. Bradley grinned, triumphantly. "Here you are," he exclaimed. "Five one thousand dollar City of Boston 4-1/2s, bought at so and so much, on such and such a date, numbered A610,309 to A610,313 inclusive. Cap'n Sears, those bonds are--or were, the last I knew--in the vault of the Bayport National Bank." Kendrick rose to his feet. "You don't tell me!" he cried. "Who put 'em there?" "I put 'em there. And I bought 'em. But they don't belong to me. There was somebody else had money left to them, and I, on request, invested it for the owner. Now you can guess, can't you?" Cap'n Sears sat down heavily. "Cordelia?" he exclaimed. "Cordelia Berry, of course!... Bradley, what an everlastin' fool I was not to guess it in the first place! _There's_ the answer I've been hunting for." But, as he pondered over it during the long drive home he realized that, after all, it was not by any means a completely satisfying answer. True it confirmed his previous belief that the bonds which Phillips had deposited with the New York brokers were not a part of the residue of his wife's estate. He had obtained them from Cordelia Berry. But the question as to how and why he had obtained them still remained. Did he get them by fraud? Did she lend them to him? If she lent them was it a loan without restrictions? Did she know what he meant to do with them; that is, was Cordelia a silent partner in Egbert's stock speculations? Or, and this was by no means impossible considering her infatuation, had she given them to him outright? Unless there was an element of fraud or false pretense in the transference of those bonds, the mere knowledge of whence they came was not likely to help in regaining George Kent's sixteen hundred dollars. For the matter of that, even if they had been obtained by fraud, if they were not Phillips' property, but Cordelia's, still the return of Kent's money might be just as impossible provided Phillips had nothing of his own to levy upon. He--Kendrick--might compel the brokers to return Mrs. Berry's City of Boston 4-1/2s to their rightful owner, but how would that help Kent? Well, never mind that now. If the worst came to the worst he could still borrow the eight hundred which would save George from public disgrace. And the fact remained that his campaign against the redoubtable Egbert had made, for the first time, a forward movement, however slight. His thoughts turned to Elizabeth. The causes of her worry and trouble were plain enough now. Esther Tidditt had declared that she and Phillips were by no means as friendly as they had been. Of course not. She, too, had been forced to realize what almost every one else had seen before, the influence which the fellow had obtained over her mother. Her visit to Bradley and her questions concerning the safety of securities in the bank's vaults were almost proof positive that she knew Egbert had those bonds and perhaps feared he might get the others. He should not get them if Sears Kendrick could help it. She had asked his pardon, she had confessed that he was right and that she had been wrong. She believed in him again. Well, in return he would fight his battle--and hers--and George's--harder than ever. The fight had been worth while of itself, now it was more than ever a fight for her happiness. And Egbert--by the living jingo, Egbert was in for a licking. So, to the mild astonishment of the placid Foam Flake, who had been meandering on in a sort of walking doze, Captain Kendrick tugged briskly at the reins and broke out in song, the hymn which Judah Cahoon had sung a few nights before: "Light in the darkness, sailor, Day is at hand." Judah himself was singing when his lodger entered the kitchen, but his was no joyful ditty. It was a dirge, which he was intoning as he bent over the cookstove. A slow and solemn and mournful wail dealing with death and burial of one "Old Storm Along," whoever he may have been. "'Old Storm Along is dead and gone To my way, oh, Storm Along. Old Storm Along is dead and gone Ay--ay--ay, Mister Storm A-long. "'When Stormy died I dug his grave To my way, oh, Storm Along, I dug his grave with a silver spade. Ay--ay--ay, Mister Storm A-long. "'I hove him up with an iron crane, To my way, oh, Storm Along, And lowered him down with----'" Kendrick broke in upon the flow of misery. "Sshh! All hands to the pumps!" he shouted. "Heavens, what a wail! Sounds like the groans of the dyin'. Didn't your breakfast set well, Judah?" Judah turned, looked at him, and grinned sheepishly. "'Tis kind of a lonesome song, ain't it?" he admitted. "Still we used to sing it consider'ble aboard ship. Don't you know we did, Cap'n?" The captain grunted. "Maybe so," he observed, "but it's one of the things that would keep the average man from going to sea. What's the news since I've been gone--anything?" Judah nodded. "Um-hm," he said. "I cal'late 'twas the news that set me goin' about old Storm Along. Esther Tidditt's been over here half the forenoon, seemed so, tellin' about Elviry Snowden's aunt over to Ostable. She's dead, the old woman is, and she died slow and agonizin', 'cordin' to Esther. Elviry was all struck of a heap about it. And now she's gone." "Gone! Elvira? Dead, you mean?" "Hey? No, no! The aunt's dead, but Elviry ain't. She's gone over to Ostable to stay till after the funeral. She's about the only relation to the remains there is left, so Esther tells me. There was a reg'lar young typhoon over to the Harbor when the news struck. 'Twas too late for the up train so they had to hire a horse and team and then somebody had to be got to pilot it, 'cause Elviry wouldn't no more undertake to drive a horse than I would to eat one. And the trouble was that the livery stable boy--that Josiah Ellis--was off drivin' somebody else somewheres." "Yes, I saw him." "Hey? You did? Where? Who was he drivin'?" "Never mind that. Heave ahead with your yarn." "Well, the next thing they done was to come cruisin' over here to see if _I_ wouldn't take the job. Hoppin', creepin', jumpin' Henry! I shut down on _that_ notion almost afore they got their hatches open to tell me about it. Suppose likely I'd set in a buggy alongside of Elviry Snowden and listen to her clack from here to Ostable? Not by a two-gallon jugful! Creepin'! She'd have another corpse on her hands time we got there. So I said I was sick." "Sick! Ha, ha! You're a healthy lookin' sick man, Judah." "Um-hm. Mine must be one of them kind of diseases that don't show on the outside. But I was sick then, all right--at the very notion. And, Cap'n Sears, who do you cal'late finally did invite himself to drive that Snowden woman to Ostable? You'll never guess in _this_ world." "Well, I don't intend to wait until the next world to find out; so you'll have to tell me, Judah. Who was it?" "Old Henfruit." "_Who?_" "Old Henfruit, that's what I call him. That Eg thing" "What? Phillips?" "Yus. That's the feller." "But why should he do it?" "Oh, just to show off how polite and obligin' he is, I presume likely. Elviry she was snifflin' around and swabbin' her deadlights with her handkercher and heavin' overboard lamentations about her poor dear Aunt So-and-so layin' all alone over there and she couldn't get to her--as if 'twould make any difference to a dead person whether she got to 'em or not, and anyhow I'd _want_ to be dead afore Elviry Snowden got to me--and---- Oh, yes, well, pretty soon here comes Eg, beaver hat and mustache and all, purrin' and wantin' to know what was the matter. And, of course all hands of 'em started to tell him, 'specially that Aurora Chase, who is so everlastin' deaf she hadn't heard the yarn more'n half straight and wan't sure yet whether 'twas a funeral or a fire. And so----" "There, there, Judah! Get back on the course. So Egbert drove Elvira over to Ostable, did he?" "Sartin sure. When Elviry saw him she kind of flew at him same as a chicken flies to the old hen. And he kind of spread out his wings, as you might say, and comforted her and, next thing you know, he'd offered to be pilot and she and him had started on the trip. So that's the news.... Esther said 'twas good as a town hall to see Cordelia Berry when them two went away together. You see, Cordelia is so dreadful gone on that Eg man that she can't bear to see another female within hailin' distance of him. Been just the same if 'twas old Northern Lights Chase he'd gone with. Haw, haw!" The Fair Harbor was still buzzing with the news of Miss Snowden's bereavement when Kendrick visited there next day. The funeral was to take place the day after that and Mrs. Brackett was going and so was Aurora. As Miss Peasley and some of the others would have liked to go, but could not afford the railway fare, there was some jealousy manifest and a few ill-natured remarks made in the captain's hearing. Elvira, it seemed, had sent for her trunk, as she was to remain in Ostable for a week or two at least. The captain and Elizabeth had their customary conference in the office concerning the Harbor's bills and finances. Kendrick's greeting was a trifle embarrassed--recollection of the interview at Orham was fresh in his mind. Elizabeth colored slightly when they met, but she did not mention that interview and, although pleasant and kind, kept the conversation strictly confined to business matters. That afternoon Sears encountered Egbert for the first time in a week or so. The captain was on his way to the barn at the rear of the Harbor grounds. He was about to turn the bend in the path, the bend which he had rounded on the day of his first excursion in those grounds, and which had afforded him the vision of Miss Snowden and Mrs. Chase framed in the ivy-draped window of The Eyrie. As he passed the clump of lilacs, now bare and scrawny, he came suddenly upon Phillips. The latter was standing there, deep in conversation with Mrs. Berry. Theirs should, it would seem, have been a pleasant conversation, but neither looked happy; in fact, Cordelia looked as if she had been crying. Sears raised his cap and Egbert lifted the tall hat with the flourish all his own. Cordelia did not bow nor even nod. Kendrick, as he walked on toward the barn, was inclined to believe he could guess the cause of Mrs. Berry's distress and her companion's annoyance; he believed that City of Boston 4-1/2s might be the subject of their talk. If so, then perhaps those bonds had come into the gentleman's possession in a manner not strictly within the law. Or, at all events, the lady might not know what had become of them and be requesting their return. He certainly hoped that such was the case. It was the one thing he yearned to find out before making the next strategic advance in his and Egbert's private war. But a note from Bradley which he received next day helped him not at all. It was a distinct disappointment. Bradley had, at his request, made some inquiries at the Bayport bank. The lawyer was a director in that institution and he could obtain information without arousing undue curiosity or answering troublesome questions. The two one thousand dollar bonds had been removed from the vaults by Cordelia Berry herself. She had come alone, and on two occasions, taking one bond at each visit. She did not state why she wanted them and the bank authorities had not considered it their business to ask. So that avenue of hope was closed. Egbert had not taken the bonds, and how they came into his possession was still as great a puzzle as ever. And the time--the time was growing so short. On Wednesday Kent had promised to send his brother-in-law eight hundred dollars. It was Saturday when Bradley's letter came. Each evening George stopped at the Minot place to ask what progress had been made. The young man's nervousness was contagious; the captain's own nerves became affected. "George," he ordered, at last, "don't ask me another question. I promised you once, and now I promise you again, that by Wednesday night you shall have enough cash in hand to satisfy your sister and her husband. Don't you come nigh me until then." On Monday, the situation remaining unchanged, Sears determined upon a desperate move. He would see Egbert alone and have a talk with him. He had, after careful consideration, decided what his share in that talk was to be. It must be two-thirds "bluff." He knew very little, but he intended to pretend to much greater knowledge. He might trap his adversary into a damaging admission. He might gain something and he could lose almost nothing. The attack was risky, a sort of forlorn hope--but he would take the risk. That afternoon he drove down to the Macomber house. There he was confronted with another disappointment. Egbert was not there. Sarah said he had been away almost all day and would not be back until late in the evening. "He's been away consider'ble the last two or three days," she said. "No, I'm sure I don't know where he's gone. He told Joel somethin' about bein' out of town on business. Joel sort of gathered 'twas in Trumet where the business was, but he never told either of us really. He wasn't here for dinner yesterday or supper either, and not for supper the day before that." "Humph! Will he be here to-morrow, think?" "I don't know, but I should think likely he would, in the forenoon, anyhow. He's almost always here in the forenoon; he doesn't get up very early, hardly ever." "Oh, he doesn't. How about his breakfast?" Mrs. Macomber looked a bit guilty. "Well," she admitted, "I usually keep his breakfast hot for him, and--and he has it in his room." "You take it in to him, I suppose?" "We-ll, he's always been used to breakfastin' that way, he says. It's the way they do over abroad, accordin' to his tell." "Oh, Sarah, Sarah!" mused her brother. "To think _you_ could slip so easy on that sort of soft-soap. Tut, tut! I'm surprised.... Well, good-by. Oh, by the way, how about his majesty's board bill? Paid up to date, is it?" His sister looked even more embarrassed, and, for her, a trifle irritated. "He owes me for three weeks, if you must know," she said, "but he'll pay it, same as he always does." "Look out, look out! Can't be too sure.... There, there, Sarah, don't be cross. I won't torment you." He laughed and Mrs. Macomber, after a moment, laughed too. "You are a tease, Sears," she declared, "and always was. Shall I tell Mr. Phillips you came to see him?" "Eh? No, indeed you shan't. Don't you mention my name to him. He loves me so much that he might cry all night at the thought of not bein' at home when I called. Don't tell him a word. I'll try again." The next forenoon he did try again. Judah had some trucking to do in the western part of the village and the captain rode with him on the seat of the truck wagon as far as the store. From there he intended to walk to his sister's, for walking, even as long a distance as a mile, was no longer an impossibility. As he alighted by the store platform Captain Elkanah Wingate came out of the Bassett emporium. "Mornin', Kendrick," he hailed. Sears did not share Bayport's awe of the prosperous Elkanah. He returned the greeting as casually as if the latter had been an everyday citizen. "Been spendin' your money on Eliphalet's bargains?" he inquired. The great man did not resent the flippancy. He seemed to be in a particularly pleasant humor. "Got a little extra to spend to-day," he declared, with a chuckle. "Picked up twenty dollars this mornin' that I never expected to see again." "So? You're lucky." "That's what I thought. Say, Kendrick, have you had any--hum--business dealings with that man Phillips? No," with another chuckle, "I suppose you haven't. He doesn't love you over and above, I understand. My wife and the rest of the women folks seem to think he's first mate to Saint Peter, but, between ourselves, he's always been a little too much of a walkin' oil barrel to suit me. He borrowed twenty of me a good while ago and I'd about decided to write it down as a dead loss. But an hour or so ago he ran afoul of me and, without my saying a word, paid up like a man, every cent. Had a roll of bills as thick as a skys'l yard, he did. Must have had a lucky voyage, I guess. Eh? Ha, ha!" He moved off, still chuckling. Kendrick walked down the lower road pondering on what he had heard. Egbert, the professed pauper, in possession of money and voluntarily paying his debts. What might that mean? Sarah met him at the door. She seemed distressed. "There!" she cried, as he approached. "If this isn't too bad! And I was afraid of it, too. You've walked way down here, Sears, on those poor legs of yours, and Mr. Phillips has gone again. And I don't think he'll be back before night, if he is then. He said not to worry if he wasn't, because he might have to go to Trumet. Isn't it a shame?" It was a shame and a rather desperate shame. This was Tuesday. If the interview with Egbert was to take place at all, it should be that day, or the next. He looked at his sister's face and something in her expression caused him to ask a question. "What is it, Sarah?" he demanded. "What's the rest of it?" She hesitated. "Sears," she said, after looking over her shoulder to make sure none of the children was within hearing, "there's somethin' else. I--I don't know, but--but I'm almost _sure_ Mr. Phillips won't be back to-night. I think he's gone to stay." "Stay? What do you mean? Did he take his dunnage--his things--with him?" "No. His trunk is in his room. And he didn't have a satchel or a valise in his hand. But, Sears, I can't understand it--they're gone--his valises are gone." "Gone! Gone where?" "I don't know. That's the funny part of it. He's always kept two valises in his room, a big one and a little one. I went into his room just now to make the beds and clean up and I didn't see those valises anywhere. I thought that was funny and then I noticed that the things on his bureau, his brushes and comb and things, weren't there. Then I looked in his bureau drawers and everything was gone, the drawers were empty.... Sears, what _do_ you suppose it means?" Her brother did not answer at once. He tugged at his beard and frowned. Then he asked: "Didn't he say a word more than you've told me? Or do anything?" "No. He had his breakfast out here with us this mornin'. Then he went back to his room and, about nine or so, he came out to me and paid his board bill---- Oh, I told you he'd pay it, Sears; he always does pay--and then----" "Here! Heave to! Hold on, Sarah! He paid his bill, all of it?" "Yes. Right up to now. That was kind of funny, bein' the middle of the week instead of the end, but he said we might as well start with a clean ledger, or somethin' nice and pleasant like that. Then he took a bundle of money from his pocketbook--a great, _big_ bundle it was, and--Why, why, Sears, what is it? Where are you goin'?" The captain had pushed by her and was on his way to the front of the house. "Goin'?" he repeated. "I'm goin' to have a look at those rooms of his. You'd better come with me, Sarah." CHAPTER XVIII The keeper of the livery stable was surprised. "Why, yes," he said, "Mr. Phillips was here a spell ago. He said he was cal'latin' to go to Trumet to-day on a business cruise, and he hired Josiah and the bay horse and buggy to get him over there. They left about ten o'clock, I should say 'twas. I had a mind to ask him why he didn't take the train, but then I thought 'twould be poor business for a fellow that let teams, so I kept still. Hey? Ho, ho!" The captain, somewhat out of breath after his hurried walk from the Macomber home to the stable, pondered a moment "Did he have a valise or satchel or anything with him?" he asked. "No. Nothin' but his cane. Couldn't navigate a yard without his cane that feller couldn't, seemed so. Looked kind of spruced up, too. Dressed in his best bib and tucker, he was, beaver hat and all. Cal'late he must be goin' to see his best girl, eh. Ho, ho! Guess not though; from what I hear his best girl's down to the Fair Harbor." Kendrick pondered a moment longer. "Did he pay for the team?" he inquired. "Hey? Yus, paid in advance, spot cash. But what you askin' all this for, Cap'n? Wanted to see him afore he went, did you?" Sears nodded. "Just a business matter," he explained, and walked away. He did not walk far, only to the corner. There on the low stone wall bordering on the east the property of Captain Orrin Eldridge, he seated himself to rest and cogitate. His cogitations were most unsatisfactory. They got him nowhere. He and his sister had pretty thoroughly inspected Egbert's quarters at the Macomber house. The Phillips trunk was still there, and the "horse pictures" and the photographs of Lobelia's charming lady friends! but there was precious little else. Toilet articles, collars, ties and more intimate articles of wearing apparel were missing and, except for a light coat and a summer suit of clothes, the closets were empty. And, as Sarah had said, the two valises had vanished. Egbert had told his landlady he was going to Trumet; he had told the livery man the same thing. But by far the easiest way to reach Trumet was by train. Why had he chosen to be driven there over a long and very bad road? And _what_ had become of the valises? And then occurred the second of a series of incidents which had a marked and helpful bearing up Captain Kendrick's actions that day. He said afterwards that, for the first time since his railway accident, he really began to believe the tide of luck was turning in his direction. The first of those incidents had been his meeting and talk with Captain Elkanah. That had sent him hurrying to the Macombers' earlier than he intended. The second incident was that now, as he sat there on the Eldridge wall, down the road came the Minot truck wagon with the Foam Flake in the shafts and Judah Cahoon swinging and jolting on the seat. Judah spied him and hailed. "Ahoy, there, Cap'n Sears!" he shouted, pulling the old horse to a standstill. "Thought you was down to Sary's long ago. What you doin' on that wall--gone to roost so early in the day?" The captain smiled. "Not exactly, Judah," he replied. "But what are you doin' 'way back here? I thought you were haulin' Seth Bangs's wood for him." "Huh!" in disgust; "I thought I was, too, but there was some kind of mix-up in the time. Cal'late 'twas that Hannah Bangs that muddled it--she could muddle a cake of ice, that woman. Kind of born with a knack for makin' mistakes, she is; and she's the biggest mistake herself, 'cordin' to my notion. Seems 'twas to-morrow, not to-day, Seth expected me to come." "Humph! So you had your cruise up there for nothin'?" "Yus. Creepin', jumpin'! Think of it, Cap'n. I navigated this old--er--er--spavin-rack 'way up to where them folks live, three mile on the Denboro road 'tis, and then had to come about and beat for home again. I ... Oh, say I sighted a chum of ours up along that way. Who do you cal'late 'twas, Cap'n Sears? Old Eg, that's who. Togged out from truck to keelson as usual, beaver and all, and----" "Here! Hold up! What's that, Judah? You saw Phillips up on the Denboro road, you say? What was he doin' there? When did you see him?" "'Bout an hour ago, or such matter. He was aboard one of the livery stable teams and that Josiah Ellis was pilotin' him. I sung out to Josiah, but he never answered. Says I----" "Sshh! Where were they bound; do you know?" "Denboro, I presume likely. That's the only place there is to be bound to, on that road; 'less you're goin' perchin' up to Seabury's Pond, and folks don't do much perchin' in December. Not with beaver hats on, anyhow. Haw, haw! Eg and Josiah was all jammed up together on the buggy seat, with two big valises crammed in alongside of 'em, and ... Hi! What's the matter, Cap'n Sears? What's your hurry?" The captain did not answer. He _was_ hurrying--hurrying back to the livery stable. Half an hour later he, too, was on the seat of a hired buggy, driving the best horse the stable afforded up the lonely road leading to Denboro. He met no one on that road--which winds and twists over the hills and through the wooded hollows from one side of the Cape to the other--until he was within a mile of Denboro village. Then he saw another horse and buggy approaching his. He recognized the occupant of that buggy long before he himself was recognized. "Hi!" he shouted, as the two vehicles came near each other. "Hi! Josiah! Josiah Ellis!" Josiah, serenely dozing, his feet propped against the dash and his cap over his eyes, came slowly to life. "Hey?" he murmured, drowsily. "Yes; here I be.... Eh! What's the matter? Why, hello, Cap'n Kendrick, that you?" "Whoa!" ordered the captain, addressing his own horse, who came to a standstill beside that driven by the other. "Stop, Josiah! Come up into the wind a minute, I want to speak to you. What have you done with Phillips?" Josiah was surprised. "Why, how did you know I had Mr. Phillips aboard?" he asked. "Oh, I presume likely they told you at the stable. But how did you know he was goin' to Denboro? _I_ never knew it till after we started. When we left port I supposed 'twas Trumet we was bound for, but we hadn't much more'n got under way when Mr. Phillips says he's changed his mind and wants to come over here. Didn't make no difference to _me_, of course. I get my wages, Saturday nights, just the same whether----" "Where is Phillips now?" "I was tellin' you. So we came about and headed for Denboro. Next thing we had to haul up abreast of that old tumbledown shed at the end of Tabby Crosby's lot there by the meetin'-house while Mr. Phillips hopped out and got a couple of great big satchels he'd left there. Big as trunks they was, pretty nigh, and time he got them stowed in here there wan't no room for knees nor feet nor nawthin' else seurcely. But, finally----" "Hold on! Why did he have his dunnage in Tabitha Crosby's shed?" "That's what _I_ couldn't make out. He said he left 'em there so's not to have to go out of our way to get 'em at Joe Macomber's. But it's about as nigh to Joe's as 'tis to Tabby's, seems to me. Seemed funny enough, that did, but 'twan't no funnier than comin' way over to the Denboro depot to take the same train he might have took just as well at Bayport. _I_ couldn't make it out. Can you, Cap'n Kendrick?" "Did you leave him at the Denboro depot?" "Yus. 'Bout an hour ago, or such matter. And the up train ain't due till four, and it's only half-past twelve now. I stopped at the Denboro House to get some diner. A feller has to eat once in a while, even if he ain't rich. And talk about chargin' high prices! All I had was some chowder and a piece of pie and tea, and I swan if they didn't stick me thirty-five cents! Yes, sir, thirty-five cents! And the pie was dried-apple at that. Don't talk to me no more about that Denboro House! If I ever----" Kendrick heard no more. He was on his way to the railway station at Denboro. The mystery of the valises was, in one way, explained; in another it was more mysterious than ever. Evidently Phillips must have taken them from his rooms either early that morning or during the night--probably the latter--and hidden them in the Crosby shed. But why? Denboro was a sleepy little village and at that hour on that raw December day the railway station was as sleepy as the rest of it. The station agent, who was also the telegraph operator, was locking his door preparatory to going home for dinner. He and the captain were old acquaintances. In days gone by he had sailed as second mate aboard a bark which Kendrick commanded. Now, retired from the sea, he was depot master and pound-keeper and constable in his native town. And, like most of Sears' shipmates, he was glad to see his former skipper. They shook hands, exchanged observations concerning the weather, and then the depot master asked what he could do for his friend. "I'm lookin' for a man named Phillips," explained Kendrick. "Josiah Ellis--fellow that drives for the livery stable over home--told me he left him here at your depot, Jim. About an hour ago, Josiah said it was. He doesn't seem to be here now; do you know where he's gone?" Jim rubbed his chin. "Tall feller, thin, long mustache, beaver hat, talks important and patronizin' like a combination of Admiral Farragut and the Angel Gabriel?" he inquired. "That's the man." "He was here. Left them two valises yonder in my care. He's comin' back in time to take the three-fifteen." "Three-fifteen? I thought the up train left here at half-past four or somethin' like that." "The reg'lar train does. But there's a kind of combination, three or four freight and one passenger car, that comes up from Hyannis and goes on ahead of the other. It don't go only to Middleboro. He said he was cal'latin' to take that. I had a notion he was goin' to change at Middleboro and go somewheres else from there." "I see. Yes, yes. And you don't know where he is now?" "Well, he asked where was the best place to eat and I told him some went to the hotel and some to Amanda Warren's boardin'-house. 'Most of 'em only go to the hotel once, though,' says I. I guess likely you'll find him at Amanda's." So to Mrs. Warren's boarding-house the captain drove. The lady herself opened the door for him. Yes, the gentleman described had been there. Yes, he had eaten dinner and gone. "Do you know where he has gone?" asked Kendrick. Mrs. Warren nodded. "He asked me where Mr. Backus, the Methodist minister, lived," she said. "He was real particular to find out how to get there, so I guess that's where he was bound." The Methodist minister! Why on earth Egbert Phillips should go to the home of a minister was another mystery beyond Sears Kendrick's power of surmise. However, he too inquired the way to the Backus domicile and once more took up the chase. The Methodist parsonage was a neat little white house, green-shuttered, and with a white picket fence inclosing its little front yard. It being the home of a clergyman, Sears ventured to knock at the front door; otherwise he would, of course, have gone around to the side entrance. A white-haired little woman answered the knock. No, Mr. Backus was out, but he was expected back very soon. He had an appointment at two, so she was sure he would be in by that time. Would the captain come in and wait? There was another gentleman now in the parlor waiting. Yes, a tall gentleman with a mustache. At last! Another minute, and Captain Kendrick, entering the Backus parlor, came face to face with the elusive object of his search, Mr. Egbert Phillips. Egbert was sitting in a rocking chair by the marble-topped center table. A plush-covered photograph album was on that table and he was languidly turning its pages and inspecting, with a smile of tolerant amusement, the likenesses of the Backus friends and relatives. As the door opened he turned, his smile changing to one of greeting. "Ah, Mr. Backus----" he began. And then he stopped. It was the captain who smiled now. His smile was as genial as a summer morn. "Good afternoon, Mr. Phillips," he said. "How are you, sir?" He stepped forward with extended hand. Still Egbert stood and stared. The photograph album, imperfectly balanced on the edge of the table, slipped to the floor. The clergyman's wife seemed a trifle puzzled and perturbed by the Phillips expression and attitude. "This gentleman said----" she began. "He said you and he----" Kendrick helped her to finish: "I told the lady," he put in cheerfully, "that I had come 'way over from Bayport to see you about a little matter. I said we knew each other pretty well and I was sure you'd be glad to see me, even if I was kind of unexpected.... Excuse me, but you've dropped your picture book." He stooped, picked up the album and replaced it on the table. This action occupied but a moment of time, nevertheless in that moment a portion at least of Egbert's poise returned. His smile might have been a bit uncertain, but it was a smile. And when Sears again extended his hand his own came to meet it. "Of course, of course," he said. "Yes--ah--yes, indeed. How do you do, Kendrick?" The captain beamed. "Oh, I'm feelin' tip-top," he declared. "The sight of you is enough to make me well, even if I was sick--which I'm not. Now if you and I might have a little talk?" Mrs. Backus was anxious to oblige. "You make yourselves right at home in here," she said. "If my husband comes I'll tell him to wait until you're through. Take all the time you want." She was at the threshold, but Phillips detained her. "Pardon me," he said, hastily, "but we mustn't abuse your hospitality to that extent. This--ah--gentleman and I can talk just as well out of doors. Really, I----" "Oh, no! You must stay right here. Please do. It isn't the least trouble." She went and the door closed behind her. Egbert glanced at the clock on the mantel and frowned. Captain Kendrick continued to smile. "And here we are at last," he observed. "Quiet and sociable as you please. Sit down, Mr. Phillips, sit down." But Egbert did not sit. He glanced at the clock once more and then at his watch. "Sit down," repeated the captain. "I've been cruisin' so much this forenoon that I'm glad of the chance to sit. From what I've been able to learn you've been movin' pretty lively, too. A little rest won't do either of us any harm. Sit down, Mr. Phillips. Take the rocker." Phillips walked to the front window, looked out, hesitated, and then, returning, did take the rocker. He looked at his fellow-townsman. "Well?" he asked. Kendrick nodded. "Yes," he agreed, "it is well, real well, now that I've caught up with you. I'll say this for you, you're as good a craft for leavin' a crooked wake as any I ever chased. For a while there you had me hull down. But I'm here now--and so are you." Egbert's slim hand slowly stroked his mustache. "There appears to be some truth in that remark," he declared. "We do seem to be here--yes.... But----" "But you are wonderin' why _I_ am here? Well, to be honest, I came to find you. I judged that you were thinkin' of leavin' us--for a spell, anyhow--and before you went I wanted to talk with you, that's all." A pause, and more mustache stroking. The two men regarded each other; the captain blandly beaming, Phillips evidently pondering. "I don't know," he said, at last, "what you may mean by my thinking of leaving you. However, that is not material, and I am always delighted to see you, of course. But as I am rather busy this afternoon perhaps you'll be good enough to come to the point.... If there is a point." "Yes, there is. Oh, yes, there's a point. Two or three points." "Indeed! How interesting. And what are they? Please be as--ah--brief as you can." Sears crossed his legs. All this had been but preliminary maneuvering. Here now was the real beginning of the fight; and he realized only too keenly that his side in that fight was tremendously short of ammunition. But he did not mean that his adversary should guess that fact, and with the smiling serenity of absolute confidence he fired the opening gun. "Egbert," he began--"you don't mind my callin' you Egbert? Knowin' you as well as I do, it seems foolish to stand on ceremony, don't you think? You don't mind?" "Not at all. Charmed, I'm sure.... Well?" "Well--yes. We've got a good many mutual friends--you and I, Egbert. One of 'em is named George Kent. He's a great friend of both of us. Nice boy, too." At the mention of the name the Phillips hand, caressing the Phillips mustache, paused momentarily. But it resumed operations almost at once. Other than this there was no sign of perturbation on its owner's part. He slowly shook his head. "My _dear_ Captain Kendrick----" he drawled. "Oh, call me Sears. _Don't_ be formal." "My dear man, if it is possible for you to come to the point? Without too great a strain on your--ah--intellect?" "I'm comin', Egbert. Right abreast there now. George--our mutual friend--is in trouble. He has used some money that he can't spare, used it in a stock deal. I won't go into the particulars because you know 'em just as well as I do. You got him into the trouble in the first place, I understand. Now, to a man up a tree, as the boys say, it would seem as if you ought to be the one to get him out. Particularly as you are his very best friend. Don't you think so?" Egbert sighed before answering, a sigh of utter weariness. "And may I ask if _this_ is the--ah--point?" he inquired. "Why, yes--I guess so. In a way." "And you are acting as our young friend's representative? He has seen fit to take you into his confidence concerning a matter which was supposed to be a business secret between--ah--gentlemen?" "I could see he was in trouble and I offered to do what I could to help. Then he told me the whole thing." "Indeed? A changeable youth. When I last heard him mention your name it was not--pardon me--in a--shall we say strictly affectionate tone?" "That so? Too bad. But we are all liable to be mistaken in our judgments. Men--and women, too." Again there was a slight pause; Egbert was regarding the speaker intently. The latter's countenance was about as expressive as that of a wooden idol, a good-natured one. Mr. Phillips glanced once more at the clock, languidly closed his eyes, opened them, sighed for the third time, and then spoke. "So I am to understand that our--ah--juvenile acquaintance has turned his business affairs over to you," he said. "I congratulate him, I'm sure. The marked success which you have attained in the--ah--management of--ah--other business affairs has inspired him with perfect trust, doubtless." "That must be it. The average man has to trust somebody and I gathered that _some_ trusts of his were beginnin' to slip their moorin's. However, here's the situation. You got him to buy some stock on margin. The stock, instead of goin' up, as you prophesied, went down. You suggested his puttin' up more margin. He'd used all his own money, so he used some belonging to some one else. Now he's in trouble, bad trouble. What are you goin' to do about it?" "I? My dear man, what should I do about it? What can I do? I have explained my situation to him. I am, owing to circumstances and the--ah--machinations of certain individuals--both circumstances and individuals of your acquaintance, I believe--in a most unfortunate position financially. I have no money, or very little. Our--your young protege wished to risk some of his money in a certain speculation. I did the same. The speculation was considered good at the time. I still consider it good, although profit may be deferred. He took the risk with his eyes open. He is of age. He is not a child, although--pardon me--this new action of his might lead one to think him such. I am sorry for him, but I do not consider myself at all responsible." "I see. But he has used money which wasn't his to speculate with." "I am sorry, deeply sorry. But--is that my fault? "Well, that might be a question, mightn't it? You knew he was usin' that money?" "Pardon me--pardon me, Kendrick; but is that--ah--strictly true?" "Well, he says it is. However, the question is just this: Will you help him out by buyin' up his share in this C. M. deal? Pay him back his sixteen hundred and take the whole thing over yourself?" Mr. Phillips for the first time permitted himself the luxury of a real smile. "My _dear_ man," he observed, "you're not seriously offering such a proposition as that, are you? You must be joking." "It's no joke to poor George. And he's only a boy, after all. You wouldn't want him to go to jail." The smile disappeared. "I should be pained," protested Egbert, and proved it by looking pained. "It would grieve me deeply. But I can't think such a contingency possible. No, no; not possible. And in time--my brokers assure me a very short time--the stock will advance." "And you won't take over his share and get all that profit yourself?" "I can't. It is impossible. I am so sorry. In former days--" with a gesture of resignation--"it would have been quite possible. Then I should have been delighted. But now.... However, you must, as a man of the world, see that all this is quite absurd. And it is painful to me, as a friend--still a friend of young Kent's. Pardon me again, but I am busy this afternoon and----" He rose. Sears did not rise. He remained seated. "Jail's a mean place," he remarked, with apparent irrelevance. "I'd hate to go there myself. So would you, I'll bet." Another pause on Phillips' part. Then another wearied smile. "Do you--ah--foresee any likelihood of either of us arriving at that destination?" he inquired. "Well, _I'm_ hopin' to stay out, for a spell anyway. Mr. Phillips--Egbert--yes, yes, Egbert, of course; we're gettin' better acquainted all the time, so we just mustn't stand on ceremony. Egbert, how about those City of Boston 4-1/2s you put up as security over there in New York? What are you goin' to do about _them_?" Egbert had strolled to the window and was looking out. He continued to look out. The captain, his gaze fixed upon the beautifully draped, even though the least bit shiny, shoulders of the Phillips' coat, watched eagerly for some shiver, some sign of agitation, however slight. But there was none. The sole indication that the shot just fired had had any effect was the length of time Egbert took before turning. When he did turn he was still blandly smiling. He walked back to the rocker and settled himself upon its patchwork cushion. "Yes?" he queried. "You were saying----" "I was speakin' of those two one thousand dollar City of Boston bonds you sent your brokers, you know. Would you mind tellin' me how you got those bonds?" Mr Phillips lifted one slim leg over the other. He lifted two slim hands and placed their finger tips together. "Kendrick," he asked, "you will pardon me for speaking plainly? Thank you so much. I have already listened to you for some time--more time than I should have spared. For some reason you have--ah--seen fit to--shall we say pursue me here. Having found me, you make a most--pardon me again--unreasonable and childish demand on the part of young Kent. I cannot grant it. Now is there any use wasting more time by asking--pardon me once more--impertinent questions concerning my affairs? You can scarcely--well, even you, my dear Kendrick, can hardly expect me to answer them. Don't you think this--ah--extremely pleasant interview had better end pleasantly--by ending now?" He would have risen once more, but Sears motioned him to remain in the rocker. The captain leaned forward. "Egbert," he said briskly, "I'm busy, too; but I have spent a good many hours and some dollars to get at you and I shan't leave you until I get at least a part of what I came after. Those Boston bonds----" "Are my property, sir." "Well, I don't know. The last anybody heard they were the property of Mrs. Cordelia Berry. Now you say they're yours. That's one of the matters to be settled before you and I part company, Egbert." Mr. Phillips' aristocratic form stiffened. Slowly he rose to his feet. "You are insulting," he proclaimed. "That will do. There is the door." "Yes, I see it. It's a nice door; the grainin' on it seems to be pretty well done. How did you get hold of those bonds, Egbert?" "If you don't go, I shall." "All right. Then I'll go with you. You shan't take the three-fifteen or any other train till we've settled this and some other questions. Oh, it's a fact. No hard feelin', you know; just business, that's all." Egbert moved toward the door. His caller rose to follow him. The captain often wondered afterward whether or not Phillips would really have left the room if there had been no interruption. The question remained a question because at that moment there was a knock on the other side of the door. It had a marked effect upon Egbert. He started, frowned and shot another glance at the clock. "Excuse me," said Mrs. Backus, opening the door a crack, "but my husband has come." Phillips seemed relieved, yet troubled, too. "Yes--ah--yes," he said. "Will you kindly ask him to wait? Thank you." The lady closed the door again. Egbert took a turn across the room and back. Kendrick smiled cheerfully. "About those bonds?" he observed. Phillips faced him. "The bonds," he declared, "are mine. How I got them is not your business in the least." "Just a minute, just a minute. Cordelia Berry----" "Did Mrs. Berry tell you that I had them?" "No need to bother with that part of it now. I know." "But she did not give you authority to come to me about them? Don't pretend she did; I know better." "I'm not goin' to pretend--that. She didn't." "Humph!" with a sneer; "perhaps your authority comes from some one else. Her daughter, maybe? You and she are--or shall we say _were_--quite touchingly confidential at one time, I believe." The tone and the remark were mistakes; it would have been much better for the Phillips cause if the speaker had continued to be loftily condescending. Sears kept a grip on his temper, but his own tone changed as he replied. "Egbert," he said sharply, "look here. The facts, as far as a man without a spyglass can sight 'em through the fog, are just these: You got George Kent into a stock trade. He put up money--real money. You put up two thousand dollars in bonds and, because that was more than your share, he paid you four hundred dollars in cash. The last anybody knew the two bonds you put up were the property of Cordelia Berry. I want to know how you got hold of 'em." "Am I to understand that you are accusing me of _stealing_ those bonds?" "I'm not accusin' you of anything in particular. George has put this affair of his in my hands; I've got what amounts to his signed power of attorney in my pocket. If those bonds are yours, and you can prove it, then I shan't say any more about 'em. If they still belong to Cordelia--well, that's another question, one I mean to have the answer to before you and I part company." "Kendrick, I---- Do you realize that I can have you arrested for this?" "I don't know. But it does seem to me that if those bonds aren't your property then you had no right to pledge 'em in that stock deal. And that your takin' Kent's four hundred dollars in part payment for 'em comes pretty nigh to what a lawyer would call gettin' money under false pretenses. So the arrests might be even-Stephen, so far as that goes." This was the sheerest "bluff," but it was delivered with all the assurance in the world. It had not precisely the effect Sears had hoped for. Egbert did not seem so much frightened as annoyed by it. He frowned, walked across the room and back, looked at the clock, then out of the window, and finally turned to his opponent. "Recognizing, of course," he sneered, "the fact that all this is absolutely none of your business, Kendrick; may I ask why you didn't come to me in Bayport instead of here?" The captain's smile returned. "I did try to come, Egbert," he answered. "But you had gone and so had the things in your room. You told Sarah and the stable folks you were goin' to Trumet. When I found you hadn't gone there, but were bound for here--after hidin' your valises over night in Tabby Crosby's shed--I decided you might be goin' even farther than Denboro, and that if I wanted to see you pretty soon--or ever, maybe--I'd better hoist sail and travel fast. When the depot folks told me you were askin' about the three-fifteen I felt confirmed in my judgments, as the fellow said. Now if you'll tell me about those bonds?" Another turn by Phillips across the parlor and back. Then he asked, with sarcasm, "If I were to tell you that those bonds were given me by Mrs. Berry, you wouldn't believe it, I presume?" "We-ll, I'd like to hear a little testimony from Cordelia first." "May I ask why you did not go to her instead of to me?" "I didn't have a chance. You got away too soon." "Possibly you may have thought that she, too, would consider it none of your business. And, since you won't take my word, how do you expect me to prove--here in Denboro that those bonds are mine?" "I don't know. But if it can't be proved in Denboro, then I'm afraid, Egbert, that you'll have to go back to Bayport with me and prove it there.... Oh, I know you'd hate to go, but----" "Go! I flatly refuse to go, of course." "I was afraid you would. Well, then I'd have to call in the constable to help get you under way. Jim Baker, the depot master, is constable here in Denboro. He and I were shipmates. He'd arrest the prophet Elijah if I asked him to, and not ask why, either." "Kendrick----" "Egbert, a spell ago you and I had a little chat together and I told you I had just begun to fight.... Well, I haven't really begun yet, but I'm gettin' up steam.... Think it over." Phillips stopped and, standing by the window, stared fixedly at the captain. The latter met the stare with a look of the blandest serenity. Behind the look, however, were feelings vastly different. If ever a forlorn hope skated upon thin ice, his and George Kent's was doing so at that moment. If Egbert _should_ agree to return to Bayport, and if his statement concerning the ownership of the Boston bonds _was_ true, then--well, then it would not be Mr. Phillips who might receive the attentions of the constable. Egbert stopped staring and once more looked at the clock. Quarter past two! He turned again quickly. "Kendrick," he snapped, "what _is_ your proposition?" "My proposition? I want you to pay me the sixteen hundred dollars Kent put into that C. M. stock deal. If you do that I'll give you his signed paper turnin' over to you all interest in the deal. You can make all the profit on it yourself--when it comes. Then in matter of Cordelia's bonds----" Phillips lifted a hand. "The bonds are not to be considered," he said, decisively. "If they are mine, as I say they are, you have no claim on them. If they are Mrs. Berry's, as you absurdly pretend to think they are, again you have no claim. If she says I have stolen them--which she won't--she may prosecute; but, again, my dear sir, she--ah--won't." The slight smile accompanying the last sentence troubled the captain. It was not the smile of a frightened man. Before he could reply Egbert continued. "But the bond matter may be settled later," he went on. "So far as I am concerned it is settled now. For our--ah--foolish young friend, Kent, however, I feel a certain sense of--shall we say pity?--and am inclined to make certain confessions. Silly sentimentalism on my part, doubtless--but pity, nevertheless. If you will give me the paper signed by him, which you claim to have, relinquishing all share in the stock at the New York brokers, I will--well, yes, I will pay you the sixteen hundred dollars." It was Sears Kendrick who was staggered now. It was his turn to stare. "You will pay me sixteen hundred dollars--_now_?" he gasped. "Yes." "But--but.... Humph! Well, thanks, Egbert--but your check, you know----" "I have no time to waste in drawing checks. I will pay you in cash." And, as Sears's already wide-open eyes opened wider and wider, he calmly took from his coat a pocketbook hugely obese and extracted from that pocketbook a mammoth roll of bank notes. Ten minutes later the captain was again moving along the road between Denboro and Bayport, bound home this time. He was driving mechanically; the horse was acting as his own pilot, for the man who held the reins was too much engrossed in thought to pay attention to such inconsequential matters as ruts or even roads. Sears was doing his best to find the answer to a riddle and, so far, the answer was as deeply shrouded in mist as ever a ship of his had been on any sea. He was satisfied in one way, more than satisfied. His demand for the full sixteen hundred had been made with no real hope. Had Phillips consented to return eight hundred dollars of the amount, the offer would in the end have been accepted with outward reluctance but inward joy. Had he refused to return a penny Kendrick would not have been surprised. But Egbert, after making up his mind, had paid the entire sum without a whimper, had paid it almost casually and with the air of one obliging a well-meaning, if somewhat annoying, inferior. Inspecting and pocketing Kent's power of attorney and the captain's receipt he had dismissed his visitor at the parsonage door as King Solomon in all his glory might have graciously dismissed a beggar whose petition had been granted. And the look in his eye and the half smile beneath the long mustache were not those of one beaten at a game--no, they were not. The recollection of that look and that smile bothered Sears Kendrick. He could not guess what was behind them. One thing seemed to be certain, his threats of prosecution and his bluffs concerning the Boston bonds had not alarmed Phillips greatly. He had not given in because he was afraid of imprisonment. No; no, the only symptoms of nervousness he had shown were his repeated glances at the clock, at his watch, and when he looked out of the parsonage window. More and more the captain was forced to the conclusion that Egbert had paid him to get rid of him, that he did not wish to be detained or to have Kendrick remain there, and his reasons must have been so important that he was willing to part with sixteen hundred dollars to get his visitor out of the way. But what possible reason could be as important as that? Why had he run away from Bayport? Why was he taking the three-fifteen train--at Denboro? Why was he spending the time before the departure of that train in the parlor of the Methodist parsonage? And he had made an appointment with the minister himself. Was he expecting some one else at that parsonage? Eh? The captain straightened on the buggy seat. He spoke aloud one word, a name. "Cordelia!" he cried. For another five minutes Captain Sears Kendrick, his frown growing deeper and deeper as the conviction was forced upon him, sat motionless in the buggy. Then he spoke sharply to his horse, turned the latter about, and drove rapidly back to Denboro. He could do nothing worth while, he could prevent nothing, but he could answer that riddle. He believed he had answered it already. It was half-past three when he again knocked at the parsonage door. The Reverend Backus himself answered the knock. "Why, no," he said, "Mr. Phillips has gone. Yes, I think--I am sure he took the train. You are his friend, aren't you? I am sorry you missed the--er--happy event. Mrs. Phillips--the new Mrs. Phillips--is a charmingly refined lady, isn't she? And Mr. Phillips himself is _such_ a gentleman. I don't know when I have had the pleasure of--er--officiating at a pleasanter ceremony. I shall always remember it." Mrs. Backus looked over her husband's shoulder. "The bride came just after you left," she explained. "She was just a little late, she said; but it was all right, there was plenty of time. And she did look _so_ happy!" Captain Kendrick did not look happy. He had answered the riddle correctly. An elopement, of course. It was plain enough now. Oh, if he might have been there when that poor, silly, misguided woman arrived! He might not have been able to stop the marriage, but at least he could--and would--have told the bride a few pointed truths concerning the groom. Mrs. Backus, all smiles, asked her husband a question. "What did you say her name was, dear?" she asked. The minister hesitated. "Why--why--" he stammered, "it was---- Dear me, how forgetful I am!" Sears supplied the information. "Berry," he said, gloomily. "Cordelia Berry." Mr. Backus seemed surprised. "Why, no," he declared. "That doesn't sound like the name.... It wasn't. No, it wasn't. It was--I have it--Snowden. Miss Elvira Snowden--of Ostable, I believe." CHAPTER XIX Not until Captain Kendrick entered the Minot kitchen late that afternoon did he get the full and complete answer to his puzzle. Judah supplied the missing details, supplied them with a rush, had evidently been bursting with them for hours. "My hoppin', creepin', jumpin' prophets, Cap'n Sears," he roared, before his lodger could speak a word, "if I ain't got the dumdest news to tell you now, then nobody ever had none!... You ain't heard it, Cap'n, have you? _Don't_ tell me you've heard it already! Have you?" Sears shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, Judah," he replied. "Have I?" "Hoppin' Henry! I _hope_ you ain't, 'cause I wanted to tell you myself. It's about Elviry Snowden. Have you heard anything about her?" "Why--well, what have _you_ heard?" "Heard! They heard it fust over to the Harbor about a couple of hours ago. Bradley, the Orham lawyer feller, he'd heard it and he come over to see Elizabeth about somethin' or 'nother and he told it to all hands. You know that aunt of Elviry's over to Ostable, the one that died last week? Well all hands had cal'lated she was kind of on her beam ends--poor, I mean. When her husband died, don't you recollect some property they owned over to Harniss was goin' to be sold to auction? All them iron images Elviry wanted to buy was part of 'em; don't you remember?" "Yes, I remember. "Sartin sure you do. Well, so fur as that goes them images wan't sold because the widow changed her mind about 'em and had 'em all carted over to another little place she owned in Ostable, and set up in the yard there. She's been livin' on this place in Ostable and everybody figgered she didn't have much money else she'd stayed in the big house in Harniss. But, by Henry, since she's died it's come out that she was rich. Yes, sir, rich! She'd saved every cent, you see; never spent nothin'. A reg'lar mouser, she was--miser, I mean. And who do you suppose she's left it all to? Elviry, by the creepin'! Yes, sir, every last cent to Elviry Snowden." "_No!!_" "Yes. Elviry's rich. 'Cordin' to Bradley's tell there's a lot of land and a house and barn, and all them iron images, and--wait; let me tell you--stocks, and things like that, and over ten thousand dollars cash in the bank, by Henry! In _cash_, where Elviry can get right aholt of it if she wants to. Much as thirty thousand, altogether, land and all. And.... What in tunket are you laughin' at?" For Captain Kendrick had thrown himself into the rocking chair and was shaking the pans on the stove with peal after peal of laughter. It was so simple, so complete, and so wonderfully, gorgeously Egbertian. A little matter of arithmetic, that was all. Merely the substitution of twenty or thirty thousand dollars and a landed estate for five--no, three--thousand dollars and a somewhat cramped future at the Fair Harbor. The ladies in the case were incidental. When the choice was offered him the businesslike Phillips hesitated not a moment. He was on with the new love even before he was off with the old. And, in order to avoid the unpleasantness which was sure to ensue when the old found it out, he had arranged to be married at Denboro and to be far afield upon his wedding tour before the news reached Bayport. Everything was clear now. Elvira's windfall explained it all. It was her money which had paid Captain Elkanah, and Sarah Macomber, and the livery man, and no doubt many another of Egbert's little bills. It was her money that was paying the honeymoon expenses. And, of course, it was her sixteen hundred dollars which had just been handed to Sears Kendrick in the parlor of the parsonage. No wonder that, under the circumstances, Egbert had chosen to pay. It must have been a nerve-racking session for him, that interview with the captain. Each minute might bring his bride-to-be to the parsonage door, and if she learned before marriage of Cordelia's bonds and the Kent-Phillips stock speculation, not to mention the threatened arrest and consequent scandal, why--well, Elvira was fatuously smitten, but the chances were that the wedding would have been postponed, if nothing worse. No wonder Egbert preferred parting with a portion of his lady-love's fortune to the risk of parting with the lady herself--and the remainder of it. Sears did not tell Judah of the elopement. He did not feel like it, then. His had been a tiring day and the strain upon his own nerves not slight. He wanted to rest, he wanted to think, and he did not want to talk. Judah spared him the trouble; he did talking enough for two. After supper George Kent came hurrying into the yard. Sears had expected him and, when he came, led him into the "spare stateroom" and closed the door. Then, without any preliminaries, he took the sixteen hundred dollars from his wallet and gave them to him. "There's your money, George," he said. Kent could not believe it. He had come here, in the last stages of despair. This was practically his final day of grace. The afternoon mail had brought him another letter from his brother-in-law, making immediate demand and threatening drastic action within the week. He had come, haggard, nervous and trembling, ready to proclaim again his intention of self-destruction. He sat there, staring at the money in his hand, saying nothing. His face was as white as the clean towels on the captain's washstand. Kendrick, leaning forward, laid a hand on his knee. "Brace up, George," he ordered, sharply. "Don't let go of the wheel." Kent slowly lifted his gaze from the roll of bills to his friend's face. "You--you _got_ it!" he faltered. "_I_ got it--all of it. There's the whole sixteen hundred there. Count it." "But--but, oh, my God! I--I----" "Sshh! Steady as she is, George. Count your money. Put it on the table here by the lamp." He took the bills from Kent's shaking fingers, arranged them on the table and, at last, coaxed or drove the young man into beginning to count them. Of course it was Kendrick himself who really counted; his companion did little but pick up the bank notes and drop them again. Suddenly, in the midst of the performance, he stopped, put his hands to his face and burst into hysterical sobs. Sears let him cry for a time, merely stepping across to make sure that the bedroom door was tightly closed, and then standing above him with his hands on the bowed shoulders. After a little the sobs ceased. A moment later and George raised his head. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "What a--a kid I am!" Sears, who had been thinking pretty nearly that very thing, patted the shoulder beneath his hand. "All right, George," he said. "Bein' a kid is no crime. In fact, it has some advantages." "But--but, you see--I--I have been through purgatory this week, I----" "I know. But you're all through and out now." "Yes, I--I am. By George, I am, aren't I!... And you did it for me. _You_ did!" "Never mind that. I enjoyed doin' it. Yes," with a slight smile, "I had a pretty good time, take it by and large." "And you got the--the whole of it! The whole!" "Yes." "But I can't understand.... Did--Cap'n Kendrick, did you borrow it for me?" "No. I talked things over with your--er--side-partner and he decided to give it back." "To give it back! Mr. Phillips did, you mean? But he wouldn't give it to me. I begged him to. I should have been satisfied with half of it--my sister's half. Indeed I should! But he said he couldn't give it to me, he didn't have it to give. And--and you got him to give me the whole! Cap'n Kendrick, I--I can't understand." "You don't have to. There's your sixteen hundred. Now take it, and before you turn in this night you get ready to send your brother-in-law his half, and the papers that go with it, on the first mail. That's all I ask of you, George." "I'll have it in the post office as soon as it opens to-morrow morning. You bet I will!" "That's what I want to be able to bet. You send a money-order, that's safest. And--well, yes, George, you might show me the receipt." "I'll show it to you. You can keep it for me, if you want to." "Seein' it will do. And one thing more: you promise me now, on your word of honor, not to take any more of those stock market fliers for--well, for ten years, anyhow." Kent promised; he would have promised anything. His color had come back, his spirits were now as high as they had been low, and he was striding up and down the room like a mad thing. "But how did you get it for me?" he kept demanding. The captain bade him stop. "Never mind how I got it," he declared. "I got it, and you've got it, and you'll have to be satisfied with that. Don't ask me again, George." "I won't, but--but I can't understand Mr. Phillips giving it back. He didn't have to, you know. Say, I think it was mighty generous of him, after all. Don't you?" Sears's lip twitched. "It looks as if somebody was generous," he observed. "Now run along, George, and fix up that letter to your brother-in-law." "I'm going to. I'm going now. But, Cap'n Kendrick, I don't know what to say to you. I--why, great Scott, I can't begin to tell you how I feel about what you've done! I'd cut off my head for you; honest I would." "Cuttin' off your own head would be consider'ble of a job. Better keep your head on, George.... And use it once in a while." "You know what this means to me, Cap'n Kendrick. To my future and--and maybe some one else's future, too. Why, _now_ I can go--I can say---- Oh, great Scott!" Kendrick opened the bedroom door. "Come now, George," he said. "Good night--and good luck." Kent would have said more, much more, even though Judah Cahoon was sitting, with ears and mouth open, in the kitchen. But the captain would not let him linger or speak. He helped him on with his coat and hat, and, with a slap on the back, literally pushed him out into the yard. Then he turned on his heel and striding again through the kitchen reëntered the spare stateroom and closed the door behind him. Judah shouted something about its being "not much more'n two bells"--meaning nine o'clock--but he received no answer. Judah did not retire until nearly eleven that night, but when, at last, he did go to his own room, there was a light still shining under the door of the spare stateroom and he could hear the captain's footsteps moving back and forth, back and forth, within. For two hours he had so heard them. Obviously the "old man" was pacing the deck, a pretty sure sign of rough weather present or expected. Mr. Cahoon was troubled, also disappointed. He would have liked to talk interminably concerning the sensational news of Miss Snowden's inheritance; he had not begun to exhaust the possibilities of that subject. Then, too, he was very anxious to learn where Captain Sears had been all day, and why. He tried in various ways to secure attention. But when, after singing eight verses of the most doleful ditty in his repertoire, he was not ordered to "shut up," was in fact ignored altogether, he quit disgusted. But, as he closed the door of his own bedchamber, he could still hear the regular footfalls in the spare stateroom. Had he listened for another hour or more he would have heard them. Sears Kendrick was tramping back and forth, his hands jammed in his pockets, and upon his spirit the blackest and deepest and densest of clouds. It was the reaction, of course. He was tired physically, but more tired mentally. All day long he had been under a sharp strain, now he was experiencing the let-down. But there was more than that. His campaign against Egbert Phillips had kept him interested. Now the fight was over and, although superficially he was the victor, in reality it was a question which side had won. He had saved George Kent's money and his good name. And Cordelia Berry's future was safe, too, although her two thousand dollars might be, and probably were, lost. But, after all, his was a poor sort of victory. Egbert was, doubtless, congratulating himself and chuckling over the outcome of the battle; with thirty thousand dollars and ease and comfort for the rest of his life, he could afford to chuckle. Kent's happiness was sure. He could go to Elizabeth now with clean hands and youth and hope. Perhaps he had gone to her already. That very evening he and she might be together once more. And for the man who had made this possible, what remained? Where were those silly hopes with which, at one time, he had deluded himself? He had dared to dream romance. Where was that romance now? Face to face with reality, what was to be _his_ future? More days and weeks and years of puttering with the penny-paring finances of a home for old women? He dressed next morning with a mind made up. He had dallied and deliberated and wished long enough. Now he _knew_. His stay in Bayport was practically ended. Give him a little time and luck enough to find a competent manager for the Fair Harbor, one with whom he believed Judge Knowles would have been satisfied, and he was through for good. He must play fair with the judge and then--then for the shipping offices of Boston or New York and a berth at sea. His health was almost normal; his battered limbs were nearly as sound as ever. He could handle a ship and he could handle men. His fights and sacrifices for others were finished, over and done with. Now he would fight for himself. His breakfast appetite was poor. Judah, aghast at the sight of his untouched plate, demanded to know if he was sick. The answer to the question was illuminating. "No," snapped the captain, "I'm not sick.... Yes, I am, too. I'm sick to death of this town and this place and this landlubber's job. Judah, are you goin' to spend the rest of your days playin' hired boy for Ogden Minot? Or are you comin' to sea again with me? Because to sea is where I'm goin'--and mighty quick." Judah's mouth opened. "Hoppin' Henry!" he gasped. "Why, Cap'n Sears----" "You don't _like_ this job, do you? Hadn't you rather have your own galley on board a decent ship? Are you a sea-man--or a washwoman? Don't you want to ship with me again?" "_Want_ to! Cap'n Sears, you know I'd rather go to sea along with you than--than be King of Rooshy. But you ain't fit to go to sea yet." "Shut up! Don't you dare say that again. And stand by to pack your sea chest when I give the order.... No, I don't want to argue. I won't argue. Clear out!" Mr. Cahoon, bewildered but obedient, cleared out. Not long afterward he drove away on the seat of the truck wagon to haul the Bangs wood, the task postponed from the previous day. Kendrick, left alone, lit a pipe and resumed his pacing up and down. Later on he took pen, ink and paper and seated himself at the table to write some letters to shipping merchants whose vessels he had commanded in the old days, the happy days before he gave up seafaring to become a poor imitation of a business man on shore. He composed these letters with care. Two were completed and the third was under way, when some one knocked at the other door. He laid down his pen impatiently. He did not want to be interrupted. If the visitor was Kent he did not feel like listening to more thanks. If it was Esther Tidditt she could unload her cargo of gossip at some other port. But the caller was neither George nor Esther. It was Elizabeth who entered the kitchen in answer to his command to "Come in." He rose to greet her. She looked pale--yes, and tired, but she smiled faintly as she bade him good morning. "Cap'n Kendrick," she said, "are you very busy? I suppose you are, but--but if you are not too busy I should like to talk with you for a few minutes. May I?" He nodded. "Of course," he said. "My business can wait a little longer; it has waited a good while, this particular business has. Sit down." She took the rocker. He sat at the other side of the table, waiting for her to speak. It came to him, the thought that, the last time she had visited that kitchen, she had left it vowing never to speak to him again. Well, at least that was over; she no longer believed him a spy, and all the rest of it. There was, or should be, some comfort for him in knowing that. Suddenly, just as she had done on the platform of the lawyer's office at Orham, she put out her hand. "Don't!" she pleaded. He started, confusedly. "Don't?" he stammered. "What?" "Don't think of--of what you were thinking. If you knew--oh, Cap'n Kendrick, if you could only realize how wicked I feel. Even when I said those dreadful things to you I didn't mean them. And now---- Oh, _please_ forget them, if you can." He drew a long breath. "I never saw any one like you," he declared. "How did you know what I was thinkin'? ... Of course I wasn't thinkin' it, but----" She interrupted. "Of course you were, you mean," she said, with a faint smile. "It isn't hard to know what you think. You don't hide your thoughts very well, Cap'n Kendrick. They aren't the kind one needs to hide." He stared at her in guilty amazement. "Good land!" he ejaculated, involuntarily. "Don't talk that way. What do you mean by that?" "I mean that your thoughts are always straightforward and--well, honest, like yourself.... But we mustn't waste time. I don't know when we shall have another opportunity to be together like this, and there are some things I must say to you. Cap'n Kendrick, you know--you have heard the news?" "News?... Oh, you mean about Elvira's inheritin' all that money?" "That, of course. But that wasn't the news I meant. I mean about her eloping with--with that man." Troubled even as Sears was at the sight of her evident distress, he could not but feel a thrill of satisfaction at the tone in which she referred to "that man." He nodded. "I've heard it," he said. "I guess likely I was about the first Bayporter that did hear it. When did you hear?" "A little while ago. He wrote--he wrote my mother a letter. It was at the post office this morning." "He did? He _didn't_! The low-lived scamp!" "Hush! Don't talk about him. Yes, he wrote her. _Such_ a letter! She showed it to me. So full of hypocrisy, and lies and--oh, can't you imagine what it was?" Kendrick's right fist tapped the table gently. "I guess likely I can," he said, grimly. "Well, some of these days I may run afoul of Egbert again. When I do----" The fist closed a little tighter. "You won't touch him. Promise me you won't. If you should, I---- Oh, dear! I think I should be afraid to touch your hands afterwards." Sears smiled. "It might be safer to use my boot," he admitted. "Your mother--how is she?" "Can't you imagine? I think--I hope it is her pride that is hurt more than anything. For some little time--well, ever since I found out that she was lending him money--I have done my best to make her see what he really is. But before that--oh, there is no use pretending, for you know--she was insane about him. And now, with the shock and the disillusionment and the shame, she is---- Oh, it is dreadful!" "Do the--er--rest of 'em over there know it yet?" "No, but they will very soon. And when they do! You know what some of them are, what they will say. We can't stay there, mother and I. We must go away--and we will." She was crying, and if ever a man yearned for the rôle of comforter, Sears Kendrick was that man. He tried to say something, but he was afraid to trust his own tongue; it might run away with him. And before his attempt was at all coherent, she went on. "Don't mind me," she said, hastily wiping her eyes. "I am nervous, and I have been through a bad hour, and--and I am acting foolishly, of course. I know that this is, in a way, the very best thing that could happen. This ends it, so far as mother is concerned. Oh, it might have been _so_ much worse! It looked as if it were going to be. Now she _knows_ what he is. I have known it, or been almost sure of it, for a long time. And you must have known it always, from the beginning. That is a part of what I came here for this morning. Please tell me how you knew and--and all about everything." So he told her, beginning with what Judge Knowles had said concerning Lobelia's husband, and continuing on to the end. She listened intently. "Yes," she said. "I see. I wish you could have told me at first. I think if I had known exactly how Judge Knowles felt I might not have been so foolish. But I should have known--I should have seen for myself. Of course I should. To think that I ever believed in such a creature, and trusted him, and permitted him to influence me against--against a friend like you. Oh, I must have been crazy!" Kendrick shook his head. "No craziness about that," he declared. "I've seen some smooth articles in my time, seen 'em afloat and ashore, from one end of this world to the other, but of all the slick ones he was the slickest. It's a good thing the judge warned me before Egbert crossed my bows. If he hadn't--well, I don't know; _I_ might have been lendin' him my last dollar, and proud of the chance--you can't tell.... I'm sorry, though," he added, "that he got those bonds of your mother's. Borrowed 'em of her, you say?" "Yes. He was going to make better investments for her, I believe he said. But that doesn't make any difference. She has no receipts or anything to show. And of course if she should try to get them again there would be dreadful gossip, all sorts of things said. No, the bonds are gone and ... But how did you know about the bonds, Cap'n Kendrick?" Sears had momentarily forgotten. He had, during his story of his war with Phillips, carefully avoided mentioning Kent's trouble. He had told of chasing Egbert to Denboro, but the particular reason for the pursuit he had not told. He was taken aback and embarrassed. "Why--why----" he stammered. But she answered her own question. "Of course!" she cried. "I know how you knew. George said that--that that man had used some bonds as a part of their stock speculation. I didn't think then of mother's bonds. That is what he did with them. I see." The captain looked at her. Kent had told her of the C. M. deal. That meant that he had seen her, that already he had gone to her, to confess, to beg her pardon, to ... He sighed. Well, he should be glad, of course. He must pretend to be very glad. "So--so you've seen George?" he stammered. She colored slightly. "Yes," she answered. "He came to see me last evening.... Cap'n Kendrick you should hear him speak of you. You saved him from disgrace--and worse, he says. It was a wonderful thing to do. But I think you must be in the habit of doing wonderful things for other people." He shrugged his shoulders. "Nothin' very wonderful about it," he said. "George is a good boy. He hadn't bumped into any Egberts before, that's all. He'll be on the lookout for 'em now. I'm glad for him--and for you." If she understood what he meant she did not show any embarrassment. "I don't know that you need be so glad for me," she said. "Yet in a way I am glad. The problem is settled now, mother's and mine. She and I will go away." "Go away? From the Fair Harbor?" "Yes, and from Bayport. She has a little money left. Thanks to Judge Knowles, I have some of my own. She and I can live on the interest for a time, or until I can find a way to earn more." "But--but--George?" "I think George is going away, too. He spoke of Boston. But there is another thing I meant to say to you. I hate to leave you with the entire care of the Fair Harbor on your hands. I shall try and help you to find another matron before we go." Sears rose from his chair. "That's all right," he said, "that part of it. We'll try and find another outside manager at the same time. You see, you and your mother aren't the only ones who are quittin' Bayport. I'm goin', too." She turned to look at him. "_You_ are going?" she repeated, slowly. "Where?" "I don't know exactly. To sea, I hope. I'm well again, or next door to it. I mean to command another ship, if such a thing's possible." "But you are leaving the Fair Harbor. Why?" He turned on her almost fiercely. "Why?" he cried. "Don't you know why? Because I'm a man--or I was one--and I want to be a man again. On shore, I'm--well, I'm a good deal of a failure, I guess; but on salt water I count for somethin'. I'm goin' to sea where I belong." He strode to the window and stood there, looking out. He heard her rise, heard her step beside him. Then he felt her hand upon his. "I'm glad for you," she said, simply. "Very, very glad. I wish I were a man and could go, too." He did not look at her, he did not dare. "It's a rough life," he said, "but I like it." "I know.... So you will soon be really seeing again those things you told me about, the foreign cities and the people and those islands--and all the wonderful, wonderful places. And you won't have to fret about the grocery bills, or the mean little Fair Harbor gossip, or anything of the kind. You can just sail away and forget it all." "I shan't forget it all. There's a lot I never want to forget." There was an interval of silence here, an interval that, to the captain, seemed to last for ages. It must be broken, it must be or.... "I shall think of you and George often enough," he announced, briskly. "Yes, indeed. And--and if it isn't too soon--that is, if you don't mind my bein' the first one--I'd like to congratulate you and wish you a smooth passage and a long one." She did not answer and he mustered courage to turn and look at her. She was looking at him and her expression was odd. "A smooth passage?" she repeated. "Why, Cap'n Kendrick, I'm not going to sea. What do you mean?" "I mean--well, I meant--er--oh, I was speakin' in parables, like a minister, you know. I was wishin' you and George a happy voyage through life, that's all." "George! Why, I am going away with my mother. George isn't.... Why, Cap'n Kendrick, you don't think--you can't think that George and I are--are----" "Eh? Aren't you? I thought----" She shook her head. "I told you once," she said. "I mean it. I like George well enough--sometimes I like him better than at others. But--oh, why can't you believe me?" He was staring at her with a gaze so intent, an expression so strange that she could not meet it. She turned away. "Please don't say any more about it," she begged. "But--but George is--he has counted on it. He told me----" "Don't. I don't know what he told you. I hope nothing foolish. He and I understand each other. Last night, when he came, I told him ... There, I must go, Cap'n Kendrick. I have left mother alone too long already." "Wait!" he shouted it. "You mean ... You aren't goin' to marry George Kent--_ever_?" "Why, no, of course not!" "Elizabeth--oh, my soul, I--I'm crazy, I guess--but--Elizabeth, could you---- No, you couldn't, I know.... But _am_ I crazy? Could you--do you--Elizabeth, if you ... _Stop_!" She was on her way to the door. He sprang after her, caught her hand. "Elizabeth," he cried, the words tumbling over each other, "I'm thirty-eight years old. I'm a sailor, that's all. I'm not much of a man, as men go maybe, sort of a failure so far. But--with you to work for and live for, I--I guess I could be--I feel as if I could be almost anything. Could you give me that chance? Could you?" She did not answer; did not even look at him. He dropped her hand. "Of course not," he sighed. "Just craziness was what it was. Forgive me, my girl. And--forget it, if you can." She did not speak. Slowly, and still without looking at him, she walked out of the kitchen. The outer door closed behind her. He put his hand to his eyes, breathed deeply, and returning to the chair by the table, sat heavily down. "A failure," he groaned aloud. "Lord Almighty, _what_ a failure!" He had not heard the door open, but he did hear her step, and felt her arms about his neck and her kiss upon his cheek. "Don't, don't, don't!" she sobbed. "Oh, my dear, don't say that. Don't ever say it again. Oh, you mustn't." And he did not. For the next half hour he said many other things, and so did she, and when at last she did go away, he stood in the doorway, looking after her, knowing himself to be not a failure, but the one real overwhelming success in all this gloriously successful world. CHAPTER XX It was April and one of those beautiful early spring days with which New England is sometimes favored. The first buds were showing on the trees, the first patches of new green were sprinkling the sheltered slopes of the little hills, and under the dead leaves by the edges of the woods boys had been rummaging for the first mayflowers. It was supper time at the Fair Harbor and the "guests"--quoting Mrs. Susannah Brackett--or the "inmates"--quoting Mr. Judah Cahoon--were seated about the table. There were some notable vacancies in the roster. At the head, where Mrs. Cordelia Berry had so graciously and for so long presided, there was now an empty chair. That chair would soon be filled, however; the new matron of the Harbor was at that moment in the office discussing business matters with Mr. Bradley, the new "outside manager." She had told the others not to wait for her; she would come to supper as soon as she could. So Mrs. Brackett, who had moved up to the seat once glorified by the dignity of Miss Elvira Snowden, was serving the cold corned beef; while opposite her, in the chair where Elizabeth Berry used to sit, Mrs. Aurora Chase was ladling forth the preserved pears. And, in the absence of the matron, it was of course natural that conversation should turn to subjects which could not be discussed as freely or pointedly in her presence. Miss Desire Peasley began the discussion. She looked at the ancient clock on the mantel. The time was a quarter to six. "H'm," sniffed Miss Peasley, with a one-sided smile. "I suppose likely the great event's took place long afore this. They're married and off on their honeymoon by now.... If you can call a cruise on board a ship bound to an outlandish place like Singapore a honeymoon. I took one voyage to Bombay with my brother, and 'twan't the honeymoon trip I'd pick out. _Such_ a place! And such folks! The clothes those poor heathens wore--or didn't wear! Shameful! Don't talk!" The order not to talk was plainly not considered binding, for every one immediately began to talk. "I should like to have seen the weddin'," proclaimed Mrs. Hattis Thomas, with a giggle. "Must have looked more like an adoptin' ceremony than a marryin'. I've always been thankful for one thing, I married a man somewheres nigh my own age, anyhow." "Wonder how Cordelia likes bein' left alone?" observed Mrs. Constance Cahoon. "She's been used to havin' a daughter to wait on her hand and foot. Now she'll have to wait on herself for a spell. But I presume likely she won't mind that. Livin' up to Boston, with the interest of twenty-five thousand dollars to live on, will suit her down to the ground. She'll be airy enough now. Won't speak to common folks, I suppose. Well, she won't have to put herself out to speak to _me_. _I_ shan't go a-visitin' her, even if she begs me to." There was no immediate symptom of Mrs. Berry's begging for visitors, at least none present had so far received an invitation. But all nodded, indicating that they, too, would scorn the plea when it came. "That poor man!" sighed Mrs. Brackett, pityingly. "How those two, mother and daughter, did pull the wool over his eyes. I suppose he thinks we all believe he wouldn't take a cent of Elizabeth's money. Humph! Good reason why Jack wouldn't eat his supper--he didn't have a chance. Ha, ha! I cal'late he'd taken it if he could have got it. But his wife knew a trick worth two of that. She'll keep him afloat and hard at work earnin' more for her to spend. Well, I hope his poor lame legs won't give out on him. If he has to give up goin' to sea _again_, I pity him, that's all I've got to say." Mrs. Chase, her jet black locks a trifle askew as usual, was listening, the hand holding the preserve spoon cupped behind her ear and the spoon itself sticking out like a Fiji Islander's head ornament. As usual she had heard next to nothing. "That's what _I_ say!" she declared. "Why, Mr. Bradley, or whoever was responsible, let Sears Kendrick put a woman with six children in as matron of this place, I can't understand. Of course it's plain enough why Cap'n Sears wanted her to have the job. Joel Macomber's wages ain't more than twelve dollars a week and the salary here'll give 'em all the luxuries and doodads they want. Fust thing you know that Sary-Mary of hers'll be goin' to the Middleboro Academy to school. I wouldn't put it past her.... Hey? What did you say, Susanna?" Mrs. Brackett had not said anything. She and some of the others were glancing uneasily in the direction of the hall door. All agreed that the appointment of Sarah Macomber as matron of the Fair Harbor was an outrage, but no one cared to have Mrs. Macomber know of that agreement. It was an experiment, that appointment, and Sarah herself was by no means confident of its success, although she had at last agreed to give it three months' trial. Half of that time was over and so far all was well. Bradley expressed huge satisfaction. Mrs. Macomber came to the Harbor early each morning and went home again after supper. Sarah-Mary and a hired girl, wages three dollars a week, were doing the Macomber housework. "Hey?" shouted Aurora once more. "What did you say, Susanna?" Mrs. Brackett, after another uneasy glance at the hall door, nodded and smiled. Mrs. Cahoon spoke quickly, in order to change the subject. "What do you suppose I heard to-day?" she answered. "I met Josiah Ellis down to 'Liphalet's store and he told me he see Mr. Phillips yesterday. Josiah drove one of the livery hoss-'n'-teams over to Denboro--had a Boston notion drummer to cart over there, he did--and who should come drivin' along but Mr. Phillips. Josiah said he was dressed just as elegant as ever was, and the hoss-'n'-team he was drivin' was styled-up to match. Josiah hailed him and Mr. Phillips stopped and talked for a few minutes. Nice as always, not a bit of airs. No, Elviry wan't with him. Mr. Phillips said she was to home gettin' him ready to go away for a little vacation. Seems he's cal'latin' to go to New York for a fortni't. Mr. Phillips told Josiah that Elviry was kind of tired out, they'd done so much entertainin' this winter, and he was goin' away so's she could have a little rest. Ain't that just like him? Self-sacrificin'--my sakes! Elviry's a lucky woman, that's all I've got to say. I don't say so much about _his_ luck; but when she got him she done well." There was a general buzz of agreement about the table. Then from the kitchen, where she had gone to get a fresh supply of cream-of-tartar biscuit, came little Mrs. Tidditt. She put the plate of biscuits on the table and sat down. "What's that, Constance?" she demanded. Mrs. Cahoon repeated the news of the Phillips family. Aurora put in a word. "There's one thing I've always been sorry for," she said. "Of course I wouldn't take anything away from Elviry, she and I have always been good friends. But she's got enough as 'tis, and I _do_ wish--I do wish that Sears Kendrick had stayed away from this place until we'd had a chance to buy them lovely lawn statues. We'll never have another chance like that again." Esther Tidditt smiled. "Yes, you will, Aurora," she snapped. "Yes, you will. Give him time and about two or three more New York trips, and those images will be up at auction again. Thirty thousand don't last some folks long, and Elviry and her Eg will be needin' money to pay grocery bills. You can't eat an iron lion. Just wait, Aurora. We may have that menagerie in the yard here yet. Possess your soul in patience." There was another buzz about the table, this time of scornful disapproval. Mrs. Chase leaned forward. "What's she sayin', Susanna?" she demanded, querulously. "Susanna Brackett, why don't you or the rest tell me what she's sayin'?" * * * * * At that moment the ship _Gold Finder_, of Boston, Winthrop and Hunniwell, owners, Sears Kendrick, master, was sailing out over the waters of Massachusetts Bay. Astern, a diamond point against the darkening sky, Minot's Light shone. The vessel was heeling slightly in the crisp evening wind, her full, rounded sails rustling overhead, her cordage creaking, foam at her forefoot and her wake stretching backward toward the land she was leaving. Her skipper stood aft by the binnacle, feeling, with a joy quite indescribable, the lift of the deck beneath him and the rush of the breeze across his face. From the open door of the galley lamplight streamed. Within Judah Cahoon sang as he worked over the stove. Judah had had a glorious afternoon. His chanteys had cast off the hawsers, had walked away with the ropes, had hoisted the sails, had bade the tug good-by. Now his voice was a thought frayed, but he sang on. Elizabeth--now Elizabeth Berry no more forever--came up the companion ladder. She joined her husband by the after rail. The sea air was chill and she was wearing one of the captain's pea jackets, the collar turned up; a feathery strand of her brown hair blew out to leeward. She stood beside him. The man at the wheel was looking down into the binnacle and Sears took her hand. "Well?" he said, after a moment. She looked up at him. "Well?" she said. Neither spoke immediately. Then Kendrick breathed a sigh, a sigh expressive of many things. She understood. As always she knew what he was thinking. "Yes," she said, "it is glorious. Glorious for me; but for you, Sears----" "Yes. It's pretty fine. I really never expected to make sail out of Boston harbor again. And if anybody had told me that I was to--" with another look at the helmsman, and lowering his voice--"to leave port this way--with you----" He laughed aloud. She laughed, too. "And just think," she said; "no more little worries or pettinesses, no more whispers, or faultfinding, or----" "Or Fair Harbors. You're right, my girl. We're off, clean away from it all, bound out." From the galley Judah's voice came, beginning the second verse of his song, "'Aloft! Aloft!' our jolly bos'n cries. Blow high! blow low! and so sailed we. 'Look ahead, look astern, look a-weather and a-lee, Look along down the coast of the High Bar-ba-ree.' "'There's none upon the starn, there's none upon the lee.' Blow high! blow low! and so sailed we. 'There's a lofty ship to wind'ard a-sailin' fast and free, Sailin' down along the coast of the High Bar-ba-ree.'" THE END * * * * * * NOVELS FOR CHEERFUL ENTERTAINMENT GALUSHA THE MAGNIFICENT By Joseph C. Lincoln Author of "Shavings," "The Portygee," etc. The whole family will laugh over this deliriously humorous novel, that pictures the sunny side of small-town life, and contains love-making, a dash of mystery, an epidemic of spook-chasing--and laughable, lovable Galusha. THESE YOUNG REBELS By Frances R. Sterrett Author of "Nancy Goes to Town," "Up the Road with Sally," etc. A sprightly novel that hits off to perfection the present antagonism between the rebellious younger generation and their disapproving elders. PLAY THE GAME By Ruth Comfort Mitchell A happy story about American young people. The appealing qualities of a brave young girl stand out in the strife between two young fellows, the one by fair the other by foul means, to win her. IN BLESSED CYRUS By Laura E. Richards Author of "A Daughter of Jehu," etc. The quaint, quiet village of Cyrus, with its whimsical villagers, is abruptly turned topsy-turvy by the arrival in its midst of an actress, distractingly feminine, Lila Laughter; and, at the same time, an epidemic of small-pox. HELEN OF THE OLD HOUSE By Harold Bell Wright Wright's greatest novel, that presents the life of industry to-day, the laughter, the tears, the strivings of those who live about the smoky chimneys of an American industrial town. New York D. APPLETON & COMPANY London * * * * * * AMONG THE NEWEST NOVELS THE HOUSE OF MOHUN By GEORGE GIBBS, Author of "Youth Triumphant," etc. A distinguished novel depicting present day society and its most striking feature, the "flapper." A story of splendid dramatic qualities. THE COVERED WAGON By EMERSON HOUGH, Author of "The Magnificent Adventure," "The Story of the Cowboy," etc. A novel of the first water, clear and clean, is this thrilling story of the pioneers, the men and women who laid the foundation of the great west. HOMESTEAD RANCH By ELIZABETH G. YOUNG The _New York Times_ says that "Homestead Ranch" is one of the season's "two best real wild and woolly western yarns." The _Boston Herald_ says, "So delightful that we recommend it as one of the best western stories of the year." SACRIFICE By STEPHEN FRENCH WHITMAN, Author of "Predestined," etc. How a woman, spoiled child of New York society, faced the dangers of the African jungle trail. "One feels ever the white heat of emotional conflict."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._ DOUBLE-CROSSED By W. DOUGLAS NEWTON, Author of "Low Ceilings," etc. "An excellently written and handled tale of adventure and thrills in the dark spruce valleys of Canada."--_New York Times._ JANE JOURNEYS ON By RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL, Author of "Play the Game," etc. The cheerful story of a delightful heroine's adventures from Vermont to Mexico. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY New York London 
19708	----	[Illustration: CAPE COD FOLKS.] CAPE COD FOLKS BY SARAH P. MCLEAN GREENE (SALLY PRATT McLEAN) _With Illustrations from the Play_ NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Copyrighted, 1881, By A. WILLIAMS & Co. Copyrighted, 1904, BY DEWOLFE, FISKE & Co. TO W.N.G. CONTENTS. I. ON A MISSION II. I BLOW THE HORN III. THE BEAUX OF WALLENCAMP PERFORM A GRAVE DUTY IV. THE TURKEY MOGUL ARRIVES V. GRANDMA KEELER GETS GRANDPA READY FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL VI. BECKY AND THE CRADLEBOW VII. LUTE CRADLEBOW KISSES THE TEACHER VIII. FESTIVITIES AT THE ARK IX. LOVELL BARLOW "POPS THE QUESTION." X. A LETTER FROM THE FISHERMAN XI. A WALLENCAMP FUNERAL XII. BECKY'S CONFESSION XIII. A MILD WINTER ON THE CAPE XIV. RESCUED BY THE CRADLEBOW XV. DAVID ROLLIN IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM XVI. GEORGE OLVER'S LOVE FOR BECKY XVII. TEACHER HAS THE FEVER.--DEATH OF LITTLE BESSIE XVIII. LUTE CRADLEBOW GIVES THE TEACHER A NEW CHAIR XIX. DEATH OF THE CRADLEBOW XX. GEORGE OLVER'S ORATION XXI. FAREWELL TO WALLENCAMP [Illustration] CHAPTER I. ON A MISSION. "Lo, on a narrer neck o' land, 'Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand!" Aunt Sibylla was not sporting, now, in the airy realms of metaphor. Aunt Sibylla stood upon Cape Cod, and her voice rang out with that peculiar sweep and power which the presence of a dread reality alone can give. Something of the precariousness of her situation, too, was expressed in The wild, alarming, though graceful, gesture of her arms. It was before the long-projected canal separating Cape Cod from the mainland had been put under active process of preparation. It was at an evening meeting in the Wallencamp school-house. A row of dingy, smoking lanterns had been set against the wall and afforded the only light cast upon the scene. Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow, the speaker, was tall and dark-eyed, with an almost superhuman litheness of body, and a weird, beautiful face. "And, oh, my dear brothers and sisters and onconvarted friends!" she continued; "how little do we realize the reskiness of our situwation here on the Cape! Here we stand with them ar identical unbounded seas a rollin' up on ary side of us! the world a pintin' at us as them that should be always ready, with our lamps trimmed and burnin'! and, yit, oh my dear brothers and sisters and onconvarted friends! as fur as I have been inland--and I have been a consid'able ways inland, as you all know, whar it would seem no more than nateral that folks should settle down kind o' safe and easy on a dry land univarse--I say, as fur as I have been inland, I never see sech keeryins on and carnal works, sech keerlessness for the present and onconsarn for the futur', as I have amongst the benighted critturs who stand before me this evenin', a straddlin' this poor, old, Godforsaken Pot Hook!" Clearer and louder grew Aunt Sibylla's tones; her eyes lightened with terrible meaning; her words flowed with an unction that was unmistakable; and, at length, "Oh, run for the Ark, ye poor, lost sinners," she exclaimed. "Oh, run for the Ark, my onconvarted friends! Don't ye hear the waves a comin' in? They're a rollin' swift and sure! They're a rollin' in sure as death! Run for the Ark! Run for the Ark!" Now, there was in Wallencamp a literal Ark, otherwise this exhortation would have lacked its most convincing force and significance. But Aunt Sibylla paused. Among the usually restless audience, there was a moment of almost breathless suspense. Not half a mile away, behind a strip of cedar woods, we could plainly hear the surf rolling in from the bay, breaking hard against the shore with its awful, monotonous moan, moan, moan. My heart was already faint with home-sickness. The effect of that waiting moment was as sombre as anything I had ever experienced. Much to my distaste, I found myself sympathizing with the vague terror and unrest around me. I can hear it still, the voice that then rose, singing, through the sullen gloom of the school-room, a strangely sweet and rapturous voice--Madeline's. I learned to know it well afterwards. I listened with rapt surprise to the pathos with which it thrilled the simple words of the song:-- "Shall we meet beyond the River, Where the surges cease to roll, Where, in all the bright forever, Sorrow ne'er shall press the soul?" A keenly responsive chord had been touched in the simple, agitated breasts of the Wallencampers, and they joined in the chorus--those rough people--not with their usual reckless exuberance of tone, but plaintively, tremblingly even, as though, whatever the words, they would make of them a prayer in which to hide some secret doubt or longing of their souls. "Shall we meet, shall we meet, Shall we meet beyond the River?" The strain was repeated with a most pathetic quaver in the rendering, and then big Captain Sartell broke down, with a helpless gulp in his voice, and I, who believed myself of too superior and refined a nature to be moved by such tawdry sentiment, was further dismayed to feel the tears gathering fast in my own eyes. After the meeting, on the school-house steps, the big Captain, as if to atone for any unmanly exhibition of feeling into which he might have been betrayed inside, took little Bachelor Lot up by the shoulders, and gently and playfully held him suspended in mid-air, while he put to him the following riddle:-- "I'll wager a quarter, on a good, squar' guess, Bachelder. Why is--why air Aunt Sibby's remarks like this 'ere peninshaler, eh, Bachelder?" "Because--ahem!--because they're always a runnin' to a p'int, eh?" inquired the keen little bachelor. "No, by thunder!" exclaimed the discomfited Captain, setting the magician down promptly. "As near as I calk'late," he continued, endeavoring to resume his former air of cool and reckless raillery; "as near as I calk'late, Bachelder,--yes, sir, as near as I calk'late,--it's--it's--by thunder! it's because they're both liable to squalls in fa'r weather!" Amazed, and almost frightened at the unexpected brilliancy of his evil success, the Captain yet kept a rueful and furtive eye on the little bachelor. Bachelor Lot coughed slightly and smiled. "Very true," he drawled, cheerfully, in his small, thin voice; "I'm--ahem!--I'm not a married man myself, you know, Captain. However," he added; "you should have given me another try. I had the correct answer on my tongue's end." During this brief exchange between the stars of the Wallencamp debate ground, murmurs of appreciative applause arose from the group of bystanders, and "Pretty tight pinch for you, Captain!" and "Three cheers for Bachelder! ye can't git ahead of Bachelder!" sprang delightedly from lip to lip. Aunt Sibylla had scented from within this buoyant resumption of the Wallencamp mirth, and now appeared on the scene, bearing a burning lantern in her hand. She first turned the glare of its full orb on the late sin-convicted Captain, who stood revealed with a guilty grin frozen helplessly on his alarmed features, and next directed the beams of disclosing justice towards the form of the little bachelor, who, with too pronounced meekness, was engaged in readjusting the collar of his coat. "At it ag'in!" Aunt Sibylla exclaimed, with slow and cutting emphasis. "At it ag'in! I do believe you're all possessed of the devil!" Then, with one sweep of the lantern, she took a comprehensive survey of the shivering group, and passed on without another word, while in the breast of every guilty Wallencamper then present there rested a deep sense of merited condemnation. Aunt Sibylla was soon followed by the other lantern-bearers, who dispersed homeward, along the four roads diverging from the school-house, and, the night being starless, the children of the darkness followed meekly in their wake. The longest route lay before those who took the River Road leading to the Indian Encampment. Bachelor Lot was the hindmost in this receding column. Bachelor Lot, though too withered and brown of visage to afford immediate enlightenment as to his species, was held to be of unquestionable white descent. Yet he kept house, alone, at the Indian Encampment. Then there was the Stony Hill Road, up which a few pilgrims toiled; and the Cross Lot Road to the beach--thither went the Barlows. Last of all, there was the Lane, and it was somewhat in the rear of the lane procession that I musingly wended my way, led by the beams of Grandma Keeler's slowly swaying lantern. I was the Wallencamp school-teacher. I had come to "this rock-bound coast," imagining myself impelled by much the same necessity as that which fired the bosoms of the earlier pilgrims. Not that I had been restricted in respect to religious privileges, but I sought for a true independence of life and aim; and furthermore, it should be said, I had come to Wallencamp on a mission. "On a mission!" how the thought had tickled my fancy and roused my warmest enthusiasm but a few short days before! Indeed, I had not been yet a week in Wallencamp, and now, as I walked up the lane in a mood quite the reverse of enthusiastic, I was painfully trying to gather from my small and scattered sources of information what the exact meaning of the phrase might be. I had entered on the performance of my errand to Wallencamp under circumstances not usual, perhaps, among propagandists; nevertheless, I had been singularly free from misgivings. A girl of nineteen years, I had a home endowed with every luxury; a circle of family acquaintance, which, I admitted, did me great credit; congenial companions; while as for my education, I was pleased to call it completed. My career at boarding-schools had been of a delightfully varied and elective nature, for I had not deigned to toil with squalid studiousness, or even to sail with politic and inglorious ease through the prescribed course of study at any institution. Any misadventures necessarily following from this course my friends had gilded over with the flattering insinuation that I was "too vivacious" for this sort of discipline, or "too fragile" for that, though I am bound to say that, in such cases, my "vivacity" had generally sealed my fate before the delicacy of my constitution became too alarmingly apparent. I had, to be sure, a few commendable aspirations, but I had started out fresh so many times with them only to see them meet the same end! Though not by nature of a self-depreciatory turn of mind, I had occasional flashes of inspiration, to the effect that, in spite of the soft flattery of friends, I really was amounting to very little after all. It was in a mood induced by one of these supernatural gleams that I stood on one occasion, leaning a pair of very plump arms on the graveyard wall, looking wistfully over into the place of tombs, and thinking how nice it would be to have done forever with the fret and turmoil of life! And it was at such a time, too, that I received from a school friend, Mary Waite, the letter which was the moving cause of my mission to Wallencamp. Mary Waite, by the way, was one of those "prosy, ridiculous girls"--so I had been compelled to classify her, although I was secretly troubled by a sincere admiration of her virtues,--who had made it an absorbing pursuit of her school-days to probe her text-books for useful information, and was also accustomed to defer to her teachers as high authority on matters of daily discipline. She was not in "our set." She was poor, and studious, and obedient, yet a friendship had sprung up between her and me, and I was moved to forgive her the, in many respects, grovelling tendencies of her nature. I even ascended occasionally to her room on the fourth floor to shock her with my sentiments, when there was nothing livelier going on. She wrote:-- "MY DEAR S----: Are you still perfectly happy, as you used to try to have me think you were always--the old restlessness, the better longings unsatisfied, do they never come up again? [That was Mary's insidious way of stating a difficulty.] Don't you believe you would be happier to _do_ something in real earnest? Something for people _outside_, I mean. [I flushed a little at that. An insinuation of that sort can't be put too delicately.] I have tried to imagine how the proposal I am going to make will strike you--but never mind. I am teaching, you know, in Kedarville. I leave here, at the close of the term, for another field of labor, and now I want you to apply for the Kedarville school. Yes, it is a remote, poverty-stricken place. It contains no society, no church, no library, not even a little country store! It would seem to you, I dare say, like going back to the half-barbarous conditions of life. The people are simple and kind-hearted; but they need training--oh, how much!--physically, mentally, and morally. I can assure you, here is scope for the most daring missionary enterprise, and you,--I believe that you could do it if you would. Consider the matter seriously; consult with your friends about it, and if you do decide to try the experiment, write as legibly as you possibly can to the Superintendent of Schools, Farmouth, Mass., stating your qualifications, etc." The idea struck me with such strange and immediate favor that I quite forbore to consult with my friends in regard to it. I resolved to go on the instant, and wrote my friend Mary to that effect, congratulating her, with an undercurrent of mischievous intention, on having been the happy means of setting my powers drifting in the right direction at last; and reproached her gently with having seemed to imply, once, in her letter, some occult reason why I had not been regarded, heretofore as specially designed to work in the cause of missions, whereas I had always felt myself drifting inevitably towards that end. I wrote to the Superintendent of the Farmouth schools. But here I had an earnest purpose to serve, and a real desire to succeed, and here met with a difficulty. I had not the art of presenting my earnest purposes in the most assuring and credible manner. They _would_ wear, in spite of me, an uneasy air of novelty; yet I aimed nobly. I dilated largely on some of the evils existing in the present system of education, and hinted at reforms not yet meditated by the world at large; but skilfully forgot to mention my own qualifications. On reading the letter over, I was astonished at the flattering nature of the result, and, with the buoyant pride of one who believes he has suddenly discovered a new resource in himself, I sent a copy of my application to Mary Waite. She answered in the language of sorrowful reproach:-- "Oh, S., how could you?" I was forced to conclude that, as usual, I had somehow made a misstep, and sought to conceal my mortification as best I might, by persuading myself and my friend that I had only regarded the matter as a joke all through. Nevertheless, I was bitterly disappointed. What was my surprise, then, a few days afterwards, to receive this communication from the Superintendent of Schools:-- "You are accepted to fill the position of teacher in the Kedarville school." Then followed terse directions as to the best way of reaching Kedarville, and, finally: "Mrs. Philander Keeler will board you for two Dollars and fifty cents per week." As I read this last clause everything that had made a sudden tumult in my mind before was lulled into a mysterious calm. It was not the low value set upon the means of subsistence in Kedarville. Mercenary motives were, with me, as yet out of the question. It was not the oppressive charm of Mrs. Philander Keeler's name that affected me so strangely. It was the expressive combination of the whole, at once so clear cut and unique. I murmured it softly to myself on my way home from the Post-office. "Han," said I, quite gravely, to my elder sister on entering the house; "Mrs. Philander Keeler will board me for two dollars and fifty cents per week:" and handed her the letter in pensive, though triumphant, confirmation of my words. "When did you do this?" she gasped, and, before I could answer, "how are you going to get out of it?" she faintly demanded. "Simply by getting into it, my dear," I answered, with that unyielding sweetness of demeanor for which I fancied I had ever been distinguished in the family circle. I began to make my preparations for departure without delay. Tender remonstrances, studied expostulations, were alike of no avail, and they helped me to pack, finally--those dear good people at home--putting as brave a face as they could upon it, and hoping for the best. My father assured my mother, though with trembling lip and tearful eye, that "God would temper the wind to the shorn lamb." I smiled at the part I was meant to play in this cheerful allegory, though it seemed to me rather inappropriate, as I had a new sealskin cloak that very winter. At the last I gathered from the new and sprightlier form which the family submissiveness assumed, as well as from certain inadvertent disclosures of Bridget's, that I was confidently expected home again "in the course of a week or two." And I thereupon doubly confirmed myself in the resolve to see this thing through or die in the attempt. I cannot define the motives which actuated me at this time. They do not appear to have flowed in a clear and pellucid stream. I discover a thirst for the surprising and experimental, for situations, dilemmas, and emergencies, sustained by the most sublime recklessness as to consequences. Then I see a dread of sinking into humdrum--the impulse never to be at rest; deeper than all this, I find a secret dissatisfaction with myself, a vague longing to use the best that is in me to some true purpose; a desire to leave the tangled skein, and "begin all over again." It was early in January when I set out on my mission to the distant shores of Cape Cod. It was also, I remember, very early in the morning, and John Cable occupied a seat in the car. I had reason to know that John shared in the family disapproval of my sublime conduct. He sat, looking very glum behind his paper, and appeared not to notice me when I came in. Having finished reading his paper, he gnawed his moustache and gazed, still with glaring unconsciousness of my presence, out of the window. But as we neared Hartford, where I was to take the train for Boston, he came over to where I sat. "I hope you'll enjoy yourself at Sandy Creek this winter," he said. Now, I knew that John had designed this as sarcasm the most scathing, but he was himself conscious of failure, and the thought filled him with deeper gloom. He sought to reveal his baffled intentions in a scowl, which lent to his manly and intelligent features the darkness of spiritual night. And I replied, that "the recollection of his face, as it then appeared to me, would be in itself an inspiration through all the days to come." There was silence for a space, and then John continued:-- "Have you found it on the map, yet?" "What, please?" "Kedarville!" with bitter emphasis. "Oh! certainly not." "It may be a little island out there somewhere, you know," delivered with the effect of a masterpiece. "Yes; or a lighthouse, possibly." I saw that John wished he had thought of that himself. He became dejected again. Then, presently, he threw oil the cloak of bitterness which sat so ill on him, and, resuming his usual kindliness and benignity of manner, succeeded in making himself unconsciously tantalizing. "If you do find it," he said; "and if you--if you conclude to stay for any length of time, I think I will go down some time this winter and hunt you up." "If you do, John Cable," I answered, with unaccountable warmth; "I'll never forgive you as long as I live--never." At Hartford, John took the train for Boston, too. We were very old friends. Latterly, we had read Shakespeare together at the Newtown Literary Club. We concluded not to quarrel for the rest of the way. I had an influx of gay spirits, and John was almost without exception "nice." There were several hours to wait in Boston before the train on the Old Colony road would go out. We had dinner (I little realized how long it would be before I should eat again), and John tamely suggested driving about to look at some of the places of interest. I assured him that there was nothing so dispiriting as looking at places of interest, and he answered, cheerfully, after some moments of thought, that we could "shut our eyes when we went by them, then." I had reason to dread a decline of spirits. Mine were rapidly on the wane. By the time we stopped at the Old Colony _dépôt_ they were low, indeed. And the hardest of all was, that I would not, for my life, let my companion know. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and already quite dark. The atmosphere was heavy and chill; the sky ominous with clouds. I had an unknown journey yet to take in search of an unknown destination. The car into which I got on the Cape-bound train was dismal and weird-seeming enough. "I wish, if you must go, you would let me see you to the end of this," said John. I answered, laughing, with an unnecessary tinge of defiance in my tone. It would have been so much easier to cry. I thought, "If John would only try to look cross again!" as he did in the morning--anything but that expression of grieved and compassionate disapproval with which he sat, talking so earnestly to me, for the last few moments in that dark car. I thought he was cruel. He was trying to make me _think_ and I was trying so hard _not_ to think! I felt a childish desire to scream out. Then, when the signal for starting rang, and John took my hand an instant, in parting, looking down at me with his kind, familiar eyes, the impulse swept up strong within me to beg him to take me out of that dreadful car and take me back home, and I would be good, oh, so good, and "prosy," yes, and "humdrum," and never ask to go on any more missions to forlorn pieces of land sticking out into the water. So there must have been a wild extravagance in the airy recklessness of tone with which I bade John "good-bye." A sense of utter helplessness came over me as he turned and went out. I observed, particularly, but two passengers in the car. One was a man, very much bandaged as to his head, who sat gazing into the coal-stove, which occupied the centre of the car, with weakly meditative, burnt-out eyes. The other was a girl, occupying the seat directly in front of me. She might have been nine years old, but she had a singularly faded and mature countenance. As the train started, she turned to me with some excitement:-- "There!" said she, pointing towards the window; "your beau's walking off! He's walking fast! He ain't looking back!" "Thank you," said I, in a low, expressionless tone, not intended as an inducement to further conversation. This girl had a parcel of confectionery, the contents of which she occasionally took out, and ranged in a row on the window ledge, selecting therefrom the smallest and least inviting fragment, and having eaten it with the hasty air of one who treats herself under protest to the luscious prerogatives of childhood, put the rest back in the paper-bag, carefully replacing the string every time. She selected and handed to me the very largest specimen in her collection, which I had the gracelessness to refuse, though without show of disgust. Afterwards she asked if she might come and sit in the seat with me. I thought she was very disagreeable. Besides, I was so miserable I wanted to commune apart with my own loneliness. However, I made room for her. She proceeded to confide to me all of her past history. She was returning home from a visit to her aunt. Her mother had died a good many years ago, "when Johnnie was a mere baby." She "kept house for father, and took care of Johnnie." She "tried hard not to have father feel his loss. It was very hard," she added, gravely, "for a man to be left alone so." She had bought a little book for Johnnie, but she never had much time to read; besides she wasn't quick to learn. She could pick the words out, to be sure, but, somehow, it didn't make good sense, and would I read the book to her? Oh, to take counsel of my own despair! How dark and wild it was growing outside! Where was I going? whom should I meet there? And so I read, at the foot of gorgeously-illuminated pages, how-- "Henny Penny and Ducky Lucky got started for the fair, When Goosie Poosie and Turkey Lurkey went out to view the air," etc., the range of characters swiftly widening as the narrative increased in power. To my surprise, the mature child listened to this nonsense with the utmost gravity and interest. No shadow of derision played on her attentive features. When I had finished--it was soon finished--she said:-- "Oh, that sounded so good; it made such good sense," and sighed, very wistfully. "Do you want me to read it again?" I exclaimed, in despair. _Would_ I read it again? she asked. I read it again. After that she was silent and thoughtful for some time. Then she said, looking gravely into my face:-- "Do you love Jesus?" "No, my dear," said I, surprised into much gentleness. The faded blue eyes filled with tears. She had no notion of harassing me on the subject, but spoke quietly and at length of her own religious convictions. The east wind crept in through the window, and once my little companion shivered. I noticed that she was rather thinly clad. I unstrapped my shawl and wrapped it around her. She let her head fall at my side, and went to sleep. Slowly, I was constrained to draw her up closer and put my arm around her as support. In so doing, I received from some source an unaccountable strength and calm of spirit. At Braintree, which the child had told me was her home, I woke her up, and she got off. I was to stop at West Wallen, the railway station least remote from Kedarville, and expected there to meet Mrs. Philander Keeler, or some member of that mysterious family, to convey me to Wallencamp. It seemed as though the train had had time to travel the whole interminable length of the Cape, and plunge off into the ocean beyond, when, in fact, we were just entering upon that peculiar body of land at West Wallen. There was no one there to meet me. The little _dépôt_ was held by a strange night brigade of boys and girls, playing "blind-man's buff." They shouted like cannibals, and bore down on all opposing objects with resistless force. I did not attempt an entrance. A rough, good-natured looking man stood on the platform outside. I put on my glasses (I was sadly and unaffectedly near-sighted), and having further assured myself of his seeming honesty, inquired if there was such a place as Kedarville in the vicinity. "Waal, no, miss, thar' ain't," said he, with a noonday smile, which informed me that there was yet something to hope for. "Thar's no _Kedarville_ that I know on. Thar's a Wallencamp some miles up yender. We don't often tackle no Sunday go-to-meeting names on to it, but I reckon, maybe, it's the same you're a-lookin' for." He had spoken with such startling indefiniteness of the distance that I asked him how far it was to Wallencamp. "Waal, thar' you've got me," said he, beaming on me in a broadly complimentary way, as though I had actually circumvented him in some skilful play at words. "Fact is, thar' ain't never been no survey run down in that direction that I know on. We call it four miles, more or less. That's Cape Cod measure--means most anythin' lineal measure. Talkin' 'bout Cape Cod miles," he continued, with an irresistible air of raillery; "little Bachelder Lot lives up thar' to Wallencamp, and they don't have no church nor nothin' thar', so Bachelder and some on 'em they come up here, once in a while, ter Sunday-school. Deacon Lancy, he'd rather see the Old Boy comin' into Sunday-school class any time than Bachelder; for he's quiet, the little bachelder is, but dry as a herrin'. So the Deacon thought he'd stick him on distances. The Deacon is a great stickler on distances. "'How fur, Bachelder,' says he, 'did Adam and Eve go when they was turned out of the garden of Eden?' says he. "'Waal,' says Bachelder, coughing a little, so--that's Bachelder's way o' talking--'we have sufficient reason to eenfer, Deacon, that, in all probabeelity, they went a _Ceape Cod mile_.'" My informant's delight at this reminiscence was huge. It yielded to a more subdued sense of the ludicrous when I asked him if there was any public conveyance to Wallencamp. He made a polite effort to restrain his mirth, but the muscles of his face twitched violently. "Waal, no, miss," said he; "we don't run no reg'lar express up to Wallencamp; might be a very healthy oc'pation, but not as lukertive as some, I reckon--not as lukertive as pickin' 'tater-bugs: that's what they do, mostly, down thar'. Fact is, miss," he concluded, with considerable gravity; "we don't vary often go down to Wallencamp unless we're obliged to." On my proposing to make it lucrative, he immediately called, in a loud voice, to one of the playful occupants of the _dépôt_: "Hi, thar!' 'Rasmus! 'Rasmus! Here's a lady wants to be conveyed down to Wallencamp; you run home and tackle, now! You be lively, now!" 'Rasmus was lively. In a very few moments something of an unusual and ghostly appearance--so much only I could discover of what afterwards became a very familiar sort of vehicle--was waiting for me alongside the platform. The only means of getting into it was through an opening directly in front. Towards this I was encouraged to climb over the thills, but met with an obstacle, in the form of my trunk, which seemed effectually to block up the entrance. "Thar', now! I told ye so," exclaimed one of the bystanders, a large number of whom had mysteriously gathered about the scene. "You'd orter got _her_ in first." A disconsolate silence prevailed. The trunk had been elevated to its present position through the most painful exertions. "Perhaps I can climb over it," I said, and bravely made the attempt. No one knew, in the voiceless darkness, of the suddenly helpless and collapsed condition in which I landed on the other side. I groped about for a seat, and finally succeeded in finding one at the extreme rear of the vehicle. 'Rasmus drove. He was situated somewhere, somehow--I could not tell where nor how--in the realm of vacancy on the other side of the trunk; I only know that he seemed a long way off. Under these circumstances conversation was rendered extremely difficult. I learned that Mr. Philander Keeler was away at sea; that Mrs. Philander Keeler lived at the _Ark_, with Cap'n and Grandma Keeler, and the two little Keelers. 'Rasmus was the unmistakable son of his father. "And it ain't no _got-up_ ark, neither!" he yelled at me, in a tone which pierced through the distance and the darkness, and every intervening obstacle. "It's the reg'lar old _Ark_! It's what Noer, and the elephant, and them fellows come over in!" I did not wonder, as we journeyed on, that my informant of the _dépôt_ platform had used his "ups" and "downs" indiscriminately in indicating the direction of Wallencamp. In the inky blackness by which I was surrounded I was conscious, clearly, of but one sensation--that of going _up_ and _down_. The rumbling of the wheels reached me as something far off and indefinably dreadful. Then we stopped, and I crawled out like one in a dream. There was no light at the Ark to make it a distinguishable feature of the gloom. 'Rasmus found the door and knocked loudly. I became dimly conscious of the knocking, and followed 'Rasmus. "I reckon they're to bed," said he, and knocked louder. Pretty soon a clear, feminine voice, startled into musical sharpness, issued from a room quite near, with--"Who's there?" and was followed by two small, squealing voices, in unison,--"Who's there?" Then other sounds arose--sounds from some quarter mysterious and remote--low, mumbling, comfortable refrain, and ominous snatches of an uneasy grumble; then a roar that shook the Ark to its foundations:-- "Who the devil's making such a rumpus out there at this time in the mornin'?" (It was nine o'clock P.M.) 'Rasmus sent back an intrepid yell:-- "It's the _tea-cher_! It's pretty late," he said, aside, to me. "I guess I won't go in. I reckon they won't have much style on. I seen ye pay father; that's all right. I'll tip yer trunk up under the shed, and the old Cap'n 'll see to gettin' it in in the mornin'. Here's a letter the postmaster sent down to the Cap'n's folks. Good night." 'Rasmus, my only hope! I made a convulsive grasp for him in the darkness, but he was gone. It was she of the soothing, comfortable voice who took me in; and Grandma Keeler's _taking in_ I understand always in the divinest and fullest sense of the term. Further than that, I was conscious that there were white-robed and nightcapped figures moving about the room. So unearthly was their appearance that I had, at last, a confused notion of having become disengaged from the entanglements of the flesh, and fallen in with a small planetary system in the course of my wanderings through space. The centre of attraction seemed to be a table, to which the figures were constantly bringing more _pies_. The letter which 'Rasmus had directed me to hand to the "folks" was read with interest, being the one I had dispatched from Newtown, a week or two before, informing them as to the time of my arrival. Madeline rendered the brief and business-like epistle with the full effect of her peculiarly thrilling intonation, and Grandma listened with rapt attention; but, meanwhile, Grandpa Keeler and the two little Keelers found time surreptitiously to dispose of nearly a whole pie, with the serious aspect of those who will not allow a mere fleeting diversion to hinder them in the improvement of a rare opportunity. Having declined to partake of pie, through Grandma Keeler's kind interposition, I was not further urged. "Thar', poor darlin'," said she; "fix her up a good cup o' your golden seal, pa, and she shall go to bed right in the parlor to-night, seem' as we didn't get the letter, and hain't got her room fixed upstairs. It's all nice and warm, and thar', darlin', thar', we're r'al good for nussin' folks up." In the parlor, I saw only one great, delicious object--a bed. My weary brain hardly exaggerated its dimensions, which could not have failed to strike with astonishment even the most indifferent observer. It was long; it was broad; it was deep; and, alas! it was high, I disrobed as best I might, and stood before it, gazing despairingly up at its snowy summit. Then, remembering my experience with the trunk, I approached at one extreme, scaled the headboard, fell over into an absorbing sea of feathers, and, at that very instant it seemed, the perplexing nature of mortal affairs ceased to burden my mind. CHAPTER II. I BLOW THE HORN. Morning dawned on my mission to Wallencamp. My wakening was not an Enthusiastic one. Slowly my bewildered vision became fixed on an object on the wall opposite, as the least fantastic amid a group of objects. It was a sketch in water-colors of a woman in an expansive hoop and a skirt of brilliant hue, flounced to the waist. She stood with a singularly erect and dauntless front, over a grave on which was written "Consort." I observed, with a childlike wonder, which concealed no latent vein of criticism, the glowing carmine of her cheeks, the unmixed blue of her pupilless eyes, from a point exactly in the centre of which a geometric row of tears curved to the earth. A weeping willow--somewhat too green, alas!--drooped with evident reluctance over the scene, but cast no shade on its contrasting richness. The title of the piece was "_Bereavement_" By some strange means, it served as the pole-star to my wandering thoughts. As I gazed and wondered my life took on again a definite form and purpose. The events of the preceding day rose in gradual succession before me, and I proceeded to descend from the heights I had scaled the night before. [Illustration: DAVID ROLLIN INSULTS LUTHER.] I looked at my watch. It was eight o'clock, and school should begin at nine. Yet the occasion witnessed no feverish display of haste on my part, I saw that the difficulties which I was destined to endure in the Performance of my toilet that morning called either for philosophy or madness. I chose philosophy. The portion of the Ark surrounding my bed was cut up into little recesses, crannies, nooks,--used, presumably, for storing the different pairs of animals in the trying events which preceded the Flood. In one of these, I had a dim recollection of having secreted my clothes, in the disordered condition of my brain the night before. So I cast desultory glances about me for these articles on the way, having first set out on a search for a looking-glass. In one dark recess I came into forcible contact with a hanging-shelf of pies. I thought what a moment that would have been for Grandpa Keeler and the little Keelers! but I had been brought up on hygienic, as well as moral, principles, and moved away without a sigh. In another sequestered nook, I paused with a sinful mixture of curiosity and delight, before a Chinese idol standing alone on a pedestal. There was a strangeness and a newness about things at the Ark that began to be exhilarating, I was reminded, in a negative sort of way, that I had intended to begin my work on this new day with a prayer to the true God for strength and assistance. I had found it necessary to make this resolve because, although I had a "fixed habit of prayer," it was reserved rather for occasions of special humiliation than resorted to as an everyday indulgence; practically, I had well nigh dispensed with it altogether. However, I started back in an intently serious frame of mind to find my couch. I lost my way, and stumbling against a swinging-door which opened into a comparatively spacious apartment, what was my joy to discover my trunk, with the portmanteau containing my keys on top of it. I then proceeded to array myself with an absorbing ardor and devotion, doing my hair before a hand-glass with rare resignation of spirit. I began to feel more and more like an incorporated existence, and admitted a sudden eagerness to join the Keeler family at breakfast. I had no hesitation which direction to take, being guided by the sound of voices and wafts of penetrating odors. It was a fortunate direction, for I discovered on the way my lost apparel artfully concealed under a small melodeon, and, strangely enough, I was again brought face to face with my deserted couch and the weeping lady on the wall. She held me a moment with the old fascination. As I put up my glasses, I thought I detected in her face a hitherto unnoticed buoyancy of expression and not having wholly escaped in my life from ideas of a worldly nature, I reflected that, probably, her regretted consort had left her with a sufficient number of thousands. In this same connection, I was reminded that I, myself, had started out on an independent career, and wondered if it would be unkind or undutiful in me to start a private bank account of my own. I concluded that it would not. When I entered the little room where the Keeler family was assembled:-- "Why, here's our teacher!" exclaimed Grandma Keeler in accents of delight, and came to meet me with outstretched arms. "We couldn't abear to wake ye up, dearie," she went on, "knowin' ye was so tired this mornin'; and there's plenty o' time--plenty o' time. My Casindana come home!" she murmured, with a smile and a tremble of the lips, and a far-away look, for the instant, in her gentle eyes. In fact, the whole Keeler family received me with outstretched arms. If I had been a long-lost child, or a friend known and loved in days gone by, I could not have been more cordially and enthusiastically welcomed. The best chair was set for me; glances of eager and inquiring interest were bent upon me. I accepted it all coolly, though not without a certain air of affability, too, for I had a natural desire to make myself agreeable to people, when it wasn't too much trouble; but I was quite firm, at this time, in the conviction that there was little or no faith to be put in human nature. On the whole I was much entertained and interested. The two children came to climb into my lap, but this part of the acquaintance did not progress very fast. I thought they must have been struck by something in my eye (I was merely wondering abstractedly if their heads were not out of proportion to the rest of their bodies), for they paused, and Mrs. Philander called them away sharply. Mrs. Philander was a frail little woman,--she could not have been over thirty or thirty-two years old,--not pretty, though she had a very airy and graceful way of comporting herself. Her eyes were large and dark, with a strange, melancholy gleam in them. I never knew the secrets of Mrs. Philanders heart. She had often a tired, tense look about the mouth, and seemed often sorely discontent; but she had the sweetest voice I ever heard. She was familiarly called Madeline. Grandpa or Cap'n Keeler was over eighty years old. He had a tall, powerful frame--at least, it spoke of great power in the past--and I thought his eye must have been uncommonly dark and keen once. From his manly irascibility of temperament, and his frequent would-be authoritativeness of tone, one might have inferred, from a passing glimpse, that Grandpa Keeler was something of a tyrant in the family; but I soon learned that his sway was of an extremely vague and illusory nature. Grandma Keeler was twenty years his junior. She had not married him until she was herself quite advanced in life, and had had one husband. "To be sure," I heard her say once, "I ain't quite so far advanced as husband, but, then, it don't make no difference how young the girl is, you know." She used to sit down and laugh--one of Grandma's "r'al good laughs" was incompatible with a standing posture--until the tears rolled down her cheeks, and she had to wipe them off with the corner of her apron. She had been thrown from a wagon once--how often and thrillingly have I heard dear Grandma Keeler relate the particulars of that accident! She had broken at that time, I believe, nearly every bone in her body. Long was the story of her fall, but longer still the tale of her recuperation. In due course of time, she had grown together again; could now use all her limbs, and was in superabundant flesh. There was an unnatural sort of stiffness about her movements, however, her way of walking particularly. She advanced but slowly, and allowed her weight to fall from one foot to Another without any perceptible bend of any joint whatever. I have stood at one end of a room and seen Grandma Keeler approaching from the other, when it seemed as though she was not making any progress at all, but merely going through with an odd sort of balancing process in order to maintain her equilibrium. As for Grandma Keeler's face, there was enough in it to make several ordinary scrimped faces. Besides large physical proportions, there was enough in it of generosity, enough of whole-heartedness, a world of sympathy. The great catastrophe of her life had affected the muscles of her face so that although she enunciated her words very distinctly, she had a slow, automatic way of moving her lips. The room where the breakfast-table was set was the same that I had entered first, on my arrival at Wallencamp. It was low and small, but capable, as I learned afterward, of holding any amount of things and people without ever seeming crowded. There was a cooking-stove in it, and many other articles of modest worth, so artlessly scattered about as to present a scene of the wildest and richest profusion. Art was not entirely wanting, however. There was a ray of it on the wall behind the stove-pipe, the companion-piece to "Bereavement," entitled "Joy," and represented my heroine of the bed-chamber, reclining on a rustic bench in rather an unflounced and melancholy condition. In one place there hung a yellow family register, which was kept faithfully supplied from week to week with a wreath of fresh evergreens. It was headed by a woodcut representing a funeral, Grandma Keeler said; but Grandpa Keeler afterwards informed me, aside, with much solemnity, that it was a "marriage ceremony." Near the foot of the list of births, marriages and deaths, I saw "Casindana Keeler; died, aged twenty." We sat down at the table. There was a brief altercation between Dinslow and Grace, the little Keelers, in which impromptu missiles, such as spoons and knives and small tin-cups, were hurled across the table with unguided wrath, and both infants yelled furiously. Grandma had nearly succeeded in quieting them, when Madeline remarked to Grandpa Keeler, in her lively and flippant style:-- "Come, pa, say your piece." "How am I going to say anything?" inquired Grandpa, wrathfully, "in such a bedlam?" "Thar', now, thar'!" said Grandma Keeler, in her soothing tone; "It's all quiet now and time we was eatin' breakfast, so ask the blessin', pa, and don't let's have no more words about it." Whereupon the old sea-captain bowed his head, and, with a decided touch of asperity still lingering in his voice, sped through the lines:-- "God bless the food which now we take; May it do us good, for Jesus' sake." "Now, Dinnie," said Grandma Keeler, beguilingly; but it was not until after much coaxing and threatening, and the promise of a spoonful of sugar when it was over, that Dinslow was induced to solicit the same blessing, in the same poetical terms, and with an expedition still more alarming. Then Gracie, with tears not yet dried from the late conflict, lifted up her voice in a rapture of miniature delight; "Dinnie says, 'gobble the food'! Dinnie says, 'gobble the food!'" "Didn't say 'gobble the food!'" exclaimed Dinslow, blacker than a little thunder-cloud. Madeline anticipated the rising storm, and stamped her foot and cried: "_Will_ you be still?" It was Grandma Keeler who quietly and adroitly restored peace to the troubled waters. The Wallencampers, including the Keeler family, were not accustomed to speak of bread as a compact and staple article of food, but rather as one of the hard means of sustaining existence represented by the term "hunks." At the table, it was not "will you pass me the bread?" but--and I shall never forget the sweet tunefulness of Madeline's tone in this connection--"Will you hand me a hunk?" The hunks were an unleavened mixture of flour and water, about the size and consistency of an ordinary laborer's fist. I was impressed, in first sitting down at the Keelers' table, with a sense of my own ignorance as to the most familiar details of life, but soon learned to speak confidently of "hunks," and "fortune stew," and "slit herrin'," and "golden seal." Fortune stew was a dish of small, round blue potatoes, served perfectly whole in a milk gravy. I cherish the memory of this dish as sacred, as well as that of all the other dishes that ever appeared on the Wallencamp table. They were the products of faithful and loving hands to which nature had given a peculiar direction, perhaps, but which strove always to the best of their ability. Slit herrin' was a long-dried, deep-salted edition of the native alewife, a fish in which Wallencamp abounded. They hung in massive tiers from the roofs of the Wallencamp barns. The herrin' was cut open, and without having been submitted to any mollifying process whatever, not one assuaging touch of its native element, was laid flat in the spider, and fried. I saw the Keeler family, from the greatest to the least, partake of this arid and rasping substance unblinkingly, and I partook also. The brine rose to my eyes and coursed its way down my cheeks, and Grandma Keeler said I was "homesick, poor thing!" The golden seal, a "remedy for toothache, headache, sore-throat, sprains, etc., etc.," was served in a diluted state with milk and sugar, and taken as a beverage. The herrin' had destroyed my sense of taste; anything in a liquid state was alike delectable to me, and while I drank, I had a sense of having become somehow mysteriously connected with the book of revelations. "We used to think," Grandma proceeded mildly to elucidate, "that it had ought to be took externally, but husband, he was painin' around one time, and nothin' didn't seem to do him no good, and so we ventured some of it inside of him, and he didn't complain no more for a great while afterwards." I appreciated the hidden meaning of these words when I saw how sparingly Grandpa Keeler partook of the golden seal. "So then we tried some of it ourselves, and ra'ly begun to like it, so we've got into the habit of drinkin' it along through the winter, it's so quietin', and may not be no special need of it, so far as we can see, but then, it's allus well enough to be on the safe side, for there's no knowin'," concluded Grandma, solemnly, "what disease may be a growin' up inside of you." "My brother invented on't," said Grandpa Keeler, looking up at me from under his shaggy eyebrows with questionable pride. He went on more glowingly, however; "There's a picter of my brother on every bottle, teacher." (Madeline immediately ran from her chair, went into an adjoining room, and brought out a bottle to show me.) "Ye see, he used to wear them air long ringlets, though he was a powerful man, John was; but his hair curled as pretty as a girl's. Oh, he was a great dandy, John was; a great dandy." Grandpa Keeler straightened himself up and his eyes brightened perceptibly. "Never wore nothin' but the finest broadcloth; why, there's a pair of black broadcloth pants o' his'n that you'll see, come Sunday, teacher!" "Wall, thar', now, pa," said Grandma Keeler, reprovingly; "I wouldn't tell everything." "Le' me see," continued Grandpa; "I had eight brothers, teacher, yis, yis, there was nine boys in all," nodding his head emphatically, and proceeding to count on his fingers. Grandma Keeler laid her knife and fork aside, as though she felt that the occasion was an important one, and that she had a grave duty to perform in regard to it. "Thar' was Philemon, he comes first, that makes one, don't it? and there was Doddridge-- "Sure he comes next, pa?" interposed Grandma; "for now you're namin' of em, you might as well git 'em right." "Yis, yis, ma," replied the old man, hastily. "Then there was Winfield and John, they're all dead now, and Bartholomew, he was first mate in a sailin' vessel; fine man, Bartholomew was, fine man; he----" "Wall, thar' now," said Grandma; "you'll never git through namin' on 'em, pa, if you stop to talk about 'em." "Yis, yis," continued Grandpa, hopelessly confused, and showing dark symptoms of smouldering wrath; "there was Bartholomew. That makes a,--le' me see, Bartholomew,----" "How many Bartholomews was there?" inquired Grandma, with pitiless coolness of demeanor. "Thar', now, ma, ye've put me all out!" cried Grandpa, taking refuge in loud and desperate reproach; "I was gettin' along first-rate; why couldn't ye a kept still and let me reckoned 'em through?" "Yer musn't blame me, pa, 'cause yer can't carry yer own brothers in yer head." There was a touch of gentle reproach in Grandma's calm voice. "Why, there was my mother's cousin 'Statia, that was only second cousin to me, and no relation at all, on my father's side, and she had thirteen children, three of 'em was twins and one of 'em was thrins, and I could name 'em all through, and tell you what year they was born, and what day, and who vaccinated 'em. There was Amelia Day, she was born April ninth, eighteen hundred and seventeen, Doctor Sweet vaccinated her, and it took in five days." And so on Grandma went through the entire list, gradually going more and more into particulars, but always coming out strong on the main facts. The effect could not have failed to deepen in Grandpa's bosom a mortifying sense of his own incompetency. When I got up from the Keelers' breakfast table there was something choking me besides the herrin' and golden seal, and it was not homesickness, either; but as I stepped out of Mrs. Philander's low door into the light and air, all lesser impulses were forgotten in a glow and thrill of exultation. I wondered if that far, intense blue was the natural color of the Cape Cod sky in winter, and if its January sun always showered down such rich and golden beams. There was no snow on the ground; the fields presented an almost spring-like aspect, in contrast with the swarthy green of the cedars. The river ran sparkling in summer-fashion at the foot of "Eagle Hill." From the bay, the sea air came up fresh and strong. I drank it with deep inspirations. At that moment it seemed to me that I had indeed been born to perform a mission. It was so hopeful to turn over an entire fresh leaf in the book of life, and I was resolved to do it heroically, at any cost. I reflected, not without a shade of annoyance, that I had forgotten to say my prayers, after all. At the same time I had a sort of conviction that it wasn't so unfortunate a remissness on my part as it would have been for some less qualified by nature to take care of themselves. I discovered the school-house at the end of the lane. The general air of the Wallencamp houses was stranded and unsettled, as though, detained in their present position for some brief and restless season, they dreamed ever of unknown voyages yet to be made on the sea of life. They were very poor, very old. Some of them were painted red in front, some of them had only a red door, being otherwise quite brown and unadorned. There was one exception,--Emily Gaskell's--that stood on the hill, and was painted all over and had green blinds. I heard a mighty rushing sound mingled with whoops and yells and the terrible clamp of running feet, and was made aware that a detachment from my flock was coming up the lane to meet me. A girl, taller than I, with stooping shoulders and a piquant and good-natured cast of features, seized my hand and swung it in childish and confiding fashion. She had warts. I wondered, uneasily, if they would be contagious through my gloves. I was struck with the uncommon beauty of one sturdy little fellow. He was barefooted (on Cape Cod, in January), and ragged enough to have satisfied the most crazy devotee of the picturesque. His shapely head was set on his shoulders in an exceedingly high-bred way, while its bad archangel effect was intensified by rings of curling black hair and great, seductive black eyes. The children walked back, in comparative quiet, toward the school-house, except this boy. To him care was evidently a thing unknown. He managed, while keeping the distance undiminished between himself and me, to perform a great variety of antics, in which, by way of an occasional relief, his head was seen to rise above his heels. Emily's wash had been left out to dry during the night. The wind had torn various articles from the line and carried them down in the direction of the lane fence. My gymnastic-performing imp vanished through the bars. In an incredibly short space of time he reappeared, clothed--but, alas! I cannot tell how the imp was clothed, except to say that Emily being a tall, woman and the imp but a well-grown boy of ten, the effect was strangely voluminous and oriental. This part of the lane was marked by some insignificant though very abrupt depressions and elevations of the surface. Occasionally he of the floating apparel was lost to sight; then he would appear all glorious on some small height, while the mind was compelled to revert irreverently to the picture of Moses on Mount Pisgah. He was the personification of impudence, withal, looking back and showing his teeth in superlative appreciation of his own sinfulness. He descended, and I looked to see him arise again, but I saw him no more. I had a faint and fleeting vision, afterwards, of an apostolic figure flying back across the fields. It was so indistinct as to remain only among the ephemera of my fancy. In a fork of the roads, opposite the school-house, stood a house with a red door. It was loaded, in summer, with honeysuckle vines. Aunt Lobelia sat always at the window. Sometimes she had the asthma and sometimes she sang. This morning her favorite refrain from the Moody and Sankey Hymnal was wafted in loud accents up the lane:-- "Dar' to be a Danyell! Dar' to be a Danyell! Dar' to make it known!" As I entered the school-house, the inspiring strains still followed me. There was a large Franklin stove within, which exhibited the most enormous draught power, emitting sparks and roaring in a manner frightful to contemplate. Aunt Patty, who acted the part of janitress of the school-house at night and morning, had written on the blackboard in a large admonitory hand, "No spitting on this floor, you ninnies!" The bench, containing the water-pail, occupied the most central position in the room. At one side of the bench hung a long-handled tin dipper; on the other, another tin instrument, resembling an ear-trumpet, profoundly exaggerated in size. "That's what you've got to blow to call us in," exclaimed a small child, with anticipative enlivenment. I went to the door with the instrument. "Dar' to be a Danyell! Dar' to make it known." The stirring measures came across from Aunt Lobelia's window. Then the singer paused. There were other faces at other windows. The countenances of the boys and girls gathered about the door were ominously expressive. I lifted the horn to my lips. I blew upon it what was intended for a cheerful and exuberant call to duty, but to my chagrin it emitted no sound whatever. I attempted a gentle, soul-stirring strain; it was as silent as the grave. I seized it with both hands, and, oblivious to the hopeful derision Gathering on the faces of those about me, I breathed into it all the despair and anguish of my expiring breath. It gave forth a hollow, soulless, and lugubrious squeak, utterly out of proportion to the vital force expended, yet I felt that I had triumphed, and detected a new expression of awe and admiration on the faces of my flock. "I don't see how she done it," I heard one freckled-faced boy exclaim, confidingly to another; "with a hull button in thar'!" "Who put the button in the horn?" I inquired of the youngster afterwards, quite in a pleasant tone, and with a smile on which I had learned to depend for a particularly delusive effect; at the same time I put up my glasses to impress him with a sense of awe. "Simmy B.," he answered. "And which is Simmy B.?" I questioned, glancing about the school-room. "Oh, he ain't comin' in," gasped my informer; "he run over cross-lots with Emily's clo's on." I had planned not to confine my pupils to the ordinary method of imbibing knowledge through the medium of text-books, but by means of lectures, which should be interspersed with lively anecdotes and rich with the fruitful products of my own experience, to teach them. My first lecture was, quite appropriately, on the duty of close application and faithful persistence in the acquisition of knowledge, depicting the results that would inevitably accrue from the observance of such a course, and here, glowing and dazzled by my theme, I even secretly regretted that modesty forbade me to recommend to my pupils, as a forcible illustration, one who occupied so conspicuous a position before them. My new method of instruction, though not appreciated, perhaps, in its intrinsic design, was received, I could not but observe, with the most unbounded favor. After the first open-mouthed surprise had passed away from the countenances of my audience, I was loudly importuned on all sides for water. I was myself extravagantly thirsty. I requested all those who had "slit herrin'" for breakfast to raise their hands. Every hand was raised. I gravely inquired if slit herrin' formed an ordinary or accustomed repast in Wallencamp, and was unanimously assured in the affirmative. After dwelling briefly on the gratitude that should fill our hearts in view of the unnumbered blessings of Providence, I inaugurated a system by which a pail of fresh water was to be drawn from one of the neighboring wells, and impartially distributed among the occupants of the school-room, once during each successive hour of the day. The water was to be passed about in the tin dipper, in an orderly manner, by some member of the flock, properly appointed to that office, either on account of general excellence or some particular mark of good behavior; though I afterwards found it advisable not to insist on any qualifications of this sort, but to elect the water-bearers merely according to their respective rank in age. This really proved to be one of the most lively and interesting exercises of the school, was always cheerfully undertaken, executed in the most complete and faithful manner, and never on any account forgotten or omitted. I drank, and continued my lecture, but the first look of attractive surprise never came back to the faces of my audience. They sought diversion in a variety of ways, acquitting themselves throughout with a commendable degree of patience until they found it necessary gently to admonish me that it was time for recess. After recess, as the result of deep meditation, in which I had concluded that the mind of the Wallencamp youth was not yet prepared for the introduction of new and advanced methods, I examined my pupils preparatory to giving them lessons and arranging them in classes, in the ordinary way. I found that they could not read, but they could write in a truly fluent and unconventional style; they could not commit prosaical facts to memory, but they could sing songs containing any number of irrelevant stanzas. They could not "cipher," but they had witty and salient answers ready for any emergency. There seemed to be no particular distinction among them in regard to the degree of literary attainment, so I arranged them in classes, with an eye mainly to the novel and picturesque in appearance. They were a little disappointed at the turn in affairs, having evidently anticipated much from the continuation of the lecture system, yet they were disposed to look forward to school-life, in any case, as not without its ameliorating conditions. CHAPTER III. THE BEAUX OF WALLENCAMP PERFORM A GRAVE DUTY. "We have our r'al, good, comfortin' meal at night," Grandma Keeler had said, and the thought was uppermost in my mind at the close of my first day's labor in Wallencamp. I had taken a walk to the beach; a strong east wind had come up, and the surf was rolling in magnificently; a wild scene, from a wild shore, more awful then, in the gathering gloom. The long rays of light streaming out of the windows of the Ark guided me back across the fields. Within, all was warmth and cheer and festive expectation. Grandma Keeler was in such spirits; a wave of mirthful inspiration would strike her, she would sink into a chair, the tears would roll down her cheeks, and she would shake with irrepressible laughter. It was in one of her serious moments that she said to me:-- "Thar', teacher, I actually believe that I ain't made you acquainted with my two tea-kettles." They stood side by side on the stove, one very tall and lean, the other very short and plump. "This 'ere," said Grandma, pointing to the short one; "is Rachel, and this 'ere," pointing to the tall one, "is Abigail, and Abigail's a graceful creetur' to be sure," Grandma reflected admiringly; "but then Rachel has the most powerful delivery!" I was thus enabled to understand the allusions I had already heard to Rachel's being "dry," or Abigail's being as "full as a tick," or _vice versa_. The table was neatly spread with a white cloth; there was an empty bowl and a spoon at each individual's place. In the centre of the table stood a pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar. Grandpa Keeler having asked the blessing after the approved manner of the morning, there was a general uprising and moving, bowl in hand, towards the cauldron of hulled corn on the stove. This was lively, and there was a pleasurable excitement about skimming the swollen kernels of corn out of the boiling, seething liquid in which they were immersed. Eaten afterwards with milk and sugar and a little salt, the compound became possessed of a truly "comforting" nature. I stood, for the second time, over the kettle with my eye-glasses securely adjusted, very earnestly and thoughtfully occupied in wielding the skimmer, when the door of the Ark suddenly opened and a mischievously smiling young man appeared on the threshold. He was not a Wallencamper, I saw at a glance. There was about him an unmistakable air of the great world. He was fashionably dressed and rather good-looking, with a short upper lip and a decided tinge of red in his hair. He stood staring at me with such manifest appreciation of the situation in his laughing eyes, that I felt a barbarous impulse to throw the skimmer of hot corn at him. It was as though some flimsy product of an advanced civilization had come in to sneer at the sacred customs of antiquity. "I beg your pardon," the intruder began, addressing the Keeler family with exceeding urbanity of voice and manner; "I fear that I have happened in rather inopportunely, but I dared not of course transgress our happy Arcadian laws by knocking at the door." "Oh, Lordy, yis, yis, and the fewer words the better. You know our ways by this time, fisherman," exclaimed Grandpa Keeler. "Come in! come in! Nobody that calls me friend need knock at my door." "Come in! come in, fisherman! Won't you set, fisherman?" hospitably chimed in Grandma Keeler. "Ah, thank you! may I consider your kind invitation deferred, merely," said the fisherman, suavely, "and excuse me if I introduce a little matter of business with the Captain. We carelessly left our oars on the banks yesterday, Captain Keeler, they were washed off, I have ordered some more, but can't get them by to-morrow. I hear you have a pair laid by, I should like to purchase." "What, is it the old oars ye want?" interrupted Grandpa, "why, Lord a massy! you know whar' they be, fisherman, alongside that old pile o' rubbish on hither side o' the barn, and don't talk about purchasin'--take 'em and keep 'em as long as ye want, they ain't no account to me now." "I am very much obliged to you, Captain," the fisherman said, "I am very sorry to have interrupted this--a--" "Why, no interruption, I'm sure," said Grandma Keeler, good-naturedly, "we've kep' right along eatin'." "Want a lantern to look for 'em eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler, for the fisherman lingered, hesitating, on the threshold. "This is our teacher, fisherman," said Grandma, in her gentle, tranquillizing tones, "and this 'ere is one of Emily's fishermen, teacher, and may the Lord bless ye in yer acquaintance," she added with simple fervor. The fisherman saluted me with a bow which reflected great credit on his former dancing-master. He murmured the polite formula in a low tone, at the same time shooting another covertly laughing glance at me out of his eyes. As the door closed behind him, "Ah, that's a sleek devil!" said Grandpa Keeler, giving me a meaning glance from under his shaggy eyebrows. "Wall, thar' now, pa, I wouldn't blaspheme, not if I'd made the professions you have," said Grandma, with grave reproval. "A sleek dog," continued Grandpa Keeler; "tongue as smooth as butter, all 'how d' yer do!' and 'how d' yer do!' but I don't trust them fishermen much, myself, teacher." "Who are the fishermen?" I inquired. "They board up to Emily's," said Grandma. "They come from Providence and around, and they stay here, off and on, a week or two to a time, along through the winter, some of 'em. They fish pickerel on the river, and sometimes they're blue-fishin' out in the bay, and quite generally they're just kitin' round as young men will, I suppose. Sometimes they have vittles sent to 'em and Emily she cooks for 'em.'" "Why, they're off on a spree, that's all," said Grandpa Keeler, comprehensively, giving me another significant glance; "they're off on a spree, and ye see they think this 'ere is jest a right fur enough out the way place for 'em. This 'ere red-haired one that was in here this evenin', Rollin his name is, he's a dreadful rich one, I suppose, dreadful rich! I've heered all about him. He's an old bachelder, I reckon, that is, he keeps mighty spruce, but I reckon he's hard on to thirty. Emily's got a cousin that works for some o' them big folks down to Providence, and she's heered all about him, this red-haired one, and how he keeps a big house down thar', and sarvants enough, massy! and half the time he's hither and yon, and a throwin' out money like water. His father and mother they're dead, so I've heered, and he used to have gardeens over him, but he haint kep' no gardeens lately, I reckon," said Grandpa, with grim facetiousness. "Why, he's been a waitin' on Weir's daughter, down here--Becky. She goes to school to you, teacher," the old man added, presently, brightening with a senile predilection for gossip. "Becky's a very sensible girl," said Grandma Keeler; "and don't cast no sheep's eyes, but goes right along and minds her own business. Becky plays very purty on the music, too." "Yes. But you know Dave Rollin wouldn't any more think of marrying Becky Weir than he would of marrying me," cried Mrs. Philander. "Of all the fishermen that have come down here not one of them ever married in Wallencamp. He's just trifling, and she thinks he's in real earnest; anybody can see that. You've only to mention his name to see her flush up as red as a rose. I tell you this is a strange world," Madeline snapped out sharply; "and Dave Rollin, I suppose, is one of the gentlemen." "We ain't no right to say but what he's honest," said Grandma Keeler; "Becky she's honest herself, and she takes it in other folks. She's more quiet than some of our girls be, and higher notions, and she's young and haint never been away nowhere, and no wonder if he waits on her she should take a kind o' fancy to him." "You know, ma," continued Madeline, "that Dave Rollin would never take her home among his folks, never; and if I was Becky's mother I'd shut the door in his face before I'd ever have him fooling around my house, and she should never stir out of the house with him, never!" "I don't suppose there's much use in talking to the girl," said Grandma: "Emily was in here the other day, and Becky, she happened to come in the same time, and I didn't see no use in Emily's speaking up in the way she did; for, says she, 'What do you have that Dave Rollin flirtin' around you for, Beck? What do you suppose he wants o' you 'cept to amuse himself a little when he ain't nothin' better to do, and then go off and forgit he's seen ye!' And Becky didn't say nothin', but she give Emily a dreadful long, quiet kind of a look out of her eyes." "She hasn't lost quite all of Weir's temper since she's been seeking religion," said Madeline, in a strangely light and vivacious tone. Grandma and Grandpa Keeler, by the way, were good Methodists, but Madeline was not a "professor." "Seeking religion, eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler. "She'd better let Dave Rollin alone, then," he added. "Let us hope that we shall all on us be brought to a better state of mind," concluded Grandma Keeler, with solemn pertinency. Before the meal was finished and the table cleared away, the latch of the Ark had been often lifted. On all occasions, afterwards, there was a marked and cheerful variety in the nature of the droppers-in at the Ark--the children and all the young men and maidens making their appearance with a promiscuousness which precluded the possibility of design--but to-night the Wallencamp mind had evidently aimed at some great system of conventionality, and had been eminently successful in evolving a plan. The callers were young men exclusively--the native youth of Wallencamp. Their blowzy, well-favored faces, which ever afterward appeared to beam with good nature, to-night expressed a sense of some grave affliction heroically to be endured. Their best clothes, it was obvious, had been purchased by them "ready-made," and had been designed, originally, for the sons of a less stalwart community. The young men were especially pinched as to their expansive chests, the broadcloth coming much too short at this point, and shrugging up oddly enough at the shoulders, while the phenomenally slick arrangement of their hair was calculated to produce a depressing effect on the mind of the observer. As they came in one by one, in a matter of fact way, and Grandma Keeler announced hopefully to each in turn--"and this is our teacher!" they accepted the fact with no more flattering sign than that of a dumb and helpless resignation to the inevitable. They seated themselves about the room in punctilious order, assuming positions painfully suggestive of a conscientious disregard for ease, and seemed to draw some silent support and sympathy out of their hats, which they caressed with lingering affection touching to behold. Grandma beckoned me aside into the pantry which immediately adjoined the kitchen, and informed me in one of her reverberating whispers, that I "mustn't mind the boys being slicked up, for they'd sorter dropped in to make my acquaintance, and, if we wanted the pop-corn, it was in a bag down under where the almanac hung, to the furtherest corner of the wood-box." I pondered these mysterious injunctions in silence, and realizing the fact that the Wallencamp beaux had appeared in a body for the express purpose of making my acquaintance, I essayed to show my appreciation of this amiable design by an attempt to engage them in conversation. My various efforts in this line proved alike futile, and they seemed but to grow impressed with a deeper sense of misery. I had a vague intention of going in search of the pop-corn, when, to my sudden dismay, Grandma Keeler and Madeline, who had been noiselessly clearing off the table, emerged from a brief consultation in the pantry, bearing with them a lighted candle, and having given Grandpa Keeler a nod of unmistakable force and significance, disappeared through the door which led into that indefinite extension of the Ark beyond. But Grandpa Keeler remained wilfully indifferent to these broadly insinuating tactics. He fancied, poor, deluded old man, that here was a choice opportunity to tell a tale of the seas after a fashion dear to his own heart, unshackled by the restraints of family surveillance. A singularly childlike and unapprehensive smile played across his features. He drew his chair up closer to the stove and began: "Jest after I was a roundin' Cape Horn the fourth time, I believe,--yis, yis, le'me see--twenty times I've rounded the Horn,--wall, this ere, I reckon, was somewhere nigh about the fourth time." Scarcely had Grandpa arranged the merest preliminaries of his tale when ominous footsteps were heard returning along the way whither Grandma and Madeline had so recently departed, and he was interrupted by a strangely calm though authoritative voice from behind the door; "Pa!" "Wall, wall, ma! what ye want, ma?" exclaimed Grandpa, turning his head aside, with a slight shade of annoyance on his face. No answer immediately forthcoming, that wofully illusory smile returned again to his features. He moved still nearer to the stove, and was just at the point of resuming the thread of his narrative when-- "Bijonah Keeler!" came from behind the door in accents still calm, indeed, but freighted with a significance which words have faint power to express. "Yis, yis, ma! I'm a coming, ma!" replied Grandpa, rising hastily and shuffling toward the door; "I'm a coming, ma! I'm a coming!" The door opened wide enough to receive him, and then closed upon him in all his ignominy. The sound of his voice in irate expostulation, mingled with the steady flow of those serener tones, grew gradually faint in the distance, and I was left alone with the sepulchral group of young men. They arose, still maintaining the weighty aspect of those elected to the hour, and abruptly opened their lips in song. There was no repression now; the Ark fairly rang with the sonorous strains of that wild Jubilate. They sang:-- "Light in the darkness, sailor, Day is at hand; See, o'er the foaming billows, Fair haven stands." Their voices rolling in at the chorus with the resistless sweep of the ocean-waves:-- "Pull for the shore, sailor, Pull for the shore; Heed not the rolling waves, But bend to the oar:" and with a final "Pull for the shore," that sent that imaginary life-boat bounding high and dry on the strand at the hands of its impulsive crew. Then they sat down and wiped the perspiration from their faces, which had become transfigured with a sudden zest and radiance. I recovered myself sufficiently to express a bewildered sense of pleasure and gratitude. "Do you sing, teacher?" asked Harvey Dole, a round-faced youth with an irrepressible fund of mirth in his eyes, who had broken in on the former silence with an unguarded little snicker. Lovell Barlow, he of the dignified countenance and spade-shaped beard, had faintly and helplessly echoed that snicker, and now repeated Harvey's words:-- "Ahem, certainly--Do you sing, teacher? Do you, now? Do you sing, you know?" I had some new and seriously awakened doubts on the subject. However, the degree of attainment not being brought into question, I felt that I could answer in the affirmative. The countenances of the group brightened still more perceptibly. "And do you sing No. 2?" inquired Harvey, eagerly. I tried to assume, in reply, a tone of equal animation. "Is it something new? I don't think I've heard of it before." "Why, it's the Moody and Sankey hymn-book!" exclaimed Harvey, looking suddenly blank. I strove to soften the effect of this blow by a lively show of recognition. "Oh, yes, I know perfectly now. It's 'Hold the Fort,' 'Ring the Bells of Heaven,' and all those songs, isn't it?" "'Hold the Fort' 's in No. 1," said George Olver, a new speaker, with beautiful, brave, brown eyes, and a soldierly bearing. He spoke, correcting me, but with the tender consideration which a father might display toward an unenlightened child. "There's three numbers," said Harvey Dole, "and you ought to learn to sing 'em, teacher. We sing 'em all the time, down here." "You are fond of singing?" I questioned. Ned Vickery, of lithe figure and straight black hair, a denizen of the Indian encampment, started up, flushing through his dark skin. "I lul-love it!" he said. Ned Vickery sang with the most exquisite smoothness, but stumbled a little in prosaical conversation. A silent Norwegian, Lars Thorjon, who had sat gazing at me and smiling, flushed also at the words, and murmured something rapturous with a foreign accent. "Yes, we're rather fond of singing." I heard George Giver's resolute tones. Harvey Dole gave a low, expressive whistle. "I like it, certainly, ahem! _I_ do. _I_ like it, you know," said Lovell Barlow. "We have a singin' time generally every night," said Harvey. "Sometimes Madeline plays for us on her music, and sometimes we go down to Becky's. Madeline's melodeon is very soft and purty, but George here, he likes the tone of Beck's organ best, I reckon. Eh, George?" Harvey winked facetiously at George Olver, who reddened deeply but did not cast down his eyes. "If I was you, George," continued the merciless Harvey; "I'd lay for that Rollin. Gad, I'd set a match to his hair. I'd nettle him!" "I'd show him his p-p-place!" stammered Ned Vickery, with considerable warmth. "_I_ would, certainly," reiterated the automatic Lovell "I'd show him his place, you know; _I_ would certainly." The big veins swollen out in George Giver's forehead knitted themselves there for an instant sternly. "I don't interfere with no man's business," said he. "So long as he means honorable, and car'ies out his actions fa'r and squar', I don't begrudge him his chance nor meddle in his affa'rs." Our attention was suddenly diverted from this subject, which was evidently growing to be a painful one to one of the company, by the sound of a violin played with, singular skill and correctness just outside the window. "Glory, there's Lute!" exclaimed Harvey, bounding ecstatically from his chair. "Come in, Lute, come in?" he shouted; "and show us what can be got out of a fiddle!" "Let him alone," said George Olver, but the group had already vanished through the door, Lovell following mechanically. "That's Lute Cradlebow fiddlin' out thar'," George Olver explained to me. "I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days. Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'--I suppose it's true--there was some fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty a month--I Reckon that's true--to go along with some fiddlin' company thar' to Boston, and he'd got more if he'd stuck to it, but Lute, he come driftin' back in the course of a week or two. I don't blame him. He said he was sick on't. "I tell you how 'tis, teacher. Folks that lives along this shore are allus talkin' more'n any other sort of folks about going off, and complainin' about the hard livin', and cussin' the stingy sile, but thar's suthin' about it sorter holts to 'em. They allus come a driftin' back in some shape or other, in the course of a year or two at the farderest." The door was thrown wide open and my recreant guests reappeared half-dragging, half-pushing before them a matchless Adonis in glazed tarpaulin trousers and a coarse sailor's blouse. I recognized at once in the perfect physical beauty of the eccentric fiddler only a reproduction, in a larger form, of that sadly depraved young cherub who had danced before me in ghostly habiliments on the way to school. It was the imp's older brother. "Here's Lute, teacher!" cried Harvey; "he wouldn't come in 'cause he wasn't slicked up. But I tell him clo's don't make much difference with a humly dog, anyway. Come along, Lute, and put them blushes in your pocket to keep yer hands warm in cold weather. Teacher, this is our champion fiddler, inventor, whale-fisher, cranberry-picker, and potato-bugger,--Luther Larkin Cradlebow!" The youth of the tuneful and birdlike name dealt his tormentor a hearty though affectionate cuff on the ears, and being thus suddenly thrust forward, he doffed his broad souwester, took the hand I held out to him, and, stooping down, kissed me, quite in a simple and audible manner, on the cheek. It was done with such gentle, serious embarrassment, and Luther Larkin Cradlebow was so boyish and quaint looking, withal, that I felt not the slightest inclination to blush, but I heard Harvey's saucy giggle. "Gad!" said he; "hear the old women talk about Lute's being bashful and not knowin' how to act with the girls! Now I call them party easy manners, eh, Lovell? What do you think, Lovell?" "Ahem, certainly,--" responded Lovell, smiling in vague sympathy with the laughing group. "_I_ call them so,--certainly,--_I_ do." Only George Olver turned a sober, reassuring face to the blushing Cradlebow. "Give us a tune, Lutie," said he. "Lord, _I'd_ laugh if I could get the music out o' them strings that you can." The Cradlebow sat down, drew his bow across the strings with a full, quivering, premonitory touch, and, straightway, the fiddle began to talk to him as though they two were friends alone together in the room. How it played for him,--the fiddle--as though it were morning. How it shouted, laughed, ran with him in a world of sunshine and tossing blossoms! How it hoped for him, swelling out in grander strains, wild with exultation, tremulous with passion! How it mourned for him, with dying, sweet despair, until one almost saw the night fall on the water, and the lone sea-birds flying, and heard the desolate shrieking of the wind along the shore. I heard a real sob near me, and looking up saw the tears rolling down Harvey's rosy cheeks. It was in the midst of a simple melody,--I think it was the "Sweet By-and-By"--the player stopped and turned suddenly pale. "That was a new string, too!" he said; "and only half tight." Then he blushed violently, seeking to hide the irritation of his tone under a careless laugh. "Oh, I don't mind the string," he went on; "that's easy mended, but I happened to think it's a bad sign, that's all--to break down so in the middle of a tune." "Darn the sign!" exclaimed Harvey, "I wanted to hear that played through." "You remember Willie Reene?" Luther turned his eyes, still unnaturally bright with excitement, towards George Olver. "Ay, I remember," said George Olver. "I was goin' mackerellin' with ye myself that time, only I wrinched my wrist so." [Illustration: "Good Night"] "We was out on deck together," Luther continued. "I was lying down,--it was a strange, warmish sort of a night--and Willie played. He played a long time. It was just in the middle of a tune he was playin', that--snap! the string went in just that way. I never thought anything about it. I tried to laugh him out of it, and he laughed, but says he, 'It's a bad sign, Lute.' Likely it had nothin' to do with it, but I think of it sometimes, and then it seems as though I must go to that same place and look for him again. I never done anything harder than when I left him there." "You done the best you could," George Olver answered stoutly, "They said you dove for him long and long after it wasn't no use." "No use," Luther repeated, shaking his head sadly and abstractedly; "no use." "There's naught in a sign, anyway," George Olver affirmed. "They don't worry me much, you can depend"--the player looked up at length with a singularly bright and gentle smile. "But Grannie, she believes in 'em, truly. She's got a sign in a dream for everything, Grannie has so I hear lots of it." Harvey Dole had quite recovered by this time from his tearfully sentimental mood. "Now it's strange," he began, with an air of mysterious solemnity; "there was three nights runnin' that I dreamed I found a thousand-dollar bill to the right hand corner of my bury drawer, and every mornin' when I woke up and went to git it--it wa'n't there, so I know the rats must 'a' carried it off in the night, and a pretty shabby trick to play on a feller, too--but then you can't blame the poor devils for wantin' a little pin money. "Did I ever tell ye how Uncle Randal tried to clear 'em out 'o his barn? Wall, he traded with Sim Peck up to West Wallen, a peck o' clams for an old cat o' hisn, that was about the size, Uncle Randal said, of a yearlin' calf, and he turned her into the barn along o' the rats, and shut the door, and the next mornin', he went out and there was a few little pieces of fur flyin' around and devil a--devil a cat! Uncle Randal said." "You're the D--d--d--you're it, yourself, Harvey!" stammered Ned Vickery. "You'd better look out, Ned," Harvey giggled, "we're all a little nearer'n second cousins down here to Wallencamp. Ned's mother didn't use to let him go to school much, teacher," Harvey added, turning to me; "it used to wear him out luggin' home his 'Reward o' merit' cards." "I n-n-never got any," Ned retorted, blushing desperately through his dark skin; "n-n-nor you either!" "I guess that's so, Harvey," said Lovell Barlow, quite gravely; "I rather think that's so, Harvey--ahem, I guess it is." When my visitors rose to depart they formed in line, with George Olver and Luther at the head. George Olver was the spokesman of the group. He offered me his strong brown hand in hearty corroboration of his words: "We're a roughish sort of a set down here, teacher, but whenever you want friends you'll know right whar' to find us; we mean that straight through and fair an' kindly." I thanked him, and then Luther gave me his hand, but did not kiss me, in departing. Each member of the phalanx gave me his hand in turn, with a hearty "Good night," and so they passed out. The door closed behind them. I meditated a space, and when I looked up, there was Lovell Barlow's pale face peering into the room. "Ahem--Miss Hungerford!" he murmured, in awful accents: "Miss Hungerford!" Could it be some telegram from my home thus mysteriously arrived? The thought flashed through my mind before reason could act. "What is it?" I gasped, hastening to meet the informer. Lovell Barlow handed me a picture; it was a small daguerreotype, in which the mild and beneficent features of that worthy being himself shone above his own unmistakable spade-shaped whiskers. "Would you like it, Miss Hungerford?" said he, still with the same deeply impressive air; "would you, now, really, Miss Hungerford? would you like it, now?" "Why, certainly," I exclaimed, with intense relief; and before I could fully appreciate the situation, Lovell Barlow cast a cautious glance about him, leaned his head forward, and whispered hoarsely, "I've got some more, at home--ahem! I've got six, Miss Hungerford. Mother wants to keep two and she's promised Aunt Marcia one; but you can have one any time, Miss Hungerford. Ahem! ahem! _You_ can, you know." "Thank you," I murmured, while it seemed as though my faculties were desperately searching for light on a hitherto unsounded sea. "I think this will do for the present." Lovell nodded his head with a grave good-night and disappeared. Meanwhile, Grandma and Grandpa Keeler and Madeline were absorbing this last impressive scene as they slowly emerged from that unknown quarter of the Ark whither they had retreated. Grandpa looked at me with a peculiar twinkle in his eye. "So Lovell came back to give ye his picter, eh, teacher?" said he. I returned Grandpa's look with cheerful and unoffended alacrity; but Grandma interrupted, "Thar', now, pa! Thar', now! We mustn't inquire into everything we happen to get a little wind on. Ye see, teacher," she continued, in tones of the broadest gentleness, "we knew they'd be sorter bashful gettin' acquainted the first night, and so we thought it 'ud be easier for 'em if we should leave 'em to themselves, and we knew you was so--we knew you wouldn't care." As Grandpa resumed his accustomed seat by the fire, an expansive grin still lingered on his features. "Ah, he's a queer fellow, that Lovell," said he; "but he's quick to larn, they say, larns like a book. I'll tell ye what's the trouble with him, teacher. He's been tied too long to his mother's apron-strings. He don't know no more about the world than a chicken. He's thirty odd now, I guess, and I reckon he ain't never been further away from the beach than Sandwich te-own." "I don't know as we'd ought to blame him," said Grandma Keeler; "though to be sure, Lovell's more quiet-natured than some that likes to be wanderin' off as young folks will, generally; but he was the only one they had, and Lovell's allus been a good boy. Pa and me, when we go to meetin', we most allus come across him a carryin' his Sunday School book under his arm, and may be," concluded Grandma Keeler, "there'll be a time when we shall more on us wish that thar' wan't nothin' wuss could be brought against us than being innocent." We pondered these suggestive words a few moments in silence; then Grandpa Keeler boldly interposed:-- "That Lute Cradlebow--he's a handsome boy, teacher. Ah, he's a handsome one. They're a handsome family, them Cradlebows. "There's the old grannie, Aunt Sibby they call her. Lord, she's got a head on her like a picter! They're high-bred, too, I reckon. To begin with, why, Godfrey--Godfrey Cradlebow--that's Lute's father, teacher; he's college bred, I suppose! He had a rich uncle thar', that took a shine to him, and kind o' 'dopted him and eddicated him, but Godfrey, he took a shine to a poor girl thar', dreadfully handsome, she was, but yet they was both of 'em young, and it didn't suit the old uncle, so he left him to shift for himself. And Godfrey, he tried one thing and another, and never held long to nothin', I guess, and finally he drifted down this way, and here he stuck. "He's got a good head, Godfrey has, but he wasn't never extry fond o' work, I reckon, and he's growed dreadful rheumatiky lame, and he has his sprees, occasionally. "Liddy, that's his wife, teacher, she was full good enough for him when ye come to the p'int. Oh, she's a smart wife, and she's had a hard row, so many children and nothin' to do with, as ye might say. Why, they've had thirteen children, ain't they, ma? "Le' me see--four on 'em dead, and three on 'em--no! four on 'em married, and three on 'em--How is't, ma?" Grandma then took up the tangled thread of the old Captain's discourse, with calm disdain, and proceeded to disclose an appalling array of statistics, not only in regard to the Cradlebow family, but including generations of men hitherto unknown and remote. When I signified a desire to retire for the night, Madeline informed me, with a brisk and hopeful air, that my room was "all ready now." She led the way up a short and narrow little staircase into a low garret, where, amid a dark confusion of objects, I was forcibly reminded of the rows of hard substances suspended from the rafters. Turning to the left, the rays of the candle revealed a small red door framed in among the unpainted boards of the wall. There, Madeline bade me a flippant and musical good night, and I entered my room, alone. Within, the contrast between the door and the brown walls was still more effectively drawn. The bed, neatly made, stood in a niche where the roof slanted perceptibly downward, so that the sweetly unconscious sleeper (as I found afterwards) perchance tossing his head upward, in a dream, was doomed to bring that member into resounding contact with the ceiling, I judged something of the restless proclivities of the last occupants of the room by the amount of plastering of which this particular section had been deprived. In this, and in other places where it had fallen, it had been collected and tacked up again to the ceiling in cloth bags which presented a graceful and drooping, though at first sight, rather enigmatical appearance. The chimney ran through the room forming a sort of unique centre-piece. This and more I accepted, wearily, and then sank down by the bed and cried. Outside, before the one small window, stood a peach tree. Afterward, when this had grown to be a very dear little room to me, I looked out cheerfully through its branches, warm with sunshine, and fragrant with bloom; but now it was bare and ghostly, and, as the wind blew, one forlorn twig trailed back and forth across the window. For an hour or more after my head touched the pillow, I lay awake listening to the unaccustomed sound of the surf and those skeleton fingers tapping at the pane. CHAPTER IV. THE TURKEY MOGUL ARRIVES. I studied Becky Weir in school, the next day, with special interest. She was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with the stately, substantial presence of one of nature's own goddesses. She had a fresh, constant color in her cheeks, a pure, low forehead, and eyes that were clear, gray, and large, but with a strangely appealing, helplessly animal expression in them, I fancied, as she lifted them, oft-times, to mine. She was distinguished among my young disciples by the faithful, though evidently labored and wearisome attention, she gave to her books. Her glance, bent on some small wretch who was misbehaving, had a peculiarly significant force. The little ones all seemed to love her and to stand rather in awe of her, too. Entering the school-room in the morning, she discovered a network of strings, which one Lemuel Biddy had artfully laid between the desks, intending thereby to waylay and prostrate his human victim, and stooping down, she boxed the miscreant, not cruelly but effectively, on the ears. I was surprised to see that the boy seemed to regard this infliction as the simple and natural award of justice, bowed his head and wept penitently, and was subdued for some time afterward. To me, whose earliest years had been guided and illuminated on the principle that reason and persuasion alone are to be used in the training of the tender twig, this little occurrence afforded food for serious wonder and reflection. I doubted if the logic of the sages or the wooing of the celestial seraphim would have wrought with such convincing power on the mind and ears of Lemuel Biddy. If Rebecca perchance, after painfully protracted exertions, succeeded in working out some simple problem in arithmetic, her slate containing the solution was freely handed about among her unaspiring comrades; so that I judged her to be "weakly generous" as well as "plodding,"--qualities not of a high order, I esteemed, yet by no means insuperable barriers to friendship when found to enter more or less largely into the composition of one's friends. There was something in my novel relation to the girl as her teacher peculiarly fascinating to me. At recess she remained in her seat and kept quietly at her work. I went down and stood over her. "Can I help you, my dear?" I said. Whatever might have been the pedantic or obtrusively condescending quality of those words, Rebecca seemed to find nothing distasteful in them. She looked up with a "Thank you," and a pleased, trustful face like a child's. "I can't do this one," said she. "I've finished the rest, but this wouldn't come right, somehow." It was a sum in simple addition. I could not help a feeling of deep surprise and commiseration that one of Rebecca's age should have stumbled at it at all, but I essayed to examine it very closely and worked it out for her as slowly as possible. "Do you see your mistake?" I said. She blushed painfully. The tears almost stood in her eyes. "Yes, and I knew you'd have to find out how dull I was," she said; "but I dreaded it. When Miss Waite was here, mother was sick and I didn't go to school at all, and Miss Waite took me for a friend; and I told mother I'd most rather not go to school to you, for Miss Waite said you'd be a real friend, and I knew you wouldn't want me when you found how dull I was." I looked at the girl, and a bright, hesitating smile woke in her face. "Do you know, Rebecca," I said, "I don't choose my friends for their mental qualifications--for what they know; I select them just as people do horses--by their teeth. Let me see yours." Rebecca laughed most musically, thus disclosing two brilliant rows of ivories. I had noticed them before. "You'll do!" I exclaimed, lightly. "I take you into my heart of hearts. Now, what is your standard of choice? What charming characteristic do you First require in a friend, Rebecca?" "Oh!" said she, gasping a little and speaking very slowly; "I--don't--know. I--don't--think--I've got any." "Don't be afraid lest you shall guess something that I have not, my dear," I said; "You can hardly go astray. Begin with modesty, if you please, truly the chief of virtues." Rebecca caught quickly the meaning in my tone, and answered with a low ripple of laughter. When I urged her, she grew gravely embarrassed. "Well," said she; "I don't think I should want anybody that I thought I couldn't ever help them any, you know. That wouldn't ever need me, I mean, and I know," she went on more hastily; "it seems funny to say that to you, because it seems as though there wasn't anything that I could ever do for you--because you--you seem--not to need anybody--but I didn't know but some time--there might be something--I thought--maybe--some time." Rebecca paused and looked up at me with that pitifully beseeching expression in her eyes. "Oh, yes," I answered, still carelessly; "no doubt I shall be a great burden to you in time. But you do help me now, dear, by your conduct in school. You helped me this morning when you boxed Lemuel Biddy's ears. I shall have to take boxing lessons of you." "You be the scholar," Rebecca answered quickly, her lips parting again with a merry outburst of laughter. "Wretch!" said I, well pleased but affecting a tone of deep severity; "you must not be saucy to your teacher! I shall keep you in the rest of your recess for that. "Do you like to study, Rebecca?" I added presently. "No-o," said she, much abashed at the admission, and yet evidently incapable of speaking otherwise than according to the simple dictates of her conscience. "I don't think I should care anything about it if it didn't make you so dull not to. I mean," she continued; "perhaps I might 'a' liked it if I'd been to school right along, but we never did. And I was to the mills up to Taunton. I didn't stay long there. Then mother was sick. They don't any of the scholars be let to go very regular. Sometimes they're wanted to work out. So they forget. So they don't care much, I think. They get to dreading it. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn't think it so much blame--our bein' so backward." "It is the faithful improvement of what opportunities we have, Rebecca," I began and then paused, somewhat confused by the throng of lively reminiscences which suddenly crowded my mental horoscope. "You are young yet, my dear," I concluded gravely, with a resigned sigh for my own departed youth; "you can make up for lost time. It is pleasant to give, but there may be circumstances in which it is our duty imperatively to receive. You must let me do all I can for you this winter. I do want you for a friend, but I would rather it should be on these plainly implied conditions." Rebecca had been studying my face, thoughtfully, with a still expression of wonder. "I'll try to learn," said she, slowly. "I'll do anything you want me to." "Do you like to read?" I inquired, in a brighter tone. "Stories?" said Rebecca, a sparkle waking in her eyes. "Stories mixed with other things," I insisted, gently; and was then compelled to wonder how many of those "other things" had found their way into the literary appointment of my trunk. "I'll try," said Rebecca. "Come to the Ark, after school, and look over the books I have. We will talk some more about it, and you shall select as you please, or I will select for you, if you desire," I said, looking at Rebecca with kindly though severe penetration. "I'd rather you would," said Rebecca, obediently. To inflict this particular sort of patronage was a delightfully new experience for me. The glaring inconsistencies which confronted me at every turn only gave a heightened zest to the pursuit. When I went to the door to blow the horn I felt that Rebecca already regarded me as her patron, guide, and spiritual mentor, and I was seriously resolved to fill these positions hopefully for her and with credit to myself. With respect to the rest of my flock, I felt a different sort of interest--the wide-awake concern of one who finds himself suddenly perched on the back of a mettlesome, untried steed. Any one member of that benighted corps, taken as the subject of pruning and cultivating effort, would have occupied, I believed, the faithful labors of a lifetime. Considered as a gloriously rampant mass, the aspect of the field was appalling. I was especially impressed with this view of the case when I went to toot them in from those free and reckless diversions in, which their souls expanded and their bodies became as the winged creatures of the earth. The horn was still an object of terror to me, though experience had made me wise enough to institute, on all occasions, a careful preliminary search for buttons. Its blast, freighted with baleful meaning to the ears of sportive innocence, found a melancholy echo among the deeper woes of my own heart, and, if it chanced to be one of Aunt Lobelia's singing days, the "Dar' to be a Dan-yell! Dar' to be a Dan-yell!" which floated across the lane, had but a doubtfully inspiriting effect. I felt, indeed, like a Daniel doomed to convocate my own lions, and lacking that faith in a preserving Providence which is believed to have cheered and elevated the spirit of the ancient prophet, I confidently expected, on the whole, to be devoured. Gathered into their den, my lively herd gasped some moments as though suffering the last loud agony of expiring breath, and then, bethinking them of that only one of their free and native elements now obtainable, they sent up a universal cry for "water!" Ah! what to do with them through the long hours of the day--beautiful creatures! by no means unlovable, with their bright, clear eyes, their restless, restless feet, their overflowing spirits; their bodies all alive, but with minds unfitted by birth, unskilled by domestic discipline, to any sort of earnest and prolonged effort. Long, weary hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind--ah, no!--but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, tired, tired, tired! The parents of the children "dropped in" often at the Ark, and savored the lively and varied flow of their discourse with choice dissertations on methods of discipline. "I want my children whipped," said Mr. Randall Alden. "That's what they need. They git enough of it at home. It won't skeer 'em any--and I tell the folks if they'd all talk like that, they wouldn't be no trouble in the school." "Ye can't drive Milton P.," said that hopeful's mother. "He's been drove so much that he don't take no notice of it. If coaxing won't fetch him, nothin' won't; and I tell 'em if they was all like that they wouldn't be no trouble in the school." "Well," said Emily Gaskell, the matron of the painted house, a tall, angular woman, with the hectic of the orthodox Yankee consumption on her cheeks, and the orthodox Yankee twinkle in her eye; "ye can manage my boys whatever way ye please, teacher. I ain't pertickeler. They've been coaxed and they've been whipped, but they've always made out to mind by doin' pretty much as they was a mind to. They're smart boys, too," she added, with sincere pride; "but they don't take to larnin'. I never see sich boys. Ye can't git no larnin' into 'em no way. They'd rather be whipped than go to school. Sim had a man to work on our cranberry bog, and he found out that he was first-rate in 'rithmetic, this man was, and so Sim, says he,--I'll give ye the same ye git on the bog,' says he, 'to stay up to the house and larn my boys 'rithmetic,' says he; and the man, he tried it, and in the course of a day or two, he come around to Sim, and wanted to know if he couldn't go back to clarin' bog again." Emily took in the broadly contemplative expression on Grandma Keeler's benign features, and then winked at me facetiously: "I tell 'em if they was all like that," said she; "and I guess they be, pretty much, they might as well be out o' doors as in, and less worryin' to the teacher." It might have been the third day of my labors in Wallencamp that a man, having the appearance of a lame giant, entered the school-room, and advanced to meet me with an imposing dignity of mien. He held captive, with one powerful hand, a stubbornly speechless, violently struggling boy. I recognized the man as Godfrey Cradlebow, the handsome fiddler's father, and the boy was none other than the imp whose eyes, scorching and defiant now, had first sent mocking glances back at me while their light-limbed owner kicked out a jaunty rigadoon from under the encircling folds of his sacerdotal vestments. "Miss Hungerford, I beg your pardon," said the elder Cradlebow, with a distinct, refined enunciation foreign to the native element of Wallencamp, whose ordinary locution had something of a Hoosier accent "After a good deal of trouble in catching him, I have finally succeeded in bringing you in this--a--this little dev"--he made an impressive pause, patted his fiery offspring on the head with fatherly dignity, and eyed him, at once doubtfully and reflectively. I was interested in observing the aspect of the two faces. "The little boy resembles you, I think," I said. The lame man struck his cane down hard upon the floor and laughed immoderately. "If you knew what I had in my mind to say!" he exclaimed--"ah! that was well put, well put!--though but dubiously complimentary, but dubiously so, I assure you, either to father or son!" The idea still continuing to tickle him, he laughed more gently, beating a sympathetic tattoo with his cane on the floor. "To pursue directly the cause of my intrusion here," he went on, at length, "this little--well, for present purposes, we will call him the _Phenomenon_. I confess it is a name to which he is not totally unused. This little phenomenon, whom you see before you, is the youngest but one in a flock of thirteen. Some of that beautiful band--" here Mr. Cradlebow raised a very shaky hand for an instant to his eyes, and although a fitting occasion for sentiment, I was compelled to think of what Grandpa Keeler had said about Godfrey Cradlebow's "sprees"--"some of that beautiful band rest in the graveyard, yonder. Some of them already know what it is themselves to be parents. Some of them still linger in the poor old home nest. I see you have here, my Alvin, and my Wallace, and my youngest, the infant Sophronia. Well, you find them good children, I dare say. Ah! they have an estimable mother." Again, he lifted his hand to his eyes. "Mischievous enough, you find them, probably, but amenable--there it is, amenable--but this lad"--Mr. Cradlebow paused again, shaking his head with a meaning to which he gravely declined further expression. "What is your name?" I inquired of the little boy, hopefully. "Simmy B.," he answered revengefully in a tone of alarming hoarseness. "Such colds as that boy has!" exclaimed the paternal Cradlebow. "They're like all the rest of him--they're phenomenal. There are times when that boy appears to be nothing but one frightful, perambulating cold! Well," he sighed, "and yet it's a strange fact, that the more depraved and miserable a little devil is, the more his mother'll coddle him. "Now there's this one and my Lute--Luther Larkin--a good boy, but lacking all capacity for rest--always lacking the capacity for rest--uneasy, both of them--always uneasy! but how the mother would give her own rest for them, and seem to love them the better for it! strange! They have always been her idols, too. Well, I have captured Simeon and brought him in. I hope you may keep him. The rest you must learn for yourself. The Lord help me!" he groaned, as he picked up his cane, with evident physical pain, and hobbled cut of the room. Within the school-room, things resumed their customary, Niagara-like roar, until a lamentable voice rose above the others, and was straightway followed by another voice in indignant explanation. "Teacher, can't Simmy B. stop? He's puttin' beans down Amber G.'s neck!" "Simeon!" I exclaimed, in accents calculated to melt that youthful heart of stone, and then added; "I will speak with you a few moments alone, at recess." Simeon looked no longer helplessly angry as when his father brought him in. He appeared, on the whole, well pleased, but I scanned his angelic features in vain for any trace of repentance. There followed a few moments of comparative quiet. Then came a startling, sickening sound as of some one undergoing the tortures of strangulation. Then, a long, convulsive gasp. I looked down upon a sea of round eyes and uplifted hands. "Teacher, Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil! Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil!" "He's swallered most a whole one!" cried the owner of one pair of protruding orbs. "It wa'n't!" retorted Simeon, flaming with righteous indignation--"It wa'n't but harf a one!" "He t-t-told me," cried a young scion of the stammering Vickery race, all breathless with excitement, "that he was going to p-p-put it into his m-m-mouth and t-t-take it out of his n-n-nose, and he did and it t-t-t--and it slip-p-ped!" "Wall, jest you keep your eyes peeled and your ears cocked," replied the sturdy Simeon, in hoarse and jarring accents; "and see if I don't take it out of my nose, yet." The signs of that painful struggle slowly faded out of Simeon's face and there was an unusual calm in the school-room. Perhaps a quarter of an hour elapsed. I was thoughtfully engaged in hearing one of my classes when startled by the sound of a window closed with a sharp bang. At the same time arose the universal voice: "Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder! Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder!" I looked out across the snowless fields, and there having already scaled two fences and put many a good rod between himself and the scene of his brief imprisonment, I beheld, borne as on the wings of the wind, the form of the retreating Simeon. An incident at the close of my first week in Wallencamp was the visit of the "Turkey Mogul." Such was the name given by the Wallencampers to Mr. Baxter, the superintendent of schools. Mr. Baxter lived many miles away in Farmouth, and was, properly, the visitor of the schools in Farmouth County. Wallencamp was not in Farmouth County. Nevertheless, Mr. Baxter had charge of the Wallencamp school. I had been informed that he drove over at the beginning and close of each term, put the scholars through the most "dreadful examins," and gave an indiscriminate "blowin' up" to persons and things in the place. So I looked forward to his coming with a curiosity not unmingled with more doubtful emotions. It was Friday, and so near the close of the afternoon session that I had quite dismissed from my mind the contemplation of any dread advent for that day. It was just at that trying hour of Friday afternoon when only the spelling-classes remained to be heard, and teacher and scholars both were conscious, the one with a deep inward sense of relief, the others with many restless demonstrations of impatience, that the week was near its close; and that "to-morrow" would be Saturday and a holiday. Estella the raven-haired--familiarly known as the "Modoc," a long and ungainly creature, with arms and legs so seemingly profuse and unmanageable, that they reminded one of the tentacles of a cuttle-fish--Estella was "passing around the water." She was performing this accustomed office with a grin of such supreme delight and satisfaction as seemed actually to illuminate the back of her head, when the door of the school-room opened, and there, without any previous warning, appeared a grim, fierce-looking little man, whom I knew at once to be the "Turkey Mogul." The extreme exigency of the case inspired me with a certain calmness of despair. Having advanced to meet this august personage, conducted him to the desk, and placed for him the official chair, which he shortly refused, I lifted my eyes, "prepared for any fate," to observe what might be the condition of my turbulent flock, and lo--all the tops, and Jews-harps, and apples, and whirligigs, and miniature buzz-saws had disappeared, and there was an array of pallid faces bent over another array of books--many of the latter were upside down, but the effect was unbroken. Even Estella, moved by some sudden divine sense of the fitness of things, had ceased her desultory wanderings about the room with the tin dipper, and, not having had time to procure a book, was working out imaginary problems on her fingers with the air of a Herschel, and I became slowly conscious that there was such a stillness in that room as had not been--no, nor anything like unto it,--since the first time I entered there. I think Mr. Baxter must have observed something of the look of helpless astonishment which transfixed my features. I certainly saw the shadow of a smile lurking in his steel-gray eyes. "Yes," he snarled, addressing the school; "yes, if I didn't know you, now, and if your books were not, most of 'em, bottom side up, and if I shouldn't be compelled in two minutes to prove the contrary, I might possibly imagine that you were studying--yes--humph!" I said to Mr. Baxter, as cheerfully as possible, that "we were nearly through with our usual routine of classes for the day, but I should be happy, of course, to repeat any of the recitations which he might care to hear." "Would you?" said he, looking at me not unpleasantly. "Do you really ask me to believe that? um-m-m," he murmured, resuming his stern aspect. "Let me see--Geography--yes, Miss Hungerford, you may call the first class in Geography." I did not accuse the Superintendent of Schools of malevolent intentions, but I could honestly have affirmed that of all the divisions and subdivisions of my empire the first class in Geography was the one least calculated to shine on an occasion like the present. I groaned inwardly, and called them forth. Their forlorn and wilted appearance as they formed in line went to my heart. I was resolved to defend them at whatever cost. "Now," said Mr. Baxter, planting himself firmly, with his legs rather far apart, thrusting his hands in his pockets, and staring steadily at the shivering group from under his awful brows; "what _is_ Geography? To begin with. That's the first thing. What _is_ Geography?" For a moment there was no reply. I almost began to hope that there would be none. I felt that here "Silence was golden," and if maintained, all might be comparatively well; when, to my dismay, there was a sort of flank movement in the ranks and the ill-starred Estella raised her hand. "Well," said Mr. Baxter, pointing his finger steadfastly at her as if to impart a vein of concentration to her palpably loose and floating appearance; "You! You ought to know. What is Geography, eh?" Some fair wreck of an idea, formerly appropriated in this connection, floated through the brain of the "Mo-doc." She opened her mouth and in those loud and startling accents, for which she was ever distinguished, gave utterance to these memorable words: "A--round! like a ball!" Mr. Baxter glared fiercely at her for a moment, and then permitted his scorn to escape in a long, sarcastic hiss. "Yes-s-s," said he; "yes-s-s! around like a ball! Do you find it much in your way, eh? Do you often give it such a kick as that, eh? Well, take your seats! take your seats!" The Superintendent of Schools seemed disinclined to evoke any further catastrophes of this sort, but proceeded to discourse to me, aside, in a confidential growl, on the peculiar and erratic natures of the benighted Wallencampers. "Their minds," he said, with a grim smile, "have no receptivity. They must originate, or they are naught. Parents and children--they are all the same. I am convinced that there is no scholarship to be established here. It has been tried and the attempt has failed a hundred times. It's not in the nature of things. Get on the good side of them, that's all. That has failed sometimes, but it is not among the impossible things. Get on the good side of them." Finally, he turned to address the children. The "examins" had certainly not been severe, but the "blowin' up" was faithfully and liberally performed. Never before had I felt so drawn to my poor, wondering, wolf-besieged flock, and in proportion to my tenderness for them waxed my indignation toward the "Turkey Mogul." "You can't learn," said he. "That's a sufficiently established fact, but if you don't behave, your teacher is going to write to me, mind! and I shall come down here in my buggy, and take you right up and off to Farmouth where we have a place to keep all such naughty boys and girls." This last was evoked as a benediction. Mr. Baxter looked at his watch, and remarked that it was a long drive to Farmouth, and he must be going. "Dismiss your school, Miss Hungerford," he said. Now the children were accustomed--it was a special privilege they had requested--to sing, before the school closed at night, one of the hymns with which they were all so familiar in Wallencamp. I would have dismissed them, on this occasion, without further ceremony, but before I had time to tap my ruler on the desk as a signal for dismissal, they all struck up as with one voice:-- "What a friend we have in Jesus, All our griefs and woes to share! What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer." At first I was a little amused at the incongruity of the thing. Then it began to seem to me inexpressibly touching. The Superintendent of Schools stood with a cold, supercilious grin on his face, a stern, self-sufficient man, not one likely to echo the spirit of these simple words. I stood beside him, weary and perplexed enough, but ever taking counsel of the pride of my own heart. And those poor children, with their hard, toilsome, barren lives before them, how they sang! their clear, young voices ringing out fearlessly, carelessly--they knew the words. I wondered if any one in the room appreciated the song as having inner truth and meaning. As I was locking my desk, before leaving the room, I discovered this little note, which Rebecca had dropped in it. "dere teecher, "I wanted to do sumthyng to help yu wen I seen him come in To Day fur I new jus howe yu felt but thay wasent no wours than thay always was, and he nose it! and thay studdid more fur yu I think than thay did for any but I think it mus be harrd for yu not bein' use to us. I think yu was tired. When we was singin' I thot howe tired yu was, but thar' was always won to help. Excus writin' pleas but I wanted to let yu no for yu was good to me and I luv yu. Becky Weir." Somehow, the little note rested and comforted me, more than I would have imagined, a week before, any expression of this humble disciple of mine could have done. I held the letter crumpled in my hand going up the lane. Going up the lane, too, I met Emily's fisherman coming gayly home from the river. Mr. Rollin stopped, and gallantly requested the pleasure of carrying a small book which I held in my hand. He walked back to the Ark with me, talking very fluently the while. "Do you know," he began; "I think I'm awfully fortunate meeting you here in the lane. I've been wishing for an opportunity to speak with you for two or three days past, but the Ark is such a popular resort for the youth of Wallencamp, and the children seem to be always following you. Well, they regard the school teacher as their special property, and would Consider me worse than an intruder if I should go in to take even the lowest seat in the synagogue. I've been wanting to speak with you ever since that first night--when I stared at you so stupidly at Captain Keeler's--when I went up to borrow the oars, and you were engaged, you remember," said Mr. Rollin, laughing gently, "in wresting particles of hulled corn from the ocean depths of that kettle." "I remember," I said, trying to smother what annoyance I still felt at the recollection. "I admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he shouldn't look to find a confidante in me. "The hulled corn? Oh! yes, indeed!" he answered with a sprightly air. "We have it served in the same way at Emily's, and we think it's just--a--rich, you know. But I wanted to tell you. If you could have known how confoundedly struck up I was when I went into the Ark that night, you wouldn't think it so strange my standing staring there like a fool. You see we fellows, picking up everything of interest down here to amuse ourselves with, heard that there was a new school-teacher coming, so we gave our imaginations free rein. We were laughing it over among ourselves, and Smith said, 'she'd probably have hair like Rollin's,' and Jake said 'she'd wear spectacles, and have a nose like the Clipper in the _Three Fates_', and all that sort of thing. So I went up that night to see, just for the deuce of it, and not to get the oars at all, and I was deucedly well paid for it, too. In fact, Miss Hungerford," said the fisherman, darting a keen glance at me from his laughing eyes, "I did go up to scoff, but I remained to pray." My ears had never been conscientiously closed to the voice of idle praise, but with this, for some reason, I was not well pleased. "Your attitude was certainly devotional," I answered, without haste. "Your friend," I added, "must be something of a seer. Here are the literal glasses!" "Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, coloring slightly; "you know I didn't mean that--just being a little near-sighted. I said spectacles. Besides," and the fisherman looked me full and unblushingly in the face--"if I had such eyes as yours, by Jove, I wouldn't mind whether I could see anything out of 'em or not!" "You will hardly expect me to thank you for that," I murmured, with a sincere flash of indignation; not that I was unmindful of certain reckless moods of old, when I had found it not impossible to listen, even with calmness, to vain demonstrations of this sort, but I felt that I was a different person now, in a different sphere of action. Mr. Rollin knew nothing of me except that I was the teacher of the Wallencamp school--a doubtful position to his mind. He fancied that he might "pick me up," to "amuse" himself with, I thought, and at the reflection I felt an angry glow rising from heart to cheek. Meanwhile the fisherman gnawed his moustache ruefully. This idle worldling could assume, occasionally, a whimsical helplessness of expression, with an air of aggrieved and childlike candor, somewhat baffling to the stern designs of justice. "Now I've offended you," he began, exchanging his tone of easy nonchalance for one of slow and awkward dejection. "And you think I've had the impudence--well, if either one of us two is going to be taken in, Miss Hungerford, I can tell you it's a blamed sight more likely to be me; but you're prejudiced against me, I can see. You were prejudiced against me that first night. I know how those old women talk. They've got an idea, somehow, that I'm a scapegrace, and a desperate character. And, on my word, Miss Hungerford, I'm considered a real model chap there at home, and make speeches to the little boys and girls in Sunday School, and all that sort of thing. On my word, I do." Mr. Rollin spoke quite warmly. I could not help laughing at his droll self-vindication. "I should like to ask you to speak to my little boys and girls!" I said; "but it's too harrowing to the feelings. I listened to one address this afternoon." "The 'Turkey Mogul?' Oh, that isn't my style!" said Mr. Rollin. "I don't sear their young vision with the prospect of eternal flames. I entice them with the blandishments of future reward. Let me go in some day, and I promise you in one brief half hour to destroy the cankering effect of all that the 'Turkey Mogul' has ever said. At least, I shall serve as an antidote--a cheerful and allaying antidote to the wormwood of censorious criticism." Thus the voluble fisherman ran on, with an air of simple and charming ingenuousness; while I reflected that here possibly was a light and aimless creature whom I had mentally convicted of ungracious designs, that, although his presence in Wallencamp, as a representative of the great world I believed I had left behind me, was rather _mal à propos_, it might be that I ought to consider him providentially included in my field of labor, and as one of the objects of my regenerating care. Whether Mr. Rollin detected anything of this philanthropic intention I do not know. When we got to the gate he said:-- "Will you go with me for a drive to-morrow, Miss Hungerford? You know what the Wallencamp equipages are. They furnish entertainment, at all events. The drive to West Wallen is really beautiful--even at this season of the year, with such uncommonly fine weather, and you have a holiday, and the mail hasn't been brought from West Wallen for nearly a week." I thanked the fisherman almost eagerly, thinking, at that instant, of the longed-for letters that I knew were waiting for me in the West Wallen Post Office. Then, suddenly, I felt Rebecca's little note grow heavy in my hand. To act voluntarily for others--to consider as serious any obstacles in the way of following out my personal inclinations--these were experiences too new to me, and my resolve was not a natural one, but forced and impatient. "You are very kind," I said; "but I can't go to-morrow." The two little Keelers came running out of the Ark to meet me. I was secretly relieved. Mr. Rollin had been watching me narrowly; his lips curled, and his eyes flashed with a half angry, half scornful light. He cast an unloving glance at the little Keelers. "I can't, of course, question the justice of your decision," he said shortly, and touched his hat and walked away without another word. I considered this as one of the least among my many trials and perplexities. Oftentimes I sighed for the light-hearted, "irresponsible" days of yore, when "missions" were, as yet, to me unknown. School was the greatest perplexity. Grandma Keeler's tenderness grew more impressive each day. "It seems to me you're a growin' bleak and holler-eyed, teacher," she would say to me when I came home at night. So I indulged more and more in a deeply sentimental self-pity, and felt a growing satisfaction in the consciousness that I was enduring martyrdom. It was more by reason of a stubborn and desperate pride, I think, than from higher motives, that, in my letters home, I said nothing of the discomforts and discouragements which attended my course. I chose to dilate on the beautiful scenery of Wallencamp, and the quaint originality of its inhabitants. CHAPTER V. GRANDMA KEELER GETS GRANDPA READY FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL. Sunday morning nothing arose in Wallencamp save the sun. At least, that celestial orb had long forgotten all the roseate flaming of his youth, in an honest, straightforward march through the heavens, ere the first signs of smoke came curling lazily up from the Wallencamp chimneys. I had retired at night, very weary, with the delicious consciousness that it wouldn't make any difference when I woke up the next morning, or whether, indeed. I woke at all. So I opened my eyes leisurely and lay half-dreaming, half-meditating on a variety of things. I deciphered a few of the texts on the scriptural patch-work quilt which covered my couch. There were--"Let not your heart be troubled," "Remember Lot's wife," and "Philander Keeler," traced in inky hieroglyphics, all in close conjunction. Finally, I reached out for my watch, and, having ascertained the time of day, I got up and proceeded to dress hastily enough, wondering to hear no signs of life in the house. I went noiselessly down the stairs. All was silent below, except for the peaceful snoring of Mrs. Philander and the little Keelers, which was responded to from some remote western corner of the Ark by the triumphant snores of Grandma and Grandpa Keeler. I attempted to kindle a fire in the stove, but it sizzled a little while, spitefully, as much as to say, "What, Sunday morning? Not I!" and went out. So I concluded to put on some wraps and go out and warm myself in the sun. I climbed the long hill back of the Ark, descended, and walked along the bank of the river. It was a beautiful morning. The air was--everything that could be desired in the way of air, but I felt a desperate need of something more substantial. Standing alone with nature, on the bank of the lovely liver, I thought, with tears in my eyes, of the delicious breakfast already recuperating the exhausted energies of my far-away home friends. When I got back to the house, Mrs. Philander, in simple and unaffected attire, was bustling busily about the stove. The snores from Grandma and Grandpa's quarter had ceased, signifying that they, also, had advanced a stage in the grand processes of Sunday morning. The children came teasing me to dress them, so I fastened for them a variety of small articles which I flattered myself on having combined in a very ingenious and artistic manner, though I believe those infant Keelers went weeping to Grandma afterwards, and were remodeled by her all-comforting hand with much skill and patience. In the midst of her preparations for breakfast, Madeline abruptly assumed her hat and shawl, and was seen from the window, walking leisurely across the fields in the direction of the woods. She returned in due time, bearing an armful of fresh evergreens, which she twisted around the family register. When the ancient couple made their appearance, I remarked silently, in regard to Grandma Keeler's hair, what proved afterward to be its usual holiday morning arrangement. It was confined in six infinitesimal braids which appeared to be sprouting out, perpendicularly, in all directions from her head. The effect of redundancy and expansiveness thus heightened and increased on Grandma's features was striking in the extreme. While we were eating breakfast, that good soul observed to Grandpa Keeler: "Wall, pa, I suppose you'll be all ready when the time comes to take teacher and me over to West Wallen to Sunday school, won't ye?" Grandpa coughed, and coughed again, and raised his eyes helplessly to the window. "Looks some like showers," said he. "A-hem! ahem! Looks mightily to me like showers, over yonder." "Thar', r'aly, husband! I must say I feel mortified for ye," said Grandma. "Seein' as you're a professor, too, and thar' ain't been a single Sunday mornin' since I've lived with ye, pa, summer or winter, but what you've seen showers, and it r'aly seems to me it's dreadful inconsistent when thar' ain't no cloud in the sky, and don't look no more like rain than I do." And Grandma's face, in spite of her reproachful tones, was, above all, blandly sunlike and expressive of anything rather than deluge and watery disaster. Grandpa was silent a little while, then coughed again I had never seen Grandpa in worse straits. "A-hem! a-hem! 'Fanny' seems to be a little lame, this mornin'," said he. "I shouldn't wonder. She's been goin' pretty stiddy this week." "It does beat all, pa," continued Grandma Keeler, "how't all the horses you've ever had since I've known ye have always been took lame Sunday mornin'. Thar' was 'Happy Jack,' he could go anywhers through the week, and never limp a step, as nobody could see, and Sunday mornin' he was always took lame! And thar' was 'Tantrum'----" "Tantrum" was the horse that had run away with Grandma when she was thrown from the wagon, and generally smashed to pieces. And now, Grandma branched off into the thrilling reminiscences connected with this incident of her life, which was the third time during the week that the horrible tale had been repeated for my delectation. When she had finished, Grandpa shook his head with painful earnestness, reverting to the former subject of discussion. "It's a long jaunt!" said he; "a long jaunt!" "Thar's a long hill to climb before we reach Zion's mount," said Grandma Keeler, impressively. "Wall, there's a darned sight harder one on the road to West Wallen!" burst out the old sea-captain desperately; "say nothin' about the devilish stones!" "Thar' now," said Grandma, with calm though awful reproof; "I think we've gone fur enough for one day; we've broke the Sabbath, and took the name of the Lord in vain, and that ought to be enough for perfessors." Grandpa replied at length in a greatly subdued tone: "Wall, if you and the teacher want to go over to Sunday school to-day, I suppose we can go if we get ready," a long submissive sigh--"I suppose we can." "They have preachin' service in the mornin', I suppose," said Grandma. "But we don't generally git along to that. It makes such an early start. We generally try to get around, when we go, in time for Sunday school. They have singin' and all. It's just about as interestin', I think, as preachin'. The old man ra'ly likes it," she observed aside to me; "when he once gets started, but he kind o' dreads the gittin' started." When I beheld the ordeal through which Grandpa Keeler was called to pass, at the hands of his faithful consort, before he was considered in a fit condition of mind and body to embark for the sanctuary, I marvelled not at the old man's reluctance, nor that he had indeed seen clouds and tempest fringing the horizon. Immediately after breakfast, he set out for the barn, ostensibly to "see to the chores;" really, I believe, to obtain a few moments' respite, before worse evil should come upon him. Pretty soon Grandma was at the back door calling in firm though persuasive tones:-- "Husband! husband! come in, now, and get ready." No answer. Then it was in another key, weighty, yet expressive of no weak irritation, that Grandma called "Come, pa! pa-a! pa-a-a!" Still no answer. Then that voice of Grandma's sung out like a trumpet, terrible with meaning--"Bijonah Keeler!" But Grandpa appeared not. Next, I saw Grandma slowly but surely gravitating in the direction of the barn, and soon she returned, bringing with her that ancient delinquent, who looked like a lost sheep indeed and a truly unreconciled one. "Now the first thing," said Grandma, looking her forlorn captive over; "is boots. Go and get on yer meetin' gaiters, pa." The old gentleman, having invested himself with those sacred relics, came pathetically limping into the room. "I declare, ma," said he; "somehow these things--phew! Somehow they pinch my feet dreadfully. I don't know what it is,--phew! They're dreadful oncomf'table things somehow." "Since I've known ye, pa," solemnly ejaculated Grandma Keeler, "you've never had a pair o' meetin' boots that set easy on yer feet. You'd ought to get boots big enough for ye, pa," she continued looking down disapprovingly on the old gentleman's pedal extremities, which resembled two small scows at anchor in black cloth encasements: "and not be so proud as to go to pinchin' yer feet into gaiters a number o' sizes too small for ye." "They're number tens, I tell ye!" roared Grandpa nettled outrageously by this cutting taunt. "Wall, thar', now, pa," said Grandma, soothingly; "if I had sech feet as that, I wouldn't go to spreadin' it all over town, if I was you--but it's time we stopped bickerin' now, husband, and got ready for meetin'; so set down and let me wash yer head." "I've washed once this mornin'. It's clean enough," Grandpa protested, but in vain. He was planted in a chair, and Grandma Keeler, with rag and soap and a basin of water, attacked the old gentleman vigorously, much as I have seen cruel mothers wash the faces of their earth-begrimed infants. He only gave expression to such groans as:-- "Thar', ma! don't tear my ears to pieces! Come, ma! you've got my eyes so full o' soap now, ma, that I can't see nothin'. Phew! Lordy! ain't ye most through with this, ma?" Then came the dyeing process, which Grandma Keeler assured me, aside, made Grandpa "look like a man o' thirty;" but to me, after it he looked neither old nor young, human nor inhuman, nor like anything that I had ever seen before under the sun. "There's the lotion, the potion, the dye-er, and the setter," said Grandma, pointing to four bottles on the table. "Now whar's the directions, Madeline?" These having been produced from between the leaves of the family Bible, Madeline read, while Grandma made a vigorous practical application of the various mixtures. "This admirable lotion"--in soft ecstatic tones Madeline rehearsed the flowery language of the recipe--"though not so instantaneously startling in its effect as our inestimable dyer and setter, yet forms a most essential part of the whole process, opening, as it does, the dry and lifeless pores of the scalp, imparting to them new life and beauty, and rendering them more easily susceptible to the applications which follow. But we must go deeper than this; a tone must be given to the whole system by means of the cleansing and rejuvenating of the very centre of our beings, and, for this purpose, we have prepared our wonderful potion." Here Grandpa, with a wry face, was made to swallow a spoonful of the mixture. "Our unparalleled dyer," Madeline continued, "restores black hair to a more than original gloss and brilliancy, and gives to the faded golden tress the sunny flashes of youth." Grandpa was dyed. "Our world-renowned setter completes and perfects the whole process by adding tone and permanency to the efficacious qualities of the lotion, potion, and dyer, etc.;" while on Grandpa's head the unutterable dye was set. "Now, read teacher some of the testimonials, daughter," said Grandma Keeler, whose face was one broad, generous illustration of that rare and peculiar virtue called faith. So Madeline continued: "Mrs. Hiram Briggs, or North Dedham, writes: 'I was terribly afflicted with baldness, so that, for months, I was little more than an outcast from society, and an object of pity to my most familiar friends. I tried every remedy in vain. At length I heard of your wonderful restorative. After a week's application, my hair had already begun to grow in what seemed the most miraculous manner. At the end of ten months, it had assumed such length and proportions as to be a most luxurious burden, and where I had before been regarded with pity and aversion, I became the envied and admired of all beholders." "Just think!" said Grandma Keeler, with rapturous sympathy and gratitude, "how that poor creetur must a' felt!" "'Orion Spaulding of Weedsville, Vermont,'" Madeline went on--but, here, I had to beg to be excused, and went to my room to get ready for the Sunday school. When I came down again, Grandpa Keeler was seated, completely arrayed in his best clothes, opposite Grandma, who held the big family Bible in her lap, and a Sunday-school question book in one hand. "Now, pa," said she; "what tribe was it in sacred writ that wore bunnits?" I was compelled to infer from the tone of Grandpa Keeler's answer that his temper had not undergone a mollifying process during my absence. "Come, ma," said he; "how much longer ye goin' to pester me in this way?" "Why, pa," Grandma rejoined calmly; "until you git a proper understandin' of it. What tribe was it in sacred writ that wore bunnits?" "Lordy!" exclaimed the old man. "How d'ye suppose I know! They must'a' been a tarnal old womanish lookin' set any way." "The tribe o' Judah, pa," said Grandma, gravely. "Now, how good it is, husband, to have your understandin' all freshened up on the scripters!" "Come, come, ma!" said Grandpa, rising nervously, "It's time we was startin'. When I make up my mind to go anywhere I always want to git there in time. If I was goin' to the Old Harry, I should want to git there in time." "It's my consarn that we shall git thar' before time, some on us," said Grandma, with sad meaning, "unless we larn to use more respec'ful language." I shall never forget how we set off for church that Sabbath morning, way out at one of the sunny back doors of the Ark: for there was Madeline's little cottage that fronted the highway, or lane, and then there was a long backward extension of the Ark, only one story in height. This belonged peculiarly to Grandma and Grandpa Keeler. It contained the "parlor" and three "keepin'" rooms opening one into the other, all of the same size and general bare and gloomy appearance, all possessing the same sacredly preserved atmosphere, through which we passed with becoming silence and solemnity into the "end" room, the sunny kitchen where Grandma and Grandpa kept house by themselves in the summer time, and there at the door, her very yellow coat reflecting the rays of the sun, stood Fanny, presenting about as much appearance of life and animation as a pensive summer squash. The carriage, I thought, was a fac-simile of the one in which I had been brought from West Wallen on the night of my arrival. One of the most striking peculiarities of this sort of vehicle was the width at which the wheels were set apart. The body seemed comparatively narrow. It was very long, and covered with white canvas. It had neither windows nor doors, but just the one guarded opening in front. There were no steps leading to this, and, indeed, a variety of obstacles before it. And the way Grandma effected an entrance was to put a chair on a mound of earth, and a cricket on top of the chair, and thus, having climbed up to Fanny's reposeful back, she slipped passively down, feet foremost, to the whiffle-tree; from thence she easily gained the plane of the carriage floor. Grandpa and I took a less circuitous, though, perhaps, not less difficult route. I sat with Grandpa on the "front" seat--it may be remarked that the "front" seat was very much front, and the "back" seat very much back--there was a kind of wooden shelf built outside as a resting-place for the feet, so that while our heads were under cover, our feet were out, utterly exposed to the weather, and we must either lay them on the shelf or let them hang off into space. Madeline and the children stood at the door to see us off. "All aboard! ship ballasted! wind fa'r! go ahead, thar', Fanny!" shouted Grandpa, who seemed quite restored in spirits, and held the reins and wielded the whip with a masterful air. He spun sea-yarns, too, all the way--marvellous ones, and Grandma's reproving voice was mellowed by the distance, and so confusedly mingled with the rumbling of the wheels, that it seemed hardly to reach him at all. Not that Grandma looked discomfited on this account, or in bad humor. On the contrary, as she sat back there in the ghostly shadows, with her hands folded, and her hair combed out in resplendent waves on either side of her head, she appeared conscious that every word she uttered was taking root in some obdurate heart. She was, in every respect, the picture of good-will and contentment. But the face under Grandpa's antiquated beaver began to give me a fresh shock every time I looked up at him, for the light and air were rapidly turning his rejuvenated locks and his poor, thin fringe of whiskers to an unnatural greenish tint, while his bushy eyebrows, untouched by the hand of art, shone as white as ever. In spite of the old sea-captain's entertaining stories, it seemed, indeed, "a long jaunt" to West Wallen. To say that Fanny was a slow horse would be but a feeble expression of the truth. A persevering "click! click! click!" began to arise from Grandma's quarter. This annoyed Grandpa exceedingly. "Shet up, ma!" he was moved to exclaim at last. "I'm steerin' this craft." "Click! click! click!" came perseveringly from behind. "Dum it, ma! thar', ma!" cried Grandpa, exasperated beyond measure. "How is this hoss goin' to hear anything that I say ef you keep up such a tarnal cacklin'?" Just as we were coming out of the thickest part of the woods, about a mile beyond Wallencamp, we discovered a man walking in the distance. It was the only human being we had seen since we started. "Hullo, there's Lovell!" exclaimed Grandpa. "I was wonderin' why we hadn't overtook him before. We gin'ally take him in on the road. Yis, yis; that's Lovell, ain't it, teacher?" I put up my glasses, helplessly. "I'm sure," I said, "I can't tell, positively. I have seen Mr. Barlow but once, and at that distance I shouldn't know my own father." "Must be Lovell," said Grandpa. "Yis, I know him! Hullo, thar'! Ship ahoy! ship ahoy!" Grandpa's voice suggested something of the fire and vigor it must have had when it rang out across the foam of waves and pierced the tempest's roar. The man turned and looked at us, and then went on again. "He don't seem to re_cog_nize us," said Grandma. "Ship a-hoy! Ship a-hoy!" shouted Grandpa. The man turned and looked at us again, and this time he stopped and kept on looking. When we got up to him we saw that it wasn't Lovell Barlow at all, but a stranger of trampish appearance, drunk and fiery, and fixed in an aggressive attitude. I was naturally terrified. What if he should attack us in that lonely spot! Grandpa was so old! And moreover, Grandpa was so taken aback to find that it wasn't Lovell that he began some blunt and stammering expression of surprise, which only served to increase the stranger's ire. Grandma, imperturbable soul! Who never failed to come to the rescue even in the most desperate emergencies--Grandma climbed over to the front, thrust out her benign head, and said in that deep, calm voice of hers:-- "We're a goin' to the house of God, brother; won't you git in and go too?" "No!" our brother replied, doubling up his fists and shaking them menacingly in our faces: "I won't go to no house o' God. What d'ye mean by overhauling me on the road, and askin' me to git into yer d----d old travelling lunatic asylum?" "Drive on, pa," said Grandma, coldly: "He ain't in no condition to be labored with now. Drive on kind o' quick!" 'Kind o' quick' we could not go, but Fanny was made to do her best, and we did not pause to look behind. When we got to the church, Sunday-school had already begun. There was Lovell Barlow looking preternaturally stiff in his best clothes, sitting with a class of young men. He saw us when we came in, and gave me a look of deep meaning. It was the same expression--as though there was some solemn, mutual understanding between us--which he had worn on that night when he gave me his picture. "There's plenty of young folks' classes," said Grandma; "but seein' as we're late maybe you'd jest as soon go right along in with us." I said that I should like that best, so I went into the "old folks'" class with Grandma and Grandpa Keeler. There were three pews of old people in front of us, and the teacher, who certainly seemed to me the oldest person I had ever seen, sat in an otherwise vacant pew in front of all, so that, his voice being very thin and querulous, we could hear very little that he said, although we were edified in some faint sense by his pious manner of shaking his head and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. The church was a square wooden edifice, of medium size, and contained three stoves all burning brightly. Against this, and the drowsy effect of their long drive in the sun and wind, my two companions proved powerless to struggle. Grandpa looked furtively up at Grandma, then endeavored to put on as a sort of apology for what he felt was inevitably coming, a sanctimonious expression which was most unnatural to him, and which soon faded away as the sweet unconsciousness of slumber overspread his features. His head fell back helplessly, his mouth opened wide. He snored, but not very loudly. I looked at Grandma, wondering why her vigilance had failed on this occasion, and lo! her head was falling peacefully from side to side. She was fast asleep, too. She woke up first, however, and then Grandpa was speedily and adroitly aroused by some means, I think it was a pin; and Grandma fed him with bits of unsweetened flag-root which he munched penitently, though evidently without relish, until he dropped off to sleep again, and she dropped off to sleep again, and so they continued. But it always happened that Grandma woke up first. And whereas Grandpa, when the avenging pin pierced his shins, recovered himself with a start and an air of guilty confusion, Grandma opened her eyes at regular intervals, with the utmost calm and placidity, as though she had merely been closing them to engage in a few moments of silent prayer. Our class occupied an humble place in the sanctuary, near the door. Behind the pew in which Grandma, Grandpa, and I were sitting there was one more vacant. Presently the door opened, admitting a delightful waft of fresh air, and some one entered that pew, and bowed his head forward on the desk in a devotional attitude. After the brief excitement caused by the advent of this new and very late comer had subsided, the Sunday-school resumed its former lethargic condition, and then I heard my own name whispered very softly in my ear. I had to turn my head but a little to meet the deprecating, though evidently irreverent eyes of Emily's fisherman. "How do you do, Miss Hungerford?" he murmured brightly. "Please don't consider me in the light of an intruder. I know I'm rather young for the class, to which you are admitted by reason of some extraordinary acquaintance with biblical lore." "But it's an excellent opportunity for you to address the little boys and girls," I said. "Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, reddening. "I only meant that for a joke, you know." Without pausing to reflect at all on the moral consequences of the act, I welcomed the appearance of this voluble, fashionably-dressed young man among the "ancient and fish-like" odors of the West Wallen meeting-house with a positive sense of relief. "If I might venture to suppose," Mr. Rollin continued, whispering, "that I came here to-day clothed, in any sense, as an angel of light--and, indeed, I feel a good deal like that sort of thing to-day--so sweet are the solaces of an approving conscience, and the consciousness of having resisted temptation. You see I was--yes, I was going fishing this morning, but I saw Captain Keeler go by to church--observe, too, the beauty of setting a good example--and I persuaded myself that it was wrong to go fishing on Sunday, and so I concluded to come to church, too." At the light mockery of the fisherman's tone, the bolder flattery of his eyes, I felt the same quick flash of resentment that his words had occasioned when he walked with me up the lane. I turned my head away with the noble resolve to keep it there persistently. Then I heard the whisper, "Miss Hungerford, you are driving me to the last extreme of idol worship. I shall, keep on addressing my petitions to that ostrich tip in your hat until you give me, at least, the benefit of your profile." "I don't see why you should say such irreverent things to me, Mr. Rollin," I said, quite seriously, turning, and looking him full in the face, for an instant. "Heaven forbid!" he replied, in an almost inaudible tone. "And if I could have conceived of such a thing, I would beg your pardon. You have brothers, Miss Hungerford?" "Yes," I answered, nodding my head slightly, with my eyes fixed steadfastly on the ancient instructor of our class. "How would you feel if your brother was off, alone, in some wild country, in need of good and gentle influences, and some young lady should treat him as you are treating me? Please turn your head a little this way. But, on the whole, I'm very glad I'm not your brother. Shall I tell you Why? Miss Hungerford," the fisherman continued, after a pause, "do you know I've always heard that auburn-haired people come, by right, into possession of the worst tempers. Your hair is brown--dark brown, and mine is red, almost--don't you think so?--and yet my mind is all peace within, and hope, and joy, and 'What is the blooming tincture of the skin, To peace of mind and purity, within?' Miss Hungerford, it has been full two minutes, by my watch, since I caught the last beam from your eye. Let us forget the idle wranglings of the hour, and compose our minds to the great subjects which agitate eternity. One of those insects which infest ancient church edifices has been hovering about Captain Keeler's mouth. It has been drawn in. It has disappeared. Such are we, hovering on the vortex of eternity. How calm and undisturbed the old captain's face! how utterly unconscious of the tragedy just enacted! So eternity swallows us and leaves no trace behind, and no ripple marks its surface. How infer--how more than odd the old captain looks, anyway! I say, she ought to have touched up his eyebrows a little, you know, while she was at the nefarious business, Miss Hungerford." "Yes," I answered, listening deliberately. "Do you suppose that the time will ever come when she to whom I once gave the love of my young heart, and all that sort of thing, you know, will take me in hand, and dye my hair, and rig me up, and make such an infernal-looking old guy of me?" "I don't see how you can escape," I said. "But you won't care so much, then." "No, that's true." Mr. Rollin sighed deeply "I shall be old, then;-- 'When I am old, I shall not care To deck with flowers my faded hair.'" The idea of Mr. Rollin decking his hair with flowers was a specially entertaining one to me. Presently, he continued:-- "To descend for a moment to secular subjects--I've got my own horses here now, Miss Hungerford. I had my man Bob bring them down from Providence. They got here last night, and they're a pair of spankers, too, if I do say it that shouldn't, as the phrase is. That was one of the inducements which led me to follow your--to follow Captain Keeler's example in coming to church this morning. And now I have a calm, serious, and reasonable proposal to make. No doubt we are both familiar with the small conventionalities of life, but on such a day as this, and with such a glorious air outside, and such a unique framework of society--everything delightfully pagan--scruples worthy only of small consideration at any time should be thrown aside. I don't know what perils you encountered on your way to church this morning, in the canvas-covered vehicle. But, if you will drive back to Wallencamp with me, I promise to take you there fleetly and safely, and you may have the consciousness, besides, if you care for it, that you have made the day one of spiritual reclamation to an erring fellow-creature." [Illustration: VISITORS' DAY AT THE WALLENCAMP SCHOOL-HOUSE. Scene from the Play.] The Sunday-school had risen to its feet and was slowly droning "Yield not to temptation," etc. The situation was odd enough. Mr. Rollin's repressed laughing voice was in my ear: "Will you yield?" and I yielded. At the close of the Sunday-school, as we were going out of the church, I told Grandma that I should drive home with Emily's fisherman. She drew me gravely to one side. "We shall be very sorry to lose your company, teacher," she said; "only we hadn't ought to lose no precious opportunity, and I do hope as you'll labor for that young man's soul." I felt hopelessly conscience-stricken. We drove home through "Lost Cedars"--a good many miles out of the ordinary course--and I was cheerfully consenting to the divergence. Wild and tenantless, in the midst of a wild and tenantless landscape, Lost Cedars wore that air of lovely, though utter, desolation which might easily have suggested its name. There was a still unfrozen lake, which the setting sun, more like the sun of an Italian winter than of rugged New England, was painting in gorgeous colors, when we reached the place. "We come fishing here, sometimes," said Mr. Rollin; "I keep a little boat down there under the bush, and I happen to have the key of the boat here in my pocket. It looks awfully tempting, doesn't it?" I had always been passionately fond of out-door life, and prided myself in having acquired no little skill at the oar. We were out on the painted lake, and I was rowing the light boat, and taking much selfish enjoyment out of the scene around me, when I became conscious that the fisherman was leaning far forward from his seat in the boat, addressing me in a low tone. "To discuss a topic appropriate to the day, Miss Hungerford: I suppose you've read about that fellow who was looking for the pearl of great price, haven't you?--that is, as I take it, you know, it was something that was going to be of more value to him than anything else in the world,--well, now, I believe that every man thinks he's going to be lucky enough to fall in with something of that sort some day, don't you?" Mr. Rollin's tone was unusually serious and even slightly embarrassed. I looked up with curious surprise from my dreamy observation of the water. Then I thought of what Grandma Keeler had said to me about laboring for this young man's spiritual good. "I think we all ought to seek it," I observed tritely, giving a long, studied artistic stroke to the oars. "I don't see why you shouldn't find it, I'm sure--if you ask. I wish that I were good enough to talk to you real helpfully on this subject." I was startled at the inspiriting effect my brief exhortation seemed already to have produced on the soul of Emily's fisherman. "To ask! Is that all!" he exclaimed in the same low breath. And looking at the glowing, though rather unsanctified light on his features, my interest suddenly expanded to take in the possible drift of his words. I concluded that it was time for me to show myself eminently discreet; having departed so far from the immediate object of my mission as to spend a considerable part of the Sabbath driving and rowing with a strange young man, miles from every place of refuge. "I'm tired," I said. "Please row back now, I should like to go home." I rose to give Mr. Rollin my place at the oar. He held out his hand to assist me, and, whether by any malicious design of his or not, at that moment the boat gave a sudden lurch, and I was precipitated helplessly forward into his arms. I felt his kiss burning on my lips. With anger at the fisherman's unfairness, and bitterness at what I felt to be the mortifying result of my own folly and indiscretion--"Oh," I exclaimed; "I hate you! I wish you would never speak to me again! I wish I had fallen into the water." The fisherman sent the boat leaping on with long strokes. "D----n it!" he muttered softly: "I wish you had, and I after you!" We drove for several miles on the way homeward in silence. Then Mr. Rollin spoke. I had been meditating upon Rebecca, upon my determination to make my life in Wallencamp one of supreme self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, and had concluded, in a deeply repentant mind, that this unpleasant incident at the close of the day was only the natural consequence of my error in departing from the prescribed limits of my self-appointed task. I felt that after this experience it would be unwise for me further to extend my mission work in Mr. Rollin's behalf. So I answered him but briefly, and in a tone of martyr-like composure, which I could not help observing perplexed and irritated him more than anger or the most frigid silence would have done. I was strengthened in this frame of mind when we parted at the little gate in front of the Ark, and Mr. Rollin proposed another drive for the ensuing week. Then I revealed to the fisherman the grave burden of my soul. "Mr. Rollin," I said; "if I had come to Wallencamp merely in search of my own pleasure and diversion, I should doubtless find it very easy to do some things which I do not consider harmful in themselves, but which it is wrong for me to do under the circumstances. I may tell you that I have been very reckless, very thoughtless in my life, but I came here resolving to devote myself to an earnest, serious work. I hoped to do these people good. They do seem to believe in me. They trust me. I cannot bear that they should think me in any way unworthy of their trust. When you asked me to drive this evening,--it was just as it used to be--I did not think. You were very kind. It was pleasant, and I thank you,--but I ought not to have gone--don't you see? I believe, now, that it would have been so much better if I had not." "I don't see," said Mr. Rollin; "why should you leave _me_ out altogether? Don't I believe in you? Don't I need to be done some good to?" At this last childishly whimsical appeal I was in sore danger of being diverted from the serious channel of my thoughts. Then the door of the Ark softly opened a little way, and there, nightcapped in white, like a full, benignant moon, appeared the head of Grandma Keeler, as she peered blindly out into the night. "Poor old soul!" I said. "She has probably been 'waiting and watching.' Don't you see already one of the results of my sinning? Good night," I said, extending my hand to the fisherman, who had fixed on that innocent and unconscious nightcap a darkly withering gaze. "Oh, never mind me," he muttered, turning abruptly. "Only take care of this infernal old nest of Hoosiers, and respectable people may go to the devil!" CHAPTER VI. BECKY AND THE CRADLEBOW. "Teacher's got Beck's beau!" "Teacher's got Beck's beau!" I heard it whispered among the school children. Rebecca heard, too, and paled a little, but looked up at me and smiled as frankly as ever. Seeing her alone afterwards, I took occasion to remark, incidentally, "how kind it was of her friend, Mr. Rollin, to bring me home from church. Fanny was so slow! And I thought he was a very pleasant young man, but even the most estimable people, you know," I added, laughing, with an undertone of studied significance; "are not just fitted to enjoy each other's society always." Then I blushed under the girl's clear, trustful gaze. "You don't think I mind what the children talk!" she said. Every day Rebecca appealed more and more, unconsciously, to what was most generous and grave and heedful in my nature. She seemed to be demanding of me, with mute, gentle importunity, to make real my ideal of life, to be what I knew she believed me to be. Her faith in my superior wisdom and goodness, her slow, timid way of confiding in me, with tears and blushes even; it was all very flattering, very captivating to one who had but so lately risen to occupy the pedestal of a moral instructress, and "my child," "my dear child," I said to her in many private discourses, with more than the tranquil grace and dignity with which such terms had been applied to me, only a year before, by the august principal of Mt. B---- Seminary. Rebecca read my books, and I drew her out to talk with me about them. She prepared her lessons, with me, out of school. She knew that she might come whenever she chose to my little room at the Ark, which the chimney kept comfortably warm, and often I heard her footsteps on the stairs and her gentle knock at the door. If I was troubled or perplexed on any account, Rebecca always seemed to understand in that quiet, unobtrusive way of hers, and followed my movements with a grave, restful sympathy in her eyes. On several occasions I had asked her, playfully, to walk up the lane with me after school. So it became a matter of course that she should wait for me. Often we took longer walks, for it was an "open winter," with only one or two light falls of snow. Then I believed the "Tempter" came to me, in the form of another invitation to drive, from Mr. Rollin. Occupied with my duties in the school-room, one afternoon, I was startled to observe these characters as suddenly and mysteriously raised as if by the unseen hand of a modern sibyl on the blackboard:-- "teecher's Bo is a setting On the Fens." Involuntarily raising my eyes to the window, I was unable to discover on the fence opposite anything of the nature indicated in those words. I concluded that the whole was to be taken as one of those deeply allegorical expressions in which the Wallencamp tongue abounded. Shortly afterward, a boy who had been playing truant and the Jews' harp at the same time, in a subdued and melancholy way under the window, and who had, doubtless, been bribed to undertake his present commission through some extraordinary means, entered the school-room, and laid on my desk a note from the auburn-haired fisherman. It was hastily scrawled in lead pencil, on a leaf torn from a memorandum. The fisherman confessed to all the meekness and long suffering, without the cheerful intrepidity of Mary's little lamb! He would do all his waiting outside. Mr. Levi was down from West Wallen to-day, and said that he had heard somebody say that there were four letters came for the teacher in last night's mail. Would I like to drive over to West Wallen and get them. The fisherman did not believe that I had been in earnest in the prudish and unreasonable notions I had propounded when he left me the other evening. "Prudish!" In my newly-acquired elevation of mind, I hugged the term with a deep, intense, and mysterious delight. Oh, if my mother could only know--if my elder sister could only know that I had actually been accused of prudishness! It was in the glow and inspiration of this idea that I indited the answer to Mr. Rollin's missive: "Why would he make it unpleasant and disagreeable for me to do what seemed so plainly my duty?"--and dispatched the same by the pensive and unpunished truant, who was soon heard again revelling in the stolen sweets of his Jews' harp beneath the window. After this I had no further intercourse with the fisherman for some days. If I chanced to meet him in the lane, Rebecca was always with me. He came one evening to the Ark. The young people were there, singing. Then I heard, from time to time, of his taking Rebecca to drive, and congratulated myself that, through my composed wisdom and forethought, the little world of Wallencamp was destined to move very smoothly, on the whole. "I wonder why Mr. Rollin don't go home," observed Grandma Keeler, complacently, on one of those rare occasions when the Keeler family circle held quiet possession of the Ark before the songful company had arrived. "He didn't use to stay but a week or two at a time, and all the rest o' the fishermen have been gone some time now; and he keeps them horses down here, and goes loungin' around with no more object than a butterfly in December." "I tell ye he's a makin' up to Beck," said Grandpa Keeler, with the knowing air of an old man accustomed to fathom mysteries of this peculiar nature. A spark shot out of Madeline's great, black eyes. Then she laughed unpleasantly. "There's something in the wind besides Beck," said she. "Why, I don't know," said Grandma; "he don't hang around there very much, may be, but they say he takes her to ride, and I'm sure he don't wait on nobody else. But I should think, if he was a going to speak out he'd ought to do it, and not waste his time a keepin' a puttin' it off. Why, my fust husband wasn't but a week makin' up his mind, and pa," she continued, referring openly to Grandpa Keeler, "he wan't quite so outspoken, to be sure; but he came around to it in the course of a month or two, and kind o' beat around the bush then, and wanted to know what I thought on't, and--wall, I told him 'yes,'--I didn't see no use in bein' squeamish so long as I'd once made up my mind to it." "I asked ye as soon as I could!" exclaimed Grandpa, bristling on the defensive. "I wanted to be sure o' gittin' a house fust." "There!" said Madeline briskly, putting down her foot, and tossing her head as she addressed the old couple. "Be good, children! Be good!--and now, do you mark my words, it isn't Becky Weir that Dave Rollin is hanging around here for. There's some folks to be made up to, and there's some folks, jest as good, to be stepped on. And Dave Rollin--what does he think of Wallencamp folks, anyway? He wouldn't take the trouble to kick 'em out of his road; he'd jest step on 'em, and he's steppin' on Beck Weir. He don't care enough about her to let her alone." "Wall, I--don't--know!" said Grandma. "What's he stayin' for, then?" "Staying! Lord, ma!" said Madeline sharply, with a strange cold glitter in her eye. "How do I know what he's stayin' for? Oh," she added, in a tone of lighter bitterness, "It's a mild winter and open roads. He's sketching they say, and exploring the Cape. Let him explore from one end to the other, he won't find such another fool as himself." "We can't help nothin' by talkin' that way;" said Grandma Keeler, a little pale, though calmly cognizant of Madeline's emotion. "You know I had an experience of my own once, ma," said Madeline, terribly white about the lips. "I wouldn't rake up old wounds, daughter." There was nothing unfeeling in Grandma Keeler's tone. The daughter shut her lips together tightly, as though more than she had intended to reveal had already escaped them, and applied herself desperately to her sewing. I fancied that I had detected a personally aggressive quality in Madeline's indignant tone. "I don't see why we should feel that way about Rebecca," I said. "The more one gets acquainted with her, the more lovable and worthy of respect she seems. I knew a great many girls, at school--girls with every advantage of wealth and culture, too, who had not half of Rebecca's grace and refinement, nor a tenth part of her beauty!" Madeline said nothing, bending to her work with the same bitter compression of the lips. "It's right you should stand up for her, teacher," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. "Miss Waite, she begun by makin' a kind o' pet o' her, but I don't think Rebecca ever set her heart on her as she has on you, and it's easy to see you've took lots o' pains with her. She's a gittin' them same kind o' sorter interestin' high-flowed ways--why, she used to be just like the rest of 'em--jest sich a rompin', roarin' thing as Drussilly Weir is now." "Goodness gracious, ma!" Madeline put in again, sharply. "What good is it going to do Beck Weir to put on airs? Better stick to her own ways, and her own folks--she'll find they'll stand by her best in the end, I guess--than to be fillin' her head with notions to hurt her feelin's over by and by. She's a fool, I think, for treatin' George Olver as she does. He's worth a dozen Dave Rollins, if his coat don't set quite so fine, and would work his fingers off to suit her if she'd only settle down to him and be sensible." "Wall," said Grandma Keeler, in a tone that was a curious contrast to Madeline's, "our feelin's won't always go as we'd ought to have em', daughter." "No, they won't!" Madeline snapped out excitedly, "but, ma, you know I'm in the right of it just as well as I do; and there's Lute Cradlebow's got to dreamin' and moonin' around in the same way. Took it into his head he wanted to get an education--well, what hasn't he took into his head! So he must begin recitin' to teacher. Well, he had in his mind to study, I don't doubt, to begin with, and used to come two or three times a week, and rattle off a string, and now he's here every day of his life, and, if there's any reciting going on, I don't hear it--not that I want to meddle with other folks' business, but I've known those boys a good many years, and I hate to see anybody hurt and run over, even if they be young and ignorant, and making fools of themselves. Some folks are none too good, I think, for all their airs, and had better look out to see where they're going!" "Why, thar', Madeline!" said Grandma, with a decided touch of disapproval in her voice. "R'a'ly, seems to me you're kind o' out. I'm sure Luther Larkin seems to be a gittin' along finely with his Latin and Algibbery--I'm sure I've heard a lot of it, when I've been goin' through the room, if you ain't; and if he's took it into his head to git book larnin', and maybe scratch enough together to go away somewheres to school, why, I'm sure, there's older boys than him, and not so bright, have ketched up if they set there minds to it, and as for our teacher--Madeline!" "Oh, I've no doubt but what Miss Hungerford meant kindly," said Madeline, with the lightness she could so suddenly assume. "It's a mighty queer world, that's all!" she added presently, rising and putting on her bonnet; "and managed very queerly, for I suppose it is managed. I'm going out, ma. Those children have split my head with their noise to-day, and I promised Patty I'd come in and sit awhile. Now, if I've been cross and crazy, don't you and teacher talk me over," she said, looking back and trying hard to smile--and she did look very tired and white, as though she had been suffering--"and if those children wake up and begin to squall"--with a glance towards the little bedroom--"let 'em squall. If I've wished it once to-day, I have a hundred times, that they was the other side of sunset!" "I wish you'd step into Lihu's--such a poor, sufferin' creetur as he is--with these," said Grandma, appearing from the pantry with some eggs in her apron. "I wish you could take the consolations of religion with you, Madeline," she continued gravely, as Mrs. Philander was closing the door. "Lord, ma! my pocket's full now!" exclaimed Madeline. "Besides, they might break the eggs!" And the latch fell down with a click. "I wish Madeline was a believer," Grandma sighed, purposely rattling about the cover of the stove to wake up Grandpa, who had fallen asleep in his chair. Grandpa looked at me, and smiled feebly, then roused himself to meet this supposed challenge like a man. "Believer, ma?" said he; "why ain't I a believer? As old Cap'n Gates said to me on his last voyage"--Grandpa yawned alarmingly (poor old man! he was but half awake), as this unlucky reminiscence of his sea-faring life flitted through his brain--"says he, 'I read my almanick and my Bible, both, Bijonah;' says he, 'I read 'em both, and I believe there's a great deal o' truth in both on 'em.'" "Thar, pa!" said Grandma, solemnly, "you'd _better_ go to sleep! you'd _better_ close your eyes, Bijonah Keeler! What if you should never open 'em again on earthly scenes, and them words on your lips,--and you a perfessor!" Grandpa scratched his head in drowsy bewilderment, passed his hand once or twice over the coarse stubble on his face, and again committed himself helplessly to the sweet obliviousness of slumber. I drew my chair up confidentially close to Grandma Keeler's, and rested my arms on the table as I looked into her face. "Grandma!" I said, for I knew that she was better pleased to have me call her that; "I begin to think that I ought never to have come to Wallencamp on a mission, that perhaps it would be just as well if I had never come to Wallencamp at all, I mean. I didn't think. At first, it seemed more than anything else, like something very new to entertain myself with. I didn't think enough of the responsibility. Then, perhaps, I thought too much of it. I don't know. I wish I were out of it all. Grandma, I never tried to do the right thing so hard before in my life. I never worked so hard before--and I don't mind that; but I meant it all for the best, and it's no use, it's just like all the rest. I'm tired. I wish I were out of it." "Wall, thar' now, darlin'," said Grandma, employing to the full her tone of infinite consolation. "You ain't the first one as mistook a stump for livin' creetur in the night, and don't you talk about givin' up nor nothin' like it, darlin', for we couldn't do without you noways--nor you without us, for yet a while, I'm thinkin', though it does seem strange--and never you mind one straw for what Madeline said, for she was kind o' out to-night, anyway, not having got no letter from Philander, I suppose. But then she ought not to feel so. Why, there was time and time agin that I didn't git no letter from Bijonah Keeler when he was voyagin', and to be sure, they wasn't much better than nothin' when they did come; for pa"--Grandma cast a calmly comprehensive glance at her unconscious mate--"pa was a man that had a great many idees in general, but, when he set down to write a letter, somehow he seemed to consider that it wasn't no place for idees, a letter wasn't--seemed as though he managed a'most a purpose not to get none in." "Grandma," I said, leaning forward, laughing, and folding my hands in her lap, "you're the best comforter I know of." "Wall, thar'," said she; "it's a good deal in feelin's, and Madeline ain't r'al well, so she kind o' allows 'em to overcome her sometimes." "And what did she mean by saying that about Rebecca?" I asked. "Oh, she just meant girls will be girls, that's all!" replied Grandma; "why, mercy! I know all about that. I don't feel like nothin' much more than a girl myself, half the time; and we all have to have our experiences, to be sure. They ain't nobody else can wear 'em for us, but, dear me! the Lord ain't going to let our experiences hurt us; they're for our betterin'." "And Lute Cradlebow, Grandma?" I said; "what did she mean about him?" "Oh, she just meant boys will be boys, that's all--especially big ones--but thar'! I've known 'em to get over it a hundred times and not hurt 'em none. If you're always lookin' at human natur' on the dark side, it seems kind o' desp'rit. My first husband, he wasn't a fretful man, but he was always viewin' the dark side o' things. I suppose one reason was he didn't have no father nor mother, and so he kind o' begun life as a took-in boy, but Pollos Slocum, he done very well by him, for he hadn't no children of his own, but his brother--that was Daniel Slocum--he had six. There was two boys and four girls. Mary, she came fust. She was born February nineteenth"---- I was sorry that Grandma's thoughts had drifted into this hopeless and interminable channel. I had considered carefully what Madeline had said, and determined on a little new advice for my friend, Rebecca. So, the next time we were alone in my room together, I directed the conversation with a view to this end. "And I wouldn't trust any one, my dear," I said with cheerful earnestness; "then if people prove true, why, it's all the more delightful; and if not, one isn't disappointed; so you can hold the scales quite indifferently in your own hand, and are always master of the situation. Oh, I wouldn't trust people! It would be very nice if this were the sort of world that you could do it in, but it isn't. It's a very deceitful world." "But I can trust you, can't I?" Rebecca held me with her gravely questioning eyes. "Well, I don't know;" I began with the determination to be severely true to my text, but the look in Rebecca's eyes hurt me. "Oh, yes! little girl," I continued, falling into the half-tender, half-playful tone that it was always easiest to assume with her; "of course, you must trust me I Haven't I been a good teacher to you, so far?" And I sought by smiling in the girl's face, to chase the grieved expression away from it. "What I meant was that I wouldn't trust people generally, because it's a selfish world, and such is the depravity of the human mind that if it appears at all convenient, we are apt, you know, to sacrifice other people to our own interests; so, with all the little kindnesses and politenesses which are current in society, it is still the common practice--and if is best that it should be so--to keep, in the main, a sharp look out for 'Number One!'" Having proceeded so far, it occurred to me that the occasion was favorable for the discharge of another duty which I had been meditating in regard to Rebecca. "You are what Grandma Keeler calls a believer, are you not, dear?" I said, with the same composedly dictatorial manner: "in distinction from a professor, I mean." Rebecca gave a little gasp, and turned her head away, for an instant. When she looked back, there were tears of distress in her eyes. I felt a vague wonder and regret. "No," she said; "I thought, once--I wanted--I hoped----" "Why, child!" I hastened to exclaim. "I didn't ask you because I had any reason to doubt that you were one--quite the contrary--but simply for this. It seems to me it would be such a desirable thing for you, situated as you are, here, with so few surroundings of a refining and elevating nature, if you could attach yourself, if it were merely for a feeling of fellowship and sympathy--for of course, you could not attend, often--to some simple Orthodox body of believers--like the Methodist church at West Wallen, for instance. It seems to me, that, in your case, believing simply and unquestionably, as I have no doubt you do, it would be a sort of assurance, a sort of continual rest and support to you. It would be a great relief to me if I felt that you were so guarded. Not that I consider it essential at all; to some people, indeed, of a deeply thoughtful and inquisitive mind, such a course would appear impossible. You have never troubled yourself, Becky," I continued, in a tone of reassuring lightness; "you have never troubled yourself with doubts and speculations on religious subjects?" "I don't know," Becky replied, the look of perplexity and distress deepening in her eyes. "Why should you?" I murmured, softly stroking her hair; "He carries the lambs in His bosom." I had been little in the habit of quoting Scripture--the words, coming to my mind, struck me as particularly Beautiful and applicable on this occasion. "And so what I have suggested, would be the easiest and most natural thing in the world for you to do. I suppose it might be necessary for you to have come to some conclusion in regard to the first principles of Theology; but probably you have already satisfied yourself as to these in your own mind." Rebecca looked little like one who had arrived at the calm plane of philosophical conclusion of any sort. "I don't know," she gasped. "Well, take the Trinity, for instance," I continued, in a tone highly suggestive of calm and supreme forbearance with helpless ignorance. "Probably you believe in the Trinity?" "Oh, I don't know," said Rebecca. "I don't know what it means. Nobody ever told me; nobody ever talked to me about those things before." "It's simply," I said; "a term implying the existence of three persons in the Godhead. So the Trinitarians are distinguished from the Unitarians who believe that it consists of one. I'm not particularly informed as to the Methodist credentials of faith. You will always hear that they believe that salvation is free to all who will accept of it. Some people believe that man is a free agent, and may accept or refuse the means of grace, and if he refuses, is eternally lost. And then, again, there are the Universalists, who believe that all will be eventually saved. There is the Calvinistic element--those who believe in predestination--that is----" Becky had laid her head down on the bed, and was quietly sobbing. "My poor child," I exclaimed, with swift compassion, "don't think anything more about what I have said to you. Let it go. It isn't vital." "You don't hate me for not knowing anything?" sobbed Becky. "Nobody ever tried to have me understand, before." "You know enough; quite enough, dear!" I remarked hastily, producing from my trunk a quantity of illustrated magazines. These we looked over together, and when Becky went away, the tears were dried in her eyes, and she was laughing as merrily as ever. With the severely implied reproach of Madeline's words still in my mind, I took pains to assume toward Luther Larkin a more elder-sisterly air even than before. It was true, I felt that I had been unjustly stung, having, amid the press of other duties, undertaken the advancement of that bright youth, from motives, I believed, of an ideal and disinterested nature. It was also true, that, after the first enthusiasm with respect to his lessons had passed away, as well as the natural diffidence he had at first felt in my presence, Luther Larkin, though punctual to the hour of recitation, had gradually fallen into a habit of more lively and discursive inquiry than that furnished within the dull range of his text-books. He had a singularly fearless manner of challenging the inexplicable in thought and life, with a light conversational flow of much brilliancy. Moreover, he was a delightful dreamer. We had our recitation, for quiet, in one of Grandma's gloomy and mysterious keepin'-rooms. The only object inviting to sedentary posture in this room was Grandpa's huge "chist," which occupied a position "along side" the East window. Those sacred window curtains, of green paper, flowered with crimson roses, were never rolled up; but as the light strayed in at one side, and fell on the Cradlebow's fine head, often I reflected that under certain other conditions of life, meaning conditions more favorable to Luther Larkin, I might have regarded him very tenderly, and invested the strength and beauty of his young manhood with heroic meaning. As it was, I assumed that I was years beyond him in the gravest respects. And if there was any truth in what Madeline had intimated, possibly I had been at fault for not impressing this fact more deeply on his mind. "So you are getting sadly behindhand with your lessons, Luther," I said. "I wish you would make a brave effort to catch up. There is no true attainment to be reached without a corresponding degree of effort--of perseverance." I spoke with a serious and gracious air, as though this sentiment, gleaned from a profound experience, had occurred to me as an idea peculiarly my own. "Never mind the lessons!" replied my audacious pupil, brightly. "Teacher," he added presently, having fallen into a gently musing attitude; "how shiny those crimples in your hair look, with that streak of sun lighting on 'em!" "Luther," said I, very gravely: "you ought not to talk to me about my hair. Suppose we give our attention to these books. Now you were getting along so fast, I'm very sorry----" "Do you think I'm to blame, teacher?" exclaimed Luther, earnestly, "There wasn't a stick of wood to be had in our house this morning! And I've had to be off, all day, chopping, with Scudder--you ought to have seen the black snake we killed this morning. It was six feet long. If you don't believe it, Scudder's got the carcass. It was lying all curled up in the bushes with its head up so--'you watch him, Lute,' says Scudder, 'and I'll run and get the axe!' I couldn't help laughing. The axe was over the other side of the bog, and the snake began to stretch himself out and slide along. I brought my boot-heel down once or twice on his head, about as quick and strong as I could make it. I killed him. It's a good sign to kill a snake, teacher. It's a good sign to dream of killing one; but you come across one so, accidentally, and kill it, and it's sure to bring good luck, Granny says." "That's more significant than a great many of your signs and symbols," I said. "That means that you will slay the tempter in your path, and be successful in overcoming difficulties. In short, it means that whatever there has been to divert you, you are coming back to the resolve to study and improve yourself; to be all the stronger for having a few chance obstacles to dispose of." Luther's head began to droop a little. I thought it was time that the melancholy atmosphere of the room should have begun to exercise its usual depressive effect on his spirits. "You think I don't like the books, teacher," he said. "I do, but there's most always something else to be doing. Father's lame. He can't do any work, and there's the rest to take care of. First, I sat up nights to study, then I got so sleepy I couldn't. But I'd got so in the habit of coming in to talk a little while after you got home from school, teacher, that I--I forgot to forget it. Have I been a great bother to you? You've been real good. I don't want you to think I forget that. And if I'd had a chance at the books early, or to push right along with 'em now, I might make out something in that line." Luther did not speak complainingly, nor even with hopeless regret. He rose and stretched himself, with solemn satisfaction, to the extent of his goodly proportions. "But I'm a man now, teacher," he said. "I shall be twenty in June, and life is short. A man hasn't got time for everything. He'd be a fool to waste it crying for what he didn't happen to have. He'd better push along and work for the best. I meant to tell you. I'm going to sea, teacher! I'm going trading. I was down to New Bedford, to see Captain Sparhauk yesterday, for I was out with him once before, and got a good deal of the hang of the business then; and he offered me a place on his ship next time he sails." Luther stood with flushed face, regarding me with a bright restless look of inquiry in his eyes. "Are you going away, really, Luther? I'm very sorry!" I said. "You don't care! what do you care?" he exclaimed almost rudely, with an unnatural touch of hardness in his laugh. "It's the way you talk to all the rest. A fellow might get to thinking too much about it. A fellow might get to caring--if he believed it--I don't." "What makes you think I shouldn't care if you were going away?" I continued, with the dispassionately gentle and reproving tone I considered it wisest to assume on the occasion. "I should care, I should be very sorry. Come and sit down here, please, and tell me all about it, when you are going, and where, and what you are going for?" Luther came slowly back to the light. He seemed verily to have grown older and handsomer in a moment. I experienced a deeper feeling of regret than ever before, that the circumstances of his life could not have been conducive to heroism. "The captain couldn't tell me just when he should sail," said he; "and I'm going to get money. I know a good deal of the Spanish and Portugal, I learned to talk them before--and I shall go to a great many places, I may not come back when the ship does. Say, what strange eyes you've got, teacher; now they're brown--and now, they're black, and now, they're a sort of--a--purplish gray." "Oh, my dear boy," I exclaimed, with a sudden accession of wisdom, sighing deeply; "you ought not to talk to me about the color of my eyes." At the same time to deepen the effect of this condescending tenderness, I pushed back lightly from his forehead a stray lock of hair that was hanging there. "Don't do that!" the boy cried with startling impetuosity. "Don't call me that again! I mean, teacher," he went on in a gentler tone, though none the less excitedly;--"if you should know somebody, that had set his heart on something, very much, and didn't want anything else if he couldn't have that, and if he should know that he hadn't any right to ask for it now, but go off and work for it real hard, and, maybe come back lucky in a few years, with a right to ask for it then;--do you think, teacher, that there'd be any chance of his finding--of his getting what he wanted most? If you were in anybody's place, now, teacher, would you give him a word of encouragement to try?" "I think that the person you speak of would be much more likely to succeed in a practical undertaking, without any hallucination of that sort before his eyes--and if, as you say, it isn't right that he should ask for it now, can we predict that it would be any more reasonable and expedient in the future? These idle fancies of ours soon pass away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by. Life is so full of changes, and people change, oh, so much!" In spite of the vanity of my soul, I comforted myself with the reflection that Luther would not care long. I did not really believe that he would go to sea. I stood with him a moment in the door of Grandma's kitchen. He looked over to the woods, behind which the water lay, and the fire and impatience had all gone out of his manner. His gentleness touched me deeply, yet I was determined not to feel his hurt, nor--"if only the circumstances of his life had been different"--what might have been mine also! "Hark! It's high tide. It's making quite a fuss over there," he said. "I think a man feels more quiet somehow, when he's out there, teacher. Father says I'm a wild chap and uneasy. I guess that's so. I can take care of them just as well too if I go, and better. Only if I should die--" there was nothing affected or forlorn in the Cradlebow's tone--"I should like to be buried on the hill, with father's folks. You've been across there. You look one way and there's the river, oftenest still--and the other way, you hear the old Bay scooting along the sand. I like it, being used to hearing it go always. Granny says it makes a difference then, where you lie, about the resting easy. I don't know. Sometimes it seems as though I should rest easier there." "A dissertation on the graveyard," I began in a tone of affected lightness, and then paused, convicted of untruth by the solemn light in the Cradlebow's strange, grand eyes. CHAPTER VII. LUTE CRADLEBOW KISSES THE TEACHER. Wallencamp had its peculiar seasons. After the season of hulled corn, came the reign of baked beans. It was during this latter dispensation that my courage failed considerably. Madeline used to remark, throwing a rare musical halo about her words: "These beans are better than they look. Ain't they, teacher?" And I was wont to reply conscientiously enough, though with a sweetly wearied glance at the familiar dish; "Certainly, they do taste better than they look." Occasionally we had what Harvey Dole called, "squash on the shell," an ingenious term for the last of the winter pumpkins boiled in halves, and served _au naturel_. Grandpa, too, pined and put away his food. He used to look across the table at me, with a feeble appeal for sympathy in his expression. Oftentimes he sighed deeply, and related anecdotes redolent of "red salmon" and "deer flesh," "strawberries as big as teacups" and "peaches as big as pint bowls," in places where he had sailed. Once, he ventured to remark, apologetically, referring to the beans and pumpkins, that "bein' sich a mild winter, somehow he didn't hanker arter sech bracin' food, and he guessed he'd go over to Ware'am, and git some pork." "Wall, thar' now, pa!" said Grandma; "seems to me we'd ought ter consider all the fruits o' God's bounty as good and relishin' in their season." "I call that punkin out of season," said Grandpa, recklessly. "Strikes me so." "I was talkin' about fruits. I wasn't talkin' about punkins," said Grandma, with derisive conclusiveness. "Wall," said Grandpa, very much aroused, "if you call them tarnal white beans the fruits of God, I don't!" "Don't you consider that God made beans, pa?" "No, I don't!" "Who, then--" continued Grandma, in an awful tone--"do you consider made beans, pa?" Grandpa's eyes, as he glared at the dish, were large and round, and significant of unspeakable things. "Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma hastened to say; "my ears have heard enough!" As for Grandma, neither her appetite, nor her spirits, flagged. In spite of her confirmed habit of tantalizing Grandpa--and this was from no malevolence of motive, but simply as the conscientious fulfilment of a sacred religious and domestic duty--she was the most delightful soul I ever knew. At supper, it was a habit for her to sit at the table long after we had finished our meal, and to continue eating and talking in her slow, automatic, sublimely philosophical manner, until not a vestige of anything eatable remained, and then as she rose, she would remark, simply, with a glance at the denuded board:-- "It beats all, how near you guessed the vittles to-night, daughter!" Then Grandma resorted to an occasional pastime, harmless and playful enough in itself, yet intended as a special means of discipline for Grandpa, and certainly, a source of great torment and anxiety to that poor old man. Between the hours of eight and nine P.M., Grandma would deftly glide out of the family circle, and be seen no more that night. At bedtime, Grandpa would begin the search, while Madeline and I ungenerously retired. In the privacy of my own chamber, I could hear the old Captain tramping desolately about the Ark, calling, "Ma! ma!" Could hear the outside door swung open, and imagine Grandpa's wild face peering into the darkness, while still he called; "Ma! ma! where be ye? It's half after ten!" Then, from the foot of the stairs would arise his distressed, appealing cry; "Come, ma, where be ye? It's half after ten!" Silence everywhere. With a mighty groan, Grandpa would come shuffling up the steep stairs, and what was most remarkable, Grandma was invariably found secluded amid the rubbish in the old garret. Then the whisperings that arose between those two would have pierced through denser substances by far than the little red door which separated me from the scene. "How'd I know, ma, but what you'd gone out and broke yer leg, or somethin'? Come, ma--" with exasperated persuasiveness--"what do ye want to pester me this way for?" "Why, pa," arose the calm, mellifluous accents of Grandma Keeler, "so't you might know how you'd feel if I should be took away!" Next, the little staircase would resound with loud creaks and groans, as this reunited couple cautiously--and I have no doubt that they believed the whole affair had been conducted with the utmost secrecy--made their way down in their stocking feet. Grandma--Heaven bless her, always devoted, though original--never saw a human ill that she did not long to alleviate. So, as Grandpa and I daily refused our food, she affirmed, as her opinion, that the one need of our deranged systems was a clarifier! And she forthwith prepared a mixture of onions and molasses, with various bitter roots, which latter she, upon her knees, had wrested from the frosty bosom of the earth in an arena immediately adjoining the Ark. Thus I beheld her one wintry day, and wondered greatly what she was at. When I came home from school at night, through a strangely permeated atmosphere, I beheld the clarifier simmering on the stove. Grandpa already stood shivering over the fire. He smiled when I came in, but it was a faint and deathly smile--the smile of one who has returned, per force, to weak, defenceless infancy. Grandma pressed me kindly to partake. I preferred to keep what ills I had, rather than fly to others that I knew not of. So I gently and firmly declined. But for several days in succession, Grandpa was made the victim of this ghastly remedy. His sufferings went beyond the power of mad expostulation to express, and came nigh to produce upon his features the aspect of a saintly resignation. Never shall I forget his appearance during this clarifying period--his occasional faint and fleeting attempts at wit--his usually hopeless and world-weary air. The wonder to me was that he did not then enter upon a celestial state of existence, being eminently fitted to go, as far as the attenuation of his mortal frame was concerned. It was at this time that I wrote home that I had never had such an appetite before in my life as now in Wallencamp (which, in one sense, I felt to be perfectly true); that the food was of a most remarkable variety (which I also felt to be true); but that it was rather difficult to procure oranges and the like. Whereupon, I received from home a large box, containing all manner of pleasant fruits, and thus poor old Grandpa Keeler and I were enabled to take a new lease of life. I found that it was considered indispensable to the proper discharge of my duties in Wallencamp that I should make frequent calls on the parents of my flock, throughout the entire community. If I failed in any measure in this respect, they reproached me with being "unsociable," and said; "Seems to me you ain't very neighborly, teacher." I had called myself a student of human nature. It seemed to me, now, that in those dingy Wallencamp houses, I stood for the first time, awed and delighted before the real article. Sometimes the men sent out great volumes of smoke from their pipes, in the low rooms, that were not delightful; but as far as they knew, they exerted themselves to the utmost, men and women both, to make their homes pleasant and attractive to me. Godfrey Cradlebow's place was as small and poor as any. There was one room that served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, with a corresponding medley of furniture. A very finely chased gold watch hung against the loose brown boards of the wall--a reminder of Godfrey Cradlebow's youth. But what distinguished this house from all the others, was the profusion of books it contained. There were books on the tables, books under the tables, books piled up in the corner of the room. Godfrey Cradlebow himself was confined in-doors much of the time with the rheumatism. He made nets for the fishermen. I used to like to watch his fingers moving deftly while he talked. Things having gone wrong with him, and he having suffered much acute physical pain, besides--(that was evident from the manner in which his stalwart frame had been bent with his disease) he had "taken to drink," not excessively, but he seemed to be, most of the time, in a lightly inebriated condition. He was a strange and fluent talker, often ecstatic. "It is commonly believed, Miss Hungerford," he said to me, once; "that we start on the summit of life, that we descend into the valley, that the sun is westering; but as for me, I seem to look far below there on the mists and dew of earlier years. I walk among the hills. The horizon widens. The air grows thin. I see the solemn streaks of dawn appearing through the gloom. Ah," he murmured, again; "weak and erring though I undoubtedly am, I have a kinship with the living Christ. Yes, even such kinship as human worthlessness may have with infinite perfection. People will say to you about here, Miss Hungerford; 'Oh, never mind Godfrey Cradlebow. He's always being converted, why, he has been converted twenty times already!' very true, ay, and a hundred times, and I trust I shall taste the sweets of conversion many times more before I die. I do not believe the soul to be a barren tract, so far removed from the ocean of God's love, that it may be washed by the waves only once in a lifetime, and that, in case of some terrible flood. But I rejoice daily in the sweet and natural return of the tide. How the shores wait for it! Strewn with weeds and wreck, scorched by the sun, chilled by the night, how it listens for the sound of its coming! until it rushes in--ah! roar after roar--all-covering, all-hiding, all-embracing!" Godfrey Cradlebow shook his head rapturously, tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the while he went on rapidly with his netting. He had the natural tact and grace of a gentleman, and was especially courteous to his wife. This brought down upon him the derision of the Wallencampers, whose conjugal relations were seldom more delicately implied than by a reference--"my woman thar'!" or "my man over thar'!" with an accompanying jerk of the thumb. Lydia, Godfrey Cradlebow's wife, was tall and slight, with dark hair and eyes--a perfect face, though worn and sad. She invariably wore over her cotton gown, on occasions when she went out, a very fine, very thin old-fashioned mantilla, bordered with a deep black fringe. This pathetic remnant of gentility, borne rudely about by the Wallencamp winds, with Lydia's refined face and melancholy dark eyes, gave her a very interesting and picturesque appearance; though I never thought she wore the mantilla during the winter for effect. She was shy, though exceedingly gentle in her manners. At first, I had thought that she avoided me. But one time, when making the round of my parochial calls, I stopped at the Cradlebows', and Mr. Cradlebow discoursing fluently on the Phenomenon, recommended a severe method of discipline as best adapted to his case, I replied, laughingly, that he had better be cautious about making any suggestions of that sort, for Simeon and I were getting to be great friends; the mother, on whose heart I had had no design, took my hand at the door, when I went away, in a clinging, almost an affectionate way. "You are good to my boys, teacher," she said; "and I thank you for it. They make you a great deal of trouble." "Oh, no," I answered lightly, returning with a sense of pleasure the pressure of her hand, and it was not until afterwards, walking slowly down the lane that I sighed gently, thinking of that troublesome boy who had told me he was going to sea. Removed from the world of newspapers, the ordinary active interest in the affairs of church and state, there was a great deal of the lively gadding about, neighborly dropping in element in Wallencamp. This applied to the men equally as well as to the women. I remember that Abbie Ann once put out her washing, and this fact kept the whole social element of Wallencamp on the _qui vive_ for a number of days. The caller would appear at the door at anytime during the day with a good-natured matter-of-fact "I was a passin' by, and thought I'd drop in a minit, jest to see how ye was gittin' along." "Won't you set?" would be the cordial response. "Do set." "Wall, I don't know how to spend the time anyway," the visitor would reply; "there's so many things a drivin' on me." But this care-belabored victim of fate usually concluded by sitting quite complacently for any length of time. When such visitations occurred out of school hours, and I remained up in my room, as I frequently did at first, the droppers in felt very much aggrieved, as though I had wittingly offended the instincts of good society. Besides all which, seldom an evening passed that the young people did not come to the Ark _en masse_ to sing. Then Madeline or Rebecca, or (very rarely) I propelled a strain of doubtful melody from Madeline's little melodeon, while the singers--boys and girls together--chimed in, joyfully rendering with a perfect fearlessness of utterance and deep intensity of expression such songs as "Go, bury thy sorrow, the world hath its share," and "Jesus, keep me near the cross," and "Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow; now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." They knew no other songs. They would sing through a large proportion of the Moody and Sankey Hymnal in a single evening. At first I listened half amused or thoroughly wearied. But, as the strains grew more familiar and I sang occasionally with the others, I felt each day more tired and more conscious of my own incompetency. And still the Words rang in my ears; "I hear the Saviour say, thy strength indeed is small;" with much about trusting in Him, and his willingness to bear it all. As the wind beat against the Ark on wild nights, so that we could hardly tell which was the wind and which was the roar of the maddened sea, and still those voices chanted hopefully of the "stormless home beyond the river," etc., the words began to strike on something deeper than my physical or intellectual sense, and that not rudely. I smiled to catch myself humming them over often, and in the school-room, when I felt that my patience was fast oozing, and I experienced a wild desire to loose the reins and let all go, unconsciously I took refuge in repeating those same simple words, going over with them, again and again, beneath my breath, holding on to them as though they possessed some unknown charm to keep me still and strong. I went to the evening meetings. They were held in the school-house, and were very popular in Wallencamp. By some provision of the government on behalf of the Indians, a small meeting-house had been built for those in the vicinity of Wallencamp, and they were also provided with a minister for several months during the year. On this account the Indians rather set themselves up above the benighted Wallencampers, whom government had not endowed with the privileges of the sanctuary, while they, in turn, made derisive allusions to the "Nigger-camp" minister, and regarded with contempt its prescribed means of grace. The Indians enjoyed, for part of the time that I was in Wallencamp, the ministrations of a Baptist clergyman, a truly earnest and intelligent man, gifted with a most forceful manner of utterance, but so lean as to present a phenomenal appearance. This good man feared nothing but that he should fail in some part of the performance of his duty. He believed that it was his duty to come over and preach to the Wallencampers also, in their school-house, and he did so. I think that the Wallencampers regarded this, on the whole, as a doubtful though entertaining move. I do not think that they took any particular pains to harass or annoy the Rev. Mr. Rivers. But they certainly did not restrict themselves in that natural freedom which they always enjoyed on the occasions of their spiritual feasts. They attended, as usual--the old and the young, the good, the bad, the indifferent, with a lively sprinkling of babies. Though not a cold night, they kept the stove gorged with fuel. It roared furiously. They were restless. They made signs audibly expressive of the fact that the air of the room was insufferably close, and very audibly slammed up the windows. They whispered and giggled; they went out and came in, as they pleased. They drank a great deal of water. I remember particularly, how at the most earnest and affecting part of the Rev. Mr. Rivers' discourse, the immortal Estella, _alias_ the "Modoc," arose in gawky innocence and all good faith from her seat immediately in front of the speaker, and walked to the back part of the room to regale herself with a draught. The Baptist minister discharged a withering and conscientious reproof at them through his nose. Now, for, the Wallencampers to be reproved, however scathingly, by some zealous and inspired individual of their own number, was considered, on the whole, as an apt and appropriate thing, but to be reproved by the "Nigger-camp" minister! When, after the meeting he walked with the Keeler family back to the Ark, where he had been hospitably entertained, the Wallencamp boys saw us depart in silent wrath, and I feared that Treachery lay in wait for the Rev. Mr. Rivers. He sat and talked with us at the Ark for an hour or more, perhaps, before bidding us good-night, and during that time I caught glimpses of faces that appeared at the window, and then vanished again instantly--familiar faces, expressive of much scornful merriment. Now and then I heard a smothered giggle outside, and a scrambling among the bushes. It was a dark night. When the Rev. Mr. Rivers finally rose to depart, and had got as far as the gate, he became helplessly entangled in a perfect network of small ropes. He could neither advance nor recede. In a pitiable and ignominious condition, he called to us for help. "Those devilish boys!" said Grandpa, with religious fervor of tone, at the same time glancing at me with a delighted twinkle in his eye. "I knew they was up to something. I heered 'em out there;" and he patiently lit his lantern, and went out to cut the minister free; but the Rev. Mr. Rivers did not come to the Wallencamp school-house to preach again. Among those who looked on with quiet approval at this childish and barbarous performance of the Wallencamp youth, I learned afterwards, were staid Lovell Barlow and little Bachelor Lot. Left to their own spiritual devices, the Wallencampers carried on their evening meetings after methods formerly approved. They rose and talked--or prayed--or diverted themselves socially--or sang. Everything they were moved to do, they did. The lame giant, Godfrey Cradlebow, at seasons when the tide came in, would pour forth the utterances of his soul with the most earnest eloquence. At other times, he was morbid and silent, or made skeptical and sneering remarks aside. Lovell Barlow, though generally regarded as a believer, had never so far overcome his natural modesty and reserve as to address the Wallencamp meeting. But one night, spurred to make the attempt by some of his malicious and fun-loving compatriots, he surprised us all by rising with a violent motion from his seat, and making a sudden plunge forward as though his audience were a cold bath, and he had determined to wade in. "Boys!" he began, with a most unnatural ferociousness. Then I felt Lovell's eyes fixed on my face. "And girls, too," he added, more gently; "and girls, too, certainly, _I_ think so;" he continued; "_I_ think so." His tone became very feeble. He glanced about with a wild eye for his hat, grasped it, and went out, and I saw him afterwards, through the window, standing like a statue, in the moonlight, with his arms folded, and with a perfectly cold and emotionless cast of countenance. Among the professors, Godfrey Cradlebow's mother, Aunt Sibylla, with quite as much fire and less delicacy of expression than characterized the speech of the strange lame man, was always ready to warn, threaten, and exhort. Grandpa Keeler, too, though not subjected to the renovating and rejuvenating processes of the Sabbath, but just touched up a little here and there, enough to give him a slight "odor of sanctity," and a saving sense of personal discomfort, was always led to the meeting, and kept close by Grandma Keeler's side on the most prominent bench. When there was one of those frightful pauses which sometimes occurred even in the cheerful concourse of the Wallencampers, casting a depressing influence over all hearts, Grandma Keeler by a series of covert pokes and nudges, would signify to Grandpa that now was the appointed moment for him to arise and let his light shine. And Grandpa Keeler was not a timid man, but since the event of his clarification, he had shown a stronger dislike than ever to being pestered, and was abnormally quick to detect and resist any advances of that kind. So his movements on these occasions were marked by an angry deliberation, though the old sea-captain never failed in the end, to arise and "hand in his testimony." His remarks were (originally) clear cut and terse. "There's no need o' my gittin' up. You all know how I stand" (an admonitory nudge from Grandma)--"What's the matter now, ma?" I could hear the old man swear, mentally, but he went on with the amendment--"or try to. I'm afeered that even the best on us, at some time or nuther, have been up to some devil"--(sly, but awfully emphatic nudge from Grandma) "ahem! we're all born under a cuss!" persisted Grandpa, with irate satisfaction. "I've steered through a good many oceans," he continued, more softly, "but thar' ain't none so--misty--as this--a--" (portentous nudge from Grandma,) "as this pesky ocean of Life! We've got to keep a sharp look-out" (another nudge from Grandma), "ahem, steer clear of the rocks," (persistent nudges from Grandma), "ahem! ahem! trust in God Almighty!" admitted Grandpa with telling force, and sat down. As for Grandma, she was herself always prompt and faithful in the discharge of duty, however trying the circumstances. She was no hypocrite, this dear old soul! She could not have feigned sentiments which she did not feel, yet it was invariably the case that, as she rose in meeting, her usually cheerful face became in the highest degree tearful and lugubrious. The thought of so many precious souls drifting toward destruction filled her tender heart with woe. She besought them in the gentlest and most persuasive terms to "turn to Jesus." She dwelt long upon His love, standing always with hands reverently clasped before her, and eyes downcast with awe. I used to long to hear her speak. The sound of that low, tender monotone was in itself inexpressibly soothing. But Grandma's tongue had its mild edge, as well. Once, when she was speaking, a number of the young people--it was a common occurrence--rose to go out. Grandma went on talking without raising either her voice or her eyes; but when they had reached the door, "What--" said she, in that tone which, though so mild, somehow unaccountably arrested their progress; "what--poor, wanderin' creeturs--if your understandin's should give out!" meaning, what if you should suddenly be deprived of the use of your legs! "Have you never heered," she continued; "the story of Antynias and Sapf_i_ry?" But she did not recount the tale. If possible, she would rather use words of love than of malediction. I shall never forget the faithful manner in which she narrated Abraham's intercession with the Lord for Sodom and Gomorrah. "And Abraham said to the Lord, 'Periodventure there be fifty righteous found,' he said; 'willest thou destroy the city, and them in it? Oh, no! that ain't like the Lord,' he says; 'for to slay the righteous and the wicked together--fur be it.' And the Lord says; 'No. If I find fifty righteous I'll spare all the rest,' he says, 'on account o' them fifty,' he says, and Abraham says, 'O Lord, now I've begun,' he says, 'and you don't seem so very much put out with me as I expected, I've a good mind to keep on askin' ye a little more, jest to see what ye'll say,' he says; 'O Lord, periodventure what if there shouldn't be but forty-five?' he says." Grandma went through the list of "periodventures," depicting Abraham's growing fear and obsequiousness in the most tragic manner until she got to the hypothetical ten. "And Abraham said; 'O Lord, I know you won't like it this time, but I've gone so fur now, that I'm going to out with't; and don't--don't git put out, O Lord! and I won't put it one mite lower. Periodventure, O Lord, what if there shouldn't be but ten?' and the Lord said, 'If there wasn't but ten, he wouldn't destroy them wicked cities.' Now," continued Grandma, with tearful impressiveness, "if Abraham had even a ventured to put it down one five more, what more chance do you think there'd be for us here in Wallencamp?" After the meeting, Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot held their usual theological levee, outside the school-house. "Wall, Bachelder," said the captain, who always took the initiative with extreme recklessness; "if it was a goin' to take ten to clear Sodom and Germorrer, how many righteous men do you calkalate it 'ud take ter lift the mortgage off'n this ere peninsheler, eh?" Bachelor Lot was unusually thoughtful. "Heh!" said he, in his thin drawl. "The Lord knew he was seafe enough--knew he'd a been seafe enough if he'd a said tew; knew he'd a been seafe enough if he'd a said eone, for there's his own statement to the effect--heh!--that there wasn't a righteous man eanywhere, no, not eone." "Not much leeway, that's a fact, Bachelder," said Captain Sartell, who had an embarrassed way, particularly when discussing subjects of a religious nature, of twisting his powerful blonde head about, and swallowing very hard. "D----d little leeway, I must confess,--wall--all the same for you and me, Bachelder." Bachelor Lot smiled a little. "Heh! What was it about that couple, Almiry (Grandma Keeler) was tellin' about--Antynias and Sapfiry--heh, Captain? What streuck 'em eany way? It wasn't because they went out o' meetin', was it? I think it would be a satisfaction to the company, Captain, if you would relate the circumstance." The brave and honest captain craned his neck about with several hard gulps. "Wall, to tell the truth, Bachelder, I ain't quite so well posted with the Old Testament as I be with the New, but," he continued, resolutely, "if it would be any favor to the company--as near as I calkalate, this ere Antynias heered that the Lord was a goin' by, and, as near as I calkalate, he clim' up in a tree to see him pass." The captain writhed fearfully, but did not flinch, "And, as near as I calkalate, he got on to a rotten limb, and it let him down. That is," he remarked, with concluding agony, "as near as I calkalate." "Heh! yees, much obleeged, I'm sure," said Bachelor Lot. "I, heh! I recall the anecdote now, perfectly, but wheere--wheere was Sapf_i_ry?" "Wall," the captain gave a gulp that actually brought the tears to his eyes; "as near as I calkalate, Sapf_i_ry was under the limb." "Certainly," said Bachelor Lot; "certainly! and a veery unfortunate poseetion for Sapf_i_ry it was, too. I weesh you would be so kind as to eenform the company in what part of the Sacred Writ this little anecdote is recorded, Captain, as I for one should very much leike to look it up." Captain Sartell took a determined step forward. "Look y' here, Bachelder," said he; "I don't want no hard words betwixt you and me, for there never has been. But a man's word is a man's word, and a man's friends had ought to stick by it, and I want you to understand that, on this ere point, I ain't agoin' to have no lookin' up." "Heh!" Bachelor Lot smiled and nodded his head, cheerfully. "I'd be willing to waeger my life, Captain, that if anybody's made a mistake on this point--heh--it ain't you." And with this amicable conclusion, the two stars withdrew. George Olver sometimes rose in meeting and made a few remarks indicative of a manly spirit and much sound common sense. He was very fond of Rebecca, that was plain. Her continued indifference to him made him sore at heart, and the people in Wallencamp suggested that on this account he was more serious than he would otherwise have been. As for Rebecca, they said she had given up "seekin' religion," and had returned to the world. She did not rise for prayers any more, and she did not "lead the singin'" any more. And it was true that she seemed to me to have changed, somehow. I knew that she was as girlishly devoted to me as ever, as thoughtful as ever to please me. One Saturday morning, knowing that I had letters in the West Wallen Post Office, which I was anxious to get before Sunday, she walked the whole distance alone to get them, and sent them up to me by one of the school children, so that I should not know who went after them. She was careful lest I should notice any change in her. But I caught a reckless, mocking gleam in her eyes, at times, that had never shone there when I knew her first. She associated more with the "other girls," now. I heard her talking and laughing with them in as loud and careless a tone as their own. She even whispered and laughed in the evening meetings. And this, after all the earnest, serious discourse I had had with her, the "refining," "elevating" influences I had tried to throw around her, having first taken her so graciously under my wing! She knew what belonged to agreeable manners, and the advantage of paying a graceful obedience to the dictates of one's moral sense! Something must be very innately wrong in Rebecca, I thought, something I Had not hitherto suspected, else why should she fail in any degree under so admirable a method! "My dear," I said to her: "I am often tempted to do wrong--especially because my life has been hitherto so vain and thoughtless--but, having resolved to struggle with temptation, and to repel my own selfish inclinations, I will not be content until I come off conqueror; I will not fall out or loiter by the way; I have trials and perplexities, but I will not submit to them, nor be driven from my purpose. Now, are you struggling to resist the little temptations that come to you day by day? Are you striving to make the very best of yourself, Becky?" I knew how easily I could move Rebecca, either to laughter or tears, so I was not surprised to see her lip tremble, and her eyes fill; but I was surprised at the look of intense anguish, almost of horror, that came into her face. I had not supposed that she was capable of such strong emotion, and I marvelled greatly, what could be the cause. "Oh," she said; "you don't know, teacher, you don't know! It never seemed so bad before I knew you. I was different brought up from you, and I loved you, and when I knew, oh, then I could die, but I couldn't tell you! Oh, you wouldn't kiss me again, ever, if you knew; and I wish you wouldn't, for it hurts, it hurts worse than if you didn't!" Rebecca had turned very pale, and drew her breath in long gasping sobs. "Baby!" I said reassuringly, stroking her hair; "I don't believe you have done anything very wrong." But Rebecca drew away from me. "You don't know," she said. "I was brought up different--and it was before you came, and I never knew that, what you told me about not trusting people. I thought it was all true, and oh!--there ain't anybody to help! Oh, I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!" "Rebecca," I said, a little frightened, and convinced that the girl had some serious trouble at heart. "Tell me what the trouble is? Has any one deceived you? And why should any one wish to deceive you, child?" Rebecca only moaned and shook her head. "But you must tell me," I said; "I can't help you unless you do." She drew herself farther away from me, with only these convulsive sobs for a reply. I did not attempt to get nearer to her, to comfort her as it had been my first impulse to do. She had repulsed me once. "You are nervous and excited, my dear," I decided to say; "and something of little consequence, probably, looks like a mountain of difficulty to you. At any rate, when you get ready to confide in me, you must come to me. I shall not question you again." So I left her, less with a feeling of commiseration for her than with a deep sense of my own pressing burdens and responsibilities. I had another ex-pupil (Rebecca had been out of school for several weeks), who was a source of considerable anxiety to me--Luther Larkin. He had ceased coming to the Ark to sing with the others. He had not played on his violin since that first night when the string broke. I heard that he had gone to New Bedford; and it was a day or two afterwards that, coming out of the school-house after the meeting, I saw him standing on the steps alone. I knew that an escort from among the Wallencamp youths was close behind me. I hastened to put my hand on Luther's arm. "Will you walk home with me?" I said, looking up in his face and smiling. I knew that the face lifted to his then was a beautiful one, that the hand resting on his arm was small and daintily gloved, unlike the bare coarse hands of the Wallencampers. I knew that my dress had an air and a grace also foreign to Wallencamp, that a delicate perfume went up from my garments, that my voice was more than usually winning. I experienced a dangerous sense of satisfaction in the conquest of this unsophisticated youth--a conquest not wholly without its retributive pain and intoxication. I felt the Cradlebow's arm tremble as we walked up the lane. "I have a little private lecture to give you, Luther," I said. "Of course you have been very much absorbed in your own affairs lately, but is that an excuse for forsaking your old friends entirely? Especially if you are going away. Are you going away?" "Yes," said Luther. "When?" I asked. "In April," he answered briefly. [Illustration: GRANDMA KEELER INTRODUCES THE NEW TEACHER. Scene from the Play.] "And weren't you ever coming to see me, again?" I murmured with designing soft reproach. "I was coming up by and by, to say good-bye," said Luther, brokenly. "Only for that?" I questioned, and sighed with a perfect abandonment of rectitude and good faith to the selfish gratification of that moment. "What else should I come up for?" he exclaimed, breaking out into sudden passion. "Except to tell you what you don't want to hear; that I love you, teacher, I love you." "Oh, hush!" I cried with a little accent of unaffected pain. "It isn't right for me to let you talk to me in that way, Luther. Oh, don't you see? you're nothing but a boy to me!" "That's a lie!" the boy replied, with face and eyes aflame. "And because I am poor, and because I am more ignorant than you, you make it an excuse to trifle with me--and you look only to the outside, but you know I have lived as long as you--a boy's head, you mean," he went on with choking, fiery bitterness. "And it may be, and you are very kind, God knows! But I can tell you one thing, teacher, it isn't a boy's heart for you to put your foot on!" It was not a boy's strength in the quivering frame and tense, drawn muscles. In his rare passions I admired Lute Cradlebow. The greater meekness and patience which always followed, I attributed to a lack of perseverance or a too easy abandonment of purpose. "I hope you will be very happy all your life through, teacher;" he said, as we stood at the door of the Ark; and he spoke very gently, and as though he was going away then forever. Madeline had the key; she and her companions had lingered at the school-house, as usual, after the meeting. I murmured something about being very happy to have such a kind, true friend; that I should probably leave Wallencamp before he went to sea, but I hoped he would write me about his wanderings over the world, and I should always be happy to answer and give him my sisterly advice. Luther continued, thoughtfully, almost smiling:-- "You remember that night, teacher, ever so long ago it seems, before I knew you, when the boys dragged me into the Ark and I kissed you? I've always kissed the girls when they come home from anywhere, and I never thought, you know. I didn't mean anything by it." "Yes," I said. I think I must have looked amused. Luther answered the laugh in my eyes with quiet appreciation. "Well, teacher," he said; "I should like to kiss you just once to-night, and mean it." "That's a remarkable request," I said; "to come from my oldest pupil; but it is my privilege to bestow, just once. If you will bend down from your commanding height, and put yourself in an humble and submissive attitude before me." The Cradlebow knelt on the doorstep. I would have stooped to his forehead, but he put up his arm with an extremely boyish, inoffensive gesture, almost with a sob, I thought, to draw me closer. I would have had that kiss as passionless as though it had been given to a child. The Cradlebow's breath was pure upon my cheek--but I was compelled to feel the answering flame creep slowly in my own blood. "Never ask me to do that again!" I exclaimed, in righteous exculpation of the act. "Never!" CHAPTER VIII. FESTIVITIES AT THE ARK. Up from the beach, lightly tripping, capacious reticule in hand, came Mrs. Barlow to spend the day at the Ark, unexpectedly! The inspired and felicitous customs of the Wallencampers admitted of no rude surprises; rational joy, alone, pervaded the Ark at this matutinal advent. Mrs. Barlow, Lovell's mother, presented a charmingly antique appearance--antique not in the sense of advanced years, but the young antique--the gay, the lively, the never-fading antique. She had even a girlish way of simpering and uttering absurdly rapturous exclamations. Her face might have struck one at first as being of a strangely elongated cast, but for its extreme prettiness and simplicity of expression. Her nose was marked by a becoming scallop or two. Her eyes were of the ocean blue. Her dark hair was arranged, behind, in the simplest and most compact manner possible but, in front, art held delightful play. There, it was parted, slightly to the left, over a broad, high forehead, and disposed in braids of eight strands each, gracefully and lovingly looped over Mrs. Barlow's ears. The tide of cheerful converse was at its full when I came from school to lunch. Amid this preponderance of female society, my friend, Grandpa, shone with an ardent though faintly tolerated light, giving to the lively flow of the discourse, an occasional salty and comprehensive flavor, which dear Grandma Keeler held herself ever in calm and religious readiness to restrain. I listened, intensely interested, to the conversation, quite content, for my own part, to keep silence; but I caught Mrs. Barlow's eye fixed on me as if in abstracted, beatific thought. Soon was made known the result of her meditation. She had concluded that I was incapable of descending to subjects of an ordinary nature. Leaning far forward on the table, with a smile more ecstatic than any that had gone before, she directed these words at me in a clear, swift-flowing treble:-- "Oh, ain't it dreadful about them poor delewded Mormons?" "Why?" I exclaimed, involuntarily, blinded by the absolute unexpectedness of the question, and not knowing, in a dearth of daily papers, but that the infatuated people alluded to had been swallowed up of an earthquake, or fallen in a body into the Great Salt Lake. "Oh, nothing!" said Mrs. Barlow; "only I think it's dreadful, don't yew, settin' such an example to Christian nations?" "Dreadful! certainly!" I murmured, with intense relief, and allowed my glasses to drop into my lap again. Thus the conversation turned to subjects of a religious nature. "Oh, I think it's so nice to have direct dealin's with the Almighty; don't yew?" said Mrs. Barlow. "Oh, I think it is! Brother Mark Barlow says he can hear the Lord speakin' to him jest as plain as they could in Old Testament times; oh, yes, jest as plain exactly; Abraham and all them, yew know! And Brother Mark Barlow generally means to go to Sunday school. He says he thinks it's so interestin'; but it's sich an awful ways. Don't yew think it is? Oh, yes, it's a dreadful ways! He don't always. But yew remember that Saturday we had sich a dreadful storm? oh, wasn't it dreadful! Oh, yes! Well, the next day, that was Sunday, Brother Mark Barlow said he heard the Lord sayin' to him, jest as plain as day; 'Mark Barlow, don't you go to Sunday school to-day! You stay home and pick up laths!' and he did, and oh, he got a dreadful pile! most ten dollars worth; but I think it's so nice, don't yew, to have direct dealin's with the Almighty!" The Barlows, by the way, were regarded with a sort of contemptuous toleration by the Wallencampers in general, on account of their thrift and penuriousness, the branded qualities of sordid and unpoetic natures. I was sorry when the brief hour of the noon intermission was over, and I had to go back to school. But at night the Ark became alive. Soon after supper, Mr. Barlow arrived and "Brother Mark Barlow" and Lovell. Then the little room began to fill rapidly. We adjourned to the "parlor" and the melodeon. "Oh, I do think them plaster Paris picters are so beautiful, don't yew?" said Mrs. Barlow, enraptured over a statuette or two of that truly vague description, which adorned the mantelpiece. But she became perfectly lost in delight when Lovell began to sing. Lovell's was the one execrable voice among the Wallencampers--if anything so weak could be designated by so strong a term--and his manner of keeping time with his head was clock-like in its regularity and painfully arduous; yet, out of that pristine naughtiness which found a hiding-place in the hearts of the Wallencamp youth, Lovell was frequently encouraged to come to the front during their musicals, and if not actually beguiled into executing a solo, was generously applauded in the performance of minor parts. There was comfort, however, in the reflection that if Lovell had indeed possessed the tuneful gift of a Heaven-elected artist, he could not have been so supremely confident of the merit of his own performances, nor could his mother have been more delighted at their brilliancy. She sat with hands clasped in her lap and gazed at her manly offspring. "Oh, I do think it's so beautiful!" she murmured occasionally to me, aside. "Oh, yes, ain't it beautiful?" Once, she remarked in greater confidence; "Oh, he's dreadful wild!" "Lovell?" I inquired, with impulsive incredulity. "Oh, dreadful!" she continued. "I don't know what he'd ben if we hadn't always restrained him. But somehow, I think there's something dreadful bewitchin' about such folks. Don't yew?" "Very," I answered with vague, though ardent sympathy. "Oh, dreadful!" she responded. Meanwhile the perspiration stood out on Lovell's grave countenance, and his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying mechanically backward and forward. "Sing bass, now, Lovell," said Mrs. Barlow; and the expression of awed delight and expectancy on her face, as she uttered these words, was a rebuke to all cynics and unbelievers of any sort whatever. "Yes'm, so I will, certainly," said Lovell; "so I will, and if I hadn't got such a cold, I'd come down heavy on it too." "What do you think?" Mrs. Barlow went on in the same confidential aside to me; "he's took it into his head that he wants to get married! Oh, yes, he has really! and I think it's a wonder he never got set on it before. But he never has so but what we could restrain him. But William and I, we're beginning to think he might as well if he wants to. Oh, yes, I think it will be so nice. Don't yew? I think it will be just splendid! And I tell William, Lovell's wife shan't do nothing but set in the parlor and fold her hands, if she don't want to; and she shall have a music, and everything. When we built our new house, you know we used to live in that little house that Brother Mark Barlow lives in now, oh, yes, and I think it's so nice to have a new house, don't yew? I had 'em make the window seats low on purpose, so that Lovell's children could sit on them! Oh, I think it will be so pleasant, don't yew?" Mrs. Barlow turned her enraptured gaze on me. "Lovell's wife," I hastened to reply, toying with my glasses; "whoever she may be, is certainly to be envied--and Lovell's children, too"--I added, induced by that transcendently beaming smile; "who will have such a broad window seat to sit on." Never an evening began in heartier fashion at the Ark. George Olver, standing next to Rebecca, rolled out a grand and powerful bass. Lars Thorjon, the Norwegian, maintained a smiling silence, except when he was giving utterance in song to his inspiring tenor. Madeline played the "music." I saw her wince sometimes, when the fine though untutored voices around her took on a too wild and exuberant strain. The little woman's own voice was exceedingly gentle and refined; more than that, it had a passionately sweet, sad tone, a rare pathos. I used to wonder what there was in Madeline's heart--what there had been in her life--to make her sing so. Then I remembered how easy it was for her to get out of temper, and how often she slapped the children, and I concluded that it was only a voice after all, and not necessarily indicative of any inward sentiment or emotion. And the mischievous Harvey Dole--could it be the same youth who stood there now with tearful eyes, chanting his longings to be pure and sanctified and heavenly. This merry youth had a predilection for those religious songs which contained the deepest and saddest sentiment. "Now, what's the matter with you, Harvey?" said Emily Gaskell, who had but just dropped in. "You know you'll go along hum to-night stunin' my cats! You know what a precious nice time you're calculatin' to have, about two months from now, up in my trees stealin' my peaches, you young devil. 'Wash you from your sins!' Humph! Yes, you need it bad enough, Lord knows! A good poundin', and boilin', and sudzin', you need--and a good soakin' in the bluein' water over night, too." Emily's eyes sparkled with keen though good-natured satire. There was a flood of crimson color in her cheeks, not entirely the effect of her brisk walk in the open air. She had a spasm of coughing, which she endured as though such discomforts had become quite a matter of course, merely remarking when she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak:-- "Thar', that'll last me for one spell, I guess." "Won't you set, Emily?" said Grandma. "No," said Emily. "I can't. I jest come up to tell my man, there, to go home! Levi is over from West Wallen, and wants to see him. Lord, I didn't know you'd got a party, Miss Keeler!" she continued, glancing with an irresistibly comical expression about the room. "Oh, no! we ain't got no party," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. "They jest happened to drop in along." "Wall now, I should think there'd ben a shower and rained 'em all down at once:" again surveying the occupants of the room with a comprehensively critical air that was hardly flattering. "I don't see what on 'arth!" she went on. "Half the time you might ransack Wallencamp from top to bottom, and you'd find everybody a'most somewhere, and nobody to hum! It ain't much like the cake Silvy made last week--she's crazier than ever--'Where's the raisins, Silvy?' says I--I always make it chock full of 'em, and there wasn't one,--'Oh,' says Silvy, 'I mixed 'em up so thorough you can't a hardly find 'em.' 'I guess that's jest about the way the Lord put the idees into your head, Silvy,' says I. 'Bless the Lord!' says that poor fool, as slow and solemn as a minister." "We've been a singing" interposed Grandma Keeler in a voice that contrasted with Emily's, like the flow of a great calm river with the impatient fall of a cataract. "It seems a' most as though I'd been in Heaven. They was jest a singin'--'The Light of the World is Jesus,' I shall never forgit, when I was down to camp-meetin' to Marthy's Vin'yard a good while ago--there was a little blind boy stood up on a bench and sung it all alone; and it made me cry to see him standin' there with his poor little white face, and eyes that couldn't see a' one of all the faces lookin' up to him, a singin' that out as bold and free, and he did pronounce the words so beautiful so as everybody could hear--I can hear him a singin' of it out, now--'The Light of the World is Jesus.' And I suppose we git to thinkin' that the light's in our eyes, maybe, or the light's in the sun, or the light's in the lamp, maybe. But you might put out my eyes,"--said Grandma Keeler, closing her eyes as she spoke, and looking very peaceful and happy--"and you might put out the sun, and you might put out the lamp, and say--'Thar', Almiry's all in the dark room, she can't see nothin' now'--but the Light of the World 'ud be thar jest the same, you couldn't put out the light--'The Light of the World is Jesus.'" "Oh, I didn't know ye was havin' a meetin'," said Emily Gaskell, mockingly. "No more we ain't, Emily," said Grandma Keeler. "We was jest cheerin' ourselves up a little, singin' about home. Come you, now, and sing with us": "We're goin' home, No more to roam." With eyes still closed, with head thrown back, and a heavenly serene expression on her face, Grandma began the refrain, while Madeline struck the chords on the melodeon, and the singers took up the words with a hearty cheer:-- "We're goin' home, No more to roam, No more to sin and sorrow; No more to wear The brow of care, We're goin' home to-morrow." Then the chorus, "We're going home," joyfully repeated, died away at last, more plaintively, "We're going home to-morrow." "Wall, I'm goin' home to-night," said Emily, and, as I looked up at her, I caught the same mischievous gleam in her unsoftened eyes. "So strike up Something lively now, and I'll waltz down the lane to it. 'Are your windows open towards Jerusalem?'--Lord, can't you think o' something warmer than that for this weather?" But the singers were going on gloriously: "Are your windows open towards Jerusalem? Though as captives here a little while we stay For the coming of the King in His glory, Are you watching, day by day?" Emily tightened the shawl around her neck with a quick motion. In going out, she took an indirect course through the room, purposely to pass by where I was sitting. "Are your windows open towards Jerusalem?" said she, stooping and whispering in my ear: "Dave Rollin's out there hangin' onto the fence one side the bushes, and Lute Cradlebow the other, and they don't see each other no more than two bats." "Are your windows open towards Jerusalem" was a favorite with the Wallencampers. On this occasion they repeated it several times. Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot, who had been engaging in a game of checkers in the little kitchen, left the board as the well-loved strains greeted their ears, and came in to join the group. Grandpa had been consigned to the kitchen stove, with a corn-popper. I do not think that he regretted being removed, somewhat from the more inspiring scenes which animated the Ark. I was amused to follow, with my ear, the old gentleman's progress in the successive stages of his corn-shelling and corn-popping operations with certain contingent misfortunes, as when he went into the pantry to look for a pan, and brought down a large quantity of tin-ware clanging about his ears, and rolling in all directions over the floor, while I immediately inferred from the tones of his voice that he was enjoying a little unembarrassed colloquy with the powers of darkness. Once, in his shuffling peregrinations, he tipped over the little bench which sustained the water-pail. A deep sigh of horror and despair escaped his lips, and was followed by a "What the Devil!" borne in upon the song-laden air with unmistakable force and distinctness. "For Heaven's sake, ma," said Madeline, looking up sharply; "what can pa be a' doin??" "Oh," calmly said Grandma Keeler, "I guess he's only settlin' down." And with Grandma, indeed, the turmoils of this sublunary sphere implied only a vast ultimate settling down. But if such deep rest came to Grandpa, it was only as a dream from which he was soon to be rudely awakened. The sound of his footsteps had ceased. I knew that he was seated in his chair by the fire, and I heard the long-handled popper shaken back and forth upon the stove, at first as if moved by the power of a steadfast purpose. But the sound grew fainter, the motions less regular. They were several times desperately renewed, and then ceased altogether, so quickly had Grandpa soared beyond the low vicissitudes of a corn-popping world. Soon a burning smell arose. Then the door of the kitchen opened. Grandpa was startled. I knew the catastrophe. The corn-popper with its contents had been precipitated to the floor. Then I heard a courteous male voice, with just a touch of suppressed merriment in it:-- "Never mind, Captain! small business for you, steering such a slim craft as that, eh? On a red-hot, stove, too!" "Humph! Topmast heavier than the hull," replied Grandpa, accepting with gratitude, in this extremity, the sympathy of the new-comer. The other gave a low laugh. "Never mind, Captain!" he repeated, "we'll have it slick here in a minute. Let me take the broom. You've got it wrong side up. By Harry, we've got the deluge _inside_ the Ark this time, Captain!" "Tarnal water-pail slipped moorin's," confessed Grandpa. Then followed a vigorous sound of corn rattling, and water swashing against the sides of the room, and I knew that Mr. Rollin, the elegant, was sweeping out the kitchen of the Ark. "I guess they's somebody else come," exclaimed Grandma, with hospitable glee. "Wall, I declare for't. I guess I'll go out into my kitchen and git that little no-back cheer. Seems to me as though we'd got all the rest on 'em in use, pretty much." "I'll go, ma," said Madeline. "Teacher'll be wanted to play now, and may be she will? though she can't be got to do it for common folks." I did not enjoy playing on Madeline's melodeon. Any performances of that kind which I had undertaken had been confined exclusively to an audience of the Wallencampers. I had certainly never made an exception for the amusement of the fisherman. But I flattered myself that there was no trace of resentment in my tone when I said, "Sit still, Madeline, please, I know where the chair is. Don't I, Grandma?" and was groping my way out through the green curtained "keepin'" rooms, towards Grandma's culinary apartment, thankful for a momentary escape from the heated atmosphere of the "parlor," when I heard just behind me a voice of the most exquisite smoothness:-- "Miss Hungerford, allow me." "Mr. Rollin!" I exclaimed, with an overwhelming sense of the ludicrousness of the situation: "How dared you come through the room where they were all sitting and follow me out here! Did Grandma tell you that I had gone after a little no-back chair for you to sit on?" "She did," replied Mr. Rollin, with impressive gravity: "and I took it as most divinely kind of you, too; though, if I might be allowed any choice in the matter, I think I should be likely to assume a much more graceful and more easeful and natural position in a chair constructed after the ordinary pattern, Miss Hungerford, especially as after my exertions in the kitchen I feel the need of entire repose." "But this is the only one left," I answered, with suppressed laughter. "Do you think you can find it, Mr. Rollin?" "If you should leave me now," replied the fisherman; "I should have positively no idea whither to direct my steps." "Then I shall be very happy to get it for you," I said. "But I could not think," he continued, "of allowing you to pursue your way through this utter darkness to the extreme rear of the Ark alone. I beg you to show me the way." I was not disposed to commit so gross an impropriety as to linger with Mr. Rollin in "Grandma's kitchen," which we had reached, and through whose broad, uncurtained windows the moonlight was pouring in with a clear, fantastic radiance. "Isn't this glorious!" exclaimed the fisherman, in a tone nearly as rapturous as Mrs. Barlow's own. "Oh, you don't think of going back now, Miss Hungerford! After I've mopped the kitchen floor, and braved all Wallencamp in its lair, and groped my way out through those infernally black rooms, for the chance of having a few quiet words with you." Mr. Rollin's eyes were not snaky, nor his manner suggestive of dark duplicity; yet I always felt a certain unaccountable discomfort while in his presence, as though there was need of keeping my own conscience particularly on the alert. I knew that the group in the parlor would be counting the moments of our absence. "How can you ask me--" I began, in a tone of cheerful remonstrance, at the same time readjusting my glasses to glance about for the little "no-back" chair--"How can you ask me to stay out here talking with you, when you know----" "Oh, I know." Mr. Rollin interrupted quickly. "I know how very thoughtful and considerate you are for those people, Miss Hungerford. I know what lofty ideas you have just now of consecrating yourself to the work of refining and elevating the Wallencampers. I know how coolly you can fix your eyes on a certain goal, and stumble indiscriminately over everything that comes in your way. I know what a deucedly superior state of mind you've gotten into. I know too about Miss B's school, and Miss L's school, and the Seminary at Mount Blank, and the winters in New York." There was triumph at last, in Mr. Rollin's tone. "You have taken pains to collect a great deal of information about me;" I replied, virtuously concluding that I should disappoint the fisherman more by not appearing vexed. "Is it strange?" he continued earnestly, with an unconscious parody on his usually suave and insinuating manner. "You will allow, Miss Hungerford, that you might strike one, at first, as not being exactly in the ordinary line of home missionaries, that is, as not having been trained for the work, exactly; a sort of novitiate, I mean--confound it! You will allow that you might strike one at first, as being deucedly new In that _rôle_." After this, I smiled with a faintly malicious sense of satisfaction at Mr. Rollin's confusion, though I felt that I had been cut to the heart. "And when I spoke about having found out about your past life," he went on, struggling desperately with his lost cause; "I did not mean that there was anything bad, you know; only that you sought pleasant diversions in common with the rest of humanity, and enjoyed the Heaven-born instinct of knowing how to have a good time, and weren't always the ambitious recluse and religious devotee that you choose to be just at present; though I've sometimes wished that I could turn saint so all of a sudden, but I couldn't," added the fisherman, despondently; "if I should go to the ends of the earth in that capacity, nobody'd take any stock in me, whatever; and, after all, what does it amount to? "This isn't what I meant to say, any of it;" he sighed angrily. "It's just what I meant _not_ to say--confound it! You've done gloriously; you've played the thing through to perfection; you've made an inimitable success of it; but Wallencamp doesn't offer scope wide enough for your powers. I offer you a field hitherto untilled, left to the wandering winds and the birds of the air, extensive enough in its forlorn iniquity, I assure you, to engage your patient and continued efforts. It may prove productive of good results yet, who knows? Is it my fault that I didn't know you sooner?" I did not mistake the change in Mr. Rollin's tone, nor the meaning in his eyes, but as we stood there by the window, in the full moonlight, I caught a glimpse of another face outside, vanishing up the lane--almost like a ghostly apparition it seemed to me--the handsome pale young face. I guessed instinctively whose it was, and suffered a pang of sharp, unconfessed pain, while the fisherman was murmuring in my ear. "Don't speak to me again of missions!" I cried with the strong and tragic air of consciously blighted aspirations. "I shall go on no more missions, great or small. It is very true what you have tried so delicately to intimate. I was not fit for the work I undertook to do. I have only made mistakes all the way along. Possibly I have been only 'playing a part.' What does it amount to, indeed! What does it amount to!" "Heavens!" said Mr. Rollin; "play a part, by all means; never be sincere in anything you do. I never tried it but once, and I've made a desperate mess of it. Can't you understand that what I said was only in the purest sort of self-defence? You weigh my words so nicely. Well, you are considerate enough, God knows, of those dirty brats and ignorant louts--coddling that girl, Rebecca, who is a good-hearted creature enough, but not fit for respectable people to touch their hands to; and associating with such conceited boors as that George Olver, and that grinning clown, Harvey, and that poor fool, Lovell Barlow, and that what-d'ye-call him--that fiddling young devil with the bird-like name----" Mr. Rollin stopped suddenly. "You might make allowances for a man in a passion," he said; "instead of dissecting his words in that cold-blooded way." "I had no notion of dissecting your words," I said, provoked into a desperate honesty; "I believe them, as a whole, to be utterly false." "From the very beginning," said Mr. Rollin; "thank you; so I can begin all over again; meanwhile,--you will forgive me? Imagine that I'm one of those dirty little beggars that go to school to you. If one of them should come to you and say that he was sorry?--" "I should only be intensely surprised," I said; "they never do such things." "Then I have a superior claim on your clemency," said the fisherman; "for I am sorry and humiliate my soul to the lowest depths of the confessional." It was the voice of the plausible, easy-going fisherman again. My hand was on the latch. "I am not angry; I would rather be friends," I said with averted face, as we were returning through the dark "keeping-rooms." "When you get out of this realm of myths and missions, and general dread and discomfort," said Mr. Rollin, "on to comprehensible soil again, where ordinary sinners are sure of some sort of a footing,--and bad as a fellow is he knows there are plenty more like him,--then I shan't appear to you in such a deucedly poor light as I do now, a doubtful sort of pearl in a setting of isolated cedars, with my beauty and my genius and my heavenly aspirations all unappreciated, or made to descend as a greater measure of condemnation on my devoted auburn head. Truly, I believe that an evil star attends my course in Wallencamp. My own ideas seem strange to me. I cannot grasp them. My language is wild and disconnected, I fancy, like that of the early Norse poets. When I meet you in the world, I shall hope to recover some of the old-time coherence and felicity of speech which I remember to have heard practised among the world's people; and it isn't long now, thank Heaven, before you'll leave Wallencamp behind you. When you go home----" When I should go home, indeed! I had hardly dared to cherish the thought. I stifled the rising flood of exultation in my breast--but how pale and interesting I should look! And, then, I would describe Wallencamp to my own loving friends as it really was, and what a lion they would make of me! Had they not always lionized my virtuous efforts to the fullest extent! My face must have been very happy in the dark. I felt even almost kindly towards Mr. Rollin. We were at the last door. As we entered the lighted room, Grandma's broad face began to beam with slow surprise, "Why," said she; "where's the little no-back cheer?" Mr. Rollin's resources in such extremities usually bespoke a lifetime of patient and adroit application, but now he hesitated. The accumulated glory of years seemed likely to be wrecked on the phantom of a little no-back chair. "Moonstruck? Eh, Mr. Rollin?" inquired Harvey Dole. The fisherman regarded Harvey with a smile of quiet and amused sufferance. "Ah! Mrs. Keeler," said he, with a graceful bow in Grandma's direction; "Mrs. Philander did me the honor when I came in, to ask me to stand up with the singers at the melodeon; a position which I shall be most happy to take, although I fear that my vocal powers are of an exceptionally poor order." The fisherman turned over the leaves of the despised Moody and Sankey hymnal for Madeline, was profoundly attentive while the singing was going on, and made suave and affable remarks here and there during the intervals; then glanced at his watch with an expression of highly-affected concern, bade an elaborate adieu to the company, and retired from the scene. "Oh, I think that Mr. Rollin is so elegant, don't yew?" said Mrs. Barlow. "Oh, yes; I think he's so genteel!" "_I_ don't think so at all," said Lovell. "_I_ don't, certainly. _I_ don't think so." "He _ain't_ got much voice;" said Mrs. Barlow, clasping her hands in raptured appreciation of her matchless Lovell. Finally, Grandpa, with a haggard smile on his features, stumbled across the little landing of the stairway, between the parlor and the kitchen, bearing with him a pan of much scorched and battered pop-corn. "Oh, _ain't_ them beautiful!" arose Mrs. Barlow's reassuring cry. Grandma had already set an example to her guests by making a convenient receptacle of her capacious lap, and pouring some of the corn into it, an example which the fortunate scions of the skirted tribe, now arranged in rows on one side of the room, followed, each in turn. Of the male species on the other side of the room, Lovell happened to be first in line. As the corn came nearer and nearer to him, he began to look about wildly, and to cough. His legs trembled violently with the effort he was making to keep them close together. He accepted the pan of pop-corn with a gesture of feverish haste, and proceeded to pour the contents into his lap, but, as he poured they disappeared, and the faster he poured the faster they disappeared, and the more strenuous exertions he made to keep his legs close together, the wider seemed to grow the chasm through which the corn went rattling down on to the floor, until Lovell's eyes began to whirl in their orbits and drops of sweat stood out upon his forehead. Harvey, who appreciated the situation and was bursting with a desire to roar out his mirthful emotions, showed a kind heart above all, and turned the tables nicely in poor Lovell's behalf. "Look here, Lovell!" he cried; "that's a pretty trick to play on us fellows, you rascal! you'd better let up on that, now!" Lovell grasped at the idea as a drowning man might grasp at a good substantial raft that should come floating down his way. "T-that's so," he stammered. "It is too bad, Harvey. It-t-t is, certainly, but anything for a j-joke, you know. Here, take it yourself, Harvey, t-take it; take it, quick!" And Lovell got down on his knees as though he would have rendered dumb thanks to Heaven for his unexpected deliverance, and proceeded to gather up the corn with glad alacrity. After this, the water was passed, and, at such times, it was always comforting to consider how bountiful nature had been in this respect to Wallencamp, and that the demand could never be quite equal to the supply. Then the company began to disperse with many hand-shakings and "Why don't ye all drop into my house?" etc., etc. Lovell Barlow came back twice to shake hands with me; and returning the third time, got lost, somehow, in the general confusion, and shook hands very fervently with his mother, who was standing in the door. I heard one of the departing visitors exclaim: "Why, where's Lute? I should a thought he'd a dropped in, sure!" And another answered: "Oh, he's got some new notion into his head, I reckon! goin' on a cruise, may be!" Rebecca was going out with a girl companion, talking rather loudly. I was moved to take her hand a moment, gently detaining her. She looked exceedingly bright and pretty. Her physical beauty was perfect, yet I believed that the soul was only half awakened in the girl. So as I held her hand a moment, with the others taking noisy leave about us, I looked into her face with what she might have read as: "Weren't you laughing rather loudly, my dear? I can see now that you are not so happy as you would have people believe. Why not confide in me, and let me straighten your difficulty out for you?" But Rebecca's eyes were downcast, and her cheeks crimson. She let her hand slip passively out of mine, and passed on, without a word. CHAPTER IX. LOVELL "POPS THE QUESTION." One morning, ere we had breakfasted at the Ark, Lovell Barlow, like some new-fangled orb of day, was seen to surmount the ruddy verge of the horizon. He bore a gun upon his shoulders, and advanced with a singularly martial and self-confident tread. As he entered the Ark, he placed the gun against the wall, and sat down and folded his arms, and looked as though he could be brave without it. "Well, Madeline," said he, with a determined gaze fixed straight before him on vacuity, and with a desperate affectation of spontaneity in his tone--"Well, Madeline, mother and father have gone to Aunt Marcia's, _I_ suppose to spend a week, _I_ suppose--ahem!--ahem!--_I_ suppose so." "You don't say so, Lovell!" exclaimed Madeline. "And what'll poor Robin do now, Lovell? Oh, what'll poor Robin do now?" "Yes," said he gravely; "that's what _they_ thought, ahem! _They_ thought they should stay a week, _they_ thought so, certainly." "Wall, I declar' for't, Lovell," said Grandma; "now's the time you'd ought to have a wife. Jest to think how comf'table 'twould be fu ye, now, instead of stayin' there all alone, if ye only had a nice little wife to home, to cook for ye, and watch for ye, and keep ye company, and----" "_I_ think so," exclaimed Lovell, giving a quick glance backward in the direction of his gun. "Certainly, ahem! _I_ think so. _I_ do." "Lookin' for game? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa. "Pa," said Grandma, solemnly: "I wish you'd put another stick of wood in the stove." Grandpa was awake now, and a youthful and satanic gleam shone from under his shaggy eyebrows; he glanced at me, too, as was his habit on such occasions, as though I had a sort of sympathy for and fellowship with him in his bold iniquities of speech. But the guileless Lovell interpreted not the deeper meaning of Grandpa's words. "I think some of it, Cap'n," he answered unsmilingly, and then continued: "It's been--ahem!--it's been a very mild winter on the--ahem!--I should say on the Cape. It's been a very mild winter on the Cape, Miss Hungerford." Lovell's nervous glance falling again on his gun, took me in wildly on the way. I had been directing some letters that I expected to have an opportunity to send that morning. "I beg your pardon," I said, looking up. "Yes, you don't often have such mild winters on the Cape, Mr. Barlow!" "No'm, we don't," said Lovell, "not very often, ahem!" He moved his chair a peg nearer the gun. "Quite a--ahem!--quite a little fall of snow we had last night, Miss Hungerford." "Any deer tracks? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa. "Pa," said Grandma; "I wish you'd fill Abigail--seems to me she smells sorter dry." "She ain't, for sartin', ma," replied Grandpa, giving the tea-kettle a shake to verify his assertions; "and Rachel's chock full!" Grandma then gave Grandpa a meaning look, and put her fingers on her lips. "Well, Cap'n, I saw more rabbit tracks," replied Lovell, innocently amused at the ludicrousness of the old Captain's speech. "I did, rather--ahem!--yes, I saw more rabbit tracks--ahem!--ahem!" He gave his chair a desperate hitch gunward. "I don't suppose they ever do such a thing, where you live, Miss Hungerford, as to go--ahem!--to go sleigh-riding, now, do they, Miss Hungerford?" "Why, yes," I said; "they always do in the winter. I haven't been home through the winter for a year or two past, but I remember what splendid times we used to have." I was thinking particularly of a certain snow-fall, that came when I was seventeen years old, and John Cable had just returned from College, with a moustache and patriarchal airs. Some grinning recollections of the past were also floating through Grandpa's mind. The look of reprehensible mirth was still in his eyes, and he showed his teeth, which gleamed oddly white and strong in contrast with his grizzled countenance. "I remember"--he began. "Pa," said Grandma, with an expressive wink of one eye, and only part of her face visible around the corner of the doorway, through which Madeline had already disappeared; "pa--I wish you'd come out here a minute, now--I want to see ye." "Wall, wall, can't ye see me here, ma? What makes ye so dreadful anxious to see me all of a sudden?" inquired Grandpa. But his face did not lose its thoughtful illumination. "Wall, as I was a tellin' ye, teacher," he went on; "I was only a little shaver then--a little shaver--and my father had one of those 'ere pungs, as we used to call 'em, that he used to ride around in--and he was a dreadful man to swear, my father was, teacher--Lordy, how he would swear!----" "Pa!" said the great calm voice at the door; "I'm a waitin' for you to come out, so't I can shet the door." "Wall, wall, ma, shet the door if ye want to, I've no objections to havin' the door shet----and we had an old hoss, teacher. Lordy, how lean he was, lean as a skate, and----" "Bijonah Keeler!" "Yis, yis, I'm a comin', ma, I'm a comin'." And wonderful indeed, I thought must have been the tale, which, even under these exasperating circumstances, kept Grandpa's face a-grin as he ran and shuffled towards the door. The door was quickly closed behind him by other hands than his own, and then I observed that Lovell's chair had been drawn into frightfully close proximity to his gun. "I--I think it's pleasanter, that is--I--I sometimes think it's warmer for t-t-two in a sleigh, than--a--'tis--for one, don't you, Miss Hungerford?" said Lovell, and gasped for breath and continued; "Now, I think of it, you--you wouldn't think of such a thing as going to ride with me to-night, would you, Miss Hungerford? You--you wouldn't think of such a thing, would you now?" "Why--if you are kind enough to invite me to go sleigh-riding with you, Mr. Barlow?" "_I_ think so;" said Lovell, grasping his gun, and becoming immediately pale, though composed. "Yes'm, _I_ think so, certainly, _I_ do." "Thank you, I will go with pleasure," I said. "Thank you, Miss Hungerford," said Lovell, rising hurriedly. "I wish you a pleasant day--_I_ do, with pleasure, and I hope that nothing will happen to prevent!" And Lovell marched back across the fields as valiantly as a man may, who, on occasions of doubt and peril, takes the precaution to go suitably armed. During the day the Wallencampers indulged in a mode of recreation, suggestive of that unique sort of inspiration to which they not unfrequently fell victims. They attached a horse to a boat, a demoralized old boat, which had hitherto occupied a modest place amid the _débris_ surrounding the Ark, and thus equipped, they rode or sailed up and down the lane. It proved a stormy sea, and often, as the boat capsized, the air was rent with screams of mock terror and yells of unaffected delight. Thus the youth of Wallencamp, yes, and those who heeded not the swift decline of years, by reason of the immortal freshness of their spirits, disported themselves. And I was not amazed, catching a glimpse through the school-house windows of this joyous boat on one of her return voyages up the lane, to see Grandma Keeler swaying wildly in the stern. Meanwhile, I managed to keep my flock indoors. But when, at four o'clock, I took my ruler in hand to give the usual signal of dismissal, the Phenomenon's heels had already vanished through the window, and the repressed animal spirits of a whole barbaric epoch sounded in the whoop with which the Modoc shot through the door. Finally, I, myself, rode up the lane in the boat. The path was well worn by this time, and there was no danger of a catastrophe. It seemed to me a novel performance enough, but I had not yet been to ride in Lovell's sleigh. Lovell came very early, and preferred to wait outside until I had finished eating my supper. Then, with that deep self-satisfaction which predominated in my soul, even over its appreciation of the novel and amusing, I donned my seal-brown cloak, and stepping out of the door, gathered up my skirts, and smiled at Mr. Lovell with a pair of seal-brown eyes, and was not surprised to hear him ejaculate, coughing slightly; "Ahem! _I_ think so, certainly, yes'm, _I_ think so; _I_ do." Lovell's was the only sleigh in Wallencamp, and, as he informed me, it was one that he had himself constructed. It had, indeed, already suggested to my mind the workings of no ordinary intellect. Perhaps its most impressive features were its lowness and its height--the general lowness and length of its body, into which one could step easily, the floor being covered with a carpet of straw, suggesting field-mice; and the unusual height to which it rose in the back, being surmounted by two glittering knobs, like those on the head-board of an old-fashioned bedstead. Half-way down the back of this imposing structure the arms or wings sprouted out, giving to the whole the appearance of an immense Pterodactyl, or some other fossil bird of fabulous proportions, and Effectually shutting in the occupants of the sleigh from any Contemplation of the possible charms of the scenery. The seat was made very low, and it was, perhaps, on this account that the horse seemed so abnormally high. It was a white horse, and from our lowly position, there seemed to be something awful and shadowy in the motions of its legs. The red of sunset had not gone out of the sky when we started, and a pale young moon was already getting up in the heavens, but we could see neither fading sky nor rising moon, nor rock, nor tree, nor snowy expanse, naught but the gigantic hoof-falls of our phantom steed. Being thus hopelessly debarred from any communication with external nature, and fearing to give myself up to my own thoughts, which were of a somewhat dangerous character, I endeavored to engage my companion in lively and cheerful converse by the way; but he was in a position of actual physical suffering, for the reins were short--too short, that is, to form a happy connecting link between him and the horse, and poor Lovell was obliged to lean forward at an acute angle in order to grasp them at all. Whenever the ghostly quadruped made a plunge forward, as he not unfrequently did, Lovell was thrust violently down into the straw, and throughout all this he comported himself with such firm and hopeless dignity that, with the respect due to suffering, I was moved to witness the struggle, at length, with silent commiseration. Once, having kept his seat for a longer time than usual, Lovell said:-- "I'll give you a riddle, Miss Hungerford, _I_ will. Ahem! 'Why--why does a hen go around the road,' Miss Hungerford?" I posed my head in an attitude of deep thought. "Because," Lovell hastened to say; "because she can't go across--no, that wasn't right--why--ahem! why does a hen go _across_ the road, Miss Hungerford?" and the next instant he was wallowing in the straw at my feet. My soul was filled with unutterable compassion for him. "Because," I ventured, when Lovell reappeared again, affecting a tone of lively inspiration: "because she can't go around it?" "You--you've heard of it before!" gravely protested Lovell. "I confess," said I, "that I have. It used to be my favorite riddle." "It--it used to be mine, too," said Lovell. "It _used_ to be, Miss Hungerford--ahem! It _used_ to be--You--you couldn't tell what I was thinking of when I--ahem--when I started from home to-night, now, could you, Miss Hungerford?" said Lovell, at length. "I'm sure I couldn't, Mr. Barlow," said I: "but I hope it was something very agreeable." "But it wasn't," said Lovell; "that is, not very, Miss Hungerford; ahem! not very. I was--I was--ahem! I was thinking of it, you know, of--of such a thing as getting married, you know." "I hope," said I, cheerfully, after a pause; "that as you consider the subject longer, it will be a less painful one to you." "I hope so, Miss Hungerford," said Lovell. "Ahem! I hope so, certainly;" but there was little of that sanguine quality expressed in his tones. The great white horse made another plunge forward, and Lovell recovered himself with a desperate effort. "What should you think now, Miss Hungerford," he continued, moistening his parched lips; "if I should do such a thing as to--ahem!--as to speak of such a thing as--ahem!--as something of that sort to you, now, Miss Hungerford? Now, what should you think of such a thing? now, really?" "I should think you were very inconsiderate," I said, "and would probably regret your rashness afterwards." "_I_ think so," said Lovell; "ahem! _I_ think so, Miss Hungerford; _I_ do, certainly." After this it seemed as though a weight had been lifted from Lovell's mind. He kept his seat better. His was not a buoyant spirit, but there was, on this occasion, an air of repressed cheerfulness about him such as I had never before seen him exhibit. I tried to think that it was a joyous mental rebound from the contemplation of those dark riddles which trouble humanity, "Why does the hen go across the road," etc. After a brief pause, Lovell said; "You--you wouldn't mind if I should sing a little now, now would you, Miss Hungerford?" I assured him that I should be very glad to have him do so, and he sang, I remember, all the rest of the way home. At the gate, I thanked him for the ride and its cheerful vocal accompaniment, and Lovell said; "Do you like to hear me sing, now? Do you--do you, really, now, Miss Hungerford?" and turned away with a smile on his face to seek his home by the sea. But Lovell was not long lonely, for, in less than a week, his father and mother returned from their visit at Aunt Marcia's and brought to Lovell a wife. Mrs. Barlow herself informed me that "it was an awful shock to him, at first, oh, dreadful! but he'd made up his mind to get married, and he'd never a' done it in the world, if we hadn't took it into our own hands. She was a good girl, and we knew it, and Lovell wasn't no more fit to pick out a wife, anyway, than a chicken, not a bit more fit than a chicken!" This girl lived in the same town with Aunt Marcia, and was confidently recommended by her to Lovell's parents as one who would be likely to make him a wise and suitable helpmeet, and was, indeed, an uncommonly fair and wholesome looking individual. She had a mind, too, whose clear, practical common sense had never been obscured by the idle theories of romance. She was pure and hearty and substantial. She was neither diffident, nor slow of speech, nor vacillating. She came, at the invitation of Lovell's parents, to marry Lovell, and if he had refused, she would have boxed his ears as a wholesome means of correction, and married him on the spot. So Lovell's destined wife was brought home to him in the morning, and in the afternoon of that same day the connubial knot was tied. Half an hour after the arrival of the bride, it was known throughout the length and breadth of Wallencamp, to every one, I believe, save Lovell himself, who was gathering driftwood a mile or two down the beach, that Lovell was going to be married! At three o'clock P.M., Brother Mark Barlow was despatched to West Wallen for a minister. Small scouts had been sent out to watch, where the road from the beach winds into the main road, and when word was brought back that "Mark had gone by," the Wallencampers proceeded to make all due preparations; and soon might have been seen winding in a body towards the scene of interest. The small paraphernalia of invitations and wedding cards were unknown in Wallencamp. The Wallencampers would have considered that there was little virtue in a ceremony of any sort, performed without the sanction and approval of their united presence. In regard to the particular nature of this entertainment, there was some snickering in the corners of the room, but the general aspect was funereal. The season during which, with Lovell at one end of the room, and the bride at the other, we sat waiting the arrival of the minister, was as solemn as anything I had ever known. I made a congratulatory remark, in a low tone, to Mrs. Barlow, who sat at my side with her hands clasped gazing first at Lovell and then at the bride; but I was forced to experience the uncomfortable sensation of one who has inadvertently spoken out loud in meeting. No one said anything. The helpless snicker which started occasionally from Harvey Dole's corner, and was echoed faintly from other quarters of the room, only heightened, by, contrast, the effect of the succeeding gloom. The bride was perfectly composed, with a high, natural color in her cheeks, and an air of being duly impressed with the importance of the occasion. She had assumed a large white bonnet, though I do not think that she and Lovell took so much as a stroll to the beach after the ceremony--and her plump and shapely hands were encased in a pair of green kid gloves. She gazed thoughtfully, at each occupant of the room in turn, not omitting Lovell, who never once stirred or lifted his eyes. Mr. William Barlow was silently passing the water, when Brother Mark arrived with the minister. That grave dignitary advanced with measured tread to a small stand, draped with a long white sheet, that had been prepared for him in the centre of the room. He took off his gloves, and folded them; he took off his overcoat, and laid it on the back of a chair; and if he had then reached down into his pockets and taken out a rope, and proceeded to adjust a hanging-noose, his audience could not have shown a more ghastly and breathless interest in his performance. "Will the parties"--his sonorous voice resounded through the awful stillness--"Will the parties--about--to be joined--in holy wedlock--now--come forward?" As Lovell then arose and walked, with an automatic hitch in his legs, across the room to his bride, there was about him all the stiffness and pallor of the grave without its smile of peace. "Lovell and Nancy"--arose the deep intonation--will you--now--join hands? It was a warm strong hand in the green kid glove. Its grasp might have sent a thrill of life through Lovell's rigid frame, for when the minister inquired: "And do you, Lovell, take this woman?" etc., etc. Lovell bent his body, moved his lips, and replied in a strange, far-away tone, "Yes'm, _I_ think so. _I_ do, certainly." But when the question was put to the bride, she, Nancy, promised to take Lovell to be her wedded husband, to love and cherish, yes, and to cleave to, with a round, full "I do," that left no possible room for doubt in the mind of any one present, and seemed to send back the flood of frozen terror to Lovell's veins. Lovell and Nancy were pronounced man and wife, and Nancy then divested herself of her bonnet and gloves, and joined in the festivities which followed with a hearty good-will, that proved her to be quite at home among the Wallencampers, and won at once their affection and esteem. The manner, particularly, in which she carried beans from her plate to her mouth, gracefully balanced on the extreme verge of her knife, as an adroit and finished work of art, provoked the wonder and admiration of all those whose beans sometimes wandered and fell off by the way. And all the while, Mrs. Barlow's adjectives flowed in a full and copious stream. "Oh, Lovell had been so wild," she said to me. "Oh, dreadful! But didn't I think he looked like a husband now? So quick, too! Oh, yes, wasn't it beautiful! Abbie Ann said he looked as though he'd been a husband fifteen years!" After the ceremony, Lovell had taken his pipe and retired a little from the active scenes which were being enacted around him. I saw him, as I was going away, standing in the door and looking out upon the bay. I held out my hand to him, in passing. "I congratulate you, Mr. Barlow," I said. Lovell put his hand to his mouth and coughed slightly several times, as though he were striving to think of the polite thing to say. Then he replied: "I--I--ahem! I wish you the same, Miss Hungerford, _I_ do, certainly." Lovell was not so pale as he had been, but looked very serious and pensive with his eyes fixed on the mysterious depths of the ocean. Lovell had propounded riddles to me, but never before had I caught such a glimpse of the deeply philosophical workings of his mind. "When you come to think of it, life--ahem--life is very uncertain, Miss Hungerford." I replied that it was very uncertain. "And short, too, when you come to think of it. It's very short, too, Miss Hungerford." "Oh, yes," I answered, "very." "Ahem! It was--it was dreadful sudden, somehow," said Lovell. "I suppose so, Mr. Barlow," I replied gravely; "great and unexpected joys are sometimes said to be as benumbing in their first effects as griefs coming in the same way." "_I_ think so," said Lovell. "Ahem! _I_ think so, Miss Hungerford, _I_ do, certainly." Madeline joined me at the door, and I bade Lovell good-night. We clambered down the cliffs, walking a little while along on the beach on our way homeward. It was growing dark, and the voice of the ocean was infinitely mournful and sublime. No wonder, I thought, that life had seemed very short and uncertain to Lovell as he stood in the door listening to the waves. What a little thing it seemed indeed, comparatively--this life with its fears and hopes, its poor idle jests and fleeting shows. "And there shall be no more sea"--but this poor human soul that looks out so blindly, and utters itself so feebly through the senses, shall live for ever and ever. "Lovell's folks have picked out a good wife for him, anyhow," said Madeline, briskly. "She's got a sight more sense than anybody _he'd_ ever a' picked out." I crept back into my shell again. "I think so, certainly, Madeline," said I, smiling at having unconsciously repeated Lovell's favorite phrase. "She'll make Lovell all over, and get some new ideas into him, I can tell you," said Madeline. And though I did not stay in Wallencamp long enough to witness with my own eyes the fulfillment of this prophecy, I know that it was abundantly fulfilled--that Lovell soon recovered from the shock incident to his wedding; that under the influence of his wholesome, active wife, and with the weight of greater responsibilities, he grew more manly and admirable in character, as well as happier, with each succeeding year; and that Lovell's children--a joyful and robust group, adored of Mrs. Barlow, senior--play on the "broad window seat" that looks off towards the sea. CHAPTER X. A LETTER FROM THE FISHERMAN. The fisherman had gone back to Providence. Rebecca, herself, returning from the Post Office at West Wallen, brought me a letter distinguished by its peculiar dashing chirography. As she handed it to me, the girl, whose glance had been downcast of late, gave me a clear, straightforward, unembarrassed look. "Do you like him, teacher?" she said. "Oh, I tolerate him, my dear," I answered. "We're not expected to entertain a particular liking or dislike for everybody we know. There are a great many people we must just simply tolerate." Rebecca's eyes fell again. "He won't harm you, teacher," she said; "for you was used to folks. Sometime you might remember--I wasn't used to folks." Occupied with my own thoughts, I passed lightly over the girl's slow, trembling speech. She turned away, and I bent to the complacent perusal of my letter. In my then composed and exalted frame of mind its contents were not calculated to create in me either great emotion or surprise. And not because the mere fact of the fisherman's absence had suddenly rendered him more desirable in my eyes, but as the result of a recent determination on my part to take an utterly worldly and practical view of life, I resolved to give this letter the most careful and serious consideration. The fisherman was of good family, and he was rich; these statements, artistically interwoven by him with the lighter fabric of his letter, were confirmed by an acquaintance of mine in Providence, of whom, in writing, I had incidentally inquired concerning the gentleman. Respectability and wealth--items not supposed to weigh too heavily with the romantic mind of youth--but I believed that I was no longer either young or romantic. Moreover, I was slowly realizing the fact that school-teaching in Wallencamp was not likely to furnish me the means for making an excessively brilliant personal display, nor for carrying out to any extent my subordinate plans for a world-wide philanthropy. "Perhaps, after all then," I argued; "it is only left for me to give up my ideas about being unique and independent and sublime, 'take up with a good offer,' and step resolutely, without any sentimental awe, into the great orderly ranks of the married sisterhood." My life had been but a varied list of surprises to my family and acquaintances, why not effect the crowning surprise of all, by doing something they might have expected of me? Well, I had dreamed of higher things--but this was a strange, restless, disappointing world. If one saw a plain path open before one's feet, one might as well walk quietly along that way. There were thorns in every path, and it would be nice to be rich, very rich. My thoughts wandered through a wide field of imaginary delight, encountering only one serious obstacle in the way of their elysium, and that was the fisherman himself considered as a life-long escort and companion. In my youthful dreams, I had cherished, to be sure, a score of mild Arthur Greys and stern Stephen Montgomerys. My Arthurs had all died of inherited consumption. I had taken leave of their departing spirits under the most thrilling circumstances, having frequently been married to them at their deathbeds, and had lived but to plant flowers on their graves and wear crape for them ever afterwards; and my dark-browed Stephen Montgomerys had all gone to swell the avenging tide of righteous war, and had been fatally shot, while I remained to shed tears of unavailing grief over the locks of raven hair they left with me on the morning of their departure. But to marry a real, live, omnipresent man--a man, with red hair, sound lungs, and no wars to go to! My aspiring soul shrank from the realistic vision. And all the while a tenderer vision would rise before my eyes, clothed with its pitiful romance--the Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fashion guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, passing indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my lord's grand eyes obscured, perchance, behind clouds of tobacco smoke, while I set the scanty table and fried the briny herrings. With a shudder for romance, I returned to the contemplation of wealth and respectability; and took up graciously, once more, the briefly abandoned idea of duty. I had often been told that it was my duty to accommodate myself to other people's views. Perhaps I should accomplish my designs for self-immolation, and thus, in one sense, effect my highest spiritual good, by marrying the fisherman and accommodating myself to his views--ah! but how could that be, I reflected, unsmilingly, when my views were so infinitely superior to his! I wondered, for one thing, why he should have entertained, of late, such an excessive dislike for Wallencamp and its inhabitants. The natural beauty of Wallencamp had impressed me daily more and more, and the people were harmless, to say the least. I thought he should have enjoyed them; he had a humorous vein; he was not too snobbish; and he seemed of a nature to wish to make himself generally agreeable to people; but for these special objects of my care he had expressed only derision and contempt, with often a touch of positive malice; and had not been able to abstain from giving me a hard cut or two on my mission, barely avoiding it in his letter, and rejoicing with what seemed to me an unwarrantable warmth in the hope that I should soon quit forever the abominable place. Then, in my miserable short-sightedness, my thoughts wandered indirectly to Rebecca. I wondered if she had taken to heart anything in the acquaintance she was said to have had with Mr. Rollin, before I came to Wallencamp, which had caused the change in her. I did not believe she had. The girl was too artless and simple to have concealed so completely the resentment she would naturally have cherished--too childish to have borne it so silently. As far as the fisherman was implicated in the affair, even if he had trifled a little for his own amusement with the vague impulses, possibly the affections, of this unsophisticated girl, the act was by no means unprecedented among people of wealth and respectability. It was a diversion in which Arthur Grey and Stephen Montgomery would not have indulged, perhaps, "but this," I mused, "is a sadly commonplace sort of world, viewed in the broad daylight of wisdom and experience (and with such penetrating rays I felt my own optics to be only too wearily oppressed); we must give up our high ideals, take people as we find then, and submit gracefully to the inevitable." Still I was in as much of a quandary as ever as to what I should choose to consider the inevitable in my own path. It never occurred to me in this dilemma to seek advice from the elder members of my own family. They knew nothing really of my situation in Wallencamp, and even if they had been informed more truthfully in regard to it, I thought they could hardly be expected to appreciate the peculiarly trying circumstances in which I was placed just at present. Mothers were excellent for mending gloves, taking ink stains out of white dresses with lemon juice, etc., etc.; but there were certain exigencies in the remote and exalted life of those who go on "missions" which their humble though loving skill must ever fail to reach. I did write home, by the way, for more spending-money. I had been obliged to send to Boston for a few of the latest novels, fresh ribbons, cologne water, and various other articles indispensable to the career of a truly devoted propagandist. I preferred my request no longer as the dependent offspring seeking gifts from a fond and indulgent parent, but as the solicitor of a mere temporary loan, until I should be able to draw on my salary at the close of the term. One morning, having inured myself to extreme worldliness of soul and begun a deliberately reckless response to the fisherman's letter, I looked out through my window to see the Cradlebow trudging manfully down the lane, with a grotesquely antiquated portmanteau in his hand, and the general air of one who has started a-foot on a journey. With a singular readiness to be diverted, I found that the picture was, somehow, not conducive to further worldliness of meditation; and when in the evening, Mrs. Cradlebow came in to call, in her mantilla, the impression thus made on my mind was inexpressibly deepened. Mrs. Cradlebow was not a frequent caller. She had almost earned among the Wallencampers the direful anathema of "not being neighborly." She informed me, while the singers were gathered, as usual, at the Ark, that Luther had gone to make farewell visits to his friends. He had three married sisters living in different parts of the State. They had children. The children were very fond of him, and he was going on such a long voyage. Mrs. Cradlebow was looking beyond the singers, her eyes shining clear and sad above the pathetic smile on her lips-- "And he says he shan't come back again until he comes to give me such pleasure as I never dreamed of." Those words come to me now, either as part of the endless mockery of life, or as strains of hidden music, deep and true, running ever beneath the world's dull misinterpretation. Afterwards, the choir of voices in the room formed an effectual shield for confidential conversation. "You don't know what a good boy he's always been to me, teacher," Mrs. Cradlebow continued, with a manner unusual to her, I thought, as of one seeking for sympathy; "so that I've learned to depend so much on him, more, I think, than on anybody else. Some boys when they're growing up so, they feel independent and they answer you back short, but the older he grew, the gentler he was to me, always, and if he had any trouble, it never made him cross to me; and I think it's harder to see anybody so than if they was cross, for he's quick in ways, I know, but when things go real hard against him, he's patient." "He ought not to know much about trouble yet," I answered hopefully, with the consciousness of one who has fathomed all the mysteries of grief and can yet speak gayly of the forlorn background. "He doesn't know enough about the world, I'm afraid," said Mrs. Cradlebow, and her eyes, fixed on my face, seemed to me to be looking gently into my inmost heart. "He expects so much, and he never looks out for himself. I wish he'd be content to go fishing with the other boys--they always come back in the autumn--and not want to sail so far." I was almost angry because of the embarrassment I felt under that clear glance. [Illustration: THE MEETING IN THE SCHOOL-HOUSE. Scene from the Play.] "Don't you think, Mrs. Cradlebow," I said nervously; "that young people are never content until they find out the world for themselves?" It was an interrogation, but it was sagely uttered. "I know, I know," she said. "Perhaps it's best he should go." She spoke very quietly and with uncommon composure of demeanor. She withdrew her eyes from my face, but the smile trembled on her lips, and I knew that her heart was breaking over the words, for Luther was her darling. I wished, almost impatiently, for my own part, that it might all have happened differently; that I might leave everything in Wallencamp just as I had found it, so delightfully happy and peaceful it had seemed to me. I could not bear, in looking back, to think of one face as wearing upon it any unaccustomed grief. At all events, I felt that my thoughts had been helplessly turned from their prescribed channel, and the fisherman's letter remained from day to day still unanswered. Meanwhile, winter was vanishing at the Cape. As salient points in its quaint and cherished memory, I recall the frequent clamming excursions, when we rattled own to the beach, at low-tide, in a cart whose groaning members lacked every element of elasticity. Often there were as many as sixteen persons in one cart, and the same number of hoes and baskets--the baskets being filled with small children as a means of keeping both them and the children stationary. Grandma was always present on these occasions, and the hilarity of the Wallencampers, as they were jounced and joggled over the stones, in a manner which to some might have been productive of great bodily agony, concealed, with them, no undercurrent of nervous dread or pain. They were kind enough to regard the presence of the "teacher" as indispensable to their complete enjoyment, while I was ready to congratulate myself that my society alone was the object desired, for though I brought my near-sighted vision to bear faithfully upon the sands, I never succeeded in capturing a clam. I heard that Bachelor Lot had confided aside to Captain Sartell that "Teacher'd ought to bring a hook and line. The clams 'ud go for it in a minute if she'd only bring a hook and line;" and, stung by the unsheathed sarcasm of this remark, I was accustomed afterwards to wander off towards "Steeple Rock." The rock was accessible at low-tide, and from thence I could watch the ocean on one side, and the clam-diggers on the other; could see Grandma on her hands and knees, a dot of broad good nature in the distance, always remaining apparently in the one place, and always, somehow, getting her basket full of clams as she gradually sank deeper and deeper into the briny soil; but no true Wallencamper ever caught cold by soaking in the brine. I could distinguish Madeline wandering lightly about among the rocks, scraping off mussels with her hoe; and the Modoc, the champion clam-digger of all, spreading her tentacles here and there, and never failing to come up with a bivalve. It was a picturesque scene, viewed from the great rock; and when the tide began to sweep in again, George Olver sent a piercing whistle along shore, to call the stragglers together; clams, children, and all were loaded into the cart, and jostled gayly homeward erased by the fresh sea breezes. For the chowder, which in due course of events arose to take its place among the viands on the Ark board, I would leave it to that sacred and tenfold mystery with which, to my mind, it was ever enshrouded. * * * * * I recall the exhibitions held at the school-house, confined exclusively to the native talent of Wallencamp, at which the old and young were assembled to speak pieces. It was then that Aunt Rhoda and Aunt Cinthia, matrons of portly frame and perilous foothold, engaged in a metrical dialogue concerning the robbing of a bird's nest, in which lively diversion they assumed to have participated. And Bachelor Lot rendered "My beautiful Annabel Lee" with unique effect; and Grandma Keeler spoke mysteriously though hopefully of-- "Hope and Harnah Double-decked schooner Cap'n John Homer Marster and owner Bound for Bermudy." The strange effect produced upon me by the first of these rhetorical entertainments is still as fresh in my mind as though it had been yesterday, so luminous was the night with stars; so loud and prolonged the preliminary blowing of the horn; so festive the appearance of the school-house, loaded as it was with evergreens; so abnormal the proportions of the stage, which had been extended to comprise nearly two-thirds of the school-room. It comes to me again, the first shock of surprise at finding all Wallencamp on the stage, Grandpa and I, alone, being left like ostracized owls among the shrubbery of the auditorium. Our sense of isolation was only intensified by hearing the sounds of mirth which proceeded from the other side of the curtain, and seeing a foot or an elbow occasionally thrust out into our own green though silent realm. Thrice Aunt Rhoda appeared before the curtain to proclaim in pregnant tones, "We are now awaiting for Josiah and Annie." Josiah, by the way, had married a Wallencamp girl and taken her to West Wallen to live, yet the two were ever faithful attendants at the Wallencamp festivities. "Declaration" after "declaration" was announced by Aunt Rhoda, and as the declaimers finished their parts, they descended to sit with us, until at last the curtain was drawn aside, revealing Madeline, alone upon the stage, seated at her "music." She opened the Hymnal, and struck the leading chord, mid straightway, from the Wallencampers, all gathered now below, there arose a burst of melody as it had been one mighty voice. CHAPTER XI. A WALLENCAMP FUNERAL. Mr. 'Lihu Dole--Harvey's father--lay dying, and all the Wallencampers were assembled in and about the house. It was night, and one was going out from among them to launch his lonely bark on a deeper, more mysterious ocean than that whose moan came up to them from behind the cedars. There was awe on their faces, and a touch of terror, too, but above all there was a strange, childlike wonder. They had seen death before. It might come to them at any time, they knew. Its spirit sounded in the dirges of the waves along the shore, yet, none the less, for time or fate, or moan of solemn wave, grew this exceeding mystery. Was it like a cold black flood, to die at night, and no stars shining--a cold flood creeping more and more above the heart? Oh, the wonder on those poor faces, if there might be, indeed, some fairer harbor lights beyond death's tide, and gentler music lulling the dread surge, so that the voyager, with untold joy at last, felt the worn boat-keel loosen on the strand and drift off from this shore! Emily and Aunt Cinthia were alone in the room with the dying man. They were his sisters. His wife had been dead for years. In the adjoining room sat a group of females, a single candle burning dimly on a table in their midst. Grandma Bartlett was there, and Grandma Keeler, and Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow. Occasionally, a whisper from one of these three pierced the gloom, a whisper appropriately sepulchral in tone, but more penetrating than any voice of buoyant life and hope. I sat in the door with Madeline, Rebecca on the step below, very still and thoughtful. The men and the young people, for the most part, were waiting about outside. I caught the low murmur of a discussion between Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot, who were sitting on the fence, and knew by the attitude of the listeners gathered around them, that the subject was one of no ordinary interest. I could not help wondering what those two argued concerning death and the immortality of the soul. The tick! tick! tick! of the clock sounded with persistent distinctness in the room where the women sat, and Grandma Bartlett sighed, and then came the awful whisper:-- "Ah, death's vary sahd--vary sahd." Grandma Bartlett, superannuated as she was, was the most trite of the Wallencampers. Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow accepted the lifeless phrase with something almost like a smile of disdain in her magnificent eyes. "Oh, it's like everything else," she whispered. "It's a mixter! It's a mixter!" Once the door of the little bedroom opened softly, and Emily appeared on the scene. "He's got most to the end of _his_ rope," she said, dryly, in answer to the inquiring faces lifted to her own. There was an unnatural brightness in Emily's tearless eyes, and her tone was as sprightly as ever. "He don't see nothin', and he don't feel nothin', and he don't hear nothin'," she continued; "and it's sech poor work a breathin', he's most give that up, too. It might stop any minute and he not know it. Cinthy's cryin'; I don't see nothin' to cry about. It'll storm before to-morrow, likely--it's dark enough, Lord knows--and them east winds always hurt him so. 'I don't know whether he's worse off, or better off, Cinthy,' says I, 'or whether he's off entirety. But I don't believe a righteous God'll make poor 'Lihu suffer any worse than he has in the last ten weeks.' But it's strange, all the time I was a' sittin' there by him, when he was worst, it kept comin' up before me, jest as he was when he was a little boy. I hadn't thought on him so for years, but it seemed jest as though 'twas back in New Hampshire, where we was born, a' playin' around the old mill again. Him and me was the youngest, we was always together, and I couldn't 'a' called him up so before me, to save me; but there he was, as plain as life, with his little blue checked apron on, a skippin' along towards me over the logs, and his eyes a dancin', and the wind a blowin' his hair out; and all the while I couldn't help a knowin' that 'Lihu was a man grown, a dyin' there before me on the bed. "'Seems as though a man that's been a wearin' out as long as he has had ought to die easier, Cinthy,' says I. 'It's pretty hard to have forty years' consumption, and then go off with a fever,' 'We can't question the Lord's doin's,' says Cinthy. But for all that, she wouldn't stay in the room to see him. He couldn't ketch his breath and he was as crazy as a loon. Lord, how he worried! All day, yesterday, he was a loadin' ship down to the shore. It would a' made your bones ache to hear him workin' so; and all night long he was a loadin', and a loadin.' Thinks I, won't there never be no end to this, for I felt hard, and him a loadin' and a loadin' all through them long hours, jest as faithful as life, with his eyes like blood, and the sweat a rollin' off'n him. He couldn't stand that forever. This mornin' the pain sorter left him, but there was that one idee on his mind. The ship was all loaded, and he'd got to wait for high tide to git it off, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he couldn't, because he'd got to watch the tide. "'Oh, if I could only rest, now,' he kep' a savin', weak and slow. 'If I could only go to sleep now;' and so he moaned and moaned. "So I got close to his ear and I says, 'You go to sleep, now, 'Lihu, and I'll watch,' I says; 'I'll wake you up when it's high tide,' I says; but he only shook his head. So then, I says, 'Aint there none o' the folks you can trust to watch?' And he shook his head, and so he moaned and moaned. "By and by, all of a sudden, 'Lihu looked up at me different, with his eyes wide open, so that for a minute, I was most fool enough to think 'Lihu was gittin' well, and he smiled as though he wanted to say something. So I leant over. 'I--know--somebody,' he says, as slow as that, for he was all worn out. 'Who then, 'Lihu?' says I. 'Jesus,' says he, with that queer, smilin' look, as though it was the naturalest thing on earth. 'He'll--wake--me--up--when--', and he couldn't wait no longer, his head fell over as heavy as a log, and that's the way he's been ever since, sleepin' like death. "Wall, Cinthy thinks somebody'd ought to come in and make a prayer. 'He wasn't a perfessor,' says she. 'Lord knows, if he had a been,' says I, 'there'd be more need on't!' 'Anyway,' says I, 'he can't hear nothin', it won't do him no harm.' So I thought I'd come out and see. It'll make Cinthy feel easier." There was a whispered consultation among the women, but Emily came over to where I sat. "Come, teacher," said she. "Your voice ain't as raspin' as some, and you've got a knack o' stringin' words together, that sound likely, and don't hit nobody--you come in." "Hush!" I cried, grasping the woman's hand, thinking only, then, that it would seem like sacrilege for any one to speak aloud in the room where one was waiting for Christ to wake him. I had forgotten at that moment that I was out of the habit of praying, even for myself. Emily's tale had moved me so, it seemed only its sweet and fitting consummation, and nothing incredible to my mind then, that Christ should come down out of the starless sky to touch that heavy sleeper's brow. It was finally decided that there should be a quiet little prayer-meeting in the room where the women sat, in behalf of Mr. 'Lihu's soul; but before all the preliminary steps had been taken, and the men and youth noiselessly ingathered, Mr. 'Lihu's breathing had ceased, without a parting pang or gasp, and the tide was at its full. Harvey had been standing with a group near the door. Once at some irrelevancy in the proceedings, while the women were organizing the prayer-meeting, I heard his irrepressible little giggle creeping in; but when the words so mysteriously uttered were passed out to him--"Lihu's gone!"--the poor boy, realizing only at that instant their terrible meaning, that his father had indeed gone, gone away from him forever, ran forward a pace or two, and then fell, with his face to the ground. So he lay, shaking and sobbing helplessly. Grandma Bartlett, standing in the door, studied him for some moments with her fossilized eyes:-- "Fatherless and motherless, now," said she. "Poor creetur, humph! Vary sahd." Then she blinked, and, simultaneously, the subject seemed to have slipped from her mind, and she to have become vaguely contemplative concerning worlds and ages remote. The boy was still lying prone on the ground, when I left the place of mourning with Grandma and Madeline. I spoke to him, and shrank instinctively from his face as he turned it towards me. It was swollen and disfigured with weeping. He had bruised it, too, in falling. He rose, trembling, and walked with me. For my own part, the emotional had given place to feelings of a more sustained and ordinary nature. I strove to impress upon Harvey's mind the beautiful and poetic manner in which his father had been released from his sufferings. I reminded him of the shortness of life, "even from your point of view, Harvey;" and the necessity there was always, for not allowing ourselves to be overcome by our griefs or passions, or diverted from the supreme satisfaction of performing our appointed tasks, etc. And Harvey listened patiently throughout, and said "good night," with a brave attempt at a smile, and a sob still choking in his throat. I turned an instant, to look at him as he walked away. He wore, generally, a coat of ministerial form and complexion; this, taken in connection with his round, laughing face, his boyish figure, and propensity for playing tricks, had often made me smile, hitherto. But, now, there was something in the attitude of those long, black tails that brought the tears to my eyes. It occurred to me, indirectly, what Emily had said about my stringing words together, and I marvelled if possibly my exhortation had soared over poor Harvey's head and left his heart aching for an ordinary word of sympathy, or a simple reference to One who as a man of sorrows, was best fitted to understand and console his grief. To any sentiments of the latter nature, Harvey was particularly susceptible. "Children, all of them!" Thus gently apostrophizing the Wallencampers, I dismissed the cause of my brief mental discomfiture, with a half-pitying smile. The day after Mr. 'Lihu's death, I looked down from my desk in school to see the infant Sophronia weeping bitterly. "What is the matter, Sophronia?" I said. "Carietta's been to see the cops twice," she sobbed; "and I ain't been any." I only gathered from this that Carietta was somehow implicated as being the cause of the infant Sophronia's sufferings. "Now," said I gravely; "tell me what you mean?" "She means the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's cops. 'Phrony means the----" "That will do," I said. "I understand you perfectly. I understand you only too well. This is about as bad," I reflected; "as anything in my experience." After admonishing my pupils with that sincere emotion to which the occasion had given rise, that they should speak always respectfully of their elders, but especially in the most tender and solemn tones of the dead; after pointing out to them the perniciousness of a low and vulgar curiosity, and expatiating on the vastness and superiority of the spiritual life, compared with the earthly and carnal, I paused, only to give, further on, a fuller illustration to my words, and said:-- "Now, Sophronia, you have an immortal soul?" There was evidence of some faint hankering in Sophronia's face as she mentally ran over the list of her possessions. "No'm," said she; "I hain't--but I've got a cornycopia!" I think it was then and there that my hopes for the elevation of juvenile Wallencamp received their deathblow, and my labors, which had before been cheered by a dream of partially satisfying success, at least, took on an utterly goal-less and prosaical form. These children, I was forced to admit, regarded the day of Mr. 'Lihu's funeral as a holiday of rare and special interest, mysteriously bestowed by Heaven. Aunt Rhoda had previously informed me that it was expected I would have no school that afternoon. The West Wallen minister officiated on the occasion with an aspect neither more nor less funereal than he had worn at Lovell's wedding. He spoke in such a labored, trumpet-like tone of voice that the Wallencampers seemed, at first, inspired with a lively hope, expecting momentarily that his breath would give out, but in this they were doomed to ever-increasing disappointment. At length, Captain Sartell drew a bucketful of fresh water from the well, and passed it around the room, winking expansively at each individual in turn, by way of silent encouragement and support. Grandma Bartlett, observing the generally tearless aspect of the community, conscientiously attempted to weep, but being entirely out of tears, at her time of life, she only succeeded in screwing her face up into what, in earlier years, might have appeared as a lachrymose expression, but now took the shape of a fixed and ogreish grin. The infant Sophronia was seated on a bench of an exceedingly temporary nature, between Grandma Keeler and Aunt Lobelia, both persons of weight, and it so chanced, or, rather, it followed as a matter of course, an equal pressure being applied to both sides, that the board sustaining the three, broke directly under that diminutive victim of fate, awaking her thereby from feverish slumber; and whether the infant Sophronia had an immortal soul or not, no one there present could doubt that she possessed an uncommon pair of lungs. The little room where we sat was hot and overcrowded, and the thought was running in my mind continually. "Poor, restless Wallencampers! and how happy Mr. 'Lihu is not to have any connection with his funeral." When the procession was about to start for the burying-ground, the request was made to me that I would blow the horn, even as the bell is usually tolled on such occasions, for it would seem inappropriate for one of the Wallencampers to do so, they all having been related to the deceased. At such a time, I could not refuse, though the emotions with which I crossed over to the school-house to perform this grim duty, were of a nature best known to, and appreciated by, myself. My terror of the Wallencamp horn had waxed daily. I believed that there was nothing in the whole world of inanimate things on which I would not sooner have attempted to sound a funeral dirge. Though capable of some variety of expression, it had never yet been seduced into emitting any sound in the least indicative of the designs struggling in the mind of the blower. The human was paralyzed before it--a mere machine to blow into it and let come what would. And, now, for the first time in my experience, it took on a jubilant strain. I blew slowly; I blew solemnly. Still, it sounded like nothing else than a glad, exultant rallying-call. I paused, horrified. From the rear of the moving procession, Aunt Patty, with a yell and a frantic gesture of the hands, entreated me to "keep a blowin'!" And, as I stood thus on the steps of the deserted school-house and blew, only to hear the wild lamentations of my soul translated into strains of fiendish mirth through the medium of the horn, the Turkey Mogul, arrived on his second visit of examination to the Wallencamp school, seemed to be descending before my eyes, in a vortex of the giddy atmosphere. In fact, he was alighting from his buggy, and a grim, though reassuring smile sat on his features. "I see! I see!" he nodded his head. "You've given them a good start," he added, succinctly, indicating the direction of the Wallencampers; "humph! yes! they are always up to something!" He thrust his hands in his pockets, and, maintaining the same sardonic grin, he, too, stood and watched that receding column. It was an odd combination of circumstances. I had ceased my mad though involuntary jubilate, on the horn, and was slowly aspiring to that equanimity of mind which the exigencies of the case seemed to require, when the Turkey Mogul turned abruptly, and without speaking a word, handed me a soiled and wrinkled little sheet of paper, the contents of which caused my heart, for an instant, to cease beating, and then set it throbbing with a wild joy and exultation. It was simply a petition--wrought out of whose brain I know not, but most curiously inscribed in Aunt Patty's own hand, and signed by all the Wallencampers, with "CAPTAIN SARTELL," at the head, and "b. lot" at the foot--to the effect that it was their desire that my labors might be longer continued among them. Only one, who, having made a play-day of life, turns, at last, to attempt some earnest work, and fails, as he believes, utterly, and then catches a glimpse of unexpected light in the darkness, can understand the impulse given me by that dirty little scroll. It was such happiness as I had never felt before. It made me strangely weak. "You'll stay," said the Turkey Mogul, at length, "another term, or we'll consider this term extended, if you please." "I'll stay a few more weeks, anyway," I said, and the Turkey Mogul must have marvelled at the childish faith and joy with which I clung to this new-found rock of my salvation; "but I hadn't thought of it before," I added, a little faintly, thinking of home. "You're tired!" said the Turkey Mogul, almost sympathetically; "and hungry!" he subjoined, quickly, in a different tone. I knew by this time that the Turkey Mogul's eyes were dangerously prone to have twinkles in the corners of them, yet I believe I met their derisive questioning with a simple seriousness in my own. "Well, that's right!" he exclaimed. "Stick to 'em! Stick to 'em! I'll be down to conduct another--humph! another examination in a week or two. Good-bye!" and he gave me his hand, and was off almost before the little line of mourners had disappeared over the crest of the hill. Yet I remember that Grandma Bartlett, who had been deterred by the infirmity of age from joining the procession, and had remained at the window, alone, regaled the Wallencampers, on their return, with a choice fancy, in which the Turkey Mogul and I had stood "talkin' and chatterin' on the school-house steps, for an hour or more." Grandma Bartlett, though not actively disposed to work mischief, nor possessed, indeed, of any animate quality, still cherished a few of the dry formulas of scandal, which she applied to any seemingly favorable combination of circumstances. The Wallencampers, at any time, paid but little attention to her words. And, at the close of this strange day, I sat alone, in my little room in the Ark, and indited a letter to the following effect:-- "Having received gratifying overtures from the people of my charge, I had decided, for reasons which I could not then explain, to remain at Wallencamp until May, to which time I looked forward with the delightful hope of seeing my dear ones once more. "Meanwhile, I hoped they would not consider it strange, or ungracious of me to say that I should very much prefer not to have Brother Will, or any one else, come to Wallencamp to look after me, as Brother Will and some others had kindly suggested doing. It would seem to imply that I was not capable of taking care of myself, a mania which I trusted no longer held possession of the family brain. Moreover, Wallencamp, though so charming a place, had but few facilities for the accommodation of guests. I should draw on my salary, now, very shortly, and would then remit the sums I had borrowed in mere temporary embarrassment," etc. CHAPTER XII. BECKY'S CONFESSION. The Wallencamp bonfire, like Christmas or a Fourth of July celebration in less ingenious and erratic communities, came only once a year. It was kindled on Eagle Hill, that runs out from the mainland of Wallencamp into Herrin' River,--the Wallencampers called the Hill an island,--and from most points of view it answered to the geographical description of "Land entirely surrounded by water," seeming, indeed, to stand solitary in the river, with an air of infinite repose on its broad, sloping sides; green and gold, so I remember it ever, with the sun setting over it in the spring-time,--green and gold, in a crimson river! It had an air of sublimity, too, looking over and beyond the cedars to the bay, and down the length of the winding stream that fretted at its feet or lapped them quietly. There I planned to build a house, in some bright future day, that should be in effective keeping with the natural grandeur of the place,--quaint, lordly, substantial, with the appearance of having fallen somewhat into disuse, ivy growing over the dark stone walls, and moss in the winding drives, and carved lions at the gate. The hill was a favorite resort of mine, and Rebecca had generally accompanied me on my excursions thither. Once she said--it was in the days when she had been happier--"I guess _this_ place is just as God made it to begin with." Rebecca had been struck with and had retained an idea which she had probably heard promulgated sometime at the West Wallen Sunday-school, that, at the time of man's spiritual fall, the earth also, with all terrestrial things, had undergone a general mixing up. Her own idea in regard to Eagle Hill she expressed very modestly, looking off with a childish content and assurance in her eyes. And I was delighted with her. "You are always thinking such things as that," I exclaimed, enthusiastically. "I know you are!" Rebecca blushed, smiling, and shook her head. "I ain't often sure," she said. I think I told her then that when I had my house on the hill, she should be the housekeeper to guard my keys and conduct my affairs; "that is, my dear, attend to all the little practical details connected with living," and Rebecca, to whom my castles on the Hill were never castles in the air, but who believed most implicitly that I would, sooner or later, perform all things that ever I dreamed of doing, accepted her prospective matronship with a becoming sense of its advantage and dignity. Eagle Hill was haunted by a horse, a pure white horse--not Lovell's--with a flowing mane and tail, and a beautiful arched neck. His motions, the Wallencampers said, were most fiery and graceful. Occasionally he paused and fell back, quivering on his haunches, looked this way and that, and then, with a wild plunge, swept on again, swifter than before. Every true Wallencamper could both see and hear the "white horse" when, at night, clearly outlined against the sky, he galloped back and forth along the very summit of the hill. It was on one of the blackest nights of the season that the fuel, which less grand and poetic souls would doubtless have reserved for another winter's use, was borne in jubilant triumph by the Wallencampers up the sides of this sacred and illustrious steep, and there consumed in a most glorious conflagration. The spectacle was appalling. At intervals in the roaring and crackling of the flames was heard the roar of the near ocean, while the familiar features of the landscape and the faces of the encircling spectators, stood out with unreal and terrible distinctness in the hellish light. Emily, who had coughed all the way climbing up the hill, stood stirring the fire with a long pole, and making reckless and facetious remarks the while, which, uttered in the midst of that unearthly scene, struck me cold with horror. "Come, Bachelder," said she; "git onto the end of my pole, and I'll hold ye over there a while. Ye might as well be gittin' used to it!" "Heh! yes," said Bachelor Lot. "But what I'm a thinkin' is, you'd ought to have a subordinate. I never heered--heh!--of putting a person of such importance in the Kingdom--heh!--however efficient--into the position of Fire Tender!" "Crazy Silvy" was at the bonfire. I had never seen her before. Silvy did not go out on ordinary occasions. I watched her as she stood with a scant, thin shawl thrown over her head, looking intently into the flames, shivering often, and smiling as she moved her lips in apparently delightful conversation with herself. Some of the children essayed to tease her; she seemed quite unconscious of their efforts, but I turned and spoke to them rather sharply. The next time I looked up, her strange, smiling eyes were fixed full on my face. I glanced away quickly, with a nervous shiver, and moved a little farther off. As I did so, Silvy, regarding me in that same dreamily contemplative manner, walked toward me a step or two, and as I continued to move away, she walked slowly after me. My acquaintance with the unconfined insane had not been extensive enough to allow me to regard her motions with that mingled amusement and curiosity, which was the only sentiment expressed on the countenances of the Wallencampers who stood watching us; but I concluded that it was better to face about, and meet my pursuer with an air of fearlessness. I did so, and held out my hand to her as she came up. "How do you do, Silvy?" I said. "Oh, no!" said Silvy, thrusting her hands behind her, laughing softly, and shaking her head. "Not with the queen of heaven! Not with the queen of heaven!" I thought I detected Emily's derisive influence in this poor, simple creature's words. Silvy was so perfectly mild and harmless in appearance, however, that I began to feel reassured. "I've heard about you, Silvy," I continued, cheerfully. "I'm the teacher, you know. You've heard them speak of the teacher?" "So glad," continued Silvy, in the same low, cooing tone; "so glad to meet the queen of heaven." "Hush!" said I then. "You mustn't say that again. Draw your shawl up tighter." For in spite of the bonfire, the wind was blowing cold on the hill. While I spoke Silvy had become absorbed in watching the fire again. I would have walked quietly away, but as I turned to go she thrust her head toward me quickly and whispered:-- "Wait! don't--you--ever--tell!" Silvy put her hand to her lips. "No," said I, smiling. "Silvy never told," she went on; "except to you. You've got a key. Silvy's got a key. She keeps things all locked up, Silvy does. Emily don't have any key. She talks--she talks all over--don't you tell--but Silvy lives with Emily--so bad," said Silvy, heaving a gentle sigh and speaking in a tone of the deepest confidence; "so bad not to have any key." "That's true, I think," said I, beginning to find my strange companion rather interesting. "Yes." Silvy nodded her head several times as though we understood, we two, and she was delighted to have discovered the fact. Then her eyes wandered again to the fire, and she resumed her happy, smiling conversation with herself. I thought she had forgotten me, or concluded not to unlock anything with her key, when she turned slowly and looked at me, and seemed to gather up the lost train of her ideas in my face. "Silvy watched the fishermen at Emily's," she went on. "They said, 'Poor Silvy!' 'See you again next time, Silvy!' They are very p'lite, thank you, and they laugh once. 'Ha! ha!' But David Rollin, he laughs twice. 'Ha! ha!' and behind his sleeve, too. Such things are damnable!" Silvy's dulcet tones ran over that hard word with the mildest and softest of accents. "And they bring wine," she continued. "Silvy cl'ared off the table one night. She heard 'em sing, and they says to him, 'What about pretty Beck?' and he says 'We must have a little fun, you know, ha! ha!' and then, 'ha! ha!' behind his sleeve. Now if Silvy could keep it all together, you'd straighten it out maybe. Silvy can't straighten it out. Where did she hear so much, I wonder! She hears too much, Silvy does." She knitted her brows in pitiful perplexity. "You were talking about the fishermen," said I. "No," said Silvy, shaking her head; "about Beck. She never says, 'Crazy Silvy! There she goes! Look at Silvy!' She says, 'Come and see me, Silvy,' so. So soft spoken. Silvy loves her." "I love her, too," I said, gently; for Silvy had paused again, and was knitting her brows in that painful manner, as though the effort to think gave her actual physical suffering. "Silvy knows! Silvy knows!" She exclaimed suddenly, her face all smooth and softly smiling now. "Never--you--trust a neat man," impressively. "Never you trust 'em--for why? They wasn't made so. God made 'em. God made 'em to clutter. And there was that Dave Rollin. He was always a' hangin' things up. He was always foldin' of 'em. He was always a hangin' 'em up in his room. Silvy knows. But there was a piece of writin' got over behind the bury. And it didn't fall. But it stuck. Silvy knows. She reads writin'. She reads it over and over. He didn't love Beck any more. But he's afraid. And he'll give money. 'Oh, go anywhere! Only keep still, Beck. For Heaven's sake, keep still.' Why, she wouldn't hurt him! Beck wouldn't hurt him," said Silvy, in a slow tone full of wonder. "He needn't be afraid. But Silvy won't tell him so. Why not? Oh, she likes to be amused. Silvy likes to be amused! "Silvy knows! Silvy knows!" She continued, after another terrible pause. "She set eyes on you, standin' there. That's the one, she says, and she says it a long time. That's the queen of Heaven. She wouldn't hurt Silvy, poor Silvy! She's got a key. So she'll straighten it out maybe. Silvy can't, she's so tired. When Silvy got up in the mornin', it was early. Oh, so still! And a bird was flyin' up--up. Silvy couldn't see--so far to heaven. It made Silvy cry. So strange not to be any tired in the mornin'." Silvy made a last painful effort to collect her thoughts, before her face resumed its habitual, far away, half smiling expression. Then she said, "Silvy comes up the hill all alone. Not the way them others, and she see the fire burnin'. But it was dark in the bush. Silvy heard 'em talkin' terribly. It was Beck and George Olver. 'I'll make an honest home for you, Beck.' And she says, terribly, she no deserve. And he says, she better than him, and won't she come? And she cries so, 'My heart is broke!' And how good to live with him she knows, now--so honest and true--but she no fit, and, oh, 'My heart is broke! my heart is broke!'" The scene, the vividness of these words had not yet faded in the least from Silvy's memory. "Then," said she; "they keep on talkin', terribly. But Silvy--she hears so much--poor Silvy! She goes 'round very still, 'nother way. Silvy's tired." And, as unceremoniously as she had approached me, she turned and walked slowly back to her old position before the fire. She did not look at me. She seemed to have become utterly unconscious of my presence. The scant, thin shawl had fallen back from her head. She shivered as she stood gazing into the flames, but the dreamy expression was ever in her eyes and the soft laugh on her lips, as she continued murmuring to herself. The Wallencampers were not content to let the fire go out after the first grand illumination. They were bringing up more brush from the landward side of the hill, amid a confusion of wild shouts and excited laughter. I found Rebecca among a group of girls. "When you go home to-night," I said; "I want you to step in and see me. Come up to my room." "Yes," said Rebecca, and I noticed how pale she turned in the fire-light. I did not say any more to her, then. After hearing Silvy's story, I believed that Mr. Rollin had acted a heartless and unmanly part towards Rebecca, made love to her which he could not doubt the poor girl took in earnest, and even promises which he knew he should lightly break sometime, and then, for his own purposes, he begged her to keep silence. I thought I understood, and resolved to instruct Rebecca to forget the red-haired fisherman; to be "sensible," and "marry good, honest George Olver," who loved her so devotedly. Lute Cradlebow had come home, and was one among the many figures at this brilliant fête. Indeed, the bonfire had been deferred until later than usual in the season, by reason of his absence, and now he was noticeably the lion of the evening, in a brave dark blue cravat that was borne outward by the wind, or fluttered becomingly under his chin, to the envy and despair of all the Wallencamp youth. He exchanged a pleasant greeting with every one, and brought the largest young tree of all up the hill on his broad shoulders. When, at length, the Wallencampers had permitted the fire to burn low, they joined hands in a ring around the embers, and sang the saddest and sweetest songs in the Hymnal. I sat on a rock near by, engaged as I had been much of the time since my arrival in Wallencamp, in trying to realize the situation--the awful gloom of the night, the river now invisible, below, the sound of the surf farther off, that made my heart sick, and with it the strange mingling of those religious songs, the lonely hill, the smouldering fire, the fantastic group gathered around. When I got back to the Ark, I found Rebecca waiting for me. She followed me up to my room, and I closed the door. "You see I waited long enough for you to come of your own accord," I said, laughing. Then I drew a chair in front of her. She sat at the foot of the bed, and I addressed her gravely:-- "Now, Becky, something is the matter. You are not the merry, light-hearted girl you were when I first knew you. And I can help you, perhaps. I will help you. Tell me what the trouble is!" I thought I should see the tears gathering in Rebecca's eyes, but she looked, instead, so stonily disconsolate, that I was rather dismayed. "I'm going to tell you," said she; "but you can't help me. They'll all know before long, I guess. I don't care. You talk good, but you don't say much about God. I guess you don't believe there is none. I don't, I can't understand. I'm like I'd got lost, somehow, and when they found me, they'd stone me--I don't care. I've felt enough. I don't feel no more. I've cried so much, I guess I can't cry no more. If I could it 'ud be now, tellin' you. "When Miss Waite came here to teach, I hadn't ever had no friend except the girls here, and they wasn't bad, but we was always runnin' wild around in the lots, and down to shore, and always laughin' and plaguin' the teacher in school. And when Miss Waite came, she wasn't like you, nor she didn't have such clothes, nor such ways as yours. I didn't love her very much, but she used to talk to me, and wanted me to be a Christian. And she didn't tell me all it was to be a Christian like you have, or I wouldn't 'a' been such a fool to think I could be; but she talked like it wasn't anything to understand, only to want Christ in your heart, and try to be good, and, first, I didn't pretend to mind much what she said, and used to tell the girls, and they'd tell me, too, and we'd laugh. Only one time, she was talkin' to me, and it seemed as though I couldn't hold out no longer, and I cried and cried, and when I got up I felt happy. Just as though He was there. Seemed as though He was all around everywhere, and goin' down the lane, there was a whip-poor-will singin', and it sounded like it never had before--so strange and happy--and I always loved 'em after that--but I never shall again. "And I tried to be good, and quieter, and have the other girls and the children at home; and when father was drunk and noisy, and some of the folks laughed, I wouldn't give up--quite. Oh, I didn't feel like I was bad then! I didn't! You might remember that. I hadn't much manners, but I never thought anything bad. Some time you might remember that. "Then Mr. Rollin came, and he might 'a' killed me, and it 'ud been a kindness; but he hadn't no such kind heart as that. He used to make excuses for meetin' me. He wouldn't look at any of the other girls. He said he couldn't see no beauty in anybody else. He said I was the only one on earth he loved. He said he wouldn't care what became of him if I wasn't good to him. "I thought George never talked to me so much as that, and I trusted him every word. It was all so different. I thought I loved him, too. He talked about how he should take me to Providence, and I said I hadn't much manners or education, and they'd laugh at me. He said there wasn't another such a face there, and if he was suited, they might laugh. And he used to talk about how I'd look all dressed up in his house, down there--and I don't see! I don't see! I trusted every word. "It wouldn't have been no different, anyway. I loved you when you came. When he went with you, I tried to hate you. I hated him, but I never hated you! In my heart, teacher, I never hated you. You might think of that, some time----" "Well, my dear little girl," I interrupted her; "it seems we have both been deceived in the fisherman, but, doubtless, we shall recover in time. You don't like him, neither do I. We'll dismiss the subject from our minds, forever. There's a good, honest boy here in Wallencamp that a girl I know ought to busy her head about. Why trouble ourselves with disagreeable things?" "You might think, some time," Rebecca went on, with the same hopeless expression, and in the same tense voice; "I never knew that about not trustin' anybody till you told me. I hadn't never be'n away from here. I wasn't brought up like you, and I wasn't so strong as you--you might think, some time--but not now. I don't ask to have you now--you don't see. I knew you wouldn't--you can forget--you're so happy--think of that, sometime, how happy you was, sittin' there--but I never can forget any more. I say it 'ud be'n better if I'd a died. It's the sin and the shame. I've nothin' but to bear 'em, now, as long as I live. Oh, you might think what it was not to have no hope anywheres!" "What do you mean?" I cried, as it rushed over me in that instant what I had been too heedless and slow to comprehend, the possible wretched meaning of her words. "What do you mean?" rising and standing over her, with a terrible sense of power to convict. "Oh, Becky, you didn't mean that--worst?" "Yes," said she, with no visible change on her poor, set face--"yes--I do." "I wish you would go out of my room, and leave me!" I exclaimed, then; "I am not used to such people as you! Do you suppose I would have been with you all these weeks if I had known? Don't you see how you have wronged me? I never want to see you again, never! Go! go! and leave me alone!" I shall never forget the look with which Rebecca rose wearily, and went to the door--not an angry look, not a look of terror nor even of pleading reproach; but it was as if her soul, sinful, crushed and bleeding though it was, in that one moment, rose above my soul and condemned it with sorrowful, clear eyes. I listened to her step going down the stairs. I did not call her back. I heard her latch the outer door of the Ark. No thought of pity for her wrong, or commiseration for her desolation moved me. I thought only in my proud selfish passion, how miserably, how bitterly I had been deceived. I sought out the fisherman's letter before retiring, and the one I had begun in answer, and tore them both into shreds, believing that I should as easily rid my mind of the whole miserable affair with which I had been unwittingly complicated. CHAPTER XIII. A MILD WINTER ON THE CAPE. "It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape;" the Wallencampers congratulated one another, blinking, with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort, in the rays of a strong March sun. The Wallencampers were not, perhaps, generally incited by that love of stern, unceasing, and vigorous exertion which is, geographically considered, one of the chief characteristics of our hardy northern races. True poets and idealists, they were lazy, and they had but few clothes, both excellent reasons for inclining kindly to the warm weather. And yet, notwithstanding this, they had grown used to a wild ruggedness of nature and condition, a terrible, sublime uncertainty about life and things in general when the wind blew, missing which, in this earthly state, they would have pined most sadly. And I do not believe that they would have exchanged their rugged, storm-swept, wind-beleaguered little section of Cape Cod for a realm in sunny Italy itself; no, not even if the waves of that bright clime had rippled over sands of literal gold, and their winter had been nine months in the year instead of the customary six and a half. "A mild winter on the Cape." Grandpa Keeler often repeated the words; and sitting by the fire at night, his eyes grew big and wild, and his tones took on a terrible impressiveness as he told of _rough_ winters on the Cape, when the snow lay drifted high across the fences in the lane, and "every time she came in yender"--pointing in the direction of the Bay--"she licked offa slice or two o' bank, and the old Ark whirled and shuk--O Lordy, teacher!--as ef she'd slipped her moorin's and gone off on a high sea, and ef you'd a heered the wind a screechin' inter them winders, you'd a thought the"---- "Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma Keeler spoke. She said no more. It was enough. "You'd a thought something had got loose, sure," concluded Grandpa, with a keen glance aside to me that revealed, as with tenfold significance, the obstructed force of his narrative. In the daytime, Grandpa was now much out of doors. He had most frequent and loving recourse to an interesting looking pile of rubbish at the south end of the barn. There he sat, and napped and nodded, and employed the brief interims of wakefulness in whittling bean poles, preparatory for another year's supply of that dreaded and inexorable crop. Earth's disturbing voices, Grandma Keeler herself, seldom reached him there. Early, too, I saw him in the garden, leaning pensively on his hoe--a becalmed and striking figure in a ragged snuff-colored coat, and a hat marked by numerous small orifices, through which, here and there, strands from his silvery fringe of hair strayed and waved in the breezes. It was Grandma and Grandpa Keeler's custom at the first approach of spring to detach themselves from Madeline's household, and to form a separate and complete establishment of their own in the sunny kitchen, away out at the end of the Ark. I was still, nominally, Madeline's boarder, and sat at the table with her and the little Keelers; but the impulses of my heart were ever guiding my feet to that other dear resort, where doors and hearts seemed always open to receive me, and an inexpressible warmth and light and comfort pervaded the atmosphere. It was early in March, when, returning from school one day at the noontide intermission, I found Grandma standing without the Ark, singularly occupied. The sun was shining on her uncovered head, and the tranquil glow on her face was clearly the exponent of no fictitious happiness. In her apron she had a quantity of empty egg-shells, so carefully drained of their contents as to present an almost perfect external appearance, and these she was arranging on the twigs of a large bush that grew just outside the window. I was glad, afterwards, that I intruded then no skeptical questions as to her purpose, for, as I stood and looked at her, her action gradually lost for me the tinge of eccentricity, with which it had at first seemed imbued. I realized that there was something grander than reason, more exalted than philosophy. "I suppose you've heerd about egg-plants, teacher;" said she, at length, turning to me, while the sun in her face broke up into scintillant beams that penetrated my being, and quickened my very soul. "This 'ere old bush ain't bore nothin' for years, and it looked so bare and sorrerful, somehow, standin' out here all alone, and everything else a kinder wakin' up in the spring, I thought I'd try to sorter liven it up a little;" and she resumed her placid occupation. "Blessed Grandma," I could only murmur, as I turned to enter the Ark; "inspired, delightful soul!" It was in March that the Wallencamp sun-bonnets came forth, all in a single day, a curious and startling pageant. The Modoc, who had gone bareheaded through the winter, assumed hers as a turban of impressive altitude, while the diminutive Carietta and the infant Sophronia appeared but as vagrant telescopes on insufficient pegs. In March the "pipers" lifted up their homesick notes at nightfall, in the meadows. On the last day of that month, I found arbutus in bloom under the leaves in the cedar woods. Scarcely had the first faint signs of herbage appeared on the earth ere the Wallencamp cows and horses were given over exclusively to the guardianship of nature, and to wander whithersoever they would, for the Wallencamp fences had ceased to present themselves as obstacles in the way. Indeed, some portions of them had been utterly obliterated, and this was easily traced to a habit prevalent among the Wallencampers of resorting to them for fuel when, on some winter night, other resources were found to be low. Other portions of them were decayed, or blown over in the wind, so that there was just enough left to sit on for private soliloquy, or social debate, and to give a picturesque charm to the landscape; yet, it was a fact which I found worthy of notice, that, in going from one place to another, no true Wallencamper ever walked over a broken-down part of the fence, or went through a gap in the fence; he always selected an upright part of the fence to climb over, even going a little out of the way, if necessary, to effect this purpose. The Wallencampers were staunch on the matter of individual rights; they turned each his own horse and cow into his own door-yard. Animated, doubtless, by something of the same principle, those attenuated animals, having made an impartial _détour_ of the premises, congregated, as of one accord, along the highway, especially in that part of the lane between the Ark and the school-house. I made my way through these new perils from day to day, in safety, until the deepening green of the hills and fields called the herd away to wider pastures. Dr. Aberdeen, however, remained behind. Dr. Aberdeen, as he was termed by the Wallencampers, was a horse of peculiar and distinguished parts. Among his other eccentric gifts, he had a harmless habit of chasing beings of a superior race. In what manner this propensity had first manifested itself, I do not know, but it had been eagerly seized upon as ground for further development by the juvenile element of Wallencamp, and especially by the Modoc, under whose lively tuition the animal had reached an almost strategic ability in the art. Dr. Aberdeen was truly of the mildest disposition imaginable. He had never been known to kick. He had never even been known to open his mouth and snap at a fly, but the expression of his countenance, if it might be so called, when he was on the chase, was vicious and determined in the extreme, and by no means betrayed the purely facetious nature of his intentions. During school hours he seldom wandered from the immediate vicinity of the school-house, where he appeared to be waiting for the children to come out to play. Often have I looked up to see him gazing in at the windows with a gleam of evil expectancy in his melancholy dun brown eye. With the joyful advent of the spring came, also, Tommy's tame owl and "Happy Moses." Tommy's owl emerged from his winter-quarters, and took up his daily post of observation on the fence on the shady side of the school-house. He was blind in one eye, which eye was always open, the other was always closed. Yet with that one glassy, unblinking orb, Tommy's owl seemed to me, as I lifted my eyes to the window, to be reviewing the past with an indifference as calm and all-embracing as that with which he sent his inexorable gaze into the future; and to take in me and the passing events of the school-room as a mere speck in his kaleidoscopic vision of the ages. What was the winter's thraldom from which Happy Moses had escaped, I never learned. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, six feet in height, with a beard like flax, and a sunny, ingenuous countenance. What term should have been applied to his eccentricities in politer circles I cannot say, but in Wallencamp, he was artlessly designated as "the fool." Whether it was on this account, that with a certain rashness of perception peculiar to the Wallencampers, they always prefixed the adjective "happy" to his name, or merely on account of the transparent sunniness of his disposition, I cannot say, either. Happy Moses played with the children. He regarded me, as one of the class of those who presume to teach, with mingled scorn and aversion. When I went to the door to blow the children in from their play, he invariably turned his back upon me, cocked his hat on one side of his head, and walked away with an air that was palpably reckless, defiant, and jaunty. When he reappeared, it was usually with his knitting-work, to which he devoted himself in a desultory way, reclining on the school-house steps. But sometimes he sat on the fence with the owl, and then it was noticeable that while the gaze of the one was transient and silly, the gaze of the other seemed to grow the more unutterably searching and profound. So, at last, the new term was fairly established with these three--Dr. Aberdeen, Happy Moses, and the owl. Hulled corn and beans had now become but as a dream of the past in Wallencamp, and for a brief season before the accession of lobsters, life was mainly supported on winter-green-berries, or box-berries, as they were called. These grew in large quantities at "Black Ground," a section of the woods which had been burned over. Daily I met happy groups of Wallencampers, with baskets and pails in their hands, going "boxberry plummin.'" We had boxberry bread, boxberry stews and pies, and one day, I caught a glimpse of Grandma, in her part of the Ark, frying boxberry griddle-cakes. Grandpa, when I met him, at this time, wore an air of deep dejection; yet he bore his woes in silence, doubtless avoiding any concession that should suggest the need of another clarification of his system. Once, when nobody was looking, he cautiously withdrew a handful of scraped birch bark from his pocket and gave it to me, remarking that he thought it was "a little more bracin' than them tarnal woodsy plums." Next in the order of events, as the Modoc stood in her place in the reading-class and slowly enunciated each separate syllable of the lesson in a tone as remarkable for a loud distinctness as it was for a total lack of meaning and modulation, from that side of her dress which had been sagging most heavily, something fell with a crash to the floor. It was a boiled lobster of anomalous proportions. The pocket had given way at last under its overpowering burden, and now appeared ignominiously upborne on the claws of its former prisoner. The Modoc seized the crustacean with glittering defiance in her eyes, and at recess, I saw that turbaned Amazon devouring it, with a group of wistful and admiring faces gathered round. The boys were out in the bay "setting pots" and "trolling for bait." Soon, not a child at Wallencamp was lobsterless. I discovered two under the infant Sophronia's desk one morning, and afterwards kept a sharp eye in that direction. Sophronia's conduct throughout the session was in an unusual degree exemplary. I detected no guilty blush on her countenance, I heard not the crackling of a claw, but when she went out, I observed that she took no lobsters with her. Investigating the place where she had been sitting, I found a wild confusion of claws and shells, as carefully denuded of meat as though they had been turned inside out for that purpose. What was my surprise and mortification to find a like collection at nearly every seat in the school-room, and all the while my flock had seemed unusually silent and attentive; such proficiency had those children acquired in the art of dissecting lobsters. I saw how many they devoured day by day, and how much water they drank, and I fancied that they themselves grew to partake more and more of the form and character of marine animals. I believed that they could have existed equally well crawling at the bottom of the deep or swimming on its surface. We had lobsters, too, at the Ark. For the first day or two of this dispensation, Grandpa's face perceptibly brightened. At the end of two weeks it was longer than ever before. He came over from his potato patch, I remember, and leaned on the fence, as I was going by to school. "It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape, teacher," he observed, studying the heavens with an air of utter abstraction. Then his glance fell as it were inadvertently in the direction of the house, and he immediately continued with a peculiar spark of animation kindling in his eye; "I've et so many o' them 'tarnal critters, teacher, that I swon if I don't feel like a 'tarnal, long-fingered, sprawlin' shell-fish myself! But it's comin' nigh time for ale-whops. They're very good, teacher, ale-whops are--very good, though they're bony as the--they're 'tarnal bony, teacher. They're what we call herrin's in the winter." Grandpa then laughed a little and showed his teeth. "I was goin' to tell ye, Bachelder Lot, here," he went on; "he was a' askin' Captain Sartell what kind o' fish them was that it's recorded in the Scripters to 'a' fed the multitude, and then took up so many baskets full o' leavin's; and the Captain told him that as to exactly what manner of fish them was, he hadn't sufficient acquaintance with the book of Jonah to say, but, as near as he could calk'late, he reckoned they was ale-whops. "And the Bachelder told him that it seemed to him he was right, and had solved a mystery, for it stood to reason that there wa'n't no other fish _but_ an ale-whop, that they could feed five thousand folks out of seven little ones and then take up twelve bushel baskets full of bones! "And the Captain was pleased, and kind o' half owned up that he hadn't felt no ways sure as to his surmise to begin with, but he said when the question was put to him, he didn't think no man ought to hesitate to come down strong on a doctrinal p'int. "Wall, as I was a sayin', teacher," concluded Grandpa, his teeth still skinned and gleaming, "it's be'n a mild winter on the Cape." CHAPTER XIV. RESCUED BY THE CRADLEBOW. The ship in which the Cradlebow expected to take flight was to sail from New Bedford on the twentieth of June. Meantime, having abjured my friendly relations with Rebecca, and missing the quiet sustenance hitherto supplied my vanity in the girl's thoughtful devotion, I found a measure of relief for my wounded spirit in the companionship of this other--my boyish and ardent ex-pupil. Many times, after my last interview with Rebecca, had I regretted that I did not leave Wallencamp at the close of the first term. The school grew continually more irksome to me. I was not so strong as when I had first undertaken it, and no longer overlooked the discomforts of my situation in the delight I had then experienced in its novelty. Often I longed to get away from it all, to rid myself abruptly of the perplexities and distasteful duties which bound me; and yet, all the while, there was a truer impulse, a deeper longing within me, to stay. Had I not been, all my life so far, forsaking my unfinished tasks, quitting an object as soon as it seemed any the less attractive. I willed to stay, and labored, still blindly, under the conviction that my regenerating work among the Wallencampers (not theirs in me; ah, no!) was not yet accomplished. Toward Rebecca I had not softened. I was bitterly disappointed in her. She had been the formless, pliable clay, on which I purposed to prove my pet theories for development and culture. I had taken her as a perfectly fresh and untainted being, naïvely unconscious even, of the elements, either good or bad, of which her own nature was composed, waiting only for the hand of a wise and skillful modeller, like myself, to bring her up to the highest condition of manners and morals. This elegant superstructure, a purely mental product of my own, had fallen away, revealing the erring, passionate nature beneath. But, deeply as I mourned the fall of my idol, I felt still more keenly a sense of personal injury, because the inner structure on which I had been building, had not spoken out and said, "I shall contaminate you. I am not fit for the touch, of your fine hands." Clearly there could no longer be any sympathy between Rebecca and me. I avoided any occasion for private interview with the girl. Meeting her casually in the lane, or at the neighbors' houses, I acknowledged her presence with a nod or a smile, colder, I knew, than as if I had ignored her utterly. She understood; she was quiet and unobtrusive. She made no attempt to break down the wall thus established between us. And I was determined, on the whole, to be more than just with Rebecca. I would be kind to her in her disgrace. I would palliate her weakness as far as I could consistently with a pure and high standard of action. I even congratulated myself on the magnanimity of my intentions, except when I met the clear, sad gaze of those dispassionate eyes. Then I experienced an unaccountable sensation, as though I had received a blow inwardly, that staggered me, for an instant, in my fine conceptions of honor, and set my conclusions out of order. The Wallencampers were quick to note the estrangement between us, and affirmed that "Beck was mad, and wouldn't speak to teacher, along o' teacher's goin' with Beck's beau." This gratuitous solution of the mystery was not evolved in my presence. Still I knew, that all through those lonely, suffering days, it was often repeated to Rebecca; that those who had borne the girl any grudge, or deemed that she was taking airs above them, took pains, now, that the taunt should reach her ears; and even the children, who had always loved her, uttered it before her with childish thoughtlessness. But, for the Cradlebow; his bright dream of seeking his fortune over wide seas and in distant lands, his dreadless enthusiasm in the belief that he should find so much waiting for him in that unsounded world, his determination, above all, to acquit himself truthfully and bravely--all these made him, to my mind, ever an object of more inspiring and romantic interest. He seemed, somehow, to have divested himself entirely of the old, heedless irresolution. His speech expressed little of doubt or hesitancy. It was full of a bold, bright affirmation; and his step, in these days, had none of the ordinary slow, smiling, philosophical Wallencamp shuffle. He brought to my weariness and dejection such an atmosphere of vigorous, tireless life; he was so confident, helpful, unselfish; I was so faithless and disheartened a burden-bearer; that I grew almost unconsciously to find for myself a certain rest in his strength, which, whatever high and heroic qualities it may have lacked, developed, at least, rare resources of patience, constancy, and forbearance. He did not say: "You have changed your mind, you will wait for me, teacher, till I come back from over the seas?" but his eyes were eloquent. What if I was moved, I had grown so weak, to answer their question, at last, with a half-involuntary admission in my own. Ah, no! I assured myself that my attitude towards the Cradlebow was sisterly--sisterly, merely--although I might have reflected that the yearnings of that amiable affection had never, hitherto, in the ordinary walks of life, constrained me to hem so many as a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs for my brothers, which irksome task I cheerfully performed as a surprise for the sailor boy, not to speak of a pair of scarlet hose which I had already begun to knit, under Grandma's tuition. And now the life in Wallencamp seemed never like real life to me, even in the broadest daylight. It was like a dream--the sweet, warm, brightening of the landscape; the vines growing over the low, brown houses; the lazy, summer voices in the air; the skies, too, were a dream--and Luther, with his ideally beautiful face and his quaintness and ardor and unworldliness, was a part of the dream. I knew that when he went away, I should follow him long in my thoughts, and wonder much concerning him; that at home again with my own people, in gayer, different scenes, I should never hear the wind blowing up strong at night, or see the winter settling down gloomily, or watch the opening of another spring-time, without following him afar and wondering, with a vague, sorrowful, tender regret, what chance was befalling him in the world. Then an incident occurred which changed, not me, perhaps, but the complexion of my dream. One afternoon, at low tide, I wandered down to the beach and ensconced myself comfortably, with book and shawl, on the roof of Steeple Rock. The rock was an old acquaintance of mine by this time. There was a group of children playing, a little farther down the beach. My eyes turned ever to them from the written page, following them with a languid pleasure, as they revelled in the sand at the water's edge with their bare brown feet and legs. I had a sense of safety, too, in their proximity. I knew that they generally returned home passing by the place where I was. It was warm on the rock. I was very tired. As I lay there, I became only conscious, at length, that my book was slipping out of my hand, and down the shelving side of the rock, and I was too listless to attempt to reclaim it. I heard a little, dull thud on the ground below, and a faint flutter of leaves--and the long, white beach, the ragged cliffs, the laughing children, had faded from my sight. Then I dreamed, indeed, in the ordinary sense of the word; I was back again in Newtown, in my own home, in my own white bed, and I was very glad, looking at the pictures on the wall, and out on the familiar hills. I was glad to hear my sister playing for me down stairs, only it was the same tune always, and I wished that she would play more softly. And the pillow was hard, but I did not mind that so much, for my mother stood over me, looking very sweet and grave, and she said: "Why didn't you tell us that the pillow was hard!" My father was there, too, and repeated the same question, and my brothers,--they all kept saying: "Why didn't you tell us that the pillow was hard?" and seemed to be pitying me and admiring me at the same time, until John Cable came in, friend of the old Newtown days, and his face was hard and stern. "Why didn't you tell me the pillow was hard?" he said. "Now, I can't wake you! Don't you see, I can't wake you, now?" and he shook his head and would not look at me. So they took him out of the room, and went on pitying and admiring me, but my sister kept playing louder and louder, and it troubled me so that I could not rest. Then I heard a voice, that was not in my dream, calling to me in a sharp, clear, cheering tone, "Teacher! Teacher!" and I looked up to see Luther coming towards me in a boat, his face aglow with excitement. This first--before I realized that I had fallen asleep on the rock, and that what I had dreamed was my sister playing, was the sound of the tide coming in, and that I was already sprinkled from head to foot with the spray. The Cradlebow continued calling to me cheerily, and would not give me time to consider the terrors of the situation then, nor afterwards, when I strove, in my half-stunned condition of mind, to weigh and appreciate the peril from which I had been rescued. The children had wandered a mile or more along the beach and had gone home by another road. It was not yet dark. No alarm had been occasioned in Wallencamp as to my absence, but the Cradlebow, knowing that I had gone in the direction of the beach, had been moved to search for me, and had discovered me on the rock, where, in a few moments more, I should have waked to find myself at the mercy of the waves. My deliverer laughed reassuringly, sending the boat leaping upon the shore, holding out his hand to me, as though this were merely an everyday occurrence, the close of some ordinary excursion, but, to me, life had suddenly grown significant. The strong warm hand which clasped mine, weak and trembling, as I stepped from the boat, I must recognize henceforth, I knew, as the link between me and the living world. For several days afterwards I considered the matter of my relation to the Cradlebow in a new and serious light, especially in the light of present gratitude, with a sense of life-long obligation; but the Cradlebow was too generous and noble to recognize the obligation, or take advantage of the gratitude. He loved me, I knew. He had watched for me. He had saved my life. He should know, I resolved, that if he wished it still I would wait for him. And the idea was not foreign to my heart, but it grew, at last, too light of wing, and disposed to take up permanent abode in the realm of fancy. A poor, handsome young lover, seeking his fortune at the ends of the earth, and the future--ah, it did send a little stab to my conscience, to think that the uncertainty of that lover's future should so have heightened, to my mind, the romance of the picture. However, meeting him in the lane one evening, as I was returning from one of my parochial calls--it was just at dusk, I remember, and we stood under the balm-of-Gilead tree, in front of Emily's gate--I said very gravely and with none of that embarrassment which the occasion might seem to have warranted:-- "Luther, although I seem to myself much older than you, we are really, I suppose, of about the same age. I have known very happy attachments where inconsistencies of birth, habit, education were far greater, perhaps, than with us. I have made up my mind that, if you still desire it, I will wait for you." "Wait for me, teacher!" exclaimed the Cradlebow, opening his eyes with a solemn, wide surprise; "why, of course!" "Why, of course?" I questioned faintly, not knowing whether to smile at being thus abruptly disarmed, or to feel the least little bit piqued at the youth's unconscious audacity. "What else should two people do who love each other?" There was nothing either of doubt or arraignment in the Cradlebow's serious eyes. "Besides," he continued; "I've known it all along. See here, teacher!" and he took from his pocket, and carefully unfolded, a sheet of paper against the background of which there lay revealed a dainty star fish, most curiously twisted about with some rare and beautiful sea vine. "You won't find that vine washed up on this beach every day," he said eagerly. "When I showed it to Granny--'If Heaven itself had spoken, boy,' says she, 'I should be no surer it was a fair voyage waiting you than I be now;' though I was thinking of something besides the voyage, teacher, but it's all the same, it means good luck; and wouldn't you like to keep it for us?" [Illustration] "Oh, no!" I answered, laughingly refusing the delicate talisman. "I should blast its good intentions. I should stifle it with my cold unbelief." The Cradlebow tenderly replaced his treasure, and laughed with me good-naturedly. "It isn't your fault, teacher," said he, "that you weren't better brought up. If you'd always lived with our people, down here, you'd be more believing." At all events, my severe and protracted mental exertions had proved quite unnecessary, I thought, although after this there was, in some respects, a tacitly admitted change in our converse with each other. A sort of vague, venturesome house-building for the future, in which the Cradlebow seemed to wish that I would oftener show an interest in the feminine details within doors, while I had a grand and absorbing predilection for constructing imaginary grades and turrets and mediæval door-posts, receiving any thoughtful suggestions as to tin-kettles and pantry-shelves with gracious and smiling forbearance. The Cradlebow seemed particularly pleased, when he came into the Ark of an evening, if I chanced to be knitting on the scarlet stockings. I did have a new and not unpleasant sense of housewifely dignity while engaged at this task, and undoubtedly assumed an air calculated to serve as an impressive exponent to my emotion. The poor scarlet stockings lengthened, meanwhile, but it was a disheartening and almost imperceptible growth. Where the article should have been most voluminous, at the calf of the leg, it grew, in spite of me, more alarmingly narrow at every round. This was after I had graduated from under Grandma Keeler's tuition, and assumed my own responsibility in the matter; so that I disdained to appeal to her for assistance in the dilemma, but thoughtfully devised means of my own for widening the stocking. "I'll tell ye what it is, teacher," said Grandpa, who had been regarding me with that wild look which sometimes visited the old man's face when a problem seemed well nigh insoluble; "I'm afeerd, teacher, I'm afeerd that that ere stockin' ain't a goin' to fit nobody! I'll tell ye what it makes me think on. It makes me think o' one o' these 'ere accordions that ye open and shet. I'm afeerd, teacher, that it ain't a goin' to fit!" "Thar! 'sh! 'sh! pa," said Grandma, with all the unction of holy disapproval; but, for once, my ever dear friend and champion was compelled to turn her back upon the scene. In this position, she exclaimed in a low, broken tone of voice, "There may be legs, pa, as we don't know on!" Grandpa was curiously aroused. "I tell ye, I've travelled to the four quarters of the 'arth, ma," said he; "and set eyes on the tarnalest critters under God's canopy, but I never see anybody yit that 'ud fit into that 'ere. Besides," he added, knowingly, in a milder tone; "I reckin that 'ere stockin's meant for somebody nearer hum, and a pretty straight-legged fellow, too." I was enabled to judge something still further of the speculations waking in the Wallencamp brain, when, having to keep Henry G. after school, one night, as a means of discipline, he bawled out:-- "Ye don't keep Simmy B. after school no more! And why not?" continued the aggrieved infant, at the same time framing for himself an answer of malicious significance: "Oh, 'cause he's Lute Cradlebow's brother!" Social converse was at its high tide, now, in Wallencamp among the birds in the trees and the fowls in the door-yards, and quite as naturally and harmlessly so, for the most part, I think, among the beings of a superior order. They had little other recreation. The bonfire had marked the close of the gay epoch in Wallencamp. It was too warm now for the livelier recreations of the winter. Religious interest, especially, was at a low ebb. At the evening prayer-meetings, the number of worshippers appeared but as a handful compared with the number of the unconcerned who lingered outside in the pleasant moonlight. Conspicuous among these latter, replacing the fervid debates of the winter with a calm philosophy befitting a warmer season, were Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot. The old songs held the same charm for them all, however. They sang them ever with pathos in their voices and tears in their eyes. The little unpremeditated chats by gate and roadside, the neighborly "droppings-in," grew more and more frequent. But when poor Rebecca was taken up on the tide of social wonder and debate, and I heard whisperings concerning her, and knew that an evil suspicion had taken hold of the mind of the little community, and when finally Emily said to me; "I guess you done about right shirking off Beck, teacher. I guess she ain't no better than she ought to be:" in spite of what I felt to be my own unblemished conscience in the matter and the justice of the retribution which was overtaking Rebecca, I went often to my little room and cried bitterly for her, as well as for myself. CHAPTER XV. DAVID ROLLIN IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. Mrs. Philander Keeler grew kind. At first, especially while the fisherman was in Wallencamp, her demeanor towards me had been marked by a decided touch of coldness and mistrust. She suspected me, I thought, of trifling with the Cradlebow; now, she invariably deferred to me as a person worthy of all honor and consideration--of congratulation even, in an eminent degree. She assumed to be on the most frank and confiding terms with me. She found a thousand little ways for promoting my physical comfort that had never occurred to her before. So I was the more surprised, when after school, one Friday afternoon, as I was sitting in my room, this same Madeline suddenly appeared before me with her eyes glittering, her lips compressed, and her complexion of that positive green hue which it always wore when she was in a high passion. "There's a gentleman down stairs, waiting to see you, teacher," she said, with a peculiarly dark inflection on the word gentleman. "Oh, he's got on an awful interesting look!" snapped out Madeline, with a spiteful little laugh; "and a suit of light clothes, and a new spring overcoat, and he looked at me as though I was a pane of window-glass, and he says, 'Oh--ah--yes--is Miss Hungerford in?' I wonder if he's come back to make his farewell calls--" with another unpleasant laugh. "One thing I can tell him, he'd better steer clear of George Olver!" Was ever a zealous young devotee, I pondered, more perplexed! "Come this way, please," I said, holding out my hand to Madeline; and leaning back in my chair with unaffected weariness, at least. "Is Mr. Rollin down stairs?" "They call him that, I believe," said Madeline, sententiously; "things don't always get their right names in this world." "Well, you may tell him," I said; "that I can't see him." Madeline's countenance changed wonderfully in an instant. She gave me a bright look, and without waiting for another word, ran down the stairs. When she came back her tongue ran on glibly:-- "I told him," said she; "that you couldn't see him, and he kept on in that window-glass way of looking, and his head as high as ever, and he took his hat and 'I'm very sorry,' he says, 'that Miss Hungerford is indisposed, and I hope I shall have an opportunity of seeing her this evening.' "He said he came to-day, and was going away to-morrow morning, and he had something of importance to communicate, and I knew he expected I'd go up and see you again about it, but I didn't. So he said he'd call again this evening or to-morrow morning, just which 'd be most agreeable, and expected I'd budge then, sure, but I didn't show any signs of it; and I told him rightly, I guessed one time would be about as agreeable as another; and I suppose he thought he wouldn't show mad before such common bred folks. He smiled that window-glass looking smile of his, and says; 'Ah, thank you; now I won't detain you any longer, Mrs. Keeler,' and out he went. "I suppose he's come down to smooth everything over, and have it hushed up with Beck and her folks. Well, money'll do a good deal for a man, but it wouldn't stand him much if he got into George Olver's hands. However, teacher," concluded Madeline, in a sprightly tone; "give the Devil his due. It's better'n as if he'd run off and never showed his head again; and I don't suppose he'll get much satisfaction out of you, if you do see him, teacher. It's better to trust honest folks than rogues, and nobody knows that better than the rogues themselves." I knew that this last clause was not designed as a personal thrust by Madeline, yet I could not help musing a little over it, smilingly, after she had gone. The fiction, of which I was living a part, in Wallencamp, was taking on, it seemed to me, a tinge even of the tragic--perplexities were deepening. I was becoming, more than ever, the suffering though exalted heroine of a romance. I rose, and dressed myself before the glass, I remember, with particular care. I did not know why I should dread or avoid seeing the fisherman in the evening, since the part I had to sustain in the interview was so distinctly calm, dispassionate, and spiritually remote. At the same time, I wished that my cheeks had not grown so pale and my eyes so dark-rimmed and hollow. They bespoke the interesting part I had to play in the world's tragedy, but were not, otherwise, so becoming as I could have wished. Earlier, the fisherman had sent me books from Providence. I would rather, I thought, that he should take them back again. I remembered that I had left one of them in my desk at the school-house, and put on my hat to go after it. "Going out to spend the evening, teacher?" said Madeline, as I opened the door of the Ark, giving me at the same time a gay and knowing look. "No," I said, gravely tolerant of the little woman's surveillance; "I'm only going to the school-house for a book that I want. I shall be back in a few moments." It was hardly dusk then. Aunt Patty, as usual after school on Friday, had swept the room and put down the dark and dingy paper curtains. I opened the door and stood an instant looking into the gloom before entering. Then I saw that there was some one sitting in my chair--a man with his head bent forward and buried in his arms, which were folded on the desk. It was Mr. Rollin, and before I had time to retreat, he lifted his head and saw me standing at the door. I had expected that the first revelation of that glance would contain something of grief, wretchedness, remorse. The fisherman's countenance wore a shadow of annoyance, but it was expressive, above all, of a childish petulance and irritation. "Oh!" he exclaimed, speaking with the utmost abruptness, and rising from the chair; "if you had only left this place at the end of the first term, it would have saved the whole of this abominable misadventure!" "I don't think I understand you," I said, freezing now in sober earnest. "Because in your eyes only, it is a misadventure," he continued rapidly, with growing excitement. "You came to this miserable hole--this Wallencamp--resolved to view everything in a new light--the light of unselfish devotion to great ends, and exalted aspiration, and ideal perfection, and all that. Well, how has the wretched, giggling, conniving little community shown out in that light? I suppose there's one--that larking Cradlebow--who has stood the test and come out creditably, by reason of an uncommonly artistic shock of hair and a Raphaelite countenance. As for me, taken in the ordinary sense, I'm no worse than a thousand others, but I say that it was a decidedly unfortunate light to put me in! It was a decidedly unfair light!" "I have no wish to judge you in any light," I said, and explaining briefly my errand to the school-house, I expressed regret at having interrupted the fisherman's meditations, and turned to go. "Miss Hungerford!" he exclaimed, with a gesture of whimsical force and impatience; "it's my last chance for an explanation. Don't, for God's sake, cut it short at this point. You might know--you might _know_, that I'm not a bad fellow at heart. But you will never see the best side of me--there's fate in it. I never wanted to seem specially contrite but I must set myself jumping like a jack-in-the box for your infernally cold amusement! I had an explanation at my tongue's end. D--n it! I don't remember a word of it." "I don't think it is necessary," I said. "Oh, no!" he continued in a deeply aggrieved, almost a whining tone; "nothing's necessary that would set me out in a little better shape! Anything will do for these grovelling Wallencampers, but just as soon as it comes to me, all the extenuating circumstances of my life--that I was left so early orphaned, sisterless, brotherless, my nearest of kin a wicked, carousing old uncle; taken to see the world here, and to see the world there; homeless, if ever one was homeless; never trained to any correct way of thinking, or settled manner of life, but just to spend my money and aim at enjoying myself--they all amount to nothing in my case. "Well, I used to come to Wallencamp just for that same purpose--to have a good time; it was such a jolly wild place to let the Old Nick loose in; and now it seems that's to be taken for a man's natural level, and the best that he's capable of! Then I met you. You would voluntarily give up ease and luxury, for a time, for the sake of an abstract idea--whether misguided or not, I will not say, the fact remains the same--and I swear it was a new revelation to me. It was strange and perverse, and it was deuced taking! Then I tried to get you to include _me_ among the objects of your mission, to accept _me_ as a candidate for temporal leniency and final salvation, and you wouldn't. It is only the happy, ragged, unconscious heathen that are looked out for in this world; the real ones don't get any sympathy." The fisherman paused. "I should be glad to give you the first lesson in the code of salvation," I said--"that the fate of souls is not left to human hands." "Oh, I've heard that formula somewhere before!" exclaimed the fisherman, impatiently, with a little sneer in his laugh. "Why don't you tell me that God will help me? Perhaps you will even remember me in your prayers, some time." At those last words an unbearable pang of self-conviction and remorse shot through my heart. I, who had not felt greatly the need of any supernatural aid, but rather that I was able to manage my own affairs with becoming discretion--of what saving power and grace could I speak to one who was weak enough to fall, and for whom there was no help in himself? In the dark school-room I involuntarily lifted my hands to my face. When I heard the fisherman's voice again, he had come a step or two nearer to me down the aisle. "Let me tell you what I was thinking about when you came in," he said, in an altered tone. "Rather, how I was allowing my imagination to run away with itself, for my own particular delectation. I was imagining, when you opened the door and stood revealed there in the light, how you might come to me, indeed, as the angel of some better life and hope, offering me a forgiveness as full as it was unmerited." "It is not I who have to forgive you," I repeated. "It is you, if any one," replied the fisherman, quickly. "I tell you, you feel that girl Becky Weir's fault ten times more deeply than she feels it for herself. You should never have come to this place. It was deucedly odd and entertaining, but it was a step in the wrong direction. You put yourself in the place of these people and translate all their possible moods and tenses according to your own. It's a mistake. That girl, Becky, would stare in perfect bewilderment if she could know of some of the thoughts and emotions you doubtless attribute to her. She might even laugh at you for your pains." "I do not believe you," I said, not angrily nor resentfully, as might have been earlier in our acquaintance, but with a painful, slow positiveness. "Perhaps I was wrong in assuming the place I did in Wallencamp, but it was not in the way you think. I don't know--I can't see the way myself, clearly--always, but I believe that what you have said is utterly false!" "At least," continued the fisherman, in the old gay, frivolous tone, which I heard now for the first time during this conversation; "I can make her tenfold and abundant reparation--ah, you don't know--I say you don't understand these people. It's a disagreeable subject; let it go! But I'm very rich, you know," with an easy laugh, and the air of a man only conscious, at last, of his good worldly fortune, and the exquisite fit of his clothes. "Oh, I've got no end of money. After all, that's the chief thing in this world. If a fellow's ordinarily clever and good-natured, with a good reputation in town, what's a little row in the suburban districts! It's an awfully insignificant affair, anyway, it seems to me. We may as well talk sense, and the plainer the better. People don't employ lenses for shortsightedness in that particular--common sense, I mean. You walk without seeing, Miss Hungerford, and you're bound to get infernally cheated, in some shape. Why not me, I say, as well as another?" Still, the fisherman's words roused no bitterness in me. His hardened recklessness of speech served rather to strengthen me in the part I had to play of the unapproachably sublime. "I cannot consider that question," I said, with my hand on the door. He swept my face with a keen glance that had lost none of its derisive quality. "So it's true, then!" he said. "The ultimatum has been reached, at last, in the possessor of a pretty face and a broken fiddle! and dreams for the restoration of the race are to end in a broken-down hovel by the sea, in darning the Cradlebow's socks, and dressing the clams for dinner, while the bucolic George Olver and the versatile Harvey, and all the rest of the awkward, moon-gazing crew, take turns in sitting on the door-step, and dilating on the weather! Ravishing idyll but it lacks substantiality. It lacks seriousness." I heard that mocking laugh again without emotion, except it might be for a faint, far-off echo in my breast of the fisherman's own scorn. Above all, I was weary, and willing to make my escape. "We cannot help each other by standing here talking," I said, and added a "good bye." It was the last time, probably, that I should see the fisherman's face; but he refused the valediction with a toss of the head. "Oh, no!" he said; "it isn't time for my obsequies. I shall return to town for a few days or weeks only; this detestable place has always thrown a spell over me. I can't rid myself of it. Like the natives of Wallencamp, I always drift back to it again." It was growing dark. I found Madeline waiting for me in the lane. Somewhat piqued at the persistency of the little woman's ministrations, I informed her briefly, that I had found the fisherman in the school-house, and had been conversing with him there; but she put her hand in my arm with an air of unshaken confidence. CHAPTER XVI. GEORGE OLVER'S LOVE FOR BECKY. "I'd like to see you alone a few minutes, teacher, if you please." It was George Olver who spoke, in his sturdy, resolute bass. The words hardly took on the form of a suave request: they were uttered in too earnest, grave, and intent a tone. I had dismissed my school for the day. The roar of the young lions just released from bondage had not died away when George Olver entered the school-room, closed the door behind him, and stood in a manly and self-reliant attitude, his hat in his hand. "No, ma'am," he said, in answer to some gesture of mine; "I'll be much obleeged if _you'll_ set down in the chair." "There's times, teacher," he then went on, gravely and steadily; "when ordinary friends, like you and me, meetin' each other in the road, or in a neighbor's house, maybe, we say, 'How d'ye do?' or 'It's a pleasant day,' or the like o' that, and all well and good. It's a fair understandin', and enough said 'twixt you and me: and then ag'in, there's times when the wind blows up rough, as ye might say, and oncommon dark, and some harm a befallin' of us, when we git closter together and more a dependin' on each other, and then them old words ain't o' much account to us, but to speak out different what need be without fear or shame." "Yes," I said, much impressed by George Olver's manner. He was held somewhat in awe among the Wallencampers, and regarded generally as a "close-mouthed" fellow. "I hear," he resumed; "that Dave Rollin has been down this way ag'in. They say it was lucky for him I wasn't to home that day; maybe so. Ef he'd a turned up suddenly in my path--I can't say--I might 'a' trod on him. I never done anythin' like that for the fun on't. I'd rather go round one any time than step on't, but if I'd a come on him so, onexpected, I can't say for what might 'a' been the consequences. Wall, he comes down here, and he goes to her with money! Her, that ain't used to all the devilish ways o' the world, nor as fine clo's as some, but that's got a lady's heart in her, for all that; and she told him--I know just how she said it, in that quiet way she's had along lately--that it was the last thing he could do to hurt her--but he'd made a mistake if he thought she could take that. "So, then, as I've heered, he went to her father, a tryin' to make it appear, as nigh as I can make out, that he'd got suthin' in the shape of a conscience that he wanted to whiten over a little more to his own satisfaction afore he went away. "Wall, Bede and his daughter used to be called about one piece for temper, though I don't reckon that temper's lackin' allays 'cause it don't show. There's them as jest keeps the steam down a workin' the whole machinery patient and stiddy; but Bede, he's allays a histin' the cover, and lettin' on't out in one general bust, and I reckon that was what he did when he was a talkin' with the fisherman; he histed up the cover and let off a good deal of onnecessary steam, but he come to the right point in the end; that the fisherman had made a mistake thar', too, and--as near as I can make out--this Dave Rollin was kind o' took back and disappointed. He hadn't calkilated that the folks down here had any sech feelin's as his sort o' folks. "Thar' ain't any use in talkin' about him. I feel hard thar', I confess, but that can't help her none, now. What I want is to help her. I tell ye, teacher,"--the strong voice trembled slightly--"there's been times when I've felt as though I've been a sinkin', as ye might say, and a wantin' to call out for help! help! like any weak, drowning fool, instead o' swimmin' above it strong, and helpin' them as was weaker than me. "No shame for me to say, teacher, I've allays had it in my mind that Becky'd marry me. It grew up with me. I never thought o' no other girl but her. Ye see she'd always knowed me, and it was more like a brother, she said. She hadn't thought o' _that_. So, I says, I'll bide my time patient, but I believed she'd turn to me. "When Dave Rollin began to hang around there, I didn't feel exactly kindly towards him, I don't pretend. The folks, they tried to set me on. It 'ud a been mighty easy to 'a' gone on! I guess there ain't nobody as knows us two 'ud deny I could handle four o' such as him, but a man has got to say, fa'r play! fa'r play! and not put himself in other folks' light. Thinks I, if his intentions are all squar' and honorable--and I hadn't no reason, then, to say they wa'n't--and them, two take a fancy to each other, why, it ain't no more than nateral! "She was handsome enough, for a queen, and he had different manners from us fellows down here, and purtier ways o' talkin' and lookin' at a girl, as though if she didn't have him, it was goin' to knock 'im straight, and she'd lived with such different folks, it made it vary interestin'; that was nateral. Thinks I, a man in my place had ought to have sense enough to back out quiet. "You know what he done, teacher. He took the best, and when he got tired on't, he threw it away,"--the brawny hand at George Olver's side was clinched so as to appear almost colorless, yet there was little discomposure in his voice--"but cursin' him ain't a goin' to help us now. When a thing that's allays been precious to us has once fell, we can't never make it quite like it was afore, but we can keep care on't patient, a waitin' God Almighty's time to make it whole. I know what folks say. I know, but I don't keer. She ain't no less precious to me, now, than she was afore, only it's more for her, now, maybe, and less for myself. And she sees, now. She does keer for me, now. Ay, I know what they'll say, but they don't know that girl as well as I do, teacher. They ain't nothin' would 'a' wrung them words from her ef they hadn't 'a' be'n true; no, not ef it had been savin' her life to say 'em. She does keer, now, but she won't never take me now, she says, because it 'ud be wrongin' me; and I might 'a' knowed what she'd 'a' said, what it was nateral and noble for her to say. "But," continued George Olver, with a flash of magnificent fire in his eyes, and thrusting his arm out straight; "what's right atween me and my God needn't be afeard o' no man's face! I want to take that girl and keer for her, and keep her from meddlin' tongues. Let 'em say what they choose to me; they must be keerful what they say afore her, that's all. "I've waited a good while. I could bide my time, but not now, when she's heart broke and sufferin', and nobody ter put out a hand to help her. There's be'n a look on her face, lately, that I don't like to see. It's afore my eyes all the time, and it werries me night and day--as though she didn't hold herself o' no account, and might make away wi' herself. "Teacher, you've got a woman's heart, and you can save that other woman! It's a task that they needn't nobody be ashamed on, for the Lord Jesus himself set the example. I guess she thinks you've turned agin her, too, but I knew that couldn't be, for no friend 'ud leave another when they was perishin', not even if they was more to fault than she was; and she was apt to mind ye more than any one. I thought if you'd go in and speak to her as a woman could, and tell her she'd got a right to hope, and tell her her friends would not forsake her, least of all would it be likely God would forsake her, and tell her--" George Olver seemed both to be looking at me and beyond me with his beautiful, brave eyes; "Tell her thar's somebody that don't find any cause to be sorry for havin' loved her, but knows how she's been werrited, and suffers along with her, and 'ud be more glad and content than of anythin' else in his heart this minute, to protect her and keer for her as it's right--yes, tell her as it's right that she should let him do; and if she asks from whom that comes"--George Olver smiled brightly, with that far-seeing look still in his eyes--"why, it's no secret from whom it comes. Will you go, teacher?" "Yes," said I, with a vague sense of having caught a glimpse of a hitherto unknown world; "I will go." George Olver came forward, gave my hand a firm grasp, and then turned resolutely and walked out. Left to myself and my own thoughts, I dreaded more and more the concession there would seem to be in my seeking Rebecca now, for the poor girl could hardly be expected, I thought, to appreciate the magnanimity of such an act. I deferred going to see her until evening, and even thought of writing a letter instead of going at all, signifying my willingness to take her back into my favor, in a limited sort of way, and reinforcing her with a share of that counsel and advice which she must have missed so sadly of late; but I was conscious of the fact that I should not thus be keeping my promise to George Olver. After supper, the singers came in and wailed some peculiarly touching songs about rescuing the fallen and the erring. As Grandma Keeler was preparing to go on an errand of mercy down the lane, I joined her, and stopped at Bede Weir's door. Aunt Patty, Rebecca's mother, appeared in answer to my knock. Her glances had fallen rather reproachfully on me, of late. Seeing me now, she cast down her eyes, a steely expression gathering about her mouth. "You've come too late, teacher," said she, her voice breaking suddenly into a sob as she lifted her apron to her eyes. In that instant it flashed through my mind,--the fear George Olver had expressed lest Rebecca should make away with herself. I fancied that I turned terribly pale. "Come in, teacher!" Aunt Patty exclaimed, with a quick motion of her hand, and she continued rapidly:-- "Becky went away this afternoon. She's gone to Taunton. She didn't tell nobody but me. If you'd 'a' come sooner you might 'a' kep' her, teacher. She's gone to Jane Meredith's that works thar, in the shops and Beck used to know her. She hires a room, and Beck she's saved a little money cranberryin'. She says she's a goin' to stay thar' as long as it holds out, and 'maybe,' she says, 'I can git work;' she says thar' ain't nobody here cares for her but me. 'And it's only a trouble to you, mother,' she says; 'and maybe, I shan't never come back again.' If you could 'a' seen how she looked. Oh, my God!" As the poor woman held her hands to her face, I saw the tears springing out between her fingers. "There's nobody knows how I feel this night! She wa'n't a bad girl, my Becky wa'n't. She was deceived, but it'll make her bad, everybody turnin' agin her so--and that Jane Meredith, she was sech a wild girl! Oh, I'm afeard! I'm afeard!" "But we'll have Becky back again, Mrs. Weir," I said, intensely relieved, even at this state of things; "and, more than that, we shall see her very happy yet. I will write to her, myself, to-night." "I don't know,"--Aunt Patty shook her head sadly--"she might think I'd got you to do it. I seen she took it to heart, you're turnin' agin her so, and I didn't believe you'd 'a' done it if you'd known all. I wanted to go up and see yer, for I knew you'd soften, but no, she wouldn't let me. She said she'd never forgive me ef I did. No; she'd think I'd been a puttin' ye up to it." Aunt Patty dried her tears, helplessly. "You ought to have come to me!" I exclaimed with grave emphasis; "whether she wanted you to or not!" "Perhaps I had, teacher," said Aunt Patty, meekly; "but you couldn't 'a' gone agin her ef you'd been in my place. She wasn't vexed, teacher, but she was awful set, and she looked so wore out! I couldn't go agin her." "All the more reason," I continued, fortifying myself with new confidence; "why you should have been firm with her. She is not fit to go off by herself in that way. She's a child! a child! She needs some one to tell her what to do." "I know that; that's what worries me!" cried Aunt Patty, bursting into tears; "but what could I do, teacher? what could I do?" "Well, never mind," I said, assuming with readiness the attitude of the consoler; "we will have Becky home again in a very short time. I will write this evening and if she does not come, why, we shall have to go after her, that's all!" This last I was able to utter almost gayly, looking into Aunt Patty's face. The woman's poor, worn hand placed in mine, the look of confidence upturned to me in her tearful eyes, her readiness to forgive, to forget any resentment which she might have cherished towards me, all touched me deeply and strengthened me in a sincere determination to win Rebecca back. "She made me promise I wouldn't let George Olver know where she was, teacher," said Aunt Patty, breathlessly, as I was going out of the door. "She had her reasons; we'd ought to respect 'em some. I wouldn't be deceiving her entirely." On my way homeward, I reflected how altogether burdensome it was to one-half of humanity that the other half was not better calculated to take care of itself, and resolved that my letter to Rebecca should be at once dignified, imperative, and kind. CHAPTER XVII. TEACHER HAS THE FEVER.--DEATH OF LITTLE BESSIE. There were oppressive days in Wallencamp, when no fresh winds were borne to us from the ocean. The sun shone hot on the stunted cedars. The tides crept in lazily. All one weary afternoon, in the hum and stir of the dusty school-room, little Bessie Sartell--Captain Sartell's youngest, and his darling--sat stringing lilac blossoms together in a chain. She was such a cunning edition of the big Captain. She had the same strong Saxon physique in miniature, the same clear pink and white complexion, eyes hardly more limpidly blue than his, and hair that was sunniest flax, like the ends of the Captain's beard. And how patient the chubby little fingers were at their task. What small, charmingly despairing sighs escaped the child when some link fell out in the chain of purple flowers! I was struck with her air of weary, patient endeavor--so important it seemed--so important that the chain should be finished before school was out. And, at last, little Bessie lifted it to wear upon her neck, and it broke and fell in pieces on the floor. Then there was a look of gentle dismay in the blue eyes, a tear or two, and Bessie folded her arms on the desk, her head sank slowly down on them, and she fell asleep. She was still sleeping when I dismissed the school. The sound of the others going out did not wake her; the Phenomenon, disappearing through the door, pointed a finger at her, his face full of scornful merriment--so incredible was it to him that any one should sleep when school was out. I went down to Bessie and woke her gently. She looked at me, at first, with startled, feverish eyes, as though she did not know me, and screamed in pain or terror. I noticed then that the color of her cheeks was unnaturally bright. I put my hand on her pulse. It was throbbing violently. I was thoroughly frightened. "Come, Bess," I said, as winningly and soothingly as I could; "come home with teacher, now. Teacher will lead you, all the way." For answer, the child's head fell heavily on one side. I tried to take her in my arms, but she was very heavy. I found one of the small boys lingering outside the school-house and sent him for Bessie's father. I shall never forget the look with which Captain Sartell lifted his baby in his arms. He had seven other children; he was a poor man, a Wallencamper, but one would have thought him a king, and that the only hope of his line lay treasured in the mass of flaxen curls pressed against his shoulder, as he carried her home. The next morning, early, Captain Sartell appeared at the Ark with a blanched face. Bess had been growing worse, he said. They feared it was a fever. He was going to West Wallen for a doctor. "She thinks," he continued, with absolute white bewilderment on his features, "that she's in school all the while, and it's a gettin' late, and the teacher ain't there, and so she keeps a callin' for the teacher; and I wouldn't ask ye to go up, teacher, if you was anyways afeard, but it 'ud break your heart to hear her." For one of my years, I knew singularly little, either of sickness or death, so I was the more readily susceptible to the slight disrespect the Captain seemed to have cast on my wisdom and fortitude. "Certainly I will go and see her," I said; "why should I be afraid?" "I was only thinkin' it was fair to say," said the Captain; "she was took so sudden and so violent like, it might be--might be--suthin'--suthin' kitchin', perhaps. They was a case or two o' scarlet fever up to Wallen, but she wasn't exposed no way that we know on. She wasn't exposed." The Captain, regarding me intently, repeated the words, thrusting his neck out with a pitiful gulp, his hand on the latch. Observing him, the expression of my face changed; he groaned as he went out, closing the door silently. My first impulse then was to pack my trunk and start for home, but the wailing of Mrs. Philander, and of the other women who had followed the Captain in, lamenting one with another in an agony of helpless fear, appealed to my courage and presence of mind, and had a strangely sustaining and quieting effect upon me. I suggested after a few moments' reflection, that very likely the case was not so bad as Captain Sartell supposed. I determined to have no school that day, and advised the women what they should do, in case their children had been already exposed to a contagious disease. Then a happy thought struck me. I went out in the other part of the Ark to seek Grandma Keeler. I wondered why we had not thought of her, before. She entered the room where the women sat. Calm and sunshine was Grandma Keeler--calm and sunshine breaking through a storm. If it was scarlet fever, she knew just what to do. She and pa had it years ago, and they'd lived through it; but she didn't believe that it was nothin' half so bad, and "What if it is, you poor critturs, you," said Grandma, in such a tone as she would have used to soothe a frightened child; "every time there's a squall must we go to takin' on as though it was our doin's? The Lord, He makes the squalls, and he don't put it on us to manage 'em; but up thar' in His fa'r weather, He looks down on the storms that we know not whither, but are only drivin' of us landward safe, and 'Keep ye still,' He says, 'Jest keep ye still!' No need o' strainin' eyes, but fix 'em thar', on Him, I've seen a many times when no words but them would do." The tears stood in Grandma's eyes. Beautiful soul! Whatever storms she might have known in her life's voyage, she only seemed to lie at anchor now, in a sure haven; and all the while, her heart was going out in the tenderest sympathy to those still tossing on the seas and striving to make perilous passages, even to those watching false harbor lights in the distance. She had had an experience wide enough for all. She had found where it was still. She longed to draw all others into that stillness. Soon Grandma was on her way to give help and consolation where it was most needed--in Captain Sartell's household. She did not come back until near mid-day. Mrs. Philander's children were kept carefully out of the room when she entered. "The Lord is a goin' to take that little one to Himself, teacher," she said to me, very impressively. Captain Sartell had not yet returned with the doctor. Possibly he had been obliged to drive to the next town. Poor Mrs. Sartell was nearly distracted. Bessie's fever had gone to the brain. "We couldn't quiet her, no way," Grandma continued; "and she's a growin' weak, but when them spells come on, she's ravin', first about one thing and then another, but mostly it's school, school. 'It's a gittin' so late in school and the teacher not there'--and then she screams and moans so! Poor, sufferin' darlin'! ye can't ease her no way." With a desperate determination not to yield myself to my own thoughts, I informed Mrs. Philander that I was going to live with Grandma a while, that I should not go through that part of the Ark where she and the children were, and she must keep the little door at the foot of the stairway locked, and not let the children follow me; and I sprinkled myself with camphor and went back with Grandma to Captain Sartell's house. Mrs. Sartell was alone in the room with Bess. I expected that she would meet me with an almost reproachful look, but there was only sorrow in her face, a sorrow that seemed intensified by the smile she lifted to us as we entered. The air in the room was very pure and sweet. The bed on which Bess lay was as white as snow. But what a change a day had wrought in the little face pressed against the pillow. "Teacher's come," said Grandma Keeler, with soft; pathetic cheer, bending over the child. "Would she care now?" I thought. "Would she know me?" Just once she opened her eyes wide, smiled, and threw her arms towards me feebly. I would have taken her then, I thought, if it had been my death. They wrapped a shawl around her, and I took her in my arms, rocked her gently and sang to her, very softly, the songs she loved best. She moved a little restlessly, and then lay very still with her head on my breast. So I rocked and sang to Bess, and the two women moved noiselessly about the room until Grandma Keeler came and looked down very intently into the little one's face. "She's asleep," I murmured, placing a finger on my lips. "Yes, she's asleep," said Grandma, in a trembling voice, solemnly. "Sweet, purty little one," she went on, with tears running down her cheeks, and she turned to the mother--"Thank God, you!" she exclaimed, with sudden strength and firmness in her voice, that was yet thrilled with emotion; "from sorrowin' and from pain forevermore, the Lord has took His lamb!" Ay, life's chain of dewy morning flowers was broken! The baby fingers had dropped those purple fragments without grief, now, or dismay--only the peace of some sweet unfolding mystery over the veiled blue eyes! Still, she seemed to me asleep--only asleep. I felt no shrinking from the dead child in my arms. When they took her away from me and laid her on the bed, I looked at her tranquil face, and the mother's passionate grief seemed out of place. Why should one wish to wake another from such repose? I could not comprehend the mother's aching sense of loss. But later, when we heard the sound of wheels and saw Captain Sartell and the doctor driving very fast up the lane, I went down the stairs and passed out before them. I could not bear to watch the strong man's face when he should find his baby dead. Little Bess was buried under the lilac blossoms. The fever which had so soon smitten her down was not properly a contagious one. I went on with my school again, missing the sweet face of the dead child more and more each succeeding day. Not one of the children with whom she had played was taken sick, but it was scarcely two weeks after her death that I was taken sick as she had been. In the interval George Olver had come to me and I had written to Rebecca, but Rebecca had not come back to Wallencamp nor answered my letter. I was more anxious and troubled about her than I dared confess to any one. Then suddenly I ceased to care for any of those things. Of my last afternoon in school I could recall very little afterwards, except that the clock on the shelf back of me seemed to be ticking in my brain, and the voices in the room sounded indistinct. My own voice sounded to me like that of some one else speaking from a long way off. And at evening, in the Ark, I put my little room in perfect order, my head growing heavy with pain. I felt that I must finish this task before I lay down, and there was another intention to which I clung with a painful pertinacity of mind. I sat down at my table and wrote half a dozen or more brief letters home. These were filled with irrelevant anecdotes pertaining to my experience among the Wallencampers, a few desultory descriptions of character and scenery, with a philosophical digression or two. To one not intimately acquainted with the epistolary products of my pen, these letters would have undoubtedly suggested the workings of a crazed and feverish brain, but they were not calculated to arouse any particular alarm in the minds of my friends at home, unless, indeed, it was by reason of the unusual care and painstaking evinced in their chirography and the punctilious manner in which they were dated. The first one I dated for the evening on which I was writing. The next for a time several days in advance of that, and so on, performing this strange act with utter indifference to the presumption of it. When it was finished, I seemed to have forgotten what next to do. Grandma Keeler told me afterwards, that I went to the head of the stairs and called to her, that she came up, and I told her very gravely that I was going to be sick, but I knew I was not going to die, and adjured her with a look in my eyes which she said, "I couldn't go ag'inst, teacher, for it was more convincin' than health," not to write to my friends of my sickness, and instructed her how to send the letters which I had sealed, stamped, directed, and methodically arranged on the table, in their proper order to the post. For the rest, all through the pain and impotence and vague mental wanderings of the days that followed, I had a restful, comforting consciousness that a kind, loving face, like the lamp of my salvation, was hanging ever over me--always it was Grandma Keeler's face, though it seemed to have grown strangely young and fair, and the eyes that followed me with such a loving, tireless, wistful expression in them were like other eyes that I had known, and the watcher's voice was clear and musical, with a youthful repression in it. Still, somehow, it was Grandma's face, _her_ eyes, _her_ voice--and when at last, I woke one morning very weak, but able to recognize clearly all the familiar objects in the room, it was Grandma Keeler indeed, who sat by my bed, beaming gloriously upon me. "Is it most school time, Grandma?" I inquired, feebly, slowly concentrating my gaze on her face. "Oh, laws, no!" said Grandma, with cheerful emphasis, and then continued talking in her quiet monotone. I hardly heard what she said. I was painfully endeavoring to pick up the lost thread of my consciousness where I had left it on that night when I put my room in order and went so wearily to bed. At last I inquired, still vaguely, "How long?" Grandma understood. She smiled reassuringly. "Only a little while, teacher," she said. "You've only been sick a little while--a few days, maybe," and she immediately proffered me some broth which was a triumph of the good soul's art, and seemed to partake of her own comfortable and sustaining nature. I lay back on the pillows, contented to be very still for a little while. When I next looked up and recognized that familiar figure sitting by the bed, I said, "Has Becky come back?" "Yis, Becky's come back!" said Grandma, in a tone which seemed to imply, in the very best faith, that during my illness the world had been running on excellently well. "You take some more broth now, teacher, and keep r'al slow-minded and easy, and hev' a good night's rest, and to-morrer I'll tell ye all about it!" But I persisted; so Grandma continued gently:-- "Wall, it wa'n't much to tell, only the doctor said ye wasn't to be talked to much, nor worked up; but I reckon a little pleasant news ain't a gonter hurt nobody. Ye see, when you was took sick, George Olver, he got a hold of where Becky was; he had a mistrustin' of it, somehow--and he went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for _some_, they _be_ sich friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized where she was and he went down thar' and found her, and they wa'n't anybody ventured to say a word, and what need? for everybody respec's George Olver, knowin' he's uncommon ser'ous and high-minded; and the very same hour they came home, Becky, she come up here, and she turned me right out of the room, as ye might say. 'It's my place, Grandma,' says she, 'and I'm better able than you. I understand. It's my place.' And she wa'n't vary strong, but she wouldn't give up to nobody, and only run home a little while between spells to rest, and watched and tended ye as faithful as though she was keepin' count of every breath; and when the fever turned a Monday night, and you fell off into a kind of a natural sleep, the doctor, he says to her, what it ain't a very common thing for a doctor to say: 'It's you saved her life!' he says. 'She was vary sick.' And he shook his head the way they do. 'You've tended vary faithful,' he says; and Becky, she hardly spoke, but I seen when she looked up that her eyes was a shinin', and that happy look that she's had somehow, sence she came back--I can't tell ye exactly, teacher, but it's most like as ef somebody should have a bad dream, and be wakin' up kinder surprised and thankful--but when the doctor said them words, I'll never forget how her eyes went a shinin', and she says to me, 'I'm goin' home now, and never you tell her, when she wakes up, for she thought it was you watchin' with her all the time, and kep' a callin "Grandma! Grandma!" says she; 'and don't you tell her! don't you; for it would seem as though I was obligin' her, and if she forgives me and is friendly I don't want it to be for that,' And I didn't say as I should or shouldn't tell," said Grandma, smilingly unconscious of the two large tears that were stealing down her cheeks; "but I knowed pretty well what I had on my mind!" Grandma ceased speaking, and began to busy herself about the room, humming softly her favorite refrain:-- "The Light of the World is Jesus." I lay very still, thinking-- "Once I was blind but now I can see!" That low, glad, tremulous murmur brought no peace to my troubled heart. When Grandma Keeler looked at me again, I fancied she met a helpless, appealing, almost an aggrieved expression in my eyes. "I want to see her," I said. "I want to see Becky, of course." "Yis, yis," said Grandma, "to-morrer. You'd want to talk, and you've had enough for one day. I'll tell her, and she'll understand." "But I want to see her now," I persisted. "They's some folks just come in to inquire," continued Grandma, giving an easeful touch to the pillows. "They's been a good many in to inquire. May be, she's amongst 'em. I'll go down and see." Soon I heard the old, girlish, familiar step on the stairs. Rebecca hesitated, standing an instant on the threshold. In spite of the new and loftier soul looking out of her eyes, in spite of the new and womanly dignity which she bore so reposefully, she read my face with that quick, intuitive glance I had learned to know so well. Then coming towards me, she put her arm gently around my neck, kissed me, understanding all, hushing all, forgiving all; and smiling a tender prohibition in her eyes, put her finger on my lips. Sobbing inwardly, I accepted this divine retaliation in silence, and rested a while in that loving, warm embrace. CHAPTER XVIII. LUTE CRADLEBOW GIVES THE TEACHER A NEW CHAIR. One morning, early in my convalescence, I was startled by a mighty rumbling and scraping sound on the narrow stairway, as of some unwieldy object pushed steadily upward. The summit reached, I heard the retreat of manly feet, and this leviathan presented itself with Grandma Keeler as an animating force, breathless and smiling, in the rear. "He didn't have time to paint it, teacher," she began joyfully; "but it'll be jest as comf'table to set in. He's been explainin' of it to me--Lute has--ye see, it's a cheer. He made it for ye, himself. And all you've got to do is to turn this 'ere crank, here--" Grandma's countenance was radiant with wonder and approval--"and up it'll go--so--as high as ye want it! and this 'ere can be shoved in and out for ye to put yer feet on, and this 'ere back can be let anyways ye want it. He seen a picture o' one in a paper, once, and he went and made this by his own eye, and all the hinges and cranks, and everythin' as slick as a pin! He didn't say anythin'," Grandma continued, in a slightly lowered, insinuating tone of voice; "about likin' to come up and see ye, when ye was able to set up, and you know, teacher, as I don't believe in meddlin' in young folks' affairs; but it appeared to me, havin' had so much experience with the men folks as I have, that may be he was kind o' hangin' around waitin' for an invitation--for ye see, they're goin' to sail now in a vary few days." So, a little later, I sat up in my new chair and received the Cradlebow, in a loose, trailing gown of rich material, daintily embroidered. In the midst of my narrow and humble surroundings I had an exiled-princess sort of consciousness, and recognized with a new pleasure the Cradlebow's lordly face and bearing, as he stooped on entering the little red door. Living in a reverie, still,--a fancy, a day-dream, strangely vivid and life-like, but not real,--not real, I was so far softened by my illness that, with the delicious sense of returning health and strength, I was content, for a time, to live simply in the present, to dismiss the stern warden, Duty, from my thoughts, and that ever-grave necessity for maintaining a mental and moral superiority which had so oppressed me. "It had been weary work living on the heights, and what had it all amounted to?" I asked myself, with a recklessness too tranquil, now, to be converted into bitterness. "It was so much easier and safer, lower down." But while I doubted and almost gave up the struggle, the Cradlebow aspired ever to greater faith and hope in life, and enthusiasm for life's work. And with all this, it was evident that there had been with him an inward struggle and preparation, a silent conquering of self. With a vain discontent for my own failure, I marvelled at the glory which had crowned his humble efforts. "This, too," I thought, "is a sort of heroism:" and my spirit of condescension towards the youth took on something new, like reverence. It was even with pride that I reflected, "Here is a strength I may rely upon by and by;" and I was proud that my lover's kiss was so pure upon my lips, his breath on my cheek--ah, foolish sleeping heart! It was well that the dream should grow passionate, even intense, for the awakening was near. In the bewildered and feverish condition of mind in which I had last left the Wallencamp school-house, I had been consciously impressed, at least, with the idea that I should probably never enter those familiar walls again, never again as the teacher. And now, I had no intention of resuming my labors there. But I did not wish to flaunt my boasted independence before the family circle at Newtown, until my eyes should have assumed a little more nearly their usual proportions, and my manner of going up and down stairs should have become less strikingly feeble. I decided to remain in Wallencamp a few days to recuperate. I was not impatient nor especially chagrined on account of this necessity. Secretly willing to await the departure of the Cradlebow's ship, to have a brief season of rest from all care and responsibility among the scenes of my past labors--a little breathing space in which to study these people quietly, to exchange unhurried kindly words with them before I should go away from them forever--I was glad to have it so. Such welcomings and congratulations as I received from the Wallencampers when I was able to get down the stairs once more! I felt very happy, almost humble, sitting where the sunlight poured in at the open door of Grandma's living-room. That picture is still before my mind: the bare, shining floor, the unpainted table, the chimney-shelf, and a clock, the successful working of whose machinery demanded a crazily tilted attitude; a Bible on the shelf, too, and Grandma's spectacles lying askew. Then, a commodious lounge of exceedingly simple construction set up straight against the wall and extending the whole length of the room. The original framework of this lounge, by the way, disclosed itself in many bold and striking instances, under a unique method of upholstery. It was stuffed sectionally. There was the "old paper corner," within whose rustling precincts Lovell was reputed once to have endured agonies, during a religious meeting held at the Ark. There was the "sawdust" section, substantial, but by no means billowy to the touch; and the "dried yarb" section, of a nature similar to the sawdust; and, omitting the "old clothes section" with its insidious buttons, and the "corn-cob" section, and the "cotton-wood bark" section, there was the "feather corner," at the other end, generally conceded to be luxurious, but silently avoided, as having given, on more than one occasion, a sharp suggestion of quills. Over the whole, depressions and excrescences, was stretched a faded chintz cover. But woe to the luckless wight who thought to find repose by throwing himself carelessly down on this hitherto untried structure! It was reserved only to the knowing few to find a comfortable seat on the lounge. The cat, without having subjected herself to those trials which some of us endured, had discovered, with true feline instinct, wherein the deepest rest lay, and had established herself on a suspended bridge of chintz between two overhanging systems. There were a few chairs in the room besides, but the doorsteps were wide. Grandpa sat always in the south door, Grandma on the steps looking towards the lane, and it was at this latter inviting spot that the neighbors, the "passers by," paused most frequently and disposed themselves, with a grateful air. I listened to their talk, while the birds struggled to make noisy interruptions and cast their fleeting shadows in the sunlight on the floor, and the peach-blossoms outside were falling noiselessly. Grandma Keeler had been telling me in a happy, droning voice, though gravely enough, of the "awakenin'" that was going on in Wallencamp--how "a good many o' the young folks was impressed," and "Cap'n Sartell had been seekin', ever since little Bessie died, and some that had seemed to be forgitful and backslidin' had come forward and told where they stood, until it seemed as though the Lord was a sendin' a blessin' down, jest as soft and beautiful as them blossoms;" and Grandma's eyes wandered towards the peach-tree with a tearful fervor in them. Aunt Patty was a temporary occupant of the steps. Her anxious, care-lined face was turned indoors, away from the light and the falling blossoms. There was an anxious, restless ring in her voice, too. "I'm glad to hev such a time, I'm sure," said she. "We need it bad enough, any time, Lord knows!--but it seems a queer season o' the year for't. When we've had 'em before it's generally been along in the winter. I never heered of an awakenin' before right in the midst o' tater-buggin'." Aunt Patty was not intentionally irreverent. Life, with her, had been so narrow and hard pressed, always a painful reckoning of times and seasons. The allusion to "tater-buggin'" gave Grandpa an opportunity of a sort of which he had not been slow to avail himself lately--to engage in a little old-time, secular conversation. His voice, however, as it sounded from the south doorway, was impressive enough for any subject. "Grists on 'em, this year!" he said. "Heaps!" Aunt Patty responded, readily. "I don't see how ever the children could be speered to go to school now, anyway. Randal had all eight o' hisn out yesterday, with a four-quart pail apiece, and him and Lucindy pickin' into the half-bushel besides; and Rodney told Bede, for the livin' truth, he'd seen a lantern movin' around last night right in the dead o' night, and he looked out and it was the Dean and Abbie Ann out tater-buggin', and everybody knows they wasn't out in the daytime, it was so dreadful hot. I'm sure we never had such queer weather afore. But them bugs are the hardest critturs to kill. It's almost impossible to dispose on 'em; and it does seem enough, what with ploughin' and plantin' and harrowin' and hoein' to git a few potatoes, and like enough, wet weather to rot 'em, without havin' to fight over 'em, for the last chance, with a whole army of varmint. I'm sure this 'ere way o' gittin' a livin', as old Grandther Skewer used to say, 'It costs more than it's wuth.'" Led by the screams of the little Keelers in Madeline's apartment, Grandma had left the room for a moment, and Grandpa cleared his throat and began, hopefully:-- "Talkin' about tater-bugs," he said, and he glanced at me with a preliminary gleam in his eye; "Bachelder Lot was tellin' me the other mornin,--he said he was eddicatin' a couple on 'em. He said thar' wa'n't no other way to get rid on 'em, but to appeal to their moral natur', and he said when he'd got 'em eddicated up to the highest p'int o' morality, he was a goin' to send 'em out as missionaries ter convart the rest. Bachelder said he'd got 'em fur enough along, now, so't they'd pass examination along o' average folks that wa'n't admitted church members----" "Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma, unexpectedly returning, had caught the last word only of Grandpa's discourse, but taking this in connection with the bright and mirthful expression of his countenance, she judged that his sentiments had been of an unusually reprehensible nature. "Wall, wall, ma," said Grandpa, with an evident notion of continuing his narration; "what now, ma?" "I hope, pa," said Grandma, giving one the impression that she felt she couldn't put the case too strongly; "that you are as innocent o' what you've be'n a sayin' as the babe unborn, and to your credit, pa, I believe you be!" "Wall, wall, ma," said Grandpa, now mentally lost and bewildered; "I guess I know what I'm talkin' about!" "And if you do, pa," said Grandma, with a solemnity that was unutterably conclusive; "you know more than I do!" Then, while the women talked, Grandpa, sitting alone in the south door, sighed and whittled, and abstractedly scanned the horizon. Once, he made a singularly bold attempt to entice Aunt Patty again into the channels of profane conversation, by an introductory speculation as to the prospect of the bean crop; but Grandma Keeler nipped this reckless and irreverent adventure in the bud, by replying in a calm, vast tone:-- "Pa, it r'aly seems to me that for a vain creetur in a fleetin' world, and a perfessor besides, there'd ought to be more things to talk about than beans!" Grandpa Keeler sighed still more deeply, gazed wistfully towards the barn, as though he would fain have shuffled out in that direction; but the weather being so warm, he refrained. He glanced at me with a feeble, helpless smile, his head fell backward, his eyes gradually closed, and, in spite of the iniquities which covered his ancient head, he fell into a slumber that had all the semblance of childlike and unblemished innocence. CHAPTER XIX. DEATH OF THE CRADLEBOW. While Grandpa Keeler dozed peacefully, Emily Gaskell, also "passin' by," joined the group of women on the doorsteps of the Ark. Emily, by the way, was regarded as a hopeful subject of the "awakenin'." She had been to see a doctor in Farmouth, who told her she could not live through another winter "with that cough on her." She sat very still in the meetings, it was said, and seemed "tetched and wonderful," whereas she had been wont formerly, on occasions of this solemn nature, to evince many signs of restlessness, and even to engage in droll and sly diversions for the greater delectation of the "unconsarned." Emily herself was particularly unreserved on the subject of her spiritual condition. Her tone had lost none of its former bright vivacity, though I thought I saw frequently now, while she was talking, a softer shadow steal over the restless, consuming fire in her blue eyes. "I know what some on 'em say," said she; "I know what I might 'a' said, jest as like as not, if it had been somebody else in my place. Oh, she's afraid she ain't a goin' to git well, and so she's a seekin' religion. She's scart into it! "Wall, if folks that know me are a mind to say that, they may; though if it comes to bein' scart into religion by what the doctors said, I should 'a' jined the church twenty times over! "It ain't because I'm afraid o' what'll happen to me after I'm all dead and peaceable. It's because I want a little more comfort while I'm a livin'. Seems to me there's more comfort needed for the livin'. "And ever since my Brother 'Lihu died, seems as though them last words o' hisn have been a ringin' in my ears. 'I know somebody that'll watch. Who? Jesus will! Jesus will!' over and over again. And when I get to worryin' about things, and can't see no way through, or whoever's a goin' to straighten em' out, it keeps agoin', 'Who, then? Jesus will! Jesus will!' over and over. And 'Lihu wasn't a professor, neither; and maybe he hadn't no right to take the comfort out o' them words that he did; and maybe I hain't no right, and it's only like a string o' music that'll keep a runnin' in a body's head sometimes and they not thinkin' nor meanin' any thin'. "I don't see any further into it than I did afore. I don't know as I'm what you'd call any more believin', but when I've laid till after midnight with my eyes as wide open as daylight, and no shut to 'em, thinkin' and worryin' and coughin', I've seen it ag'in, jest the way he rolled and tossed that night, and then them words come to him, and he smiled and went to sleep peacefuller nor any child; and so _I've_ said 'em, and faith or no faith, believin' or no believin', they've set me a cryin', time and ag'in, and they've put me to sleep! thar', they've put me to sleep!" "And who else could they 'a' be'n meant for but him and you?" cried Grandma, in a gush of sympathy; "him and you, and anybody else as you seen needed them words and could give 'em to 'em to quiet 'em; for, dear woman! there ain't none on us that see into it, but jest to say it over. Dear woman! we don't know no more. It's what's a restin' all on us. It's what's a restin' all on us!" I looked up and saw tears in Madeline's eyes. I had not heard Madeline spoken of as among the number of the impressed. There were tears in my own eyes, I knew; there had grown to be such a pathos in those women's voices. A little later, Emily lapsed into a strain of sprightly gossip. "And who do you think's kitin' around in this region ag'in?" she began. "Somebody you'd expect least of all, I reckon; wall, it's Dave Rollin," and she nodded her head quickly and expressively at the others. "I don't mean," she continued; "that he's been in Wallencamp, but Levi was down from Wallen this mornin', and he said they stopped last night in Wallen Harbor--him and some other fellers, mighty stylish lookin', but he said it was Dave Rollin's yacht, as fine and fancy-rigged as ever he see, and there was some that looked like common sailors, and they all come ashore, and the common ones was the quietest. But he reckoned the fisherman was off on 'a time,' and stopped there jest for fun, and to show off, maybe. "Wall, Levi told me that, and to-day, 'long about the middle o' the forenoon, my man come up to the house--he's down to shore, you know, along o' Cap'n Sartell and George Olver and Lute Cradlebow and all the rest, down there a mendin' up the old schooner, 'cause Cap'n wanted Lute to see to it afore he went away. My man come up for a wrench, and 'Who do you think's a scootin' around down on the Bay?' says he. 'Wall, it's Dave Rollin,' says he; 'in the purtiest little craft, that runs jest like a picter,' and he said they couldn't see but two men aboard of her then; he guessed they wan't many. It was jest like Dave Rollin to take a run from Wallen down this way to show what he could do alone, for he was always braggin' about bein' so stiddy on his sea-legs, and how't he understood this shore better'n any o' the old uns. "My man said they didn't know who 'twas out there, at first, for it ain't the kind o' vessel often seen, and it skimmed along on the edge o' the water, Sim said, like a bird, in and out amongst the rocks, so't anybody'd a thought, not knowin' who they was--and them, maybe, not knowin' the shore--that they was drunk or gone crazy; and Sim said they hollered to 'em to look out for the rocks, and they heered a kind of a laugh on the water, and somebody shouted back: "'Stow your gab, land lubbers!' and they knew from the voice it was Dave Rollin. "He was probably meanin' to put in there, and might 'a' come ashore may be,--he was wild enough--but he seen our men and that kind o' hindered him; he didn't want to turn round and put right back neither, lookin' as though he was scared, so he kep' on, and Sim said they watched 'em clean out o' sight; 'but,' says he, 'I never seen a man turn whiter'n George Olver did for a minute, and then he onclinched his fist and went to work ag'in, harder than ever, for you can allays depend on Jim, somehow--George Olver--but he's a dreadful close-mouthed fellow!" During the recital of this narrative, recalling so much to my mind, I experienced more than anything else a feeling of annoyance, almost of resentment, that the fisherman should appear, however remotely, to disturb the serenity of these last few days in which I had to live out my Wallencamp idyl. For the others the story seemed to have created a momentary excitement, but they regarded it, on the whole, as of little consequence. Aunt Patty had passed on to the doorway of another neighbor, and George Olver's relations with Rebecca soon constituted the theme of a more general and lively discourse, in which the remarks concerning Rebecca were mostly kind and considerate, and the praise of George Olver's conduct enthusiastic; and, at the close of which, I remember, Grandma said that "the higher minded folks gits to be, the pitifuller they be a'most always!" The fact of the fisherman's transient appearance on the Bay was not again alluded to, nor do I think the mind of any one present reverted to it, when Grandpa Keeler, looking up with that utterly dazed and bewildered air which betokened a decisive awakening on his part, cast his eye along the horizon, and observed gravely,-- "Storm a brewin', ma." "You've been asleep, pa," said Grandma, in sweetly mollifying tones; and Emily Gaskell, almost involuntarily, glanced up at me with a mischievous, anticipative wink. [Illustration] "Asleep, ma," said Grandpa Keeler; "no, I hain't been asleep, neither! And what if I had, ma? That don't hender a storm's brewin', does it?" "We've be'n seein' them little wind clouds passin' afore the sun for half an hour past," explained Grandma Keeler, composedly. But Grandpa scanned the sky with a dark, keen glance--the air of an old voyager on stormy and literal seas, and he shook his head, sagely. "Wall, wall, ma," he said, "it don't make no difference whether it's a wind-storm or a rain-storm that I know on, but a tempest it's brewin', sartin sure. I remember once, we'd had a spell o' weather jest like this, and it begun to gether up in the same way. It was in the same latitude, teacher, same latitude. I was off cruisin' with Bob Henchy--whew! That ar' was a singin' gale! I remember it as well as yesterday. I was off with Bob----" "Are you sure it was Bob ye was off with, pa," interrupted Grandma. "I could almost write a book, pa, while you was tellin' a story." "Wall, wall, ma! Write a book, if ye want to!" exclaimed Grandpa, with sweeping force. "I'm sure nobody wants to hender yer writing a book if ye want to, ma!" Grandma Keeler heeded not those derisive words. Her mind was bent on pursuits of a far loftier and more engrossing nature. In respect to the weather--except on Sabbath mornings, when it was impossible to credit Grandpa with perfect fairness and impartiality of judgment--Grandma, it must be said, had real faith in the old sea-captain's prognostications. "It does look like a shower, and a mighty sudden one," said Emily. She thrust her knitting-work in her pocket, donned her sun-bonnet, and departed with other chance occupants of the doorsteps. And Grandma, too, admitted the prospect of foul weather by throwing a handkerchief over her head and going out to fetch the milk-pans. Since early spring Grandma Keeler had put her milk-pans to dry in the sun on a bench half-way up the "Pastur-Hill." Why she should choose to place them at such a seemingly capricious and unnecessary distance from the house, for it was really no inconsiderable journey for Grandma, taking into account her peculiar style of locomotion; whether she considered that the rays of the morning sun visited them more directly on that plane, or that the elevation exposed them to peculiar atmospheric advantages; these were questions which the curious mind was left to solve for itself, for the grave office of carrying out and bringing in the milk-pans was performed by Grandma with an air of mysterious calm, which admitted of no profane comment or speculation. Madeline laughed, watching her, the musical notes ringing out with a touch of insane gayety. "If ma knew it was Judgment Day," said she, "she'd carry those milk-pans up the hill to dry, and if she knew it was Judgment Hour she'd go to fetch 'em." The scene grew rapidly weird as the sky darkened. A low sigh, like a premonition, crept through the heavy atmosphere and shivered among the peach-blossoms. The first gust of wind seized Grandma, returning with the milk-pans. It was a zephyr compared with the blasts that followed, but it had the effect of giving to that good soul's usually composed and reassuring presence, something of the appearance of a crazy and dismantled ship, rolling in a high sea. Grandpa was quick at detecting the resemblance, and hailed her approach in thrilling nautical terms, such as: "Why didn't ye reef yer topgallant, ma!" when the handkerchief was torn off her head; and "hang to the main-royal, ma," as Grandma's apron was caught up and borne, wildly fluttering, about her ears; and "keep your ballast, ma," with frequent ejaculations of "Lor', how she pitches! how she pitches!" These were not thrown out as light shafts of ridicule. It was no occasion for such. There was an awful earnestness in Grandpa Keeler's eye and in his tone, that invested his words with due solemnity. Grandma, struggling with the wind, had not heard them. She entered the Ark, however, cheerful though panting. "Bijonah Keeler," said she, in accents of real affection, "I wouldn't have you out in that wind for no money--not for no money, nor our teacher, neither. Why, no stronger than she is now, it 'ud take the breath right out of our teacher's body! Why, ef it hadn't been for the cargo I had on board, pa," continued Grandma, naturally falling into the same train of ideas we had followed, while watching her battle with the elements, "I should 'a' slipped moorin's, sure!" A casual listener might have smiled at this, in view of Grandma's substantial physique. Presently she said, as though the thought had just struck her; "I hope fisherman's got back to Wallen Harbor, pa." "And if he ain't, ma," replied Grandpa Keeler, sententiously, "he'll know what it is to be out in a squall! but I reckon he's looked out for himself." The old Captain's face grew graver; his eyes, in that closed room, which had grown so suddenly dark, took on an intensely solemn look. He did not attempt the narration of any stormy adventures of old. Perhaps the scenes of the past rose too vividly before his eyes. But, as the fiercest gusts came, he kept muttering:-- "I knew what it meant--mild winter on the Cape! There's the devil in the old Cape weather, teacher, and he never skipped four seasons yit! If it ain't one time, it must be another. Yis, yis! mild winter on the Cape, and no March to speak on, and a hurricane in summer! Wall, we're both on us right, ma, and we're both on us wrong. It ain't neither wind ner rain, but the heavens let loose, and God A'mighty's own power a blowin' of it. Yis, yis! I had my misgivin's all along; thinks I, better a little more weather now, than to blast every livin' thing by and by; but I hadn't no idee o' this! The Lord ha' mercy! The Lord ha' mercy!" For all that one could see through the windows was a great black sheet of driving rain, and the roar of the storm was terrible. The Ark shook. It seemed, at each successive blast, as though the walls would fall in over our heads. One could easily imagine the whole crazy structure borne onward before the resistless tempest, to take a final wild leap from the cliffs. "Wallencamp's a gittin' all mixed up," said Grandpa, without the faintest tinge of humor, now. "We sha'n't know where to find ourselves when we git out o' this 'ere, ef we ever do git out on't. Lord ha' mercy!" Madeline sat very white and still, resting her chin on her hands, her great eyes staring out. Grandma held the two frightened children in her lap. She was rocking and singing to them in a low, crooning tone. Though she was pale and her lips trembled, there was still about her a soothing atmosphere of peace. I was frightened, like the children. I longed to cry out as they had done; to bury my head away from the terrors somewhere, as they did in Grandma's lap. "That was the blackest squall," said Grandpa Keeler, afterwards; "that ever swep' across the Cape!" Terrible as it had been, it died quickly. The transition seemed miraculous from the sullen roar of the wind and torrent-fall of rain, to the renewed chirping of the birds, the quiet dripping of the eaves, and sunshine over all. But the young peach-tree that had stood by the window of the Ark, and sent its fragrance into my little room above, lay prone upon the ground. When she saw that, Grandma Keeler moaned heart-brokenly, as though it had been some fair human life stripped suddenly of its promise and left to wither fruitlessly. There were traces of the storm everywhere. Trees that had stood isolated in the fields lay, some of them, with roots exposed; others were broken off at the trunk, left with only a branch or two, helpless figures with outstretched arms, to give a weird desolation to the landscape by and by, I thought with a shudder, when winter should come again to Wallencamp. The fences--what remained of them from former depredations--had either fallen utterly to the ground, or assumed a strikingly precarious position. Part of the roof of Mr. Randal's house had been blown off, and the chimneys of several of the Wallencamp houses demolished, and Grandpa's barn twisted and distorted almost beyond recognition. That poor old gentleman put on his hat and stepped out of the door cautiously, looking about him like one in a dream. The Ark had stood firm, apparently, in its old resting-place. Grandma and Madeline proceeded to sweep out the rain which had been driven in through the cracks, and then it was that little Henry G. came running, with a white face, to the door. He had an air of childish importance, too, as being the first to bear tidings of some strange and dreadful event, and eager to hasten to other doors. "Where's the rest?" he gasped, seeing only me in the room. "You tell 'em, teacher, Lute Cradlebow's drownded!" and the boy disappeared, without another word. I was already faint from the reaction of the excitement incident to the storm, weak with the effort I had made to "hold myself still." I heard Grandma calling quickly, "Child! child!" I saw her coming towards me, and then I lost consciousness. * * * * * At evening, while the sun went down over the hill by which the transfigured river flowed, Captain Sartell sat in the door of the Ark, and told the story. The marvellous light was on his face, too. It fell, in shafts of glory, on the bright foliage of the fallen tree. Grandma was at Godfrey Cradlebow's, but Grandpa Keeler was within the Ark, and Madeline caressing her children with a new fondness. There were a few of the neighbors present; they looked neither frightened nor curious, but ineffably exalted. "We'd got our work about done," said Captain Sartell, speaking mechanically and with little of his customary hesitation of manner. "As near as I calk'late, there wa'n't a half hour's more work to do on the old craft, and it had got to be sometime arter noon, but says the boys, 'Let's finish her off, now we've got so near through, and not have to come back ag'in.' They was always a cheery set--especially _him_--when they took hold of a job, to put it through. "We'd seen them sailin' fellows go by a while before; and we knew Rollin was one of 'em. They wasn't but two, as we could see, managin' the craft; and they was full sail, clippin' it lively. I calk'late there ain't many knows this shore better'n me, but I wouldn't 'a' durst skirted along the adge down thar' at sech a rate, not in the finest day blowin'. First, we thought it was somebody didn't know what they was about. When we made out it was Rollin, we knew, if he _was_ drunk, he was tol'able well acquainted with the rocks along shore, and 'ud probably put further out when he got through showin' off. We didn't worry about 'em, nor think no more about 'em, in special. The boys didn't want to talk to rile George Olver. "So we kep' to work, and in a minute, cheery ag'in with the hammers click, clickin'--and every now and then the boys 'ud strike up a singin' something'. 'Beyond the River,' and 'Homeward Bound.' "It sounded dredful purty down thar' by the water, with the water and the wideness all around sorter softenin' of it. It made a man feel curious and wishful somehow. "Well, by and by, _him_ and George Olver struck up a song. I've heern 'em sing it before, them two. As nigh as I calk'late, it's about findin' rest in Jesus, and one a askin' questions, all fa'r and squar', to know the way and whether it's a goin' to lead thar' straight or not, and the other answerin'. And _he_--he was a tinkerin', 'way up on the foremast, George Olver and the rest on us was astern,--and I'll hear to my dyin' day how his voice came a floatin' down to us thar'--chantin'-like it was--cl'ar and fearless and slow. So he asks, for findin' Jesus, ef thar's any marks to foller by; and George Olver, he answers about them bleedin' nail-prints, and the great one in His side. So then that voice comes down ag'in, askin' if thar's any crown, like other kings, to tell Him by; and George Olver, he answers straight about that crown o' thorns. Then says that other voice, floatin' so strong and cl'ar, and if he gin up all and hollered, what should he have? what now? "So George Olver, he sings deep o' the trial and the sorrowin'. But that other voice never shook, a askin', and what if he helt to Him to the end, what then should it be, what then? George Olver answers: 'Forever-more, the sorrowin' ended--Death gone over.' "Then he sings out, like his mind was all made up, 'And if he undertook it, would he likely be turned away?' "'And it's likelier,' George Olver answers him; 'that heaven and earth shall pass.' "So I'll hear it to my dyin' day--his voice a floatin' down to me from up above thar', somewhar', askin' them questions that nobody could ever answer like, so soon, he answered 'em for himself--and when I looked up, thar' was Harvey, with his hammer dropped, and his mouth wide open, a starin' up thar', and the tears rollin' down his cheeks like he was a baby. "They didn't sing no more, after that. They was still for about five minutes, I calk'late. Harvey, he was still, too; but pretty soon, he wakes up and says, 'Gad, boys! Did ye ever see sech a queer look in the sky? I believe thar's a September gale brewin'." "'It's a little wind storm, I reckon,' says Bachelder. Bachelder was settin', with his legs curled up under him, mendin' sail, and he begun to spin one o' them yarns o' hisn, with his voice pitched up middlin' high, and the boys, they begun to laugh and cheer. "Then Harvey says; 'I'll run up to headquarters, and find out about the weather;' and clim' up the main-mast as limber as a squirrel, and when he came back, thar' was Tommy's hat stickin' way up top o' the mast; so Tommy, he promised to pay him--them two was always foolin' together, but good-natered enough." The captain introduced this little incident, in the midst of his narration, with a dull, pathetic gravity, "It was the last thing we thought on, o' bein' fearful, or calk'latin' any danger. We reckoned it was a brisk little shower comin' up, maybe, and the boys was runnin' one another about gittin' into the cabin, and runnin' on about the old craft. "Then thar' come, all of a sudden, sech a strange feelin', as ef the 'arth and the water was a tremblin', and a dreadful moanin' sound runnin' through 'em. Seemed as though it came swirlin' across the bay. Then it bust on us in a fury. "He was out, sorter lookin' around him, Bachelder was, and the wind took Bachelder up, and keeled 'im over two or three times runnin'. "Black it grew as the Jedgement day. Then come no sich rain as ever I see, even the pourin'est, but the clouds fallin' all to once, and the wind a scatterin' of 'em, and up on the cliffs, we could jest hear a creakin' and a bendin' whar' the trees was turned as white as ghosts in that 'ere blackness, and the old Bay, in sech a minute, was spinnin' into foam. "We was shelterin' around the old craft now, sure enough, and nobody speakin' a word, but jest a holdin' our breaths a waitin', when, in among them other noises, thar' come, out on the water, sech a low, dull sound as sent the awful truth on us in a minute, and for a minute, that ar' right hand of mine was numb. "Then Harvey, he had hold o' me, a pintin' out, and whether he spoke a word or not, I seen it--through wind and rain and foam, all in my eyes to once, I seen--reelin' and tossin' and pitching out thar' on the Bay, lost, lost for sure--I seen that fancy ship! "Thar' wa'n't no hand on 'arth could guide it, now. Every second was like to see it keeled squar' over, or slipped and driv' in, straight on to the rocks. "We're used to other'n fa'r weather along this shore. I calk'late we ain't used to frighten at a little danger, but knowin' the sea so well, we know the helplessness a'most o' puttin' out in sech a gale as that. "I heered the sound. It only came but once: and Bede hissed through his teeth, a cryin' too, a'most: 'Ain't thar' no other way to werry us, but they must come in here to drown afore our very eyes! A fool's ventur'! what could ye expect but a fool's end! Ef he must drown, let the red-haired devil drown!' "But when they heered it, them two, _him_ and George Olver, I knowed how it would be. I hardly durst to look. I seen them flash at one another with their great eyes, as ef it wa'n't enough to do man's work, but when thar' come a chance, they must go act like God! I seen in jest that flash, them two agreein' solemnly. "Then it was all done in a minute's space, like you'll live yer life through sometimes, in a dream. They had Bill Barlow's eight-oar ready. They pushed us back. They'd a' gone alone, them two. I kep' the third place. Harvey and Tommy scuffled, in a breath, and Harvey, he thrust Tommy back, and we was off. "God knows I never expected we'd come back again. You heern the wind. You can calk'late what it was out thar' with the rain a drivin', and the salt foam blowed into our eyes. I calk'late we never fetched a harder pull, no, nor a blinder one. "And she, the cursed thing, mad with twitchin' at her cable, lay over to one side. But she was dyin' mad. I tell ye she was dyin' mad. Thar' was them two a hangin' to her--thar' hadn't be'n but them. So we hauled Rollin in, but that other one, when he seen us, the chance o' bein' saved, it crazed him, and he sent up a quick, glad sort of a yell and throwed his arms out straight, and back he fell, like lead, into the water. And Rollin, crouchin' thar' and shiverin', 'He couldn't swim! He's sunk! he's sunk!' he says. Then _he_, he ris up in a flash, and out he dove into that hell. "Then come another gust, a blindin', blindin', blindin'. 'He'll weather it! He'll weather it!' George Olver kep' a mutterin', but his teeth was set; his eyes shot through me like a tiger's--them two was brothers, and more'n brothers, always. But when thar' come a half lull so't we could see, and we looked out and seen him risin' on the wave, grippin' that other one, in spite o' hope I scurse believed my eyes, and what a shout they sent up from that boat! "Ay, thar' they was, for sure, but--God, how fur away! Not much for common weather, but then they looked as fur to me as 'arth from heaven. Ef we could reach 'em afore the next sweel come; and every man, it seemed as though he put his livin' soul into his arms. 'Pull! pull!' says George, and seemed to git the strength of seven, but still we went too slow. We missed _him_ at the oar. And _he_, he was the strongest swimmer that I ever knowed, but who could live in the like o' that? We pulled for life or death, and that brave head kep' risin' on the wave. "Ef we could 'a' had another minute afore the next sweel come! George Olver felt it. He sent the rope out with a giant's throw. Then it was all and more than we could do to held the boat ag'in the wind. It come so fast ye scurse could see them next ye in the boat. 'He's grappled it! he's thar'! he's thar'! says they, and when they pulled it in, thar' was that other one belt fast, and only him. "God knows! I calk'late he made sure o' the other first, and thar' wa'n't jest the breath's time left for him, blinded so sudden maybe, and fell death faint. I've knowed it be so with the strongest; no wonder thar'; the wonder was in what he done. He was the strongest swimmer that I ever knowed, the strongest and the fearlessest! "George Olver never'll be content. He would 'a' gone in after _him_. We'd be'n driv' a furlong back, I reckon, and every mark was lost. It 'ud be'n naught but to swaller him, too. He lost his sense. We had to holt him back. He raved thar', like a madman. It blew a bitter spell, longest of all, and when it helt a bit so we could take our bearin's some'at, what hope! What hope! "But poor George, of a suddint he grew quiet as a lamb, and set a lookin' out, with his hand light on the oar, as ef 'twas pleasant weather, and he could see _him_ ridin' in thar' easy on the wave; and his eyes was fur off and smilin', but they looked as though they died. "Mebbe--I know no more. "We found him arterwards. Thar' wa'n't no mark nor stain on him. You think I talk dry-eyed. Go you and look at him. Somehow it don't leave ary breath for cryin'. It's like as ef he knowed. It's more than quietness, seemin' to say, for all he loved his life and fou't so hard out thar', ter lose his own at last--givin' or losin', he never missed o' naught! he never missed o' naught! "I can't tell what's the thought comes nighest to ye when we look at him. I hain't got high enough for that, but I can tell ye what's the furderest--weepin' and sorrowin'. Since I seen him and my little Bessie fell asleep, please God I die a half so trustful or so brave, I make no fear o' death!" The Captain sighed a long, ecstatic sigh and rose, the after-glow still shining on his face. In passing through the room, he pressed something softly into my hand. "We found it in the breast-pocket of his coat, teacher," he said. "The coat lay in the bottom o' the boat, and was soaked with brine. It had your name on't." When I unfolded it, it was the little star-fish the Cradlebow had showed me, days before, still folded close in its delicate vine wreath. CHAPTER XX. GEORGE OLVER'S ORATION. The Wallencampers gathered at the Ark, singing a calm and high farewell to earth, that alone was meet for the untroubled lips of that silent singer in their midst. They gathered at the Ark. No other place seemed to them sacred enough for such a meeting, now; no other place dear enough for the celebration of such a solemn, long farewell. Over the threshold, where he had come so often bounding in his life, they brought the dead; there was the same strange look of exaltation on their faces that I had noticed while Captain Sartell told the story of the storm; stricken and white, the poor faces, yet touched with some daring, unutterable hope--so clear a message they read on that wondrously still and reconciled face, so without fear the dead lips spoke to them. To me, the message was one of infinite pathos and rebuke, speaking of a heroism beyond my poor conception, of a height of glory of which I had not dreamed. "Farewell, forevermore," the fathomless far voice murmured to my despair, and slowly and repeatedly; "Farewell, forevermore. I am beyond the need of your poor love." And my heart turned to stone, with all the passionate, pure sorrow that might have been, the tears in which I might have found relief. Grandma Keeler's sacred "keepin' rooms" were opened wide for the reception of this guest, yet the sunshine stole in with a hallowed light, the entering breeze sighed low and softly. The children, always present, were, on this occasion, attentively still. There were no external signs of woe for the poor Wallencampers to assume; they made no mad demonstrations of their grief; the suffering and the wonder were too deep. Lydia--they all knew how she had loved this son. When they returned from their perilous quest in the storm, the first words Captain Sartell said were; "Who must go up now, and break Lyddy's heart?" She stood among the others, very still, the old faded mantilla folded decently over her shoulders, the great dark eyes, _his_ eyes, shining out even kindly from the worn face on those who came to speak to her. Godfrey Cradlebow stood at the outer door, and addressed the people as they entered. Some said, afterwards, that he had been drinking; others declared he had not touched a drop for days. In the room where I stood, I heard his musical, deep tones, now swelling with the fervor of his harangue, now broken and trembling with emotion. "Enter, my friends!" said this strange man. "Go in, and look on quietness. What do we seek for most, my friends? Look out on the world. It's a whole world of seekers. How they jostle against one another! How they sweat! how they strive! how they toil! And why all this? What seek they for? For quietness, my friends, even so--the quietness of wealth to gain, may be, or competence; may be, the quietness of some renown. And some go seeking over land and sea for their lost health, and quietness from pain. "My friends, within there was as restless a seeker as I ever knew. Pity the old, my friends, but pity more the young! Never such dreams of rest! Never such restlessness! Hush! when he heard, he answered well. He put all by. Somehow, we think he has obtained--wealth, honor, perfect health. My friends, pass in! behold this wonder! "My friends, you look up at the sky. Ah, what a sky! purple and deep! Yet I see something in your eyes that is not quietness; for storms will come, too well you know, and the cold blasts of winter; but if you knew that never any sorrowful, hard wind could sweep across yon blue--then, my friends, you would look as he looks who lies within there. Pass in! pass in! behold this wonder." Within, Grandma Keeler stood with closed eyes and folded hands. Her cheeks were wet. She wore a heavenly, trustful expression of countenance. Her lips moved as if in prayer. Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow rose in her place--majestic and weird she looked, like some old Eastern prophetess, a grand forecasting in her shadowy eyes. "Gether in the sheaves," she began; "the bright sheaves, early ripe and ready for the harvestin'; and begrudge not the Master of His harvestin'. Why, O Lord, Lord, this sheaf, while there be them that stand, late harvest day, bowed and witherin' in the cornfield? Because He reckons not o' time. Glory, glory, to the Lord o' the harvestin'! But gether in for me, He says, my bright sheaves, early ripe! my sheaves o' the golden wine! "It was the night but two before my grandson died, I seen a death-sign in a dream, and so I speaks to my son's wife, but 'Fear you not,' I says; 'it was the blessed sign o' blessed death;' and thought o' some one old and helpless, sick maybe, gettin' release thereby. Why this sheaf, O Lord?--Glory, glory, to the Lord o' the harvestin'! For I dreamt there was a bird ketched in my room, and flutterin' here and there, and beatin' 'ginst the window with its wings. And dreamin' I ris up, and there was such a light along the floor as never any moonlight that I see was half so solemn or so beautiful. But when I stretched my hand to free the poor, blind, flutterin' bird, it ris away from me, and spread its wings, snow-white, and out it flew, and sharp and clear along that shinin' track. Then when I woke, I knew it was the sign o' blessed death, nor ever feared. And God will bear me true, it was the very night they brought my grandson home that, lyin' down to rest a while from watchin' with the rest, nor ever wonderin' nor layin' it to mind what I had dreamed afore, but tired and heart-broke only, I seen the long, bright shinin' track ag'in, a pourin' through the window; and 'My son's son!' I cries, 'dear boy! dear boy!'--for it was like him playin' on his violin--'What tunes must be,' I cries, 'that you play so and scarce a day in heaven!' But when I ris up, callin', it grew dim along the track, and there was mornin' in the room, and then I heered them cryin' where they watched. "Why this sheaf, O Lord?--gether in the sheaves, O Lord, the bright sheaves, early ripe and ready for the harvestin'. Glory, glory to the Lord o' the harvestin'!" Then the Wallencampers sang tremblingly of the "Harvest Home." They were glad when they saw George Olver stand up in their midst--George Olver, least subject of them all to dreams or ecstasies, but with his slow, labored speech, and his sorrowful, bowed head. He took his place beside the coffin of his friend, looked gently at that face, and squared his shoulders for a moment then, and held his head with the old manly air: "When Uncle 'Lihu died," said he; "my friend and me walked home together from the funeral, and Luther says to me: 'I want you to promise me, George, that if I shed die, you wouldn't have that man to preach over me,' meanin' the minister, though he was kindly to him; 'and he means well,' says he; 'but he don't understand us; he knows naught about us 'ceptin' that now we're dead, and not bein' used to them long texts o' hisn, it frets our folks,' says he. 'They weary on't, so long a string they bar'ly understand; but I would rather,' Luther says, 'have some one amongst my folks that knowed me well, git up and speak, ef it was only: _This was my friend lies here; I loved him_. And promise me, George, ef I shed die, you'd hev no stranger preachin' over me, but speak some such easy words yourself for love o' me.' And I felt with him thar', and promised him, and he me; but I remember thinkin', as I looked at him, it's little likely I'll ever stand above your grave. "Enough said. 'This was our friend lies here. We loved him.' We thank him for them words. Better nor more, they cl'ar it all up on this side twixt him and us. No need ter tell o' what he was, or what he done. 'Tain't likely we'll forgit. He didn't say ter praise him. He wanted none o' that, but jest we knowed and loved him. "And so it might 'a' been enough, but now, my God! my God! as I stand here aside o' him, he bids me, plain as day, to speak a word beyent; ef I could only name it, ef I could only name it, what looks so cl'ar and beautiful thar' on his face. "'Hold strong;' he says, 'below thar'. Keep heart and make cl'ar reckonin', for it's losin' all may be, in this 'ere mystery, makes cl'arest gain o' all. There's fairer day to rest ye arter storm. All's well! all's well!' he says; 'all's well beyent. All's well along this shore!'" Here George Olver's husky voice failed him; sobs rose in the room. Then the "farewell" was sung, and bravely; but at the last, I heard only Madeline's voice, it grew so surpassingly clear and sweet; it seemed to float solitary in the room, and to play triumphantly about the sleeper's lips--the voice, indeed, of a free spirit in its bliss, thrilled only with some plaintive memory of human woe and loss. * * * * * Farewell, ye dreams of night; Jesus is mine! Lost in this dawning bright; Jesus is mine! All that my soul has tried, Left but a dismal void; Jesus has satisfied. Jesus is mine! Farewell, mortality! Jesus is mine! Welcome, eternity! Jesus is mine! Welcome, the loved and blest! Welcome, bright scenes of rest! Welcome, my Saviour's breast! Jesus is mine! Scarcely had the leaves of the fallen peach-tree by the window begun to wither when the strong bearers passed out with their beautiful, stainless burden, while slowly, reverently, the little community of mourners followed to the grave. CHAPTER XXI. FAREWELL TO WALLENCAMP. Yet another week passed in Wallencamp before I was able to complete the preparations for my departure. One day, I set myself with a sort of listless fidelity to the summing up of my accounts. I found, on deducting the amount of my actual expenses from the sum total of my earnings in Wallencamp, that I had sixty-two cents left! The revelation caused me some surprise; strangely little perturbation of spirit. I thought what tragic tales might sometimes lie hidden beneath a seemingly dry and senseless combination of figures, while, in my own case, I was merely struck with the justice of those figures. For such eccentric and distracted services as I had rendered in Wallencamp, the superintendent of schools had paid me in full at the price stipulated, eight dollars per week. On the other hand, the column of insolvency, I considered that the West Wallen Doctor's bill was an expression of modesty itself. The sum due my Dear Madeline for "board," at two dollars and a half per week, though I trusted it was some compensation for the merely temporal advantages to be enjoyed in Wallencamp, did not appear as an astounding aggregate. The list of "minor details" was well portrayed, and presented an aspect of clear use and value. My once fond dream of a "private bank account" had gradually faded from my memory. I saw the last spar in that fair wreck go down, now, without a sigh. And the "loans solicited," in labored phrase, as "mere temporary conveniences," from the friends at home--these, I was satisfied, must remain only as the sweet continuation of a life-long debt. But how was I to get home? The combined fares on that route, I remembered, had amounted to something over nine dollars! So the question haunted me, not restlessly, but with a vague, tranquil, melancholy interest, as pertaining to the history of some one who had lived and died a few years before; so long indeed, it seemed to me, since I had performed the journey to Wallencamp. I had not written home as to the day of my probable arrival, in this yielding passively to the force of habit, which had ever constrained me to plan my returns as "surprises" to my family and friends. But for myself, I had fixed the day of my departure from Wallencamp, and, in spite of the discovery made in regard to the insufficient state of my finances, looked forward to that event without any trepidation, so that, I remember--it was actually the day before the one fixed on, and still no hope had dawned on the financial horizon,--when Grandma Keeler embraced me with some tender words premonitory of our parting, I kissed her gratefully, musing at the same time in dreamy, untroubled fashion: "Yes, I must be going home to-morrow." It was on this same day that we drove to "Wallen Town," Grandma and Madeline and Becky and I. The excursion was one Grandma had planned several weeks before, and I had no intention of making it the opportunity which I finally did. As we were passing a dingy-looking establishment, where some doubtful articles of _virtu_ appeared in the window, an idea seized me, as new as it was comprehensive of my difficulties. I went in, ostensibly to purchase a watch-key, really to engage in negotiations of a more serious and complicated nature. The proprietor of the shop became the temporary guardian of my watch, while I was invested with the funds necessary for my homeward journey. I learned, afterwards, that this man had made an exception in the usually limited range of his operations, in my favor, his establishment not being, by any means, that of a pawnbroker, but, in every sense, of the most highly moral and respectable nature. He gave me such "ready cash" as his coffers would yield, with an improvised pawnbroker's check, at the composition of which we had both seriously and ingeniously labored. I can testify both to his honesty and obligingness. He insisted on my taking with me, "jest to tell the time o' day," a very large watch in a tarnished silver case. Not wishing to seem to cast any disparagement on his wares, I became the helpless recipient of this favor. The article in question was far too large for my watch-pocket, and had a persistent habit of holding its mouth wide open like a too weary shell-fish. On the interior of the case, one on either side, were pasted photographs of individuals to me unknown, male and female, their countenances such as the blinded eye of affection alone, I thought, could have rendered mutually entertaining; and the watch maintained, on all occasions, a system of chronology peculiarly its own. As we drove back to Wallencamp, Grandma Keeler, her great heart close to Nature that sunny afternoon, beguiled the way with a gentle hilarity which never shocked or offended, but Becky put her hand often in mine, looking up with the old helpless, pleading expression in her eyes--Becky, I knew, would remember longest. Sometimes, as my hand wandered almost unconsciously to caress the precious coin in my pocket, instead of the wild tract of stunted cedars through which our road lay, I fancied I saw the great elms of Newtown, the wide, straight street, the familiar house, an open door, and--ah! It wasn't the first time I had been taken in at that door, the survivor of wrecked ambition and misguided hope, only to hear my shortcomings made tenderly light of, my most desperate follies lovingly ignored and forgiven. But I had meant that it should be so different this time! I had gone out as a missionary; and deeper than ever in my consciousness, I must feel the want and woe of the returning prodigal; the same old story, the ever-recurring failure. It seemed as though all the wonder and impatience might well go out of my despair. Then as I lent myself more and more to the contemplation of that home picture, how restful and happy it grew! but poor old Wallencamp--for we were nearing the little settlement now, and the sun was fast westering--poor, squalid, solitary, beautiful Wallencamp, as I looked down upon it from the brow of Stony Hill, thrilled me with a troubled sense of some diviner, some half-comprehended glory. The crimson glow had not quite faded in the sky when I took my last walk across the fields to where the new grave had been made on the hillside. This is the new burying-ground of the Wallencampers; the old one lies a mile farther up the river, near the Indian encampment. Here I saw more than one simple slab, bearing the name of Cradlebow. Here little Bess lies, too. The hill, meet for such sublime repose, looks ever calmly on the humble, straggling homes of the Wallencampers below, and sees the lonely river winding near, and hears, by night and day, the monody of deeper waters. I thought the voice of that great ocean of restlessness sounding along the shore might quiet my unrest, but the beat of the waves, the growing gloom of that still evening hour, oppressed me with a feeling unutterably sad. I could not bear it, at last. It seemed as though another deep was rising and breaking in my heart, the flood of proud, half-stifled passion waking in one awful moment to overwhelm me. No light upon that sea--but hope wronged, the mockery of death for yearning love, the unguided clash of drifting human lives! An agony of blindness swam before my eyes. I felt my weak hands clutching at the grass, and gasped, as though it had been indeed in the blindness and pain of physical death, the prayer wrung from my selfish need. But the answer was of infinite love and compassion. It came to me then--not as some grave revelation of truth to the "enlightened seeker," but like the kiss or peace to a tired child, a door mysteriously opened to the self-bound captive, to one ignorant, the light shining along a plain, straight way. And the doubt and terror and anguish went out of the world; even the sorrowless farewell of frozen lips changed to tender benediction. When I looked up at last, wondering, peaceful, my face wet with happy tears, the stars had come out in the sky, and, down below, the windows of the Ark were shining. The faint murmur of a song was borne up to me. The Wallencampers had gathered at the Ark to celebrate our last "meeting" together, and I went down to join them. * * * * * At what ghostly hour of the next morning Grandma Keeler awoke Grandpa to the unusual exigencies of the occasion, I cannot say. It was necessary for me to start very early from the Ark to take the train at West Wallen, but when I descended the stairs, by candle-light, Grandpa Keeler had been already washed and dyed and arrayed, as for the Sabbath, in his best. Yes, and I was constrained to believe that he had even been instructed in the mysteries of Sunday-school lore, for there was about him an air of haggard and feverish excitement, and he glared at my familiar presence with wild, unseeing eyes. Memorable were the colloquies held that morning between Grandma and Grandpa Keeler; Grandpa's tragic assumption of manly consequence, and solemn fears lest we should miss the train, directed in astute syllables of warning towards Grandma Keeler; Grandma's increased deliberation, and imperturbable quietude of soul. I recall the strange, unearthly aspect of the scenes enacted in the Ark at that early hour, the fleeting vision of a morning repast which formed some accidental part in the chaos of vaster proceedings. Then, when the first faint signs of dawn were beginning to break through the gray in the eastern sky, I bade farewell to the Ark forever, lingering a moment on the old familiar doorstep for a last word with those of the neighbors who had gathered there to see us off, for the whole Keeler family accompanied me to the station. There were others waiting at the gate to say good-bye, and at various posts all the way down the lane. At the big white house, Emily came running out, breathless. She whispered hurriedly in my ear; "There was a message left. Ye wasn't well. I reckon 'twas a message. When fisherman and that other one came up from the shore, day o' the storm, he came to our house for Sim to take him to Wallen. He said it was better to be the dead one than him. He was awful white, and Sim got harnessed, and just as fisherman was goin' out, he left a message along o' me, though there wasn't no names mentioned, and he talked queer; but he wanted as somebody should know that he realized it all now, and he couldn't make up for it, never; but it was go'n' to be new or nothin' for him, and they shouldn't want for nothin', never, and kep' a sayin' more, and no message, exactly, as ye could call a message, but I reckoned--I thought--may be--" Emily's glowing eyes, fixed on my face, grew very wide and grave. I could only press her hand in parting for Grandpa, growing impatient, had succeeded in clucking Fanny on again. We drove along the river road, and, passing through the Indian encampment, there were more good-byes exchanged by the roadside. Then climbing up "Sandy Slope," beyond the settlement, we heard the shrill "Hullo!" of a familiar voice, and looking back, saw Bachelor Lot running after us very swiftly, his head destitute of covering, and his little wizened face glowing red as the celestial Mars in the distance. He looked like some odd, fantastic toy that had been wound up and set going. So he came up with us, and trying to conceal his breathlessness in polite little "hums and haws," delivered aside, he offered me a huge bouquet, composed, I should think, of every sort of wild-flower available on the Cape at that season, and showing, in its arrangement, marks of the most arduous striving after artistic effect. In the other hand, he held out to me a basket of large, selected boxberries. I accepted the gifts with unaffected delight, and thanked Bachelor Lot warmly. I looked back at him, trudging cheerfully homeward through the sand, so withered and small, with the gray in his hair, and his coat so much too long for him--back to the poor brown house, which no tender love had ever hallowed, or merry waiting laugh made bright for him; and I wondered, along his life's way which looked so sad and desolate, what hidden wild flowers God had strewed for him, that he seemed always so humbly cheerful and content, and brought his best of offerings with a smile to bless the happier lot of others. For the rest of the way, the wild untenanted stretch was unbroken by any incident; yet I remember no tedium by the way; and I believe that a trip taken with Grandma and Grandpa Keeler through the most trackless desert would inevitably have been made to teem with diversion. Those blessed souls! I smile, looking back, but through tears, and with a reverence and tenderness far deeper than the smile. By the time we reached the West Wallen depot the sky had clouded over. "A little shower comin' up," Grandma said, but Grandpa shook his head and prophesied "a long, stiddy spell o' weather." I persuaded my friends not to wait with me for the arrival of the train which, owing to some discrepancy in the matter of time between Wallencamp and West Wallen, would not be due for an hour or more. I watched them out of sight, the last of my Wallencamp! How deeply, how utterly it had grown into my life, so that now, in spite of the secret, glad exultation I felt at the thought of going home, my heart went running out after that quaint, receding vehicle, and aching sensibly. On board the train at last, I began to experience something of the sensation of one who awakens from a long sleep to the half-forgotten ways of men and life with a vague, untroubled wonder as to the latest styles in dress; or, like a traveller from a strange country, weary, and way-worn, and out of date, who yet can smile, hugging in his breast the happy secret of boundless wealth in the gold-mine he has discovered far away. I had neither umbrella, portmanteau, nor shawl-strap; such ordinary paraphernalia of travel I remembered once to have possessed, and tried in vain to recall the particular occasions on which they had been wrecked in Wallencamp. I bore with me my bouquet, my basket of boxberries, some small cedar trees for transplanting, and half of the largest clam-shell the shores of Cape Cod had ever produced; this last a parting gift from Lovell Barlow. I was far from being troubled with the consciousness of anything quaint or _bizarre_ in my appearance. I felt no mortification on account of these treasures so intrinsically dear to my heart; but Grandma Keeler had insisted on binding a mustard paste on my chest. It was a parting request--I could not have refused--but in the close air of the car the physical torture began to be extreme. Tears fell on the cedar spray at my side, yet was I withal strangely, peacefully happy. It was raining when I passed through Boston. Once more in the din of a city, jolting noisily over the rough, uneven pavements, I found myself wondering continually if the Keelers had reached home, and imagining how the rain was falling gently, quietly, on the roof of the Ark. At the next stage, at Hartford, I was half afraid that I should meet brother or sister or some member of the family, and so have the complete effect of my "surprise" destroyed; but I saw none of them. There were few passengers on board the Newtown-bound train. It was raining still. I was growing more and more glad at heart, and looking out with my arm pressed against the window, when I heard a voice right over me--a soft, pitiful, thrilling exclamation:-- "Great Heavens!" I looked up and saw John Cable. He sank slowly down into the seat in front of me and, for a moment, neither of us spoke. I did not mind meeting John. I had not thought of including him in the surprise. The sight of his familiar, friendly face gave me a positive thrill of pleasure, but there was something in his manner that kept me silent. I said: "I am going to surprise them, John." There was nothing offensive in the grave, swift glance with which John Cable then took me in, me and my bouquet of wilted wild-flowers and my small cedar trees, only a slow, solemn distinctness in his tone. "You will succeed," he said. "Undoubtedly you will succeed." Still I felt no resentment. A gentle, sorrowful perplexity filled my breast. "Why, do--I--look--very--very--unusual, John?" I questioned, and looking in his face I wondered why, in the old days of careless jest and repartee, he had never seemed so moved. More words he said, but I could not bear them then, and tears from an inward pain fell on the cedar spray, yet I was glad that I had not grown so unusual that people would never like me any more. Next, the surprise was a success, as John Cable had predicted, but that was the one point in my career in which my genius had never failed me. My surprises, though inclined to take something of the nature of an accumulation of calamities, had never lacked the great element of awe-producing wonder. For the rest, I had known that I should be forgiven and received with the usual _éclât_ of the returned prodigal into the family bosom--but to be held up on successive days as an object of ever-increasing marvel and interest, as one whose words and acts were endowed with a peculiar significance, as the light of the social fireside, the enchanter of small spell-bound audiences! Well, I had been spoiled so early in life that little was needed to complete the wreck. I felt a deeper satisfaction when, as I was meekly beseeching our Bridget's instruction in some particular branch of the culinary art, that majestic female observed, as she folded her arms and looked down on me complacently:-- "There's one thing I like better about you than I used to, miss--you do have to wade through a great deal o' flour to larn a little plain cooking but Job himself couldn't a' be'n no patienter." And it was indeed true that my "Graham gems" never quite reached perfection, though they bore with them marks of earnest and faithful endeavor. I found new sources of interest everywhere, and in ways which I had formerly regarded with aversion and disdain. At the "Newtown Ladies' Charitable Sewing Society," I was elevated from among the common stitchers and sewers, for faithfulness in service,--I believe, though malicious fingers would point to the distortion of the legs of little heathens' trousers--to a place on the "cutting circle." From the cutting circle, it is needless to say, I was speedily exalted to a presidential chair of easeful observation and general vague superintendency. Later, there was a revival of the "Literary Club." There John Cable and I shone once more amid a group of familiar and undimmed luminaries. John Cable never took up the exact thread of the discourse broken off so abruptly on the day of my return, in the cars, but it was when coming home from the club one evening that he expressed himself to the effect that I had always been a great burden on his mind, ever since the first day he led me to school, and, to be sure, I had shown signs of improvement lately, but there was always a pardonable doubt as to what I might do next, and it was wearing on him, and would I set his mind at rest by allowing him, in some sense, to take the direction of my life into his own hands? John, though of adverse views, had been heatedly discussing the merits of the Capital Punishment question at the club, so I was not surprised at the unusual grace and flow of his address. Years have passed since that evening. I have been very happy as John's wife. If I wander in my story, be it said that little John is running a model express-train on the floor over my head. Little John, when not dreaming, exercises a vast amount of destructive physical force. * * * * * A little more than a year after I left Wallencamp, I heard of Grandma and Grandpa Keeler's death. "Very quiet and peaceful," they said concerning Grandma, but I had known what sort of a death-bed hers would be. Scarcely a week after she had passed away, Grandpa Keeler followed her. I had it from good authority that he kept about the house till the last. There was a "rainy spell," and he stood often gazing out of the window "with a lost look on his face," and once he said with a wistful, broken utterance and a pathetic longing in his eyes that did away forever with any opprobrium there might have been in connection with the term, that "it was gittin' to be very lonely about the house without ma pesterin' on him." Since then, I have not heard from Wallencamp. It is doubtful whether I ever get another letter from that source. Though singularly gifted in the epistolary art, it is but a dull and faint means of expression to the souls of the Wallencampers--and _they_ will not forget. From the storms that shake their earthly habitations, they pass to their sweet, wild rest beside the sea; and by and by, when I meet them, I shall hear them sing. 
2452	----	"SHAVINGS" by Joseph C. Lincoln CHAPTER I Mr. Gabriel Bearse was happy. The prominence given to this statement is not meant to imply that Gabriel was, as a general rule, unhappy. Quite the contrary; Mr. Bearse's disposition was a cheerful one and the cares of this world had not rounded his plump shoulders. But Captain Sam Hunniwell had once said, and Orham public opinion agreed with him, that Gabe Bearse was never happy unless he was talking. Now here was Gabriel, not talking, but walking briskly along the Orham main road, and yet so distinctly happy that the happiness showed in his gait, his manner and in the excited glitter of his watery eye. Truly an astonishing condition of things and tending, one would say, to prove that Captain Sam's didactic remark, so long locally accepted and quoted as gospel truth, had a flaw in its wisdom somewhere. And yet the flaw was but a small one and the explanation simple. Gabriel was not talking at that moment, it is true, but he was expecting to talk very soon, to talk a great deal. He had just come into possession of an item of news which would furnish his vocal machine gun with ammunition sufficient for wordy volley after volley. Gabriel was joyfully contemplating peppering all Orham with that bit of gossip. No wonder he was happy; no wonder he hurried along the main road like a battery galloping eagerly into action. He was on his way to the post office, always the gossip- sharpshooters' first line trench, when, turning the corner where Nickerson's Lane enters the main road, he saw something which caused him to pause, alter his battle-mad walk to a slower one, then to a saunter, and finally to a halt altogether. This something was a toy windmill fastened to a white picket fence and clattering cheerfully as its arms spun in the brisk, pleasant summer breeze. The little windmill was one of a dozen, all fastened to the top rail of that fence and all whirling. Behind the fence, on posts, were other and larger windmills; behind these, others larger still. Interspersed among the mills were little wooden sailors swinging paddles; weather vanes in the shapes of wooden whales, swordfish, ducks, crows, seagulls; circles of little wooden profile sailboats, made to chase each other 'round and 'round a central post. All of these were painted in gay colors, or in black and white, and all were in motion. The mills spun, the boats sailed 'round and 'round, the sailors did vigorous Indian club exercises with their paddles. The grass in the little yard and the tall hollyhocks in the beds at its sides swayed and bowed and nodded. Beyond, seen over the edge of the bluff and stretching to the horizon, the blue and white waves leaped and danced and sparkled. As a picture of movement and color and joyful bustle the scene was inspiring; children, viewing it for the first time, almost invariably danced and waved their arms in sympathy. Summer visitors, loitering idly by, suddenly became fired with the desire to set about doing something, something energetic. Gabriel Bearse was not a summer visitor, but a "native," that is, an all-the-year-round resident of Orham, and, as his fellow natives would have cheerfully testified, it took much more than windmills to arouse HIS energy. He had not halted to look at the mills. He had stopped because the sight of them recalled to his mind the fact that the maker of these mills was a friend of one of the men most concerned in his brand new news item. It was possible, barely possible, that here was an opportunity to learn just a little more, to obtain an additional clip of cartridges before opening fire on the crowd at the post office. Certainly it might be worth trying, particularly as the afternoon mail would not be ready for another hour, even if the train was on time. At the rear of the little yard, and situated perhaps fifty feet from the edge of the high sand bluff leading down precipitously to the beach, was a shingled building, whitewashed, and with a door, painted green, and four windows on the side toward the road. A clamshell walk led from the gate to the doors. Over the door was a sign, very neatly lettered, as follows: "J. EDGAR W. WINSLOW. MILLS FOR SALE." In the lot next to that, where the little shop stood, was a small, old-fashioned story-and-a-half Cape Cod house, painted a speckless white, with vivid green blinds. The blinds were shut now, for the house was unoccupied. House and shop and both yards were neat and clean as a New England kitchen. Gabriel Bearse, after a moment's reflection, opened the gate in the picket fence and walked along the clamshell walk to the shop door. Opening the door, he entered, a bell attached to the top of the door jingling as he did so. The room which Mr. Bearse entered was crowded from floor to ceiling, save for a narrow passage, with hit- or-miss stacks of the wooden toys evidently finished and ready for shipment. Threading his way between the heaps of sailors, mills, vanes and boats, Gabriel came to a door evidently leading to another room. There was a sign tacked to this door, which read, "PRIVATE," but Mr. Bearse did not let that trouble him. He pushed the door open. The second room was evidently the work-shop. There were a circular saw and a turning lathe, with the needful belts, and a small electric motor to furnish power. Also there were piles of lumber, shelves of paint pots and brushes, many shavings and much sawdust. And, standing beside a dilapidated chair from which he had evidently risen at the sound of the door bell, with a dripping paint brush in one hand and a wooden sailor in the other, there was a man. When he saw who his visitor was he sat down again. He was a tall man and, as the chair he sat in was a low one and the heels of his large shoes were hooked over its lower rounds, his knees and shoulders were close together when he bent over his work. He was a thin man and his trousers hung about his ankles like a loose sail on a yard. His hair was thick and plentiful, a brown sprinkled with gray at the temples. His face was smooth-shaven, with wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and mouth. He wore spectacles perched at the very end of his nose, and looked down over rather than through them as he dipped the brush in the can of paint beside him on the floor. "Hello, Shavin's," hailed Mr. Bearse, blithely. The tall man applied the brush to the nude pine legs of the wooden sailor. One side of those legs were modestly covered forthwith by a pair of sky-blue breeches. The artist regarded the breeches dreamily. Then he said: "Hello, Gab." His voice was a drawl, very deliberate, very quiet, rather soft and pleasant. But Mr. Bearse was not pleased. "Don't call me that," he snapped. The brush was again dipped in the paint pot and the rear elevation of the pine sailor became sky-blue like the other side of him. Then the tall man asked: "Call you what?" "Gab. That's a divil of a name to call anybody. Last time I was in here Cap'n Sam Hunniwell heard you call me that and I cal'lated he'd die laughin'. Seemed to cal'late there was somethin' specially dum funny about it. I don't call it funny. Say, speakin' of Cap'n Sam, have you heard the news about him?" He asked the question eagerly, because it was a part of what he came there to ask. His eagerness was not contagious. The man on the chair put down the blue brush, took up a fresh one, dipped it in another paint pot and proceeded to garb another section of his sailor in a spotless white shirt. Mr. Bearse grew impatient. "Have you heard the news about Cap'n Sam?" he repeated. "Say, Shavin's, have you?" The painting went serenely on, but the painter answered. "Well, Gab," he drawled, "I--" "Don't call me Gab, I tell you. 'Tain't my name." "Sho! Ain't it?" "You know well enough 'tain't. My name's Gabriel. Call me that-- or Gabe. I don't like to be called out of my name. But say, Shavin's--" "Well, Gab, say it." "Look here, Jed Winslow, do you hear me?" "Yes, hear you fust rate, Gabe--now." Mr. Bearse's understanding was not easily penetrated; a hint usually glanced from it like a piece of soap from a slanting cellar door, but this time the speaker's tone and the emphasis on the "now" made a slight dent. Gabriel's eyes opened. "Huh?" he grunted in astonishment, as if the possibility had never until that moment occured to him. "Why, say, Jed, don't you like to be called 'Shavin's'?" No answer. A blue collar was added to the white shirt of the sailor. "Don't you, Jed?" repeated Gabe. Mr. Winslow's gaze was lifted from his work and his eyes turned momentarily in the direction of his caller. "Gabe," he drawled, "did you ever hear about the feller that was born stone deef and the Doxology?" "Eh? What-- No, I never heard it." The eyes turned back to the wooden sailor and Mr. Winslow chose another brush. "Neither did he," he observed, and began to whistle what sounded like a dirge. Mr. Bearse stared at him for at least a minute. Then he shook his head. "Well, by Judas!" he exclaimed. "I--I--I snum if I don't think you BE crazy, same as some folks say you are! What in the nation has-- has your name got to do with a deef man and the Doxology?" "Eh? . . . Oh, nothin'." "Then what did you bust loose and tell me about 'em for? They wan't any of MY business, was they?" "No-o. That's why I spoke of 'em." "What? You spoke of 'em 'cause they wan't any of my business?" "Ye-es . . . I thought maybe--" He paused, turned the sailor over in his hand, whistled a few more bars of the dirge and then finished his sentence. "I thought maybe you might like to ask questions about 'em," he concluded. Mr. Bearse stared suspiciously at his companion, swallowed several times and, between swallows, started to speak, but each time gave it up. Mr. Winslow appeared quite oblivious of the stare. His brushes gave the wooden sailor black hair, eyes and brows, and an engaging crimson smile. When Gabriel did speak it was not concerning names. "Say, Jed," he cried, "HAVE you heard about Cap'n Sam Hunniwell? 'Bout his bein' put on the Exemption Board?" His companion went on whistling, but he nodded. "Um-hm," grunted Gabe, grudgingly. "I presumed likely you would hear; he told you himself, I cal'late. Seth Baker said he see him come in here night afore last and I suppose that's when he told you. Didn't say nothin' else, did he?" he added, eagerly. Again Mr. Winslow nodded. "Did he? Did he? What else did he say?" The tall man seemed to consider. "Well," he drawled, at length, "seems to me I remember him sayin'-- sayin'--" "Yes? Yes? What did he say?" "Well--er--seems to me he said good night just afore he went home." The disappointed Gabriel lost patience. "Oh, you DIVILISH fool head!" he exclaimed, disgustedly. "Look here, Jed Winslow, talk sense for a minute, if you can, won't you? I've just heard somethin' that's goin' to make a big row in this town and it's got to do with Cap'n Sam's bein' app'inted on that Gov'ment Exemption Board for drafted folks. If you'd heard Phineas Babbitt goin' on the way I done, I guess likely you'd have been interested." It was plain that, for the first time since his caller intruded upon his privacy, the maker of mills and sailors WAS interested. He did not put down his brush, but he turned his head to look and listen. Bearse, pleased with this symptom of attention, went on. "I was just into Phineas' store," he said, "and he was there, so I had a chance to talk with him. He's been up to Boston and never got back till this afternoon, so I cal'lated maybe he hadn't heard about Cap'n Sam's app'intment. And I knew, too, how he does hate the Cap'n; ain't had nothin' but cuss words and such names for him ever since Sam done him out of gettin' the postmaster's job. Pretty mean trick, some folks call it, but--" Mr. Winslow interrupted; his drawl was a trifle less evident. "Congressman Taylor asked Sam for the truth regardin' Phineas and a certain matter," he said. "Sam told the truth, that's all." "Well, maybe that's so, but does tellin' the truth about folks make 'em love you? I don't know as it does." Winslow appeared to meditate. "No-o," he observed, thoughtfully, "I don't suppose you do." "No, I . . . Eh? What do you mean by that? Look here, Jed Winslow, if--" Jed held up a big hand. "There, there, Gabe," he suggested, mildly. "Let's hear about Sam and Phin Babbitt. What was Phineas goin' on about when you was in his store?" Mr. Bearse forgot personal grievance in his eagerness to tell the story. "Why," he began, "you see, 'twas like this: 'Twas all on account of Leander. Leander's been drafted. You know that, of course?" Jed nodded. Leander Babbitt was the son of Phineas Babbitt, Orham's dealer in hardware and lumber and a leading political boss. Between Babbitt, Senior, and Captain Sam Hunniwell, the latter President of the Orham National Bank and also a vigorous politician, the dislike had always been strong. Since the affair of the postmastership it had become, on Babbitt's part, an intense hatred. During the week just past young Babbitt's name had been drawn as one of Orham's quota for the new National Army. The village was still talking of the draft when the news came that Captain Hunniwell had been selected as a member of the Exemption Board for the district, the Board which was to hold its sessions at Ostable and listen to the pleas of those desiring to be excused from service. Not all of Orham knew this as yet. Jed Winslow had heard it, from Captain Sam himself. Gabe Bearse had heard it because he made it his business to hear everything, whether it concerned him or not--preferably not. The war had come to Orham with the unbelievable unreality with which it had come to the great mass of the country. Ever since the news of the descent of von Kluck's hordes upon devoted Belgium, in the fall of 1914, the death grapple in Europe had, of course, been the principal topic of discussion at the post office and around the whist tables at the Setuckit Club, where ancient and retired mariners met and pounded their own and each other's knees while they expressed sulphurous opinions concerning the attitude of the President and Congress. These opinions were, as a usual thing, guided by the fact of their holders' allegiance to one or the other of the great political parties. Captain Sam Hunniwell, a lifelong and ardent Republican, with a temper as peppery as the chile con carne upon which, when commander of a steam freighter trading with Mexico, he had feasted so often--Captain Sam would have hoisted the Stars and Stripes to the masthead the day the Lusitania sank and put to sea in a dory, if need be, and armed only with a shotgun, to avenge that outrage. To hear Captain Sam orate concerning the neglect of duty of which he considered the United States government guilty was an experience, interesting or shocking, according to the drift of one's political or religious creed. Phineas Babbitt, on the contrary, had at first upheld the policy of strict neutrality. "What business is it of ours if them furriners take to slaughterin' themselves?" he wanted to know. He hotly declared the Lusitania victims plaguey fools who knew what they were riskin' when they sailed and had got just what was comin' to 'em--that is, he was proclaiming it when Captain Sam heard him; after that the captain issued a proclamation of his own and was proceeding to follow words with deeds. The affair ended by mutual acquaintances leading Captain Sam from the Babbitt Hardware Company's store, the captain rumbling like a volcano and, to follow up the simile, still emitting verbal brimstone and molten lava, while Mr. Babbitt, entrenched behind his counter, with a monkey wrench in his hand, dared his adversary to lay hands on a law- abiding citizen. When the Kaiser and von Tirpitz issued their final ultimatum, however, and the President called America to arms, Phineas, in company with others of his breed, appeared to have experienced a change of heart. At all events he kept his anti-war opinions to himself and, except that his hatred for the captain was more virulent than ever since the affair of the postmastership, he found little fault with the war preparations in the village, the organizing of a Home Guard, the raising of funds for a new flag and flagpole and the recruiting meeting in the town hall. At that meeting a half dozen of Orham's best young fellows had expressed their desire to fight for Uncle Sam. The Orham band-- minus its first cornet, who was himself one of the volunteers--had serenaded them at the railway station and the Congregational minister and Lawyer Poundberry of the Board of Selectmen had made speeches. Captain Sam Hunniwell, being called upon to say a few words, had said a few--perhaps, considering the feelings of the minister and the feminine members of his flock present, it is well they were not more numerous. "Good luck to you, boys," said Captain Sam. "I wish to the Almighty I was young enough to go with you. And say, if you see that Kaiser anywheres afloat or ashore give him particular merry hell for me, will you?" And then, a little later, came the news that the conscription bill had become a law and that the draft was to be a reality. And with that news the war itself became a little more real. And, suddenly, Phineas Babbitt, realizing that his son, Leander, was twenty-five years old and, therefore, within the limits of the draft age, became once more an ardent, if a little more careful, conscientious objector. He discovered that the war was a profiteering enterprise engineered by capital and greed for the exploiting of labor and the common people. Whenever he thought it safe to do so he aired these opinions and, as there were a few of what Captain Hunniwell called "yellow-backed swabs" in Orham or its neighborhood, he occasionally had sympathetic listeners. Phineas, it is only fair to say, had never heretofore shown any marked interest in labor except to get as much of it for as little money as possible. If his son, Leander, shared his father's opinions, he did not express them. In fact he said very little, working steadily in the store all day and appearing to have something on his mind. Most people liked Leander. Then came the draft and Leander was drafted. He said very little about it, but his father said a great deal. The boy should not go; the affair was an outrage. Leander wasn't strong, anyway; besides, wasn't he his father's principal support? He couldn't be spared, that's all there was about it, and he shouldn't be. There was going to be an Exemption Board, wasn't there? All right--just wait until he, Phineas, went before that board. He hadn't been in politics all these years for nothin'. Sam Hunniwell hadn't got all the pull there was in the county. And then Captain Sam was appointed a member of that very board. He had dropped in at the windmill shop the very evening when he decided to accept and told Jed Winslow all about it. There never were two people more unlike than Sam Hunniwell and Jed Winslow, but they had been fast friends since boyhood. Jed knew that Phineas Babbitt had been on a trip to Boston and, therefore, had not heard of the captain's appointment. Now, according to Gabriel Bearse, he had returned and had heard of it, and according to Bearse's excited statement he had "gone on" about it. "Leander's been drafted," repeated Gabe. "And that was bad enough for Phineas, he bein' down on the war, anyhow. But he's been cal'latin', I cal'late, to use his political pull to get Leander exempted off. Nine boards out of ten, if they'd had a man from Orham on 'em, would have gone by what that man said in a case like Leander's. And Phineas, he was movin' heavens and earth to get one of his friends put on as the right Orham man. And now--NOW, by godfreys domino, they've put on the ONE man that Phin can't influence, that hates Phin worse than a cat hates a swim. Oh, you ought to heard Phineas go on when I told him. He'd just got off the train, as you might say, so nobody'd had a chance to tell him. I was the fust one, you see. So--" "Was Leander there?" "No, he wan't. There wan't nobody in the store but Susie Ellis, that keeps the books there now, and Abner Burgess's boy, that runs errands and waits on folks when everybody else is busy. That was a funny thing, too--that about Leander's not bein' there. Susie said she hadn't seen him since just after breakfast time, half past seven o'clock or so, and when she telephoned the Babbitt house it turned out he hadn't been there, neither. Had his breakfast and went out, he did, and that's all his step-ma knew about him. But Phineas, he. . . . Eh? Ain't that the bell? Customer, I presume likely. Want me to go see who 'tis, Shavin's--Jed, I mean?" CHAPTER II But the person who had entered the outer shop saved Mr. Bearse the trouble. He, too, disregarded the "Private" sign on the door of the inner room. Before Gabriel could reach it that door was thrown open and the newcomer entered. He was a big man, gray-mustached, with hair a grizzled red, and with blue eyes set in a florid face. The hand which had opened the door looked big and powerful enough to have knocked a hole in it, if such a procedure had been necessary. And its owner looked quite capable of doing it, if he deemed it necessary, in fact he looked as if he would rather have enjoyed it. He swept into the room like a northwest breeze, and two bundles of wooden strips, cut to the size of mill arms, clattered to the floor as he did so. "Hello, Jed!" he hailed, in a voice which measured up to the rest of him. Then, noticing Mr. Bearse for the first time, he added: "Hello, Gabe, what are you doin' here?" Gabriel hastened to explain. His habitual desire to please and humor each person he met--each person of consequence, that is; very poor people or village eccentrics like Jed Winslow did not much matter, of course--was in this case augmented by a particular desire to please Captain Sam Hunniwell. Captain Sam, being one of Orham's most influential men, was not, in Mr. Bearse's estimation, at all the sort of person whom it was advisable to displease. He might--and did--talk disparagingly of him behind his back, as he did behind the back of every one else, but he smiled humbly and spoke softly in his presence. The consciousness of having just been talking of him, however, of having visited that shop for the express purpose of talking about him, made the explaining process a trifle embarrassing. "Oh, howd'ye do, howd'ye do, Cap'n Hunniwell?" stammered Gabriel. "Nice day, ain't it, sir? Yes, sir, 'tis a nice day. I was just-- er--that is, I just run in to see Shavin's here; to make a little call, you know. We was just settin' here talkin', wan't we, Shavin's--Jed, I mean?" Mr. Winslow stood his completed sailor man in a rack to dry. "Ya-as," he drawled, solemnly, "that was about it, I guess. Have a chair, Sam, won't you? . . . That was about it, we was sittin' and talkin' . . . I was sittin' and Gab--Gabe, I mean--was talkin'." Captain Sam chuckled. As Winslow and Mr. Bearse were occupying the only two chairs in the room he accepted the invitation in its broad sense and, turning an empty box upon end, sat down on that. "So Gabe was talkin', eh?" he repeated. "Well, that's singular. How'd that happen, Gabe?" Mr. Bearse looked rather foolish. "Oh, we was just--just talkin' about--er--this and that," he said, hastily. "Just this and that, nothin' partic'lar. Cal'late I'll have to be runnin' along now, Jed." Jed Winslow selected a new and unpainted sailor from the pile near him. He eyed it dreamily. "Well, Gabe," he observed, "if you must, you must, I suppose. Seems to me you're leavin' at the most interestin' time. We've been talkin' about this and that, same as you say, and now you're leavin' just as 'this' has got here. Maybe if you wait--wait--a--" The sentence died away into nothingness. He had taken up the brush which he used for the blue paint. There was a loose bristle in it. He pulled this out and one or two more came with it. "Hu-um!" he mused, absently. Captain Sam was tired of waiting. "Come, finish her out, Jed--finish her out," he urged. "What's the rest of it?" "I cal'late I'll run along now," said Mr. Bearse, nervously moving toward the door. "Hold on a minute," commanded the captain. "Jed hadn't finished what he was sayin' to you. He generally talks like one of those continued-in-our-next yarns in the magazines. Give us the September installment, Jed--come." Mr. Winslow smiled, a slow, whimsical smile that lit up his lean, brown face and then passed away as slowly as it had come, lingering for an instant at one corner of his mouth. "Oh, I was just tellin' Gabe that the 'this' he was talkin' about was here now," he said, "and that maybe if he waited a space the 'that' would come, too. Seems to me if I was you, Gabe, I'd--" But Mr. Bearse had gone. Captain Hunniwell snorted. "Humph!" he said; "I judge likely I'm the 'this' you and that gas bag have been talkin' about. Who's the 'that'?" His companion was gazing absently at the door through which Gabriel had made his hurried departure. After gazing at it in silence for a moment, he rose from the chair, unfolding section by section like a pocket rule, and, crossing the room, opened the door and took from its other side the lettered sign "Private" which had hung there. Then, with tacks and a hammer, he proceeded to affix the placard to the inner side of the door, that facing the room where he and Captain Sam were. The captain regarded this operation with huge astonishment. "Gracious king!" he exclaimed. "What in thunder are you doin' that for? This is the private room in here, ain't it?" Mr. Winslow, returning to his chair, nodded. "Ya-as," he admitted, "that's why I'm puttin' the 'Private' sign on this side of the door." "Yes, but-- Why, confound it, anybody who sees it there will think it is the other room that's private, won't they?" Jed nodded. "I'm in hopes they will," he said. "You're in hopes they will! Why?" "'Cause if Gabe Bearse thinks that room's private and that he don't belong there he'll be sartin sure to go there; then maybe he'll give me a rest." He selected a new brush and went on with his painting. Captain Hunniwell laughed heartily. Then, all at once, his laughter ceased and his face assumed a troubled expression. "Jed," he ordered, "leave off daubin' at that wooden doll baby for a minute, will you? I want to talk to you. I want to ask you what you think I'd better do. I know what Gab Bearse-- Much obliged for that name, Jed; 'Gab's' the best name on earth for that critter--I know what Gab came in here to talk about. 'Twas about me and my bein' put on the Exemption Board, of course. That was it, wan't it? Um-hm, I knew 'twas. I was the 'this' in his 'this and that.' And Phin Babbitt was the 'that'; I'll bet on it. Am I right?" Winslow nodded. "Sure thing!" continued the captain. "Well, there 'tis. What am I goin' to do? When they wanted me to take the job in the first place I kind of hesitated. You know I did. 'Twas bound to be one of those thankless sort of jobs that get a feller into trouble, bound to be. And yet--and yet--well, SOMEBODY has to take those kind of jobs. And a man hadn't ought to talk all the time about how he wishes he could do somethin' to help his country, and then lay down and quit on the first chance that comes his way, just 'cause that chance ain't--ain't eatin' up all the pie in the state so the Germans can't get it, or somethin' like that. Ain't that so?" "Seems so to me, Sam." "Yes. Well, so I said I'd take my Exemption Board job. But when I said I'd accept it, it didn't run across my mind that Leander Babbitt was liable to be drafted, first crack out of the box. Now he IS drafted, and, if I know Phin Babbitt, the old man will be down on us Board fellers the first thing to get the boy exempted. AND, I bein' on the Board and hailin' from his own town, Orham here, it would naturally be to me that he'd come first. Eh? That's what he'd naturally do, ain't it?" His friend nodded once more. Captain Sam lost patience. "Gracious king!" he exclaimed. "Jed Winslow, for thunder sakes say somethin'! Don't set there bobbin' your head up and down like one of those wound-up images in a Christmas-time store window. I ask you if that ain't what Phin Babbitt would do? What would you do if you was in his shoes?" Jed rubbed his chin. "Step out of 'em, I guess likely," he drawled. "Humph! Yes--well, any self-respectin' person would do that, even if he had to go barefooted the rest of his life. But, what I'm gettin' at is this: Babbitt'll come to me orderin' me to get Leander exempted. And what'll I say?" Winslow turned and looked at him. "Seems to me, Sam," he answered, "that if that thing happened there'd be only one thing to say. You'd just have to tell him that you'd listen to his reasons and if they seemed good enough to let the boy off, for your part you'd vote to let him off. If they didn't seem good enough--why--" "Well--what?" "Why, then Leander'd have to go to war and his dad could go to--" "Eh? Go on. I want to hear you say it. Where could he go?" Jed wiped the surplus paint from his brush on the edge of the can. "To sellin' hardware," he concluded, gravely, but with a twinkle in his eye. Captain Sam sniffed, perhaps in disappointment. "His hardware'd melt where I'D tell him to go," he declared. "What you say is all right, Ed. It's an easy doctrine to preach, but, like lots of other preacher's doctrines, it's hard to live up to. Phin loves me like a step-brother and I love him the same way. Well, now here he comes to ask me to do a favor for him. If I don't do it, he'll say, and the whole town'll say, that I'm ventin' my spite on him, keepin' on with my grudge, bein' nasty, cussed, everything that's mean. If I do do it, if I let Leander off, all hands'll say that I did it because I was afraid of Phineas and the rest would say the other thing. It puts me in a devil of a position. It's all right to say, 'Do your duty,' 'Stand up in your shoes,' 'Do what you think's right, never mind whose boy 'tis,' and all that, but I wouldn't have that old skunk goin' around sayin' I took advantage of my position to rob him of his son for anything on earth. I despise him too much to give him that much satisfaction. And yet there I am, and the case'll come up afore me. What'll I do, Jed? Shall I resign? Help me out. I'm about crazy. Shall I heave up the job? Shall I quit?" Jed put down the brush and the sailor man. He rubbed his chin. "No-o," he drawled, after a moment. "Oh, I shan't, eh? Why not?" "'Cause you don't know how, Sam. It always seemed to me that it took a lot of practice to be a quitter. You never practiced." "Thanks. All right, then, I'm to hang on, I suppose, and take my medicine. If that's all the advice you've got to give me, I might as well have stayed at home. But I tell you this, Jed Winslow: If I'd realized--if I'd thought about the Leander Babbitt case comin' up afore me on that Board I never would have accepted the appointment. When you and I were talkin' here the other night it's queer that neither of us thought of it. . . . Eh? What are you lookin at me like that for? You don't mean to tell me that YOU DID think of it? Did you?" Winslow nodded. "Yes," he said. "I thought of it." "You DID! Well, I swear! Then why in thunder didn't you--" He was interrupted. The bell attached to the door of the outer shop rang. The maker of windmills rose jerkily to his feet. Captain Sam made a gesture of impatience. "Get rid of your customer and come back here soon as you can," he ordered. Having commanded a steamer before he left the sea and become a banker, the captain usually ordered rather than requested. "Hurry all you can. I ain't half through talkin' with you. For the land sakes, MOVE! Of all the deliberate, slow travelin'--" He did not finish his sentence, nor did Winslow, who had started toward the door, have time to reach it. The door was opened and a short, thickset man, with a leathery face and a bristling yellow- white chin beard, burst into the room. At the sight of its occupants he uttered a grunt of satisfaction and his bushy brows were drawn together above his little eyes, the latter a washed-out gray and set very close together. "Humph!" he snarled, vindictively. "So you BE here. Gabe Bearse said you was, but I thought probably he was lyin', as usual. Did he lie about the other thing, that's what I've come here to find out? Sam Hunniwell, have you been put on that Draft Exemption Board?" "Yes," he said, curtly, "I have." The man trembled all over. "You have?" he cried, raising his voice almost to a scream. "Yes, I have. What's it matter to you, Phin Babbitt? Seems to have het you up some, that or somethin' else." "Het me up! By--" Mr. Phineas Babbitt swore steadily for a full minute. When he stopped for breath Jed Winslow, who had stepped over and was looking out of the window, uttered an observation. "I'm afraid I made a mistake, changin' that sign," he said, musingly. "I cal'late I'll make another: 'Prayer meetin's must be held outside.'" "By--," began Mr. Babbitt again, but this time it was Captain Sam who interrupted. The captain occasionally swore at other people, but he was not accustomed to be sworn at. He, too, began to "heat up." He rose to his feet. "That'll do, Babbitt," he commanded. "What's the matter with you? Is it me you're cussin'? Because if it is--" The little Babbitt eyes snapped defiance. "If it is, what?" he demanded. But before the captain could reply Winslow, turning away from the window, did so for him. "If it is, I should say 'twas a pretty complete job," he drawled. "I don't know when I've heard fewer things left out. You have reason to be proud, both of you. And now, Phineas," he went on, "what's it all about? What's the matter?" Mr. Babbitt waved his fists again, preparatory to another outburst. Jed laid a big hand on his shoulder. "Don't seem to me time for the benediction yet, Phineas," he said. "Ought to preach your sermon or sing a hymn first, seems so. What did you come here for?" Phineas Babbitt's hard gray eyes looked up into the big brown ones gazing mildly down upon him. His gaze shifted and his tone when he next spoke was a trifle less savage. "He knows well enough what I came here for," he growled, indicating Hunniwell with a jerk of his thumb. "He knows that just as well as he knows why he had himself put on that Exemption Board." "I didn't have myself put there," declared the captain. "The job was wished on me. Lord knows I didn't want it. I was just tellin' Jed here that very thing." "Wished on you nothin'! You planned to get it and you worked to get it and I know why you did it, too. 'Twas to get another crack at me. 'Twas to play another dirty trick on me like the one you played that cheated me out of the post office. You knew they'd drafted my boy and you wanted to make sure he didn't get clear. You--" "That'll do!" Captain Hunniwell seized him by the shoulder. "That's enough," cried the captain. "Your boy had nothin' to do with it. I never thought of his name bein' drawn when I said I'd accept the job." "You lie!" "WHAT? Why, you little sawed-off, dried-up, sassy son of a sea cook! I'll--" Winslow's lanky form was interposed between the pair; and his slow, gentle drawl made itself heard. "I'm sorry to interrupt the experience meetin'," he said, "but I'VE got a call to testify and I feel the spirit aworkin'. Set down again, Sam, will you please. Phineas, you set down over there. Please set down, both of you. Sam, as a favor to me--" But the captain was not in a favor-extending mood. He glowered at his adversary and remained standing. "Phin--" begged Winslow. But Mr. Babbitt, although a trifle paler than when he entered the shop, was not more yielding. "I'm particular who I set down along of," he declared. "I'd as soon set down with a--a rattlesnake as I would with some humans." Captain Sam was not pale, far from it. "Skunks are always afraid of snakes, they tell me," he observed, tartly. "A rattlesnake's honest, anyhow, and he ain't afraid to bite. He ain't all bad smell and nothin' else." Babbitt's bristling chin beard quivered with inarticulate hatred. Winslow sighed resignedly. "Well," he asked, "you don't mind the other--er--critter in the menagerie sittin', do you? Now--now--now, just a minute," he pleaded, as his two companions showed symptoms of speaking simultaneously. "Just a minute; let me say a word. Phineas, I judge the only reason you have for objectin' to the captain's bein' on the Exemption Board is on account of your son, ain't it? It's just on Leander's account?" But before the furious Mr. Babbitt could answer there came another interruption. The bell attached to the door of the outer shop rang once more. Jed, who had accepted his own invitation to sit, rose again with a groan. "Now I wonder who THAT is?" he drawled, in mild surprise. Captain Hunniwell's frayed patience, never noted for long endurance, snapped again. "Gracious king! go and find out," he roared. "Whoever 'tis 'll die of old age before you get there." The slow smile drifted over Mr. Winslow's face. "Probably if I wait and give 'em a chance they'll come in here and have apoplexy instead," he said. "That seems to be the fashionable disease this afternoon. They won't stay out there and be lonesome; they'll come in here where it's private and there's a crowd. Eh? Yes, here they come." But the newest visitor did not come, like the others, uninvited into the "private" room. Instead he knocked on its door. When Winslow opened it he saw a small boy with a yellow envelope in his hand. "Hello, Josiah," hailed Jed, genially. "How's the president of the Western Union these days?" The boy grinned bashfully and opined the magnate just mentioned was "all right." Then he added: "Is Mr. Babbitt here? Mr. Bearse--Mr. Gabe Bearse--is over at the office and he said he saw Mr. Babbitt come in here." "Yes, he's here. Want to see him, do you?" "I've got a telegram for him." Mr. Babbitt himself came forward and took the yellow envelope. After absently turning it over several times, as so many people do when they receive an unexpected letter or message, he tore it open. Winslow and Captain Sam, watching him, saw his face, to which the color had returned in the last few minutes, grow white again. He staggered a little. Jed stepped toward him. "What is it, Phin?" he asked. "Somebody dead or--" Babbitt waved him away. "No," he gasped, chokingly. "No, let me be. I'm--I'm all right." Captain Sam, a little conscience-stricken, came forward. "Are you sick, Phin?" he asked. "Is there anything I can do?" Phineas glowered at him. "Yes," he snarled between his clenched teeth, "you can mind your own darned business." Then, turning to the boy who had brought the message, he ordered: "You get out of here." The frightened youngster scuttled away and Babbitt, the telegram rattling in his shaking hand, followed him. The captain, hurrying to the window, saw him go down the walk and along the road in the direction of his store. He walked like a man stricken. Captain Sam turned back again. "Now what in time was in that telegram?" he demanded. Jed, standing with his back toward him and looking out of the window on the side of the shop toward the sea, did not answer. "Do you hear me?" asked the captain. "That telegram struck him like a shock of paralysis. He went all to pieces. What on earth do you suppose was in it? Eh? Why don't you say somethin'? YOU don't know what was in it, do you?" Winslow shook his head. "No," he answered. "I don't know's I do." "You don't know as you do? Well, do you GUESS you do? Jed Winslow, what have you got up your sleeve?" The proprietor of the windmill shop slowly turned and faced him. "I don't know's there's anything there, Sam," he answered, "but-- but I shouldn't be much surprised if that telegram was from Leander." "Leander? Leander Babbitt? What . . . Eh? What in thunder do YOU want?" The last question was directed toward the window on the street side of the shop. Mr. Gabriel Bearse was standing on the outside of that window, energetically thumping on the glass. "Open her up! Open her up!" commanded Gabe. "I've got somethin' to tell you." Captain Sam opened the window. Gabriel's face was aglow with excitement. "Say! Say!" he cried. "Did he tell you? Did he tell you?" "Did who tell what?" demanded the captain. "Did Phin Babbitt tell you what was in that telegram he just got? What did he say when he read it? Did he swear? I bet he did! If that telegram wan't some surprise to old Babbitt, then--" "Do you know what 'twas--what the telegram was?" "Do I? You bet you I do! And I'm the only one in this town except Phin and Jim Bailey that does know. I was in the telegraph office when Jim took it over the wire. I see Jim was pretty excited. 'Well,' says he, 'if this won't be some jolt to old Phin!' he says. 'What will?' says I. 'Why,' says he--" "What was it?" demanded Captain Sam. "You're dyin' to tell us, a blind man could see that. Get it off your chest and save your life. What was it?" Mr. Bearse leaned forward and whispered. There was no real reason why he should whisper, but doing so added a mysterious, confidential tang, so to speak, to the value of his news. "'Twas from Leander--from Phin's own boy, Leander Babbitt, 'twas. 'Twas from him, up in Boston and it went somethin' like this: 'Have enlisted in the infantry. Made up my mind best thing to do. Will not be back. Have written particulars.' That was it, or pretty nigh it. Leander's enlisted. Never waited for no Exemption Board nor nothin', but went up and enlisted on his own hook without tellin' a soul he was goin' to. That's the way Bailey and me figger it up. Say, ain't that some news? Godfreys, I must hustle back to the post office and tell the gang afore anybody else gets ahead of me. So long!" He hurried away on his joyful errand. Captain Hunniwell closed the window and turned to face his friend. "Do you suppose that's true, Jed?" he asked. "Do you suppose it CAN be true?" Jed nodded. "Shouldn't be surprised," he said. "Good gracious king! Do you mean the boy went off up to Boston on his own hook, as that what's-his-name--Gab--says, and volunteered and got himself enlisted into the army?" "Shouldn't wonder, Sam." "Well, my gracious king! Why--why--no wonder old Babbitt looked as if the main topsail yard had fell on him. Tut, tut, tut! Well, I declare! Now what do you suppose put him up to doin' that?" Winslow sat down in his low chair again and picked up the wooden sailor and the paint brush. "Well, Sam," he said, slowly, "Leander's a pretty good boy." "Yes, I suppose he is, but he's Phin Babbitt's son." "I know, but don't it seem to you as if some sorts of fathers was like birthmarks and bow legs; they come early in life and a feller ain't to blame for havin' 'em? Sam, you ain't sorry the boy's volunteered, are you?" "Sorry! I should say not! For one thing his doin' it makes my job on the Exemption Board a mighty sight easier. There won't be any row there with Phineas now." "No-o, I thought 'twould help that. But that wan't the whole reason, Sam." "Reason for what? What do you mean?" "I mean that wan't my whole reason for tellin' Leander he'd better volunteer, better go up to Boston and enlist, same as he did. That was part, but 'twan't all." Captain Sam's eyes and mouth opened. He stared at the speaker in amazement. "You told him to volunteer?" he repeated. "You told him to go to Boston and-- YOU did? What on earth?" Jed's brush moved slowly down the wooden legs of his sailor man. "Leander and I are pretty good friends," he explained. "I like him and he--er--hum--I'm afraid that paint's kind of thick. Cal'late I'll have to thin it a little." Captain Sam condemned the paint to an eternal blister. "Go on! go on!" he commanded. "What about you and Leander? Finish her out. Can't you see you've got my head whirlin' like one of those windmills of yours? Finish her OUT!" Jed looked over his spectacles. "Oh!" he said. "Well, Leander's been comin' in here pretty frequent and we've talked about his affairs a good deal. He's always wanted to enlist ever since the war broke out." "He HAS?" "Why, sartin. Just the same as you would, or--or I hope I would, if I was young and--and," with a wistful smile, "different, and likely to be any good to Uncle Sam. Yes, Leander's been anxious to go to war, but his dad was so set against it all and kept hollerin' so about the boy's bein' needed in the store, that Leander didn't hardly know what to do. But then when he was drawn on the draft list he came in here and he and I had a long talk. 'Twas yesterday, after you'd told me about bein' put on the Board, you know. I could see the trouble there'd be between you and Phineas and--and--well, you see, Sam, I just kind of wanted that boy to volunteer. I--I don't know why, but--" He looked up from his work and stared dreamily out of the window. "I guess maybe 'twas because I've been wishin' so that I could go myself--or--do SOMETHIN' that was some good. So Leander and I talked and finally he said, 'Well, by George, I WILL go.' And--and--well, I guess that's all; he went, you see." The captain drew a long breath. "He went," he repeated. "And you knew he'd gone?" "No, I didn't know, but I kind of guessed." "You guessed, and yet all the time I've been here you haven't said a word about it till this minute." "Well, I didn't think 'twas much use sayin' until I knew." "Well, my gracious king, Jed Winslow, you beat all my goin' to sea! But you've helped Uncle Sam to a good soldier and you've helped me out of a nasty row. For my part I'm everlastin' obliged to you, I am so." Jed looked pleased but very much embarrassed. "Sho, sho," he exclaimed, hastily, "'twan't anything. Oh, say," hastily changing the subject, "I've got some money 'round here somewheres I thought maybe you'd take to the bank and deposit for me next time you went, if 'twan't too much trouble." "Trouble? Course 'tain't any trouble. Where is it?" Winslow put down his work and began to hunt. From one drawer of his work bench, amid nails, tools and huddles of papers, he produced a small bundle of banknotes; from another drawer another bundle. These, however, did not seem to satisfy him entirely. At last, after a good deal of very deliberate search, he unearthed more paper currency from the pocket of a dirty pair of overalls hanging on a nail, and emptied a heap of silver and coppers from a battered can on the shelf. Captain Hunniwell, muttering to himself, watched the collecting process. When it was completed, he asked: "Is this all?" "Eh? Yes, I guess 'tis. I can't seem to find any more just now. Maybe another batch'll turn up later. If it does I'll keep it till next time." The captain, suppressing his emotions, hastily counted the money. "Have you any idea how much there is here?" he asked. "No, I don't know's I have. There's been quite consider'ble comin' in last fortni't or so. Summer folks been payin' bills and one thing or 'nother. Might be forty or fifty dollars, I presume likely." "Forty or fifty! Nearer a hundred and fifty! And you keep it stuffed around in every junk hole from the roof to the cellar. Wonder to me you don't light your pipe with it. I shouldn't wonder if you did. How many times have I told you to deposit your money every three days anyhow? How many times?" Mr. Winslow seemed to reflect. "Don't know, Sam," he admitted. "Good many, I will give in. But-- but, you see, Sam, if--if I take it to the bank I'm liable to forget I've got it. Long's it's round here somewheres I--why, I know where 'tis and--and it's handy. See, don't you?" The captain shook his head. "Jed Winslow," he declared, "as I said to you just now you beat all my goin' to sea. I can't make you out. When I see how you act with money and business, and how you let folks take advantage of you, then I think you're a plain dum fool. And yet when you bob up and do somethin' like gettin' Leander Babbitt to volunteer and gettin' me out of that row with his father, then--well, then, I'm ready to swear you're as wise as King Solomon ever was. You're a puzzle to me, Jed. What are you, anyway--the dum fool or King Solomon?" Jed looked meditatively over his spectacles. The slow smile twitched the corners of his lips. "Well, Sam," he drawled, "if you put it to vote at town meetin' I cal'late the majority'd be all one way. But, I don't know"--; he paused, and then added, "I don't know, Sam, but it's just as well as 'tis. A King Solomon down here in Orham would be an awful lonesome cuss." CHAPTER III Upon a late September day forty-nine years and some months before that upon which Gabe Bearse came to Jed Winslow's windmill shop in Orham with the news of Leander Babbitt's enlistment, Miss Floretta Thompson came to that village to teach the "downstairs" school. Miss Thompson was an orphan. Her father had kept a small drug store in a town in western Massachusetts. Her mother had been a clergyman's daughter. Both had died when she was in her 'teens. Now, at twenty, she came to Cape Cod, pale, slim, with a wealth of light brown hair and a pair of large, dreamy brown eyes. Her taste in dress was peculiar, even eccentric, and Orham soon discovered that she, herself, was also somewhat eccentric. As a schoolteacher she was not an unqualified success. The "downstairs" curriculum was not extensive nor very exacting, but it was supposed to impart to the boys and girls of from seven to twelve a rudimentary knowledge of the three R's and of geography. In the first two R's, "readin' and 'ritin'," Miss Thompson was proficient. She wrote a flowery Spencerian, which was beautifully "shaded" and looked well on the blackboard, and reading was the dissipation of her spare moments. The third "R," 'rithmetic, she loathed. Youth, even at the ages of from seven to twelve, is only too proficient in learning to evade hard work. The fact that Teacher took no delight in traveling the prosaic highways of addition, multiplication and division, but could be easily lured to wander the flowery lanes of romantic fiction, was soon grasped by the downstairs pupils. The hour set for recitation by the first class in arithmetic was often and often monopolized by a hold-over of the first class in reading, while Miss Floretta, artfully spurred by questions asked by the older scholars, rhapsodized on the beauties of James Fenimore Cooper's "Uncas," or Dickens' "Little Nell," or Scott's "Ellen." Some of us antiques, then tow-headed little shavers in the front seats, can still remember Miss Floretta's rendition of the lines: "And Saxon--I am Roderick Dhu!" The extremely genteel, not to say ladylike, elocution of the Highland chief and the indescribable rising inflection and emphasis on the "I." These literary rambles had their inevitable effect, an effect noted, after a time, and called to the attention of the school committee by old Captain Lycurgus Batcheldor, whose two grandchildren were among the ramblers. "Say," demanded Captain Lycurgus, "how old does a young-one have to be afore it's supposed to know how much four times eight is? My Sarah's Nathan is pretty nigh ten and HE don't know it. Gave me three answers he did; first that 'twas forty-eight, then that 'twas eighty-four and then that he'd forgot what 'twas. But I noticed he could tell me a whole string about some feller called Lockintar or Lochinvar or some such outlandish name, and not only his name but where he came from, which was out west somewheres. A poetry piece 'twas; Nate said the teacher'd been speakin' it to 'em. I ain't got no objection to speakin' pieces, but I do object to bein' told that four times eight is eighty-four, 'specially when I'm buyin' codfish at eight cents a pound. I ain't on the school committee, but if I was--" So the committee investigated and when Miss Thompson's year was up and the question arose as to her re-engagement, there was considerable hesitancy. But the situation was relieved in a most unexpected fashion. Thaddeus Winslow, first mate on the clipper ship, "Owner's Favorite," at home from a voyage to the Dutch East Indies, fell in love with Miss Floretta, proposed, was accepted and married her. It was an odd match: Floretta, pale, polite, impractical and intensely romantic; Thad, florid, rough and to the point. Yet the married pair seemed to be happy together. Winslow went to sea on several voyages and, four years after the marriage, remained at home for what, for him, was a long time. During that time a child, a boy, was born. The story of the christening of that child is one of Orham's pet yarns even to this day. It seems that there was a marked disagreement concerning the name to be given him. Captain Thad had had an Uncle Edgar, who had been very kind to him when a boy. The captain wished to name his own youngster after this uncle. But Floretta's heart was set upon "Wilfred," her favorite hero of romance being Wilfred of Ivanhoe. The story is that the parents being no nearer an agreement on the great question, Floretta made a proposal of compromise. She proposed that her husband take up his stand by the bedroom window and the first male person he saw passing on the sidewalk below, the name of that person should be given to their offspring; a sporting proposition certainly. But the story goes on to detract a bit from the sporting element by explaining that Mrs. Winslow was expecting a call at that hour from the Baptist minister, and the Baptist minister's Christian name was "Clarence," which, if not quite as romantic as Wilfred, is by no means common and prosaic. Captain Thad, who had not been informed of the expected ministerial call and was something of a sport himself, assented to the arrangement. It was solemnly agreed that the name of the first male passer-by should be the name of the new Winslow. The captain took up his post of observation at the window and waited. He did not have to wait long. Unfortunately for romance, the Reverend Clarence was detained at the home of another parishioner a trifle longer than he had planned and the first masculine to pass the Winslow home was old Jedidah Wingate, the fish peddler. Mrs. Diadama Busteed, who was acting as nurse in the family and had been sworn in as witness to the agreement between husband and wife, declared to the day of her death that that death was hastened by the shock to her nervous and moral system caused by Captain Thad's language when old Jedidah hove in sight. He vowed over and over again that he would be everlastingly condemned if he would label a young-one of his with such a crashety-blank-blanked outrage of a name as "Jedidah." "Jedidiah" was bad enough, but there WERE a few Jedidiahs in Ostable County, whereas there was but one Jedidah. Mrs. Winslow, who did not fancy Jedidah any more than her husband did, wept; Captain Thad's profanity impregnated the air with brimstone. But they had solemnly sworn to the agreement and Mrs. Busteed had witnessed it, and an oath is an oath. Besides, Mrs. Winslow was inclined to think the whole matter guided by Fate, and, being superstitious as well as romantic, feared dire calamity if Fate was interfered with. It ended in a compromise and, a fortnight later, the Reverend Clarence, keeping his countenance with difficulty, christened a red-faced and protesting infant "Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow." Jedidah Edgar Wilfred grew up. At first he was called "Edgar" by his father and "Wilfred" by his mother. His teachers, day school and Sunday school, called him one or the other as suited their individual fancies. But his schoolmates and playfellows, knowing that he hated the name above all else on earth, gleefully hailed him as "Jedidah." By the time he was ten he was "Jed" Winslow beyond hope of recovery. Also it was settled locally that he was "queer"--not "cracked" or "lacking," which would have implied that his brain was affected--but just "queer," which meant that his ways of thinking and acting were different from those of Orham in general. His father, Captain Thaddeus, died when Jed was fifteen, just through the grammar school and ready to enter the high. He did not enter; instead, the need of money being pressing, he went to work in one of the local stores, selling behind the counter. If his father had lived he would, probably, have gone away after finishing high school and perhaps, if by that time the mechanical ability which he possessed had shown itself, he might even have gone to some technical school or college. In that case Jed Winslow's career might have been very, very different. But instead he went to selling groceries, boots, shoes, dry goods and notions for Mr. Seth Wingate, old Jedidah's younger brother. As a grocery clerk Jed was not a success, neither did he shine as a clerk in the post office, nor as an assistant to the local expressman. In desperation he began to learn the carpenter's trade and, because he liked to handle tools, did pretty well at it. But he continued to be "queer" and his absent-minded dreaminess was in evidence even then. "I snum I don't know what to make of him," declared Mr. Abijah Mullett, who was the youth's "boss." "Never know just what he's goin' to do or just what he's goin' to say. I says to him yesterday: 'Jed,' says I, 'you do pretty well with tools and wood, considerin' what little experience you've had. Did Cap'n Thad teach you some or did you pick it up yourself?' He never answered for a minute or so, seemed to be way off dreamin' in the next county somewheres. Then he looked at me with them big eyes of his and he drawled out: 'Comes natural to me, Mr. Mullett, I guess,' he says. 'There seems to be a sort of family feelin' between my head and a chunk of wood.' Now what kind of an answer was that, I want to know!" Jed worked at carpentering for a number of years, sometimes going as far away as Ostable to obtain employment. And then his mother was seized with the illness from which, so she said, she never recovered. It is true that Doctor Parker, the Orham physician, declared that she had recovered, or might recover if she cared to. Which of the pair was right does not really matter. At all events Mrs. Winslow, whether she recovered or not, never walked abroad again. She was "up and about," as they say in Orham, and did some housework, after a fashion, but she never again set foot across the granite doorstep of the Winslow cottage. Probably the poor woman's mind was slightly affected; it is charitable to hope that it was. It seems the only reasonable excuse for the oddity of her behavior during the last twenty years of her life, for her growing querulousness and selfishness and for the exacting slavery in which she kept her only son. During those twenty years whatever ambition Jedidah Edgar Wilfred may once have had was thoroughly crushed. His mother would not hear of his leaving her to find better work or to obtain promotion. She needed him, she wailed; he was her life, her all; she should die if he left her. Some hard-hearted townspeople, Captain Hunniwell among them, disgustedly opined that, in view of such a result, Jed should be forcibly kidnaped forthwith for the general betterment of the community. But Jed himself never rebelled. He cheerfully gave up his youth and early middle age to his mother and waited upon her, ran her errands, sat beside her practically every evening and read romance after romance aloud for her benefit. And his "queerness" developed, as under such circumstances it was bound to do. Money had to be earned and, as the invalid would not permit him to leave her to earn it, it was necessary to find ways of earning it at home. Jed did odd jobs of carpentering and cabinet making, went fishing sometimes, worked in gardens between times, did almost anything, in fact, to bring in the needed dollars. And when he was thirty-eight years old he made and sold his first "Cape Cod Winslow windmill," the forerunner of the thousands to follow. That mill, made in some of his rare idle moments and given to the child of a wealthy summer visitor, made a hit. The child liked it and other children wanted mills just like it. Then "grown-ups" among the summer folk took up the craze. "Winslow mills" became the fad. Jed built his little shop, or the first installment of it. Mrs. Floretta Winslow died when her son was forty. A merciful release, Captain Sam and the rest called it, but to Jed it was a stunning shock. He had no one to take care of now except himself and he did not know what to do. He moped about like a deserted cat. Finally he decided that he could not live in the old house where he was born and had lived all his life. He expressed his feelings concerning that house to his nearest friend, practically his sole confidant, Captain Sam. "I can't somehow seem to stand it, Sam," he said, solemnly. "I can't stay in that house alone any longer, it's--it's too sociable." The captain, who had expected almost anything but that, stared at him. "Sociable!" he repeated. "You're sailin' stern first, Jed. Lonesome's what you mean, of course." Jed shook his head. "No-o," he drawled, "I mean sociable. There's too many boys in there, for one thing." "Boys!" Captain Sam was beginning to be really alarmed now. "Boys! Say--say, Jed Winslow, you come along home to dinner with me. I bet you've forgot to eat anything for the last day or so-- been inventin' some new kind of whirlagig or other--and your empty stomach's gone to your head and made it dizzy. Boys! Gracious king! Come on home with me." Jed smiled his slow smile. "I don't mean real boys, Sam," he explained. "I mean me--I'm the boys. Nights now when I'm walkin' around in that house alone I meet myself comin' round every corner. Me when I was five, comin' out of the buttery with a cooky in each fist; and me when I was ten sittin' studyin' my lesson book in the corner; and me when I was fifteen, just afore Father died, sittin' all alone thinkin' what I'd do when I went to Boston Tech same as he said he was cal'latin' to send me. Then--" He paused and lapsed into one of his fits of musing. His friend drew a breath of relief. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Well, I don't mind your meetin' yourself. I thought first you'd gone off your head, blessed if I didn't. You're a queer critter, Jed. Get those funny notions from readin' so many books, I guess likely. Meetin' yourself! What an idea that is! I suppose you mean that, bein' alone in that house where you've lived since you was born, you naturally get to thinkin' about what used to be." Jed stared wistfully at the back of a chair. "Um-hm," he murmured, "and what might have been--and--and ain't." The captain nodded. Of all the people in Orham he, he prided himself, was the only one who thoroughly understood Jed Winslow. And sometimes he did partially understand him; this was one of the times. "Now--now--now," he said, hastily, "don't you get to frettin' yourself about your not amountin' to anything and all that. You've got a nice little trade of your own buildin' up here. What more do you want? We can't all be--er--Know-it-alls like Shakespeare, or-- or rich as Standard Oil Companies, can we? Look here, what do you waste your time goin' back twenty-five years and meetin' yourself for? Why don't you look ahead ten or fifteen and try to meet yourself then? You may be a millionaire, a--er--windmill trust or somethin' of that kind, by that time. Eh? Ha, ha!" Jed rubbed his chin. "When I meet myself lookin' like a millionaire," he observed, gravely, "I'll have to do the way you do at your bank, Sam--call in somebody to identify me." Captain Sam laughed. "Well, anyhow," he said, "don't talk any more foolishness about not livin' in your own house. If I was you--" Mr. Winslow interrupted. "Sam," he said, "the way to find out what you would do if you was me is to make sure WHAT you'd do--and then do t'other thing, or somethin' worse." "Oh, Jed, be reasonable." Jed looked over his spectacles. "Sam," he drawled, "if I was reasonable I wouldn't be me." And he lived no longer in the old house. Having made up his mind, he built a small two-room addition to his workshop and lived in that. Later he added a sleeping room--a sort of loft--and a little covered porch on the side toward the sea. Here, in pleasant summer twilights or on moonlight nights, he sat and smoked. He had a good many callers and but few real friends. Most of the townspeople liked him, but almost all considered him a joke, an oddity, a specimen to be pointed out to those of the summer people who were looking for "types." A few, like Mr. Gabriel Bearse, who distinctly did NOT understand him and who found his solemn suggestions and pointed repartee irritating at times, were inclined to refer to him in these moments of irritation as "town crank." But they did not really mean it when they said it. And some others, like Leander Babbitt or Captain Hunniwell, came to ask his advice on personal matters, although even they patronized him just a little. He had various nicknames, "Shavings" being the most popular. His peculiar business, the making of wooden mills, toys and weather vanes, had grown steadily. Now he shipped many boxes of these to other seashore and mountain resorts. He might have doubled his output had he chosen to employ help or to enlarge his plant, but he would not do so. He had rented the old Winslow house furnished once to a summer tenant, but he never did so again, although he had many opportunities. He lived alone in the addition to the little workshop, cooking his own meals, making his own bed, and sewing on his own buttons. And on the day following that upon which Leander Babbitt enrolled to fight for Uncle Sam, Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow was forty- five years old. He was conscious of that fact when he arose. It was a pleasant morning, the sun was rising over the notched horizon of the tumbling ocean, the breeze was blowing, the surf on the bar was frothing and roaring cheerily--and it was his birthday. The morning, the sunrise, the surf and all the rest were pleasant to contemplate--his age was not. So he decided not to contemplate it. Instead he went out and hoisted at the top of the short pole on the edge of the bluff the flag he had set there on the day when the United States declared war against the Hun. He hoisted it every fine morning and he took it in every night. He stood for a moment, watching the red, white and blue flapping bravely in the morning sunshine, then he went back into his little kitchen at the rear of the workshop and set about cooking his breakfast. The kitchen was about as big as a good-sized packing box and Jed, standing over the oilstove, could reach any shelf in sight without moving. He cooked his oatmeal porridge, boiled his egg and then sat down at the table in the next room--his combined living and dining-room and not very much bigger than the kitchen-- to eat. When he had finished, he washed the dishes, walked up to the post office for the mail and then, entering the workshop, took up the paint brush and the top sailor-man of the pile beside him and began work. This, except on Sundays, was his usual morning routine. It varied little, except that he occasionally sawed or whittled instead of painted, or, less occasionally still, boxed some of his wares for shipment. During the forenoon he had some visitors. A group of summer people from the hotel came in and, after pawing over and displacing about half of the movable stock, bought ten or fifteen dollars' worth and departed. Mr. Winslow had the satisfaction of hearing them burst into a shout of laughter as they emerged into the yard and the shrill voice of one of the females in the party rose above the hilarity with: "Isn't he the WEIRDEST thing!" And an accompanying male voice appraised him as "Some guy, believe me! S-o-o-me guy!" Jed winced a little, but he went on with his painting. On one's forty-fifth birthday one has acquired or should have acquired a certain measure of philosophical resignation. Other customers or lookers came and went. Maud Hunniwell, Captain Sam's daughter, dropped in on her way to the post office. The captain was a widower and Maud was his only child. She was, therefore, more than the apple of his eye, she was a whole orchard of apples. She was eighteen, pretty and vivacious, and her father made a thorough job of spoiling her. Not that the spoiling had injured her to any great extent, it had not as yet, but that was Captain Sam's good luck. Maud was wearing a new dress--she had a new one every week or so--and she came into the windmill shop to show it. Of course she would have denied that that was the reason for her coming, but the statement stands, nevertheless. She and Jed were great chums and had been since she could walk. She liked him, took his part when she heard him criticized or made fun of, and was always prettily confidential and friendly when they were alone together. Of course there was a touch of superiority and patronage in her friendship. She should not be blamed for this; all Orham, consciously or unconsciously, patronized Jed Winslow. She came into the inner shop and sat down upon the same upturned box upon which her father had sat the afternoon before. Her first remark, after "good mornings" had been exchanged, was concerning the "Private" sign on the inner side of the door. "What in the world have you put that sign inside here for?" she demanded. Mr. Winslow explained, taking his own deliberate time in making the explanation. Miss Hunniwell wrinkled her dainty upturned nose and burst into a trill of laughter. "Oh, that's lovely," she declared, "and just like you, besides. And do you think Gabe Bearse will go back into the other room when he sees it?" Jed looked dreamily over his spectacles at the sign. "I don't know," he drawled. "If I thought he'd go wherever that sign was I ain't sure but I'd tack it on the cover of the well out in the yard yonder." His fair visitor laughed again. "Why, Jed," she exclaimed. "You wouldn't want to drown him, would you?" Jed seemed to reflect. "No-o," he answered, slowly, "don't know's I would--not in my well, anyhow." Miss Hunniwell declared that that was all nonsense. "You wouldn't drown a kitten," she said. "I know that because when Mrs. Nathaniel Rogers' old white cat brought all her kittens over here the first of this summer you wouldn't even put them out in the yard at night, to say nothing of drowning them. All six and the mother cat stayed here and fairly swarmed over you and ate you out of house and home. Father said he believed they fed at the first table and you were taking what was left. It was a mercy the old cat decided to lead them back to the Rogers' again or I don't know WHAT might have become of you by this time." Jed seemed to be thinking; there was a reminiscent twinkle in his eye. "The old cat didn't lead 'em back," he said. "Nathaniel took 'em back. Didn't I ever tell you about that?" "No, you didn't. You KNOW you didn't. Mr. Rogers took them back? I can't believe it. He told everywhere about town that he was glad to get rid of the whole family and, as you and the cats seemed to be mutually happy together, he wasn't going to disturb you. He thought it was a great joke on you. And he took them back himself? Why?" Mr. Winslow rubbed his chin. "I don't know's I'd ought to say anything about it," he said. "I haven't afore. I wouldn't interfere with Nate's sales for anything." "Sales? Sales of what? Oh, you mean thing! Don't be so provoking! Tell me the whole story this minute." Jed painted a moment or two. Then he said: "We-ell, Maud, you see those kittens got to be kind of a nuisance. They was cunnin' and cute and all that, but they was so everlastin' lively and hungry that they didn't give me much of a chance. I was only one, you see, and they had a majority vote every time on who should have the bed and the chairs and the table and one thing or 'nother. If I sat down I sat on a cat. If I went to bed I laid down on cats, and when I turned them out and turned in myself they came and laid down on ME. I slept under fur blankets most of June. And as for eatin'-- Well, every time I cooked meat or fish they sat down in a circle and whooped for some. When I took it off the fire and put it in a plate on the table, I had to put another plate and a--a plane or somethin' heavy on top of it or they'd have had it sartin sure. Then when I sat down to eat it they formed a circle again like a reg'lar band and tuned up and hollered. Lord a-mercy, HOW they did holler! And if one of the kittens stopped, run out of wind or got a sore throat or anything, the old cat would bite it to set it goin' again. She wan't goin' to have any shirkin' in HER orchestra. I ate to music, as you might say, same as I've read they do up to Boston restaurants. And about everything I did eat was stuffed with cats' hairs. Seemed sometimes as if those kittens was solid fur all the way through; they never could have shed all that hair from the outside. Somebody told me that kittens never shed hair, 'twas only full grown cats did that. I don't believe it. Nate Rogers' old maltee never shed all that alone; allowin' her a half barrel, there was all of another barrel spread around the premises. No-o, those cats was a good deal of a nuisance. Um-hm. . . . Yes, they was. . . ." He paused and, apparently having forgotten that he was in the middle of a story, began to whistle lugubriously and to bend all his other energies to painting. Miss Hunniwell, who had laughed until her eyes were misty, wiped them with her handkerchief and commanded him to go on. "Tell me the rest of it," she insisted. "How did you get rid of them? How did Mr. Rogers come to take them back?" "Eh? . . . Oh, why, you see, I went over to Nate's three or four times and told him his cat and kittens were here and I didn't feel right to deprive him of 'em any longer. He said never mind, I could keep 'em long as I wanted to. I said that was about as long as I had kept 'em. Then he said he didn't know's he cared about ever havin' 'em again; said he and his wife had kind of lost their taste for cats, seemed so. I--well, I hinted that, long as the tribe was at my house I wan't likely to have a chance to taste much of anything, but it didn't seem to have much effect. Then--" "Yes, yes; go on! go on!" "Oh. . . . Then one day Nate he happened to be in here--come to borrow somethin', some tool seems to me 'twas--and the cats was climbin' round promiscuous same as usual. And one of the summer women came in while he was here, wanted a mill for her little niece or somethin'. And she saw one of the animals and she dropped everything else and sang out: 'Oh, what a beautiful kitten! What unusual coloring! May I see it?' Course she was seein' it already, but I judged she meant could she handle it, so I tried to haul the critter loose from my leg--there was generally one or more of 'em shinnin' over me somewhere. It squalled when I took hold of it and she says: 'Oh, it doesn't want to come, does it! It must have a very affectionate disposition to be so attached to you.' Seemed to me 'twas attached by its claws more'n its disposition, but I pried it loose and handed it to her. Then she says again, 'What unusual colorin'! Will you sell this one to me? I'll give you five dollars for it.'" He stopped again. Another reminder from Miss Hunniwell was necessary to make him continue. "And you sold one of those kittens for five dollars?" she cried. "No-o." "You didn't? Why, you foolish man! Why not?" "I never had a chance. Afore I could say a word Nate Rogers spoke up and said the kittens belonged to him. Then she saw another one that she hadn't seen afore and she says: 'Oh, that one has more unusual colorin's even than this. I never saw such color in a cat.' Course she meant ON a cat but we understood what she meant. 'Are they a very rare breed?' she asked. Nate said they was and--" Miss Hunniwell interrupted. "But they weren't, were they?" she cried. "I never knew they were anything more than plain tabby." Jed shook his head. "Nate said they was," he went on solemnly. "He said they were awful rare. Then she wanted to know would he sell one for five dollars. He said no, he couldn't think of it." "Why, the greedy old thing!" "And so he and she had it back and forth and finally they struck a bargain at seven dollars for the one that looked most like a crazy quilt." "Seven dollars for a CAT? What color was it, for goodness' sake?" "Oh, all kinds, seemed so. Black and white and maltee and blue and red and green--" "Green! What ARE you talking about? Who ever saw a green cat?" "This woman saw one that was part green and she bought it. Then she said she'd take it right along in her car. Said she had a friend that was as loony about cats as she was and she was goin' to fetch her right down the very next day. And a couple of hours after she'd gone Nate and his boy came back with a clothes basket with a board over the top and loaded in the balance of the family and went off with 'em. I ain't seen a hair of 'em since--no, I won't say that quite, but I ain't seen THEM." "And didn't he give you any of the seven dollars?" "No-o." "But you had been feeding those kittens and their mother for weeks." "Ye-es." "But didn't you ASK for anything?" "We-ll, I told Nate he might maybe leave one of the kittens, so's I could have a--er--souvenir of the visit, but he wouldn't do it. Said those kittens was rare and--er--precious, or words to that effect. He didn't intend to let another go as cheap as he had that one." "Oh. . . . I see. I remember now; I heard some one saying something, early in July, about the sign on the Rogers' front fence. 'Rare Cats for Sale' they said it was. I think. Of course, I never thought of THOSE kittens. He must have sold them all, for the sign isn't there now." Jed whistled a few bars. "I don't hardly think he's sold 'em," he said. "I presume likely he's just gone out of the business." "I don't see why he shouldn't sell them. Green cats ought to sell quickly enough, I should think. Were they green, honest and truly, Jed?" Mr. Winslow nodded. "They were that mornin'," he drawled, solemnly. "That morning? What do you mean?" "We-ll, you see, Maud, those kittens were into everything and over everything most of the time. Four of 'em had got in here early afore I came downstairs that day and had been playin' hide and hoot amongst my paint pots. They was green in spots, sure enough, but I had my doubts as to its bein' fast color." Maud laughed joyfully over the secret of the green pussies. "I wish I might have seen that woman's face after the colors began to wear off her 'rare' kitten," she said. Jed smiled slightly. "Nathan saw it," he said. "I understood he had to take back the kitten and give up the seven dollars. He don't hardly speak to me nowadays. Seems to think 'twas my fault. I don't hardly think 'twas, do you?" Miss Hunniwell's call lasted almost an hour. Besides a general chat concerning Leander Babbit's voluntary enlistment, the subject which all Orham had discussed since the previous afternoon, she had a fresh bit of news. The government had leased a large section of land along the bay at East Harniss, the next village to Orham and seven or eight miles distant, and there was to be a military aviation camp there. "Oh, it's true!" she declared, emphatically. "Father has known that the Army people have been thinking of it for some time, but it was really decided and the leases signed only last Saturday. They will begin building the barracks and the buildings--the--oh, what do they call those big sheds they keep the aeroplanes in?" "The hangars," said Winslow, promptly. "Yes, that's it. They will begin building those right away." She paused and looked at him curiously. "How did you know they called them hangars, Jed?" she asked. "Eh? . . . Oh, I've read about 'em in the newspapers, that's all. . . . H-u-u-m. . . . So we'll have aeroplanes flyin' around here pretty soon, I suppose. Well, well!" "Yes. And there'll be lots and lots of the flying men--the what- do-you-call-'ems--aviators, and officers in uniform--and all sorts. What fun! I'm just crazy about uniforms!" Her eyes snapped. Jed, in his quiet way, seemed excited, too. He was gazing absently out of the window as if he saw, in fancy, a procession of aircraft flying over Orham flats. "They'll be flyin' up out there," he said, musingly. "And I'll see 'em--I will. Sho!" Miss Hunniwell regarded him mischievously. "Jed," she asked, "would you like to be an aviator?" Jed's answer was solemnly given. "I'm afraid I shouldn't be much good at the job," he drawled. His visitor burst into another laugh. He looked at her over his glasses. "What is it?" he asked. "Oh, nothing; I--I was just thinking of you in a uniform, that's all." Jed smiled his slow, fleeting smile. "I guess likely I would be pretty funny," he admitted. "Any Germans I met would probably die laughin' and that might help along some." But after Miss Hunniwell had gone he sat for some minutes gazing out of the window, the wistful, dreamy look on his lean, homely face. Then he sighed, and resumed his painting. That afternoon, about half past five, he was still at his task when, hearing the doorbell ring, he rose and went into the front shop. To his astonishment the shop was empty. He looked about for the expected customer or caller, whoever he or she might be, and saw no one. He stepped to the window and looked out, but there was no one on the steps or in the yard. He made up his mind that he must have dreamed of the bell-ringing and was turning back to the inner room, when a voice said: "Please, are you the windmill man?" Jed started, turned again, and stared about him. "Please, sir, here I am," said the voice. Jed, looking down, instead of up or on a level, saw his visitor then. That is, he saw a tumbled shock of curls and a pair of big round eyes looking up at him over a stock of weather vanes. "Hello!" he exclaimed, in surprise. The curls and eyes came out from behind the stack of vanes. They were parts of a little girl, and the little girl made him a demure little courtesy. "How do you do?" she said. Jed regarded her in silence for a moment. Then, "Why, I'm fair to middlin' smart just at present," he drawled. "How do YOU find yourself to-day?" The young lady's answer was prompt and to the point. "I'm nicely, thank you," she replied, and added: "I was sick at my stomach yesterday, though." This bit of personal information being quite unexpected, Mr. Winslow scarcely knew what comment to make in reply to it. "Sho!" he exclaimed. "Was you, though?" "Yes. Mamma says she is 'clined to think it was the two whole bananas and the choc'late creams, but I think it was the fried potatoes. I was sick twice--no, three times. Please, I asked you something. Are you the windmill man?" Jed, by this time very much amused, looked her over once more. She was a pretty little thing, although just at this time it is doubtful if any of her family or those closely associated with her would have admitted it. Her face was not too clean, her frock was soiled and mussed, her curls had been blown into a tangle and there were smooches, Jed guessed them to be blackberry stains, on her hands, around her mouth and even across her small nose. She had a doll, its raiment in about the same condition as her own, tucked under one arm. Hat she had none. Mr. Winslow inspected her in his accustomed deliberate fashion. "Guess you've been havin' a pretty good time, haven't you?" he inquired. The small visitor's answer was given with dignity. "Yes," she said. "Will you please tell me if you are the windmill man?" Jed accepted the snub with outward humility and inward appreciation. "Why, yes," he admitted; "I presume likely I'm the windmill man. Is there anything I can do for you this evenin'?" Apparently there was, for the child, untucking the doll from beneath her right arm and tucking it under the left, pointed her right hand at a wooden weather-vane in the shape of a sperm whale and asked: "Please, does that fish go 'round?" "Go 'round? Go 'round where?" "I mean does it go 'round and 'round on a stick?" "Cal'late it does when it has a chance." "And does it make the wind blow no'theast by no'th and--and like that?" "Eh? Make the wind blow--how?" "I mean does it make the wind blow different ways, no'theast by no'th and cantin' 'round to the sou-east and--and those ways? Captain Hedge has got a fish up on his barn that used to do that, but now it won't 'cause he cal'lates it's rusted fast. He said he guessed he would have to be getting a new one. When I saw the fishes out in your yard I thought about it and I thought I would come in and see if you had the right kind. Is this one a--a gunfish?" "A WHICH fish?" "A gunfish. No, that isn't it. A--a swordfish, that's it. Captain Hedge's is a swordfish." "We-ll, that particular one got a wrong start and ended up by bein' a whale, but I shouldn't wonder if we could find a swordfish if we looked. Yes, here's one. Think that would do?" The child looked it over very carefully. "Yes," she said, "I think it would. If you're sure it would make the wind go right." "We-ll, I guess likely I could guarantee that fish would go 'most any way the wind did, unless it should take a notion to blow straight up and down, which don't happen often. So you know Cap'n Hedge, do you? Relation of his, are you? Visitin' there?" "No. Mamma and I are boarding at Mrs. Smalley's, but I go over to call on Captain Hedge 'most every day." "Sho! Want to know! Well, that's nice and sociable. So you're boardin' at Luretta Smalley's. My! you're consider'ble ways from home, ain't you? Is your mamma with you?" For the first time the youthful caller's poise seemed a trifle shaken. "No-o . . . no," she stammered, and added, hastily: "How much is this fish, please?" "I generally sell that sort of fish for about two dollars." He looked out of the window, hummed a tune, and then added: "Let's see, what did you say your name was?" "I didn't, but it's Barbara Armstrong. HOW much did you say the fish was?" "Eh? . . . Oh, two dollars." Miss Armstrong looked very much disappointed. "Oh, dear," she sighed. "I didn't know it would be as much as that. I--I'm 'fraid I can't get it." "So? That's too bad. What was you cal'latin' to do with it, if you did get it?" "I was going to give it to Captain Hedge. He misses his, now that it's rusted so fast that it won't go. But I can't get it. I haven't got but fourteen cents, ten that Mamma gave me this morning for being a good girl and taking my medicine nice yesterday, and four that Mrs. Smalley gave me for getting the eggs last week. And two dollars is EVER so much more than fourteen cents, isn't it?" "Hum. . . . 'Tis a little more, that's right. It's considered more by the--um--er--best authorities. Hum . . . er . . . h-u-u-m. Sometimes, though, I do take off a little somethin' for spot cash. You'd pay spot cash, I presume likely, wouldn't you?" "I--I don't know what spot cash is. I'd pay fourteen cents." Jed rubbed his chin. "We-e-ll," he drawled, gravely, "I'm afraid I couldn't hardly knock off all that that comes to. But," taking another and much smaller vane from a shelf, "there's an article, not quite so big, that I usually get fifty cents for. What do you think of that?" The child took the miniature swordfish and inspected it carefully. "It's a baby one, isn't it," she observed. "Will it tell wind just as good as the big one?" "Tell wind? Hum! . . . Don't know's I ever heard it put just that way afore. But a clock tells time, so I suppose there's no reason why a vane shouldn't tell wind. Yes, I guess 'twill tell wind all right." "Then I think it might do." She seemed a little doubtful. "Only," she added, "fifty cents is lots more than fourteen, isn't it?" Mr. Winslow admitted that it was. "But I tell you," he said, after another period of reflection, "seein' as it's you I'll make a proposal to you. Cap'n Eri Hedge is a pretty good friend of mine, same as he is of yours. Suppose you and I go in partners. You put in your fourteen cents and I'll put in the rest of the swordfish. Then you can take it to Cap'n Eri and tell him that we're givin' it to him together. You just consider that plan for a minute now, will you?" Miss Armstrong looked doubtful. "I--I don't know as I know what you mean," she said. "What did you want me to do?" "Why, consider the plan. You know what 'consider' means, don't you?" "I know a Mother Goose with it in. That one about the piper and the cow: 'He took up his pipes and he played her a tune, Consider, old cow, consider.' But I don't know as I SURELY know what he wanted the cow to do? Does 'consider' mean see if you like it?" "That's the idea. Think it over and see if you'd like to go halves with me givin' the fish to Cap'n Hedge." The curls moved vigorously up and down. "I think I should," she decided. "Good! Now you wait and I'll do it up." He wrapped the toy vane in a piece of paper and handed it to his small patron. She gravely produced a miniature velvet purse with the remnants of some bead fringe hanging to its lower edge and laid a dime and four pennies on the top of a packing case between them. It was growing dark in the shop and Jed lighted one of the bracket lamps. Returning, he found the coins laid in a row and Miss Armstrong regarding them somewhat soberly. "There isn't any MORE than fourteen, is there?" she asked. "I mean--I mean fourteen cents takes all of it, doesn't it?" Jed looked at her face. His eye twinkled. "Well, suppose it didn't?" he asked. "What then?" She hesitated. "Why," she stammered, "if--if there was ONE left over I--maybe I could buy something tomorrow at the candy store. Not to-day, 'cause I told Mamma I wouldn't to-day 'cause I was sick at my stomach yesterday--but to-morrow I could." Mr. Winslow carefully counted the coins and then, spreading them out on his big palm, showed them to her. "There!" he said. "Now you've given me the fourteen cents. I've got 'em, haven't I?" Miss Barbara solemnly nodded. "Yes," continued Jed. "Now I'll put 'em back in your wallet again. There they are, shut up in the wallet. Now you put the wallet in your pocket. Now take your fish bundle under your arm. There! now everything's settled. You've got the fish, haven't you? Sartin'. Yes, and I've been paid for it, haven't I?" The child stared at him. "But--but--" she began. "Now--now don't let's argue about it," pleaded Jed, plaintively. "Argum always gives me the--er--epizootic or somethin'. You saw me have the money right in my hand. It's all settled; think it over and see if it ain't. You've got the fish and I've HAD the fourteen cents. Now run right along home and don't get lost. Good-night." He led her gently to the door and closed it behind her. Then, smiling and shaking his head, he returned to the inner shop, where he lit the lamps and sat down for another bit of painting before supper. But that bit was destined not to be done that night. He had scarcely picked up his brush before the doorbell rang once more. Returning to the outer room, he found his recent visitor, the swordfish under one arm and the doll under the other, standing in the aisle between the stacked mills and vanes and looking, so it seemed to him, considerably perturbed. "Well, well!" he exclaimed. "Back again so soon? What's the matter; forget somethin', did you?" Miss Armstrong shook her head. "No-o," she said. "But--but--" "Yes? But what?" "Don't you think--don't you think it is pretty dark for little girls to be out?" Jed looked at her, stepped to the door, opened it and looked out, and then turned back again. "Why," he admitted, "it is gettin' a little shadowy in the corners, maybe. It will be darker in an hour or so. But you think it's too dark for little girls already, eh?" She nodded. "I don't think Mamma would like me to be out when it's so awful dark," she said. "Hum! . . . Hum. . . . Does your mamma know where you are?" The young lady's toe marked a circle on the shop floor. "No-o," she confessed, "I--I guess she doesn't, not just exactly." "I shouldn't be surprised. And so you've come back because you was afraid, eh?" She swallowed hard and edged a little nearer to him. "No-o," she declared, stoutly, "I--I wasn't afraid, not very; but-- but I thought the--the swordfish was pretty heavy to carry all alone and--and so--" Jed laughed aloud, something that he rarely did. "Good for you, sis!" he exclaimed. "Now you just wait until I get my hat and we'll carry that heavy fish home together." Miss Armstrong looked decidedly happier. "Thank you very much," she said. "And--and, if you please, my name is Barbara." CHAPTER IV The Smalley residence, where Mrs. Luretta Smalley, relict of the late Zenas T., accommodated a few "paying guests," was nearly a mile from the windmill shop and on the Orham "lower road." Mr. Winslow and his new acquaintance took the short cuts, through by- paths and across fields, and the young lady appeared to have thoroughly recovered from her misgivings concerning the dark--in reality it was scarcely dusk--and her doubts concerning her ability to carry the "heavy" swordfish without help. At all events she insisted upon carrying it alone, telling her companion that she thought perhaps he had better not touch it as it was so very, very brittle and might get broken, and consoling him by offering to permit him to carry Petunia, which fragrant appellation, it appeared, was the name of the doll. "I named her Petunia after a flower," she explained. "I think she looks like a flower, don't you?" If she did it was a wilted one. However, Miss Armstrong did not wait for comment on the part of her escort, but chatted straight on. Jed learned that her mother's name was Mrs. Ruth Phillips Armstrong. "It used to be Mrs. Seymour Armstrong, but it isn't now, because Papa's name was Doctor Seymour Armstrong and he died, you know." And they lived in a central Connecticut city, but perhaps they weren't going to live there any more because Mamma had sold the house and didn't know exactly WHAT to do. And they had been in Orham ever since before the Fourth of July, and they liked it EVER so much, it was so quaint and--and "franteek"-- Jed interrupted here. "So quaint and what?" he demanded. "Franteek." Miss Barbara herself seemed a little doubtful of the word. At any rate Mamma said it was something like that, and it meant they liked it anyway. So Mr. Winslow was left to ponder whether "antique" or "unique" was intended and to follow his train of thought wherever it chanced to lead him, while the child prattled on. They came in sight of the Smalley front gate and Jed came out of his walking trance to hear her say: "Anyway, we like it all but the sal'ratus biscuits and the coffee and THEY are dreadful. Mamma thinks it's made of chickenry--the coffee, I mean." At the gate Jed's "queerness," or shyness, came upon him. The idea of meeting Mrs. Armstrong or even the members of the Smalley family he shrank from. Barbara invited him to come in, but he refused even to accompany her to the door. "I'll just run along now," he said, hurriedly. "Good night." The child put out her hand. "Good night," she said. "Thank you very much for helping me carry the fish home. I'm coming to see you again some day." She scampered up the walk. Jed, waiting in the shadow of the lilac bushes by the fence, saw her rattle the latch of the door, saw the door open and the child caught up in the arms of a woman, who cried: "Oh, Babbie, dear, where HAVE you been? Mamma was SO frightened!" He smiled over the memory of the little girl's visit more than once that evening. He was very fond of children and their society did not embarrass or annoy him as did the company of most grown-ups-- strangers, that is. He remembered portions of Miss Barbara's conversation and determined to repeat them to Captain Sam Hunniwell, the next time the latter called. And that next time was the following forenoon. Captain Sam, on the way to his office at the bank, stopped his car at the edge of the sidewalk and came into the shop. Jed, having finished painting wooden sailors for the present, was boxing an assorted collection of mills and vanes to be sent South, for a certain demand for "Winslow mills" was developing at the winter as well as the summer resorts. It was far from winter yet, but this purchaser was forehanded. "Hello, Jed," hailed the captain, "busy as usual. You've got the busy bee a mile astern so far as real hustlin' is concerned." Jed took a nail from the half dozen held between his lips and applied its point to the box top. His sentences for the next few minutes were mumbled between nails and punctuated with blows of the hammer. "The busy bee," he mumbled, "can sting other folks. He don't get stung much himself. Collectin' honey's easier, I cal'late, than collectin' money." Captain Sam grunted. "Are you stung again?" he demanded. "Who did it this time?" Jed pointed with the hammer to an envelope lying on a pile of wooden crows. The captain took up the envelope and inspected its contents. "'We regret to inform you,' he read aloud, 'that the Funny Novelty Company of this town went into bankruptcy a month ago. "'JOHN HOLWAY.'" "Humph!" he sniffed. "That's short and sweet. Owed you somethin', I presume likely?" Jed nodded. "Seventeen dollars and three cents," he admitted, between the remaining nails. "Sho! Well, if you could get the seventeen dollars you'd throw off the three cents, wouldn't you?" "No-o." "You wouldn't? Why not?" Jed pried a crookedly driven nail out again and substituted a fresh one. "Can't afford to," he drawled. "That's the part I'll probably get." "Guess you're right. Who's this John Holway?" "Eh. . . . Why, when he ordered the mills of me last summer he was president of the Funny Novelty Company up there to Manchester." "Good Lord! Well, I admire his nerve. How did you come to sell these--er--Funny folks, in the first place?" Mr. Winslow looked surprised. "Why, they wrote and sent an order," he replied. "Did, eh? And you didn't think of lookin' 'em up to see whether they was good for anything or good for nothin'? Just sailed in and hurried off the stuff, I presume likely?" Jed nodded. "Why--why, yes, of course," he said. "You see, they said they wanted it right away." His friend groaned. "Gracious king!" he exclaimed. "How many times have I told you to let me look up credits for you when you get an order from a stranger? Well, there's no use talkin' to you. Give me this letter. I'll see what I can squeeze out of your Funny friend. . . . But, say," he added, "I can't stop but a minute, and I ran in to ask you if you'd changed your mind about rentin' the old house here. If you have, I believe I've got a good tenant for you." Jed looked troubled. He laid down the hammer and took the last nail from his mouth. "Now--now, Sam," he began, "you know--" "Oh, I know you've set your thick head dead against rentin' it at all, but that's silly, as I've told you a thousand times. The house is empty and it doesn't do any house good to stay empty. Course if 'twas anybody but you, Jed Winslow, you'd live in it yourself instead of campin' out in this shack here." Jed sat down on the box he had just nailed and, taking one long leg between his big hands, pulled its knee up until he could have rested his chin upon it without much inconvenience. "I know, Sam," he drawled gravely, "but that's the trouble--I ain't been anybody but me for forty-five years." The captain smiled, in spite of his impatience. "And you won't be anybody else for the next forty-five," he said, "I know that. But all the same, bein' a practical, more or less sane man myself, it makes me nervous to see a nice, attractive, comfortable little house standin' idle while the feller that owns it eats and sleeps in a two-by-four sawmill, so to speak. And, not only that, but won't let anybody else live in the house, either. I call that a dog in the manger business, and crazy besides." The big foot at the end of the long leg swung slowly back and forth. Mr. Winslow looked absently at the roof. "DON'T look like that!" snapped Captain Sam. "Come out of it! Wake up! It always gives me the fidgets to see you settin' gapin' at nothin'. What are you daydreamin' about now, eh?" Jed turned and gazed over his spectacles. "I was thinkin'," he observed, "that most likely that dog himself was crazy. If he wasn't he wouldn't have got into the manger. I never saw a dog that wanted to climb into a manger, did you, Sam?" "Oh, confound the manger and the dog, too! Look here, Jed; if I found you a good tenant would you rent 'em that house of yours?" Jed looked more troubled than ever. "Sam," he began, "you know I'd do 'most anything to oblige you, but--" "Oblige me! This ain't to oblige me. It's to oblige you." "Oh, then I won't do it." "Well, then, 'tis to oblige me. It'll oblige me to have you show some sense. Come on, Jed. These people I've got in mind are nice people. They want to find a little house and they've come to me at the bank for advice about findin' it. It's a chance for you, a real chance." Jed rocked back and forth. He looked genuinely worried. "Who are they?" he asked, after a moment "Can't name any names yet." Another period of reflection. Then: "City folks or Orham folks?" inquired Mr. Winslow. "City folks." Some of the worried look disappeared. Jed was plainly relieved and more hopeful. "Oh, then they won't want it," he declared. "City folks want to hire houses in the spring, not along as late in the summer as this." "These people do. They're thinkin' of livin' here in Orham all the year round. It's a first-rate chance for you, Jed. Course, I know you don't really need the money, perhaps, but--well, to be real honest, I want these folks to stay in Orham--they're the kind of folks the town needs--and I want 'em contented. I think they would be contented in your house. You let those Davidsons from Chicago have the place that summer, but you've never let anybody so much as consider it since. What's the real reason? You've told me as much as a dozen, but I'll bet anything you've never told me the real one. 'Twas somethin' the Davidsons did you didn't like--but what?" Jed's rocking back and forth on the box became almost energetic and his troubled expression more than ever apparent. "Now--now, Sam," he begged, "I've told you all about that ever and ever so many times. There wasn't anything, really." "There was, too. What was it?" Jed suffered in silence for two or three minutes. "What was the real reason? Out with it," persisted Captain Hunniwell. "Well--well, 'twas--'twas--" desperately, "'twas the squeakin' and-- and squealin'." "Squeakin' and squealin'? Gracious king! What are you talkin' about?" "Why--the--the mills, you know. The mills and vanes outside on--on the posts and the fence. They squeaked and--and sometimes they squealed awful. And he didn't like it." "Who didn't?" "Colonel Davidson. He said they'd got to stop makin' that noise and I said I'd oil 'em every day. And--and I forgot it." "Yes--well, I ain't surprised to death, exactly. What then?" "Well--well, you see, they were squealin' worse than usual one mornin' and Colonel Davidson he came in here and--and I remembered I hadn't oiled 'em for three days. And I--I said how horrible the squealin' was and that I'd oil 'em right away and--and--" "Well, go on! go on!" "And when I went out to do it there wasn't any wind and the mills wasn't goin' at all. You see, 'twas his oldest daughter takin' her singin' lessons in the house with the window open." Captain Sam put back his head and shouted. Jed looked sadly at the floor. When the captain could speak he asked: "And you mean to tell me that was the reason you wouldn't let the house again?" "Er--why, yes." "I know better. You didn't have any row with the Davidsons. You couldn't row with anybody, anyhow; and besides the Colonel himself told me they would have taken the house the very next summer but you wouldn't rent it to 'em. And you mean to say that yarn you've just spun was the reason?" "Why--yes." "Rubbish! You've told me a dozen reasons afore, but I'm bound to say this is the most foolish yet. All right, keep the real reason to yourself, then. But I tell you what I'm goin' to do to get even with you: I'm goin' to send these folks down to look at your house and I shan't tell you who they are or when they're comin'." The knee slipped down from Mr. Winslow's grasp and his foot struck the floor with a crash. He made a frantic clutch at his friend's arm. "Oh, now, Sam," he cried, in horror, "don't do that! Don't talk so! You don't mean it! Come here! . . . Sam!" But the captain was at the door. "You bet I mean it!" he declared. "Keep your weather eye peeled, Jed. They'll be comin' 'most any time now. And if you have ANY sense you'll let 'em the house. So long!" He drove away in his little car. Jed Winslow, left standing in the shop doorway, staring after him, groaned in anxious foreboding. He groaned a good many times during the next few hours. Each time the bell rang announcing the arrival of a visitor he rose to answer it perfectly sure that here were the would-be tenants whom his friend, in the mistaken kindness of his heart, was sending to him. Not that he had the slightest idea of renting his old home, but he dreaded the ordeal of refusing. In fact he was not sure that he could refuse, not sure that he could invent a believable excuse for doing so. Another person would not have sought excuses, would have declared simply that the property was not for rent, but Jed Winslow was not that other person; he was himself, and ordinary methods of procedure were not his. Two or three groups of customers came in, purchased and departed. Captain Jerry Burgess dropped in to bring the Winslow mail, which in this case consisted of an order, a bill and a circular setting forth the transcendent healing qualities of African Balm, the Foe of Rheumatism. Mr. Bearse happened in to discuss the great news of the proposed aviation camp and to tell with gusto and detail how Phineas Babbitt had met Captain Hunniwell "right square in front of the bank" and had not spoken to him. "No, sir, never said a word to him no more'n if he wan't there. What do you think of that? And they say Leander wrote his dad that he thought he was goin' to like soldierin' fust-rate, and Mrs. Sarah Mary Babbitt she told Melissa Busteed that her husband's language when he read that was somethin' sinful. She said she never was more thankful that they had lightnin' rods on the roof, 'cause such talk as that was enough to fetch down fire from heaven." CHAPTER V It was nearly noon when Jed, entering the front shop in answer to the bell, found there the couple the sight of which caused his heart to sink. Here they were, the house hunters--there was no doubt of it in his mind. The man was short and broad and protuberant and pompous. The woman possessed all the last three qualities, besides being tall. He shone with prosperity and sunburn, she reeked of riches and talcum. They were just the sort of people who would insist upon hiring a house that was not in the market; its not being in the market would, in their eyes, make it all the more desirable. Jed had seen them before, knew they were staying at the hotel and that their names were Powless. He remembered now, with a thrill of alarm, that Mr. Bearse had recently spoken of them as liking Orham very much and considering getting a place of their own. And of course Captain Sam, hearing this, had told them of the Winslow place, had sent them to him. "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" thought Jed, although what he said was: "Good mornin'." He might as well have said nothing. Mrs. Powless, looming large between the piles of mills and vanes, like a battleship in a narrow channel, was loftily inspecting the stock through her lorgnette. Her husband, his walking stick under his arm and his hands in his pockets, was not even making the pretense of being interested; he was staring through the seaward window toward the yard and the old house. "These are really quite extraordinary," the lady announced, after a moment. "George, you really should see these extraordinary things." George was, evidently, not interested. He continued to look out of the window. "What are they?" he asked, without turning. "Oh, I don't know. All sorts of queer dolls and boats--and creatures, made of wood. Like those outside, you know--er-- teetotums, windmills. Do come and look at them." Mr. Powless did not comply. He said "Umph" and that was all. "George," repeated Mrs. Powless, "do you hear me? Come and look at them." And George came. One might have inferred that, when his wife spoke like that, he usually came. He treated a wooden porpoise to a thoroughly wooden stare and repeated his remark of "Umph!" "Aren't they extraordinary!" exclaimed his wife. "Does this man make them himself, I wonder?" She seemed to be addressing her husband, so Jed did not answer. "Do you?" demanded Mr. Powless. "Yes," replied Jed. Mrs. Powless said "Fancy!" Mr. Powless strolled back to the window. "This view is all right, Mollie," he observed. "Better even than it is from the street. Come and see." Mrs. Powless went and saw. Jed stood still and stared miserably. "Rather attractive, on the whole, don't you think, dear?" inquired the gentleman. "Must be very decent in the yard there." The lady did not reply, but she opened the door and went out, around the corner of the shop and into the back yard. Her husband trotted after her. The owner of the property, gazing pathetically through the window, saw them wandering about the premises, looking off at the view, up into the trees, and finally trying the door of the old house and peeping in between the slats of the closed blinds. Then they came strolling back to the shop. Jed, drawing a long breath, prepared to face the ordeal. Mrs. Powless entered the shop. Mr. Powless remained by the door. He spoke first. "You own all this?" he asked, indicating the surrounding country with a wave of his cane. Jed nodded. "That house, too?" waving the point of the cane toward the Winslow cottage. "Yes." "How old is it?" Jed stammered that he guessed likely it was about a hundred years old or such matter. "Umph! Furniture old, too?" "Yes, I cal'late most of it is." "Nobody living in it?" "No-o." "Got the key to it?" Here was the question direct. If he answered in the affirmative the next utterance of the Powless man would be a command to be shown the interior of the house. Jed was certain of it, he could see it in the man's eye. What was infinitely more important, he could see it in the lady's eye. He hesitated. "Got the key to it?" repeated Mr. Powless. Jed swallowed. "No-o," he faltered, "I--I guess not." "You GUESS not. Don't you know whether you've got it or not?" "No. I mean yes. I know I ain't." "Where is it; lost?" The key was usually lost, that is to say, Jed was accustomed to hunt for fifteen minutes before finding it, so, his conscience backing his inclination, he replied that he cal'lated it must be. "Umph!" grunted Powless. "How do you get into the house without a key?" Jed rubbed his chin, swallowed hard, and drawled that he didn't very often. "You do sometimes, don't you?" The best answer that the harassed windmill maker could summon was that he didn't know. The red-faced gentleman stared at him in indignant amazement. "You don't KNOW?" he repeated. "Which don't you know, whether you go into the house at all, or how you get in without a key?" "Yes,--er--er--that's it." Mr. Powless breathed deeply. "Well, I'll be damned!" he declared, with conviction. His wife did not contradict his assertion, but she made one of her own. "George," she commanded majestically, "can't you see the man has been drinking. Probably he doesn't own the place at all. Don't waste another moment on him. We will come back later, when the real owner is in. Come!" George came and they both went. Mr. Winslow wiped his perspiring forehead on a piece of wrapping paper and sat down upon a box to recover. Recovery, however, was by no means rapid or complete. They had gone, but they were coming back again; and what should he say to them then? Very likely Captain Sam, who had sent them in the first place, would return with them. And Captain Sam knew that the key was not really lost. Jed's satisfaction in the fact that he had escaped tenantless so far was nullified by the fear that his freedom was but temporary. He cooked his dinner, but ate little. After washing the dishes he crossed the road to the telephone and telegraph office and called up the Orham Bank. He meant to get Captain Hunniwell on the wire, tell him that the house hunters had paid him a visit, that he did not like them, and beg the captain to call them off the scent. But Captain Sam had motored to Ostable to attend a preliminary session of the Exemption Board. Jed sauntered gloomily back to the shop. When he opened the door and entered he was greeted by a familiar voice, which said: "Here he is, Mamma. Good afternoon, Mr. Winslow." Jed started, turned, and found Miss Barbara Armstrong beaming up at him. The young lady's attire and general appearance were in marked contrast to those of the previous evening. Petunia also was in calling costume; save for the trifling lack of one eye and a chip from the end of her nose, she would have been an ornament to doll society anywhere. "This is my mamma," announced Barbara. "She's come to see you." "How do you do, Mr. Winslow?" said Mrs. Armstrong. Jed looked up to find her standing beside him, her hand extended. Beside a general impression that she was young and that her gown and hat and shoes were white, he was at that moment too greatly embarrassed to notice much concerning her appearance. Probably he did not notice even this until later. However, he took her hand, moved it up and down, dropped it again and said: "I--I'm pleased to meet you, ma'am." She smiled. "And I am very glad to meet you," she said. "It was very kind of you to bring my little girl home last night and she and I have come to thank you for doing it." Jed was more embarrassed than ever. "Sho, sho!" he protested; "'twasn't anything." "Oh, yes, it was; it was a great deal. I was getting very worried, almost frightened. She had been gone ever since luncheon--dinner, I mean--and I had no idea where. She's a pretty good little girl, generally speaking," drawing the child close and smiling down upon her, "but sometimes she is heedless and forgets. Yesterday she forgot, didn't you, dear?" Barbara shook her head. "I didn't forget," she said. "I mean I only forgot a little. Petunia forgot almost EVERYTHING. I forgot and went as far as the bridge, but she forgot all the way to the clam field." Jed rubbed his chin. "The which field?" he drawled. "The clam field. The place where Mrs. Smalley's fish man unplants the clams she makes the chowder of. He does it with a sort of hoe thing and puts them in a pail. He was doing it yesterday; I saw him." Jed's eyes twinkled at the word "unplants," but another thought occurred to him. "You wasn't out on those clam flats alone, was you?" he asked, addressing Barbara. She nodded. "Petunia and I went all alone," she said. "It was kind of wet so we took off our shoes and stockings and paddled. I--I don't know's I remembered to tell you that part, Mamma," she added, hastily. "I--I guess it must have slipped my mind." But Mrs. Armstrong was watching Jed's face. "Was there any danger?" she asked, quickly. Jed hesitated before answering. "Why," he drawled, "I--I don't know as there was, but--well, the tide comes in kind of slow off ON the flats, but it's liable to fill up the channels between them and the beach some faster. Course if you know the wadin' places it's all right, but if you don't it's--well, it's sort of uncomfortable, that's all." The lady's cheeks paled a bit, but she did not exclaim, nor as Jed would have said "make a fuss." She said, simply, "Thank you, I will remember," and that was the only reference she made to the subject of the "clam field." Miss Barbara, to whom the events of dead yesterdays were of no particular concern compared to those of the vital and living to- day, was rummaging among the stock. "Mamma," she cried, excitedly, "here is a whale fish like the one I was going to buy for Captain Hedge. Come and see it." Mrs. Armstrong came and was much interested. She asked Jed questions concerning the "whale fish" and others of his creations. At first his replies were brief and monosyllabic, but gradually they became more lengthy, until, without being aware of it, he was carrying on his share of a real conversation. Of course, he hesitated and paused and drawled, but he always did that, even when talking with Captain Sam Hunniwell. He took down and exhibited his wares one by one. Barbara asked numberless questions concerning each and chattered like a red squirrel. Her mother showed such a genuine interest in his work and was so pleasant and quiet and friendly, was, in short, such a marked contrast to Mrs. George Powless, that he found himself actually beginning to enjoy the visit. Usually he was glad when summer folks finished their looking and buying and went away; but now, when Mrs. Armstrong glanced at the clock on the shelf, he was secretly glad that that clock had not gone for over four months and had providentially stopped going at a quarter after three. He took them into the inner shop, his workroom, and showed them the band saw and the lathe and the rest of his manufacturing outfit. Barbara asked if he lived there all alone and he said he did. "I live out there," he explained, pointing toward the shop extension. "Got a sittin'-room and a kitchen out there, and a little upstairs, where I sleep." Mrs. Armstrong seemed surprised. "Why!" she exclaimed, "I thought you lived in that dear little old house next door here. I was told that you owned it." Jed nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he said, "I do own it, but I don't live in it. I used to live there, but I ain't for quite a spell now." "I don't see how you could bear to give it up. It looks so quaint and homey, and if the inside is as delightful as the outside it must be quite wonderful. And the view is the best in town, isn't it?" Jed was pleased. "Why, yes, ma'am, 'tis pretty good," he admitted. "Anyhow, most folks seem to cal'late 'tis. Wouldn't you like to come out and look at it?" Barbara clapped her hands. "Oh, yes, Mamma, do!" she cried. Her mother hesitated. "I don't know that we ought to trouble Mr. Winslow," she said. "He is busy, you know." Jed protested. "It won't be a mite of trouble," he declared. "Besides, it ain't healthy to work too long at a stretch. That is," he drawled, "folks say 'tain't, so I never take the risk." Mrs. Armstrong smiled and followed him out into the yard, where Miss Barbara had already preceded them. The view over the edge of the bluff was glorious and the grass in the yard was green, the flowers bright and pretty and the shadows of the tall lilac bushes by the back door of the little white house cool and inviting. Barbara danced along the bluff edge, looking down at the dories and nets on the beach below. Her mother sighed softly. "It is lovely!" she said. Then, turning to look at the little house, she added, "And it was your old home, I suppose." Jed nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he replied. "I was born in that house and lived there all my life up to five years ago." "And then you gave it up. Why? . . . Please forgive me. I didn't mean to be curious." "Oh, that's all right, ma'am. Nothin' secret about it. My mother died and I didn't seem to care about livin' there alone, that's all." "I see. I understand." She looked as if she did understand, and Jed, the seldom understood, experienced an unusual pleasure. The sensation produced an unusual result. "It's a kind of cute and old-fashioned house inside," he observed. "Maybe you'd like to go in and look around; would you?" She looked very much pleased. "Oh, I should, indeed!" she exclaimed. "May I?" Now, the moment after he issued the invitation he was sorry. It had been quite unpremeditated and had been given he could not have told why. His visitor had seemed so genuinely interested, and, above all, had treated him like a rational human being instead of a freak. Under this unaccustomed treatment Jed Winslow had been caught off his guard--hypnotized, so to speak. And now, when it was too late, he realized the possible danger. Only a few hours ago he had told Mr. and Mrs. George Powless that the key to that house had been lost. He paused and hesitated. Mrs. Armstrong noticed his hesitation. "Please don't think any more about it," she said. "It is delightful here in the yard. Babbie and I will stay here a few minutes, if we may, and you must go back to your work, Mr. Winslow." But Jed, having put his foot in it, was ashamed to withdraw. He hastened to disclaim any intention of withdrawal. "No, no," he protested. "I don't need to go to work, not yet anyhow. I should be real pleased to show you the house, ma'am. You wait now and I'll fetch the key." Some five minutes later he reappeared with triumph in his eye and the "lost" key in his hand. "Sorry to keep you waitin', ma'am," he explained. "The key had-- er--stole its nest, as you might say. Got it now, though." His visitors looked at the key, which was attached by a cord to a slab of wood about the size of half a shingle. Upon one side of the slab were lettered in black paint the words HERE IT IS. Barbara's curiosity was aroused. "What have you got those letters on there for, Mr. Winslow?" she asked. "What does it say?" Jed solemnly read the inscription. "I printed that on there," he explained, "so I'd be able to find the key when I wanted it." Mrs. Armstrong smiled. "I should think it might help," she observed, evidently much amused. Mr. Winslow nodded. "You would think so," he said, "wouldn't you? Maybe 'twould, too, only 'twas such a plaguey nuisance, towin' that half a cord of wood around, that I left it to home last time. Untied the string, you know, and just took the key. The wood and the string was hangin' up in the right place, but the key wan't among those present, as they say in the newspapers." "Where was it?" demanded Barbara. "Hush, dear," cautioned her mother. "You mustn't ask so many questions." "That's all right, ma'am; I don't mind a mite. Where was it? We-ll, 'twas in my pants pocket here, just where I put it last time I used it. Naturally enough I shouldn't have thought of lookin' there and I don't know's I'd have found it yet, but I happened to shove my hands in my pockets to help me think, and there 'twas." This explanation should have been satisfying, doubtless, but Barbara did not seem to find it wholly so. "Please may I ask one more question, Mamma?" she pleaded. "Just only one?" She asked it before her mother could reply. "How does putting your hands in your pockets help you think, Mr. Winslow?" she asked. "I don't see how it would help a bit?" Jed's eye twinkled, but his reply was solemnly given. "Why, you see," he drawled, "I'm built a good deal like the old steam launch Tobias Wixon used to own. Every time Tobias blew the whistle it used up all the steam and the engine stopped. I've got a head about like that engine; when I want to use it I have to give all the rest of me a layoff. . . . Here we are, ma'am. Walk right in, won't you." He showed them through room after room of the little house, opening the closed shutters so that the afternoon sunlight might stream in and brighten their progress. The rooms were small, but they were attractive and cosy. The furniture was almost all old mahogany and in remarkably good condition. The rugs were home-made; even the coverlets of the beds were of the old-fashioned blue and white, woven on the hand looms of our great-grandmothers. Mrs. Armstrong was enthusiastic. "It is like a miniature museum of antiques," she declared. "And such wonderful antiques, too. You must have been besieged by people who wanted to buy them." Jed nodded. "Ye-es," he admitted, "I cal'late there's been no less'n a million antiquers here in the last four or five year. I don't mean here in the house--I never let 'em in the house--but 'round the premises. Got so they kind of swarmed first of every summer, like June bugs. I got rid of 'em, though, for a spell." "Did you; how?" He rubbed his chin. "Put up a sign by the front door that said: 'Beware of Leprosy.' That kept 'em away while it lasted." Mrs. Armstrong laughed merrily. "I should think so," she said. "But why leprosy, pray?" "Oh, I was goin' to make it smallpox, but I asked Doctor Parker if there was anything worse than smallpox and he said he cal'lated leprosy was about as bad as any disease goin'. It worked fine while it lasted, but the Board of Health made me take it down; said there wan't any leprosy on the premises. I told 'em no, but 'twas a good idea to beware of it anyhow, and I'd put up the sign just on general principles. No use; they hadn't much use for principles, general or otherwise, seemed so." The lady commented on the neatness and order in the little rooms. They were in marked contrast to the workshop. "I suppose you have a woman come here to clean and sweep," she said. Jed shook his head. "No-o," he answered. "I generally cal'late to come in every little while and clean up. Mother was always a great one for keepin' things slicked up," he added, apologetically, "and I--I kind of like to think 'twould please her. Foolish, I presume likely, but-- well, foolish things seem to come natural to me. Got a kind of a gift for 'em, as you might say. I . . ." He lapsed into silence, his sentence only begun. Mrs. Armstrong, looking up, found him gazing at her with the absent, far-off look that his closest associates knew so well. She had not met it before and found it rather embarrassing, especially as it kept on and on. "Well?" she asked, after a time. He started and awoke to realities. "I was just thinkin'," he explained, "that you was the only woman that has been in this house since the summer I let it to the Davidson folks. And Mrs. Davidson wan't a mite like you." That was true enough. Mrs. Davidson had been a plump elderly matron with gray hair, a rather rasping voice and a somewhat aggressive manner. Mrs. Armstrong was young and slim, her hair and eyes were dark, her manner refined and her voice low and gentle. And, if Jed had been in the habit of noticing such things, he might have noticed that she was pleasant to look at. Perhaps he was conscious of this fact, but, if so, it was only in a vague, general way. His gaze wandered to Barbara, who, with Petunia, was curled up in a big old-fashioned rocker. "And a child, too," he mused. "I don't know when there's been a child in here. Not since I was one, I guess likely, and that's too long ago for anybody to remember single-handed." But Mrs. Armstrong was interested in his previous remark. "You have let others occupy this house then?" she asked. "Yes, ma'am, one summer I did. Let it furnished to some folks name of Davidson, from Chicago." "And you haven't rented it since?" "No, ma'am, not but that once." She was silent for a moment. Then she said: "I am surprised that it hasn't been occupied always. Do you ask such a VERY high rent, Mr. Winslow?" Jed looked doubtful. "Why, no, ma'am," he answered. "I didn't cal'late 'twas so very high, considerin' that 'twas just for 'summer and furnished and all. The Davidsons paid forty dollars a month, but--" "FORTY dollars! A month? And furnished like that? You mean a week, don't you?" Mr. Winslow looked at her. The slow smile wandered across his face. He evidently suspected a joke. "Why, no, ma'am," he drawled. "You see, they was rentin' the place, not buyin' it." "But forty dollars a month is VERY cheap." "Is it? Sho! Now you speak of it I remember that Captain Sam seemed to cal'late 'twas. He said I ought to have asked a hundred, or some such foolishness. I told him he must have the notion that I was left out of the sweet ile when they pickled the other thirty- nine thieves. Perhaps you've read the story, ma'am," he suggested. His visitor laughed. "I have read it," she said. Then she added, plainly more to herself than to him: "But even forty is far too much, of course." Jed was surprised and a little hurt. "Yes--er--yes, ma'am," he faltered. "Well, I--I was kind of 'fraid 'twas, but Colonel Davidson seemed to think 'twas about fair, so--" "Oh, you misunderstand me. I didn't mean that forty dollars was too high a rent. It isn't, it is a very low one. I meant that it was more than I ought to think of paying. You see, Mr. Winslow, I have been thinking that we might live here in Orham, Barbara and I. I like the town; and the people, most of those I have met, have been very pleasant and kind. And it is necessary--that is, it seems to me preferable--that we live, for some years at least, away from the city. This little house of yours is perfect. I fell in love with the outside of it at first sight. Now I find the inside even more delightful. I"--she hesitated, and then added--"I don't suppose you would care to let it unfurnished at--at a lower rate?" Jed was very much embarrassed. The idea that his caller would make such a proposition as this had not occurred to him for a moment. If it had the lost key would almost certainly have remained lost. He liked Mrs. Armstrong even on such short acquaintance, and he had taken a real fancy to Barbara; but his prejudice against tenants remained. He rubbed his chin. "Why--why, now, ma'am," he stammered, "you--you wouldn't like livin' in Orham all the year 'round, would you?" "I hope I should. I know I should like it better than living-- elsewhere," with, so it seemed to him, a little shudder. "And I cannot afford to live otherwise than very simply anywhere. I have been boarding in Orham for almost three months now and I feel that I have given it a trial." "Yes--yes, ma'am, but summer's considerable more lively than winter here on the Cape." "I have no desire for society. I expect to be quiet and I wish to be. Mr. Winslow, would you consider letting me occupy this house-- unfurnished, of course? I should dearly love to take it just as it is--this furniture is far more fitting for it than mine--but I cannot afford forty dollars a month. Provided you were willing to let me hire the house of you at all, not for the summer alone but for all the year, what rent do you think you should charge?" Jed's embarrassment increased. "Well, now, ma'am," he faltered, "I--I hope you won't mind my sayin' it, but--but I don't know's I want to let this house at all. I--I've had consider'ble many chances to rent it, but--but--" He could not seem to find a satisfactory ending to the sentence and so left it unfinished. Mrs. Armstrong was evidently much disappointed, but she did not give up completely. "I see," she said. "Well, in a way I think I understand. You prefer the privacy. I think I could promise you that Barbara and I would disturb you very little. As to the rent, that would be paid promptly." "Sartin, ma'am, sartin; I know 'twould, but--" "Won't you think it over? We might even live here for a month, with your furniture undisturbed and at the regular rental. You could call it a trial month, if you liked. You could see how you liked us, you know. At the end of that time," with a smile, "you might tell us we wouldn't do at all, or, perhaps, then you might consider making a more permanent arrangement. Barbara would like it here, wouldn't you, dear?" Barbara, who had been listening, nodded excitedly from the big rocker. "Ever and ever so much," she declared; "and Petunia would just adore it." Poor Jed was greatly perturbed. "Don't talk so, Mrs. Armstrong," he blurted. "Please don't. I--I don't want you to. You--you make me feel bad." "Do I? I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to say anything to hurt your feelings. I beg your pardon." "No, you don't. I--I mean you hadn't ought to. You don't hurt my feelin's; I mean you make me feel bad--wicked--cussed mean--all that and some more. I know I ought to let you have this house. Any common, decent man with common decent feelin's and sense would let you have it. But, you see, I ain't that kind. I--I'm selfish and--and wicked and--" He waved a big hand in desperation. She laughed. "Nonsense!" she exclaimed. "Besides, it isn't so desperate as all that. You certainly are not obliged to rent the house unless you want to." "But I do want to; that is, I don't, but I know I'd ought to want to. And if I was goin' to let anybody have it I'd rather 'twould be you--honest, I would. And it's the right thing for me to do, I know that. That's what bothers me; the trouble's with ME. I don't want to do the right thing." He broke off, seemed to reflect and then asked suddenly: "Ma'am, do you want to go to heaven when you die?" The lady was naturally somewhat surprised at the question. "Why, yes," she replied, "I-- Why, of course I do." "There, that's it! Any decent, sensible person would. But I don't." Barbara, startled into forgetting that children should be seen and not heard, uttered a shocked "Oh!" Jed waved his hand. "You see," he said, "even that child's morals are upset by me. I know I ought to want to go to heaven. But when I see the crowd that KNOW they're goin' there, are sartin of it, the ones from this town, a good many of 'em anyhow; when I hear how they talk in prayer-meetin' and then see how they act outside of it, I-- Well," with a deep sigh, "I want to go where they ain't, that's all." He paused, and then drawled solemnly, but with a suspicion of the twinkle in his eye: "The general opinion seems to be that that's where I'll go, so's I don't know's I need to worry." Mrs. Armstrong made no comment on this confession. He did not seem to expect any. "Ma'am," he continued, "you see what I mean. The trouble's with me, I ain't made right. I ought to let that house; Sam Hunniwell told me so this mornin'. But I--I don't want to. Nothin' personal to you, you understand; but . . . Eh? Who's that?" A step sounded on the walk outside and voices were heard. Jed turned to the door. "Customers, I cal'late," he said. "Make yourselves right to home, ma'am, you and the little girl. I'll be right back." He went out through the dining-room into the little hall. Barbara, in the big rocker, looked up over Petunia's head at her mother. "Isn't he a funny man, Mamma?" she said. Mrs. Armstrong nodded. "Yes, he certainly is," she admitted. "Yes," the child nodded reflectively. "But I don't believe he's wicked at all. I believe he's real nice, don't you?" "I'm sure he is, dear." "Yes. Petunia and I like him. I think he's what you said our Bridget was, a rough damson." "Not damson; diamond, dear." "Oh, yes. It was damson preserve Mrs. Smalley had for supper last night. I forgot. Petunia told me to say damson; she makes so many mistakes." They heard the "rough diamond" returning. He seemed to be in a hurry. When he re-entered the little sitting-room he looked very much frightened. "What is the matter?" demanded Mrs. Armstrong. Jed gulped. "They've come back," he whispered. "Godfreys, I forgot 'em, and they've come back. WHAT'LL I do now?" "But who--who has come back?" Mr. Winslow waved both hands. "The Old Scratch and his wife," he declared. "I hope they didn't see me, but--Land of love, they're comin' in!" A majestic tread sounded in the hall, in the dining-room. Mrs. George Powless appeared, severe, overwhelming, with Mr. George Powless in her wake. The former saw Mr. Winslow and fixed him with her glittering eye, as the Ancient Mariner fixed the wedding guest. "Ah!" she observed, with majestic irony, "the lost key is found, it would seem." Jed looked guilty. "Yes, ma'am," he faltered. "Er--yes, ma'am." "So? And now, I presume, as it is apparent that you do show the interior of this house to other interested persons," with a glance like a sharpened icicle in the direction of the Armstrongs, "perhaps you will show it to my husband and me." Jed swallowed hard. "Well, ma'am," he faltered, "I--I'd like to, but--but the fact is, I--" "Well, what?" "It ain't my house." "Isn't your house? George," turning to Mr. Powless, "didn't I hear this man distinctly tell you that this house WAS his?" George nodded. "Certainly, my dear," he declared. Then turning to Mr. Winslow, he demanded: "What do you mean by saying it is yours one moment and not yours the next; eh?" Jed looked around. For one instant his gaze rested upon the face of Mrs. Armstrong. Then he drew himself up. "Because," he declared, "I've rented it furnished to this lady here. And, that bein' the case, it ain't mine just now and I ain't got any right to be in it. And," his voice rising in desperation, "neither has anybody else." Mrs. George Powless went a few moments later; before she went she expressed her opinion of Mr. Winslow's behavior. Mr. George Powless followed her, expressing his opinion as he went. The object of their adjuration sat down upon a rush-bottomed chair and rubbed his chin. "Lord!" he exclaimed, with fervor. Mrs. Armstrong looked at him in amazement. "Why, Mr. Winslow!" she exclaimed, and burst out laughing. Jed groaned. "I know how Jonah felt after the whale unloaded him," he drawled. "That woman all but had me swallered. If you hadn't been here she would." "Jed!" shouted a voice outside. "Jed, where are you?" Mr. Winslow raised his head. "Eh?" he queried. "That's Sam hollerin', ain't it?" It was Captain Hunniwell and a moment later he entered the little sitting-room. When he saw who his friend's companions were he seemed greatly surprised. "Why, Mrs. Armstrong!" he exclaimed. "Are you here? Now that's a funny thing. The last time I saw Jed I warned him I was goin' to send you here to look at this house. And you came without bein' sent, after all; eh?" Jed stared at him. Before the lady could reply he spoke. "What?" he cried. "Was she--Sam Hunniwell, was it HER you was goin' to send to see about hirin' this house?" "Sure it was. Why not?" Jed pointed toward the door. "Then--then who," he demanded, "sent those Powlesses here?" "No one that I know of. And anyhow they don't want to rent any houses. They've bought land over at Harnissport and they're goin' to build a house of their own there." "They are? They are? Then--then WHAT did that woman say I'd got to show her the inside of this house for?" "I don't know. Did she? Oh, I tell you what she was after, probably. Some one had told her about your old furniture and things, Jed. She's the greatest antique hunter on earth, so they tell me. That's what she was after--antiques." Jed, having paused until this had sunk in, groaned. "Lord!" he said, again. "And I went and--" Another groan finished the sentence. Mrs. Armstrong came forward. "Please don't worry about it, Mr. Winslow," she said. "I know you didn't mean it. Of course, knowing your feelings, I shouldn't think of taking the house." But Jed slowly shook his head. "I want you to," he declared. "Yes, I mean it. I want you to come and live in this house for a month, anyhow. If you don't, that Powless woman will come back and buy every stick and rag on the place. I don't want to sell 'em, but I couldn't say no to her any more than I could to the Old Harry. I called her the Old Scratch's wife, didn't I," he added. "Well, I won't take it back." Captain Sam laughed uproariously. "You ain't very complimentary to Mr. Powless," he observed. Jed rubbed his chin. "I would be if I was referrin' to him," he drawled, "but I judge he's her second husband." CHAPTER VI Of course Mrs. Armstrong still insisted that, knowing, as she did, Mr. Winslow's prejudice against occupying the position of landlord, she could not think of accepting his offer. "Of course I shall not," she declared. "I am flattered to know that you consider Barbara and me preferable to Mr. and Mrs. Powless; but even there you may be mistaken, and, beside, why should you feel you must endure the lesser evil. If I were in your place I shouldn't endure any evil at all. I should keep the house closed and empty, just as you have been doing." Captain Sam shook his head impatiently. "If you was in his place," he observed, "you would have let it every year. Don't interfere with him, Mrs. Armstrong, for the land sakes. He's showed the first streak of common sense about that house that he's showed since the Davidsons went out. Don't ask him to take it back." And Jed stubbornly refused to take it back. "I've let it to you for a month, ma'am," he insisted. "It's yours, furniture and all, for a month. You won't sell that Mrs. Powless any of it, will you?" he added, anxiously. "Any of the furniture, I mean." Mrs. Armstrong scarcely knew whether to be amused or indignant. "Of course I shouldn't sell it," she declared. "It wouldn't be mine to sell." Jed looked frightened. "Yes, 'twould; yes, 'twould," he persisted. "That's why I'm lettin' it to you. Then I can't sell it to her; I CAN'T, don't you see?" Captain Sam grinned. "Fur's that goes," he suggested, "I don't see's you've got to worry, Jed. You don't need to sell it, to her or anybody else, unless you want to." But Jed looked dubious. "I suppose Jonah cal'lated he didn't need to be swallowed," he mused. "You take it, ma'am, for a month, as a favor to me." "But how can I--like this? We haven't even settled the question of rent. And you know nothing whatever about me." He seemed to reflect. Then he asked: "Your daughter don't sing like a windmill, does she?" Barbara's eyes and mouth opened. "Why, Mamma!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "Hush, Babbie. Sing like a--what? I don't understand, Mr. Winslow." The captain burst out laughing. "No wonder you don't, ma'am," he said. "It takes the seven wise men of Greece to understand him most of the time. You leave it to me, Mrs. Armstrong. He and I will talk it over together and then you and he can talk to-morrow. But I guess likely you'll have the house, if you want it; Jed doesn't go back on his word. I always say that for you, don't I, old sawdust?" turning to the gentleman thus nicknamed. Jed, humming a mournful hymn, was apparently miles away in dreamland. Yet he returned to earth long enough to indulge in a mild bit of repartee. "You say 'most everything for me, Sam," he drawled, "except when I talk in my sleep." Mrs. Armstrong and Barbara left a moment later, the lady saying that she and Mr. Winslow would have another interview next day. Barbara gravely shook hands with both men. "I and Petunia hope awfully that we are going to live here, Mr. Winslow," she said, "'specially Petunia." Jed regarded her gravely. "Oh, she wants to more'n you do, then, does she?" he asked. The child looked doubtful. "No-o," she admitted, after a moment's reflection, "but she can't talk, you know, and so she has to hope twice as hard else I wouldn't know it. Good-by. Oh, I forgot; Captain Hedge liked his swordfish EVER so much. He said it was a-- a--oh, yes, humdinger." She trotted off after her mother. Captain Hunniwell, after a chuckle of appreciation over the "humdinger," began to tell his friend what little he had learned concerning the Armstrongs. This was, of course, merely what Mrs. Armstrong herself had told him and amounted to this: She was a widow whose husband had been a physician in Middleford, Connecticut. His name was Seymour Armstrong and he had now been dead four years. Mrs. Armstrong and Barbara, the latter an only child, had continued to occupy the house at Middleford, but recently the lady had come to feel that she could not afford to live there longer, but must find some less expensive quarters. "She didn't say so," volunteered Captain Sam, "but I judge she lost a good deal of her money, bad investments or somethin' like that. If there's any bad investment anywheres in the neighborhood you can 'most generally trust a widow to hunt it up and put her insurance money into it. Anyhow, 'twas somethin' like that, for after livin' there a spell, just as she did when her husband was alive, she all at once decides to up anchor and find some cheaper moorin's. First off, though, she decided to spend the summer in a cool place and some friend, somebody with good, sound judgment, suggests Orham. So she lets her own place in Middleford, comes to Orham, falls in love with the place--same as any sensible person would naturally, of course--and, havin' spent 'most three months here, decides she wants to spend nine more anyhow. She comes to the bank to cash a check, she and I get talkin', she tells me what she's lookin' for, I tell her I cal'late I've got a place in my eye that I think might be just the thing, and--" He paused to bite the end from a cigar. His friend finished the sentence for him. "And then," he said, "you, knowin' that I didn't want to let this house any time to anybody, naturally sent her down to look at it." "No such thing. Course I knew that you'd OUGHT to let the house and, likin' the looks and ways of these Armstrong folks first rate, I give in that I had made up my mind TO send her down to look at it. But, afore I could do it, the Almighty sent her on His own hook. Which proves," he added, with a grin, "that my judgment has pretty good backin' sometimes." Jed rubbed his chin. "Careful, Sam," he drawled, "careful. The Kaiser'll be gettin' jealous of you if you don't look out. But what," he inquired, "made her and the little girl move out of Middleford, or wherever 'twas they lived? They could have found cheaper quarters there, couldn't they? Course I ain't never been there, but seems as if they could." "Sartin they could, but the fact of their movin' is what makes me pretty sure the widow's investments had turned sour. It's a plaguey sight easier to begin to cut down and live economical in a place where nobody knows you than 'tis in one where everybody has known you for years. See that, don't you?" Jed whistled sadly, breaking off in the middle of a bar to reply that he didn't know as he did. "I've never cut up, so cuttin' down don't worry me much," he observed. "But I presume likely you're right, Sam; you generally are." He whistled a moment longer, his gaze apparently fixed upon a point in the middle of the white plastered ceiling. Then he said, dreamily: "Well, anyhow, 'twon't be but a month. They'll go somewheres else in a month." Captain Sam sniffed. "Bet you a dollar they won't," he retorted. "Not unless you turn 'em out. And I see you turnin' anybody out." But Mr. Winslow looked hopeful. "They'll go when the month's up," he reiterated. "Nobody could stand me more than a month. Mother used to say so, and she'd known me longer than anybody." And so, in this curious fashion, did tenants come to the old Winslow house. They moved in on the following Monday. Jed saw the wagon with the trunks backing up to the door and he sighed. Then he went over to help carry the trunks into the house. For the first week he found the situation rather uncomfortable; not as uncomfortable as he had feared, but a trifle embarrassing, nevertheless. His new neighbors were not too neighborly; they did not do what he would have termed "pester" him by running in and out of the shop at all hours, nor did they continually ask favors. On the other hand they did not, like his former tenants, the Davidsons, treat him as if he were some sort of odd wooden image, like one of his own weather vanes, a creature without feelings, to be displayed and "shown off" when it pleased them and ignored when it did not. Mrs. Armstrong was always quietly cheerful and friendly when they met in the yard or about the premises, but she neither intruded nor patronized. Jed's first impression of her, a favorable one, was strengthened daily. "I like her first-rate," he told Captain Sam. "She ain't too folksy and she ain't too standoffish. Why, honest truth, Sam," he added, ingenuously, "she treats me just the same as if I was like the common run of folks." The captain snorted. "Gracious king! Do stop runnin' yourself down," he commanded. "Suppose you are a little mite--er--different from the--well, from the heft of mackerel in the keg, what of it? That's your own private business, ain't it?" Jed's lip twitched. "I suppose 'tis," he drawled. "If it wan't there wouldn't be so many folks interested in it." At first he missed the freedom to which he had accustomed himself during his years of solitude, the liberty of preparing for bed with the doors and windows toward the sea wide open and the shades not drawn; of strolling out to the well at unearthly hours of the early morning singing at the top of his lungs; of washing face and hands in a tin basin on a bench by that well curb instead of within doors. There were some necessary concessions to convention to which his attention was called by Captain Hunniwell, who took it upon himself to act as a sort of social mentor. "Do you always wash outdoors there?" asked the captain, after watching one set of ablutions. "Why--er--yes, I 'most generally do in good weather. It's sort of-- er--well, sort of cool and roomy, as you might say." "Roomy, eh? Gracious king! Well, I should say you needed room. You splash into that basin like a kedge anchor goin' overboard and when you come out of it you puff like a grampus comin' up to blow. How do you cal'late Mrs. Armstrong enjoys seein' you do that?" Jed looked startled and much disturbed. "Eh?" he exclaimed. "Why, I never thought about her, Sam. I declare I never did. I--I'll fetch the wash basin inside this very minute." And he did. The inconvenience attached to the breaking off of a summer-time habit of years troubled him not half as much as the fear that he might have offended a fellow creature's sensibilities. Jed Winslow was far too sensitive himself and his own feelings had been hurt too many times to make hurting those of another a small offense in his eyes. But these were minor inconveniences attached to his new position as landlord. There were recompenses. At work in his shop he could see through the window the white-clad, graceful figure of Mrs. Armstrong moving about the yard, sitting with Barbara on the bench by the edge of the bluff, or writing a letter at a table she had taken out under the shadow of the silver-leaf tree. Gradually Jed came to enjoy seeing her there, to see the windows of the old house open, to hear voices once more on that side of the shop, and to catch glimpses of Babbie dancing in and out over the shining mica slab at the door. He liked the child when he first met her, but he had been a little fearful that, as a neighbor, she might trouble him by running in and out of the shop, interfering with his privacy and his work or making a small nuisance of herself when he was waiting on customers. But she did none of these things, in fact she did not come into the shop at all and, after the first week had passed, he began to wonder why. Late that afternoon, seeing her sitting on the bench by the bluff edge, her doll in her arms, he came out of the door of his little kitchen at the back of the shop and called her. "Good evenin'," he hailed. "Takin' in the view, was you?" She bobbed her head. "Yes, sir," she called in reply; "Petunia and I were looking at it." "Sho! Well, what do you and-er--What's-her-name think of it?" Barbara pondered. "We think it's very nice," she announced, after a moment. "Don't you like it, Mr. Winslow?" "Eh? Oh, yes, I like it, I guess. I ain't really had time to look at it to-day; been too busy." The child nodded, sympathetically. "That's too bad," she said. Jed had, for him, a curious impulse, and acted upon it. "Maybe I might come and look at it now, if I was asked," he suggested. "Plenty of room on that bench, is there?" "Oh, yes, sir, there's lots. I don't take much room and Petunia almost always sits on my lap. Please come." So Jed came and, sitting down upon the bench, looked off at the inlet and the beach and the ocean beyond. It was the scene most familiar to him, one he had seen, under varying weather conditions, through many summers and winters. This very thought was in his mind as he looked at it now. After a time he became aware that his companion was speaking. "Eh?" he ejaculated, coming out of his reverie. "Did you say somethin'?" "Yes, sir, three times. I guess you were thinking, weren't you?" "Um-m--yes, I shouldn't be surprised. It's one of my bad habits, thinkin' is." She looked hard to see if he was smiling, but he was not, and she accepted the statement as a serious one. "Is thinking a bad habit?" she asked. "I didn't know it was." "Cal'late it must be. If it wasn't, more folks would do it. Tell me, now," he added, changing the subject to avoid further cross- questioning, "do you and your ma like it here?" The answer was enthusiastic. "Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, "we like it ever and ever so much. Mamma says it's--" Barbara hesitated, and then, after what was evidently a severe mental struggle, finished with, "she said once it was like paradise after category." "After--which?" The young lady frowned. "It doesn't seem to me," she observed, slowly, "as if 'category' was what she said. Does 'category' sound right to you, Mr. Winslow?" Jed looked doubtful. "I shouldn't want to say that it did, right offhand like this," he drawled. "No-o. I don't believe it was 'category.' But I'm almost sure it was something about a cat, something a cat eats--or does--or something. Mew--mouse--milk--" she was wrinkling her forehead and repeating the words to herself when Mr. Winslow had an inspiration. "'Twan't purgatory, was it?" he suggested. Miss Barbara's head bobbed enthusiastically. "Purr-gatory, that was it," she declared. "And it was something a cat does--purr, you know; I knew it was. Mamma said living here was paradise after purr-gatory." Jed rubbed his chin. "I cal'late your ma didn't care much for the board at Luretta Smalley's," he observed. He couldn't help thinking the remark an odd one to make to a child. "Oh, I don't think she meant Mrs. Smalley's," explained Barbara. "She liked Mrs. Smalley's pretty well, well as any one can like boarding, you know," this last plainly another quotation. "I think she meant she liked living here so much better than she did living in Middleford, where we used to be." "Hum," was the only comment Jed made. He was surprised, nevertheless. Judged by what Captain Sam had told him, the Armstrong home at Middleford should have been a pleasant one. Barbara rattled on. "I guess that was it," she observed. "She was sort of talking to herself when she said it. She was writing a letter--to Uncle Charlie, I think it was--and I and Petunia asked her if she liked it here and she sort of looked at me without looking, same as you do sometimes, Mr. Winslow, when you're thinking of something else, and then she said that about the catty--no, the purr-gatory. And when I asked her what purr-gatory meant she said, 'Never mind,' and. . . . Oh, I forgot!" in consternation; "she told me I mustn't tell anybody she said it, either. Oh, dear me!" Jed hastened to reassure her. "Never mind," he declared, "I'll forget you ever did say it. I'll start in forgettin' now. In five minutes or so I'll have forgot two words of it already. By to- morrow mornin' I wouldn't remember it for money." "Truly?" "Truly bluely, lay me down and cut me in twoly. But what's this you're sayin' about your ma lookin' at things without seein' 'em, same as I do? She don't do that, does she?" The young lady nodded. "Yes," she said; "course not as bad--I mean not as often as you do, but sometimes, 'specially since--" She hastily clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "What's the matter? Toothache?" "No. Only I almost told another somethin' I mustn't." "Sho! Well, I'm glad you put on the cover just in time." "So am I. What else was I talking about? Oh, yes, Mamma's thinking so hard, same as you do, Mr. Winslow. You know," she added, earnestly, "she acts quite a lot like you sometimes." Jed looked at her in horror. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed. Then, in his solemnest drawl, he added, "You tell her to take somethin' for it afore it's too late." As he rose from the bench he observed: "Haven't seen you over to the shop since you moved in. I've been turnin' out another school of swordfish and whales, too. Why don't you run in and look 'em over?" She clapped her hands. "Oh, may I?" she cried. "I've wanted to ever and ever so much, but Mamma said not to because it might annoy you. Wouldn't it annoy you, TRULY?" "Not a bit." "Oh, goody! And might Petunia come, too?" "Um-hm. Only," gravely, "she'll have to promise not to talk too much. Think she'll promise that? All right; then fetch her along." So, the very next morning, when Jed was busy at the bandsaw, he was not greatly surprised when the door opened and Miss Barbara appeared, with Petunia in her arms. He was surprised, however, and not a little embarrassed when Mrs. Armstrong followed. "Good morning," said the lady, pleasantly. "I came over to make sure that there hadn't been a mistake. You really did ask Babby to come in and see you at work?" "Yes, ma'am, I--I did. I did, sartin." "And you don't mind having her here? She won't annoy you?" "Not a mite. Real glad to have her." "Very well, then she may stay--an hour, but no longer. Mind, Babby, dear, I am relying on you not to annoy Mr. Winslow." So the juvenile visitor stayed her hour and then obediently went away, in spite of Jed's urgent invitation to stay longer. She had asked a good many questions and talked almost continuously, but Mr. Winslow, instead of being bored by her prattle, was surprised to find how empty and uninteresting the shop seemed after she had quitted it. She came again the next day and the next. By the end of the week Jed had become sufficiently emboldened to ask her mother to permit her to come in the afternoon also. This request was the result of a conspiracy between Barbara and himself. "You ask your ma," urged Jed. "Tell her I say I need you here afternoons." Barbara looked troubled. "But that would be a wrong story, wouldn't it?" she asked. "You don't really need me, you know." "Eh? Yes, I do; yes, I do." "What for? What shall I tell her you need me for?" Jed scratched his chin with the tail of a wooden whale. "You tell her," he drawled, after considering for a minute or two, "that I need you to help carry lumber." Even a child could not swallow this ridiculous excuse. Barbara burst out laughing. "Why, Mr. Winslow!" she cried. "You don't, either. You know I couldn't carry lumber; I'm too little. I couldn't carry any but the littlest, tiny bit." Jed nodded, gravely. "Yes, sartin," he agreed; "that's what I need you to carry. You run along and tell her so, that's a good girl." But she shook her head vigorously. "No," she declared. "She would say it was silly, and it would be. Besides, you don't really need me at all. You just want Petunia and me for company, same as we want you. Isn't that it, truly?" "Um-m. Well, I shouldn't wonder. You can tell her that, if you want to; I'd just as soon." The young lady still hesitated. "No-o," she said, "because she'd think perhaps you didn't really want me, but was too polite to say so. If you asked her yourself, though, I think she'd let me come." At first Jed's bashfulness was up in arms at the very idea, but at length he considered to ask Mrs. Armstrong for the permission. It was granted, as soon as the lady was convinced that the desire for more of her daughter's society was a genuine one, and thereafter Barbara visited the windmill shop afternoons as well as mornings. She sat, her doll in her arms, upon a box which she soon came to consider her own particular and private seat, watching her long- legged friend as he sawed or glued or jointed or painted. He had little waiting on customers to do now, for most of the summer people had gone. His small visitor and he had many long and, to them, interesting conversations. Other visitors to the shop, those who knew him well, were surprised and amused to find him on such confidential and intimate terms with a child. Gabe Bearse, after one short call, reported about town that crazy Shavin's Winslow had taken up with a young-one just about as crazy as he was. "There she set," declared Gabriel, "on a box, hugging a broken- nosed doll baby up to her and starin' at me and Shavin's as if we was some kind of curiosities, as you might say. Well, one of us was; eh? Haw, haw! She didn't say a word and Shavin's he never said nothin' and I felt as if I was preaching in a deef and dumb asylum. Finally, I happened to look at her and I see her lips movin'. 'Well,' says I, 'you CAN talk, can't you, sis, even if it's only to yourself. What was you talkin' to yourself about, eh?' She didn't seem to want to answer; just sort of reddened up, you know; but I kept right after her. Finally she owned up she was countin'. 'What was you countin'?' says I. Well, she didn't want to tell that, neither. Finally I dragged it out of her that she was countin' how many words I'd said since I started to tell about Melissy Busteed and what she said about Luther Small's wife's aunt, the one that's so wheezed up with asthma and Doctor Parker don't seem to be able to do nothin' to help. 'So you was countin' my words, was you?' says I. 'Well, that's good business, I must say! How many have I said?' She looked solemn and shook her head. 'I had to give it up,' says she. 'It makes my head ache to count fast very long. Doesn't it give you a headache to count fast, Mr. Winslow?' Jed, he mumbled some kind of foolishness about some things givin' him earache. I laughed at the two of 'em. 'Humph!' says I, 'the only kind of aches I have is them in my bones,' meanin' my rheumatiz, you understand. Shavin's he looked moony up at the roof for about a week and a half, same as he's liable to do, and then he drawled out: 'You see he DOES have headache, Babbie,' says he. Now did you ever hear such fool talk outside of an asylum? He and that Armstrong kid are well matched. No wonder she sits in there and gapes at him half the day." Captain Sam Hunniwell and his daughter were hugely tickled. "Jed's got a girl at last," crowed the captain. "I'd about given up hope, Jed. I was fearful that the bloom of your youth would pass away from you and you wouldn't keep company with anybody. You're so bashful that I know you'd never call on a young woman, but I never figured that one might begin callin' on you. Course she's kind of extra young, but she'll grow out of that, give her time." Maud Hunniwell laughed merrily, enjoying Mr. Winslow's confusion. "Oh, the little girl is only the bait, Father," she declared. "It is the pretty widow that Jed is fishing for. She'll be calling here soon, or he'll be calling there. Isn't that true, Jed? Own up, now. Oh, see him blush, Father! Just see him!" Jed, of course, denied that he was blushing. His fair tormentor had no mercy. "You must be," she insisted. "At any rate your face is very, very red. I'll leave it to Father. Isn't his face red, Father?" "Red as a flannel lung-protector," declared Captain Sam, who was never known to contradict his only daughter, nor, so report affirmed, deny a request of hers. "Of course it is," triumphantly. "And it can't be the heat, because it isn't at all warm here." Poor Jed, the long-suffering, was goaded into a mild retort. "There's consider'ble hot air in here some spells," he drawled, mournfully. Miss Hunniwell went away reaffirming her belief that Mr. Winslow's friendship for the daughter was merely a strategical advance with the mother as the ultimate objective. "You'll see, Father," she prophesied, mischievously. "We shall hear of his 'keeping company' with Mrs. Armstrong soon. Oh, he couldn't escape even if he wanted to. These young widows are perfectly irresistible." When they were a safe distance from the windmill shop the captain cautioned his daughter. "Maud," he said, "you'd better not tease Jed too much about that good-lookin' tenant of his. He's so queer and so bashful that I'm afraid if you do he'll take a notion to turn the Armstrongs out when this month's up." Miss Hunniwell glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "Suppose he does?" she asked. "What of it? She isn't a GREAT friend of yours, is she, Father?" It was the captain's turn to look embarrassed. "No, no, course she ain't," he declared, hastily. "All I've been thinkin' is that Jed ought to have a tenant in that house of his, because he needs the money. And from what I've been able to find out about this Mrs. Armstrong she's a real nice genteel sort of body, and--and--er--" "And she's very sweet and very pretty and so, of course, naturally, all the men, especially the middle-aged men--" Captain Sam interrupted explosively. "Don't be so foolish!" he ordered. "If you don't stop talkin' such nonsense I'll--I don't know what I'll do to you. What do you suppose her bein' sweet and good-lookin' has got to do with me? Gracious king! I've got one good-lookin'--er--that is to say, I've got one young female to take care of now and that's enough, in all conscience." His daughter pinched his arm. "Oh, ho!" she observed. "You were going to say she was good- looking and then you changed your mind. Don't you think this young female--WHAT a word! you ought to be ashamed of it--DON'T you think she is good-looking, Daddy, dear?" She looked provokingly up into his face and he looked fondly down into hers. "Don't you?" she repeated. "We-ll, I--I don't know as I'd want to go so far as to say that. I presume likely her face might not stop a meetin'-house clock on a dark night, but--" As they were in a secluded spot where a high hedge screened them from observation Miss Maud playfully boxed her parent's ears, a proceeding which he seemed to enjoy hugely. But there was reason in the captain's caution, nevertheless. Miss Maud's "teasing" concerning the widow had set Jed to thinking. The "trial" month was almost up. In a little while he would have to give his decision as to whether the little Winslow house was to continue to be occupied by Barbara and her mother, or whether it was to be, as it had been for years, closed and shuttered tight. He had permitted them to occupy it for that month, on the spur of the moment, as the result of a promise made upon impulse, a characteristic Jed Winslow impulse. Now, however, he must decide in cold blood whether or not it should be theirs for another eleven months at least. In his conversation with Captain Sam, the conversation which took place immediately after the Armstrongs came, he had stoutly maintained that the latter would not wish to stay longer than the month, that his own proximity as landlord and neighbor would be unbearable longer than that period. But if the widow found it so she had so far shown no evidence of her disgust. Apparently that means of breaking off the relationship could not be relied upon. Of course he did not know whether or not she wished to remain, but, if she did, did he wish her to do so? There was nothing personal in the matter; it was merely the question as to whether his prejudice of years against renting that house to any one was to rule or be overthrown. If she asked him for his decision what should he say? At night, when he went to bed, his mind was made up. In the morning when he arose it was unmade. As he told Captain Hunniwell: "I'm like that old clock I used to have, Sam. The pendulum of that thing used to work fine, but the hands wouldn't move. Same way with me. I tick, tick, tick all day over this pesky business, but I don't get anywheres. It's always half- past nothin'." Captain Sam was hugely disgusted. "It ain't more'n quarter past, if it is that," he declared, emphatically. "It's just nothin', if you ask me. And say, speakin' of askin', I'd like to ask you this: How are you goin' to get 'em out, provided you're fool enough to decide they've got to go? Are you goin' to tell Mrs. Armstrong right up and down and flat-footed that you can't stand any more of her? I'd like to hear you say it. Let me know when the show's goin' to come off. I want a seat in the front row." Poor Jed looked aghast at the very idea. His friend laughed derisively and walked off and left him. And the days passed and the "trial month" drew closer and closer to its end until one morning he awoke to realize that that end had come; the month was up that very day. He had not mentioned the subject to the widow, nor had she to him. His reasons for not speaking were obvious enough; one was that he did not know what to say, and the other that he was afraid to say it. But, as the time approached when the decision must be made, he had expected that she would speak. And she had not. He saw her daily, sometimes several times a day. She often came into the shop to find Barbara, who made the workroom a playhouse on rainy or cloudy days, and she talked with him on other topics, but she did not mention this one. It was raining on this particular day, the last day in the "trial month," and Jed, working at his lathe, momentarily expected Barbara to appear, with Petunia under one arm and a bundle of dolls' clothes under the other, to announce casually that, as it was such bad weather, they had run in to keep him, Mr. Winslow, from getting lonesome. There was precious little opportunity to be lonesome where Babbie was. But this morning the child did not come and Jed, wondering what the reason for her absence might be, began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. Just what was the matter he did not know, but that there was something wrong with him, Jed Winslow, was plain. He could not seem to keep his mind on his work; he found himself wandering to the window and looking out into the yard, where the lilac bushes whipped and thrashed in the gusts, the overflowing spouts splashed and gurgled, and the sea beyond the edge of the bluff was a troubled stretch of gray and white, seen through diagonal streaks of wind-driven rain. And always when he looked out of that window he glanced toward the little house next door, hoping to see a small figure, bundled under a big rain coat and sheltered by a big umbrella, dodge out of the door and race across the yard toward the shop. But the door remained shut, the little figure did not appear and, except for the fact that the blinds were not closed and that there was smoke issuing from the chimney of the kitchen, the little house might have been as empty as it had been the month before. Or as it might be next month. The thought came to Jed with a meaning and emphasis which it had not brought before. A stronger gust than usual howled around the eaves of the shop, the sashes rattled, the panes were beaten by the flung raindrops which pounded down in watery sheets to the sills, and Jed suddenly diagnosed his own case, he knew what was the matter with him--he was lonesome; he, who had lived alone for five years and had hoped to live alone for the rest of his life, was lonesome. He would not admit it, even to himself; it was ridiculous. He was not lonesome, he was just a little "blue," that was all. It was the weather; he might have caught a slight cold, perhaps his breakfast had not agreed with him. He tried to remember what that breakfast had been. It had been eaten in a hurry, he had been thinking of something else as usual, and, except that it consisted of various odds and ends which he had happened to have on hand, he could not itemize it with exactness. There had been some cold fried potatoes, and some warmed-over pop-overs which had "slumped" in the cooking, and a doughnut or two and--oh, yes, a saucer of canned peaches which had been sitting around for a week and which he had eaten to get out of the way. These, with a cup of warmed- over coffee, made up the meal. Jed couldn't see why a breakfast of that kind should make him "blue." And yet he was blue--yes, and there was no use disguising the fact, he was lonesome. If that child would only come, as she generally did, her nonsense might cheer him up a bit. But she did not come. And if he decided not to permit her mother to occupy the house, she would not come much more. Eh? Why, it was the last day of the month! She might never come again! Jed shut off the motor and turned away from the lathe. He sank down into his little chair, drew his knee up under his chin, and thought, long and seriously. When the knee slid down to its normal position once more his mind was made up. Mrs. Armstrong might remain in the little house--for a few months more, at any rate. Even if she insisted upon a year's lease it wouldn't do any great harm. He would wait until she spoke to him about it and then he would give his consent. And--and it would please Captain Sam, at any rate. He rose and, going to the window, looked out once more across the yard. What he saw astonished him. The back door of the house was partially open and a man was just coming out. The man, in dripping oil-skins and a sou'wester, was Philander Hardy, the local expressman. Philander turned and spoke to some one in the house behind him. Jed opened the shop door a crack and listened. "Yes, ma'am," he heard Hardy say. "I'll be back for 'em about four o'clock this afternoon. Rain may let up a little mite by that time, and anyhow, I'll have the covered wagon. Your trunks won't get wet, ma'am; I'll see to that." A minute later Jed, an old sweater thrown over his head and shoulders, darted out of the front door of his shop. The express wagon with Hardy on the driver's seat was just moving off. Jed called after it. "Hi, Philander!" he called, raising his voice only a little, for fear of being overheard at the Armstrong house. "Hi, Philander, come here a minute. I want to see you." Mr. Hardy looked over his shoulder and then backed his equipage opposite the Winslow gate. "Hello, Jedidah Shavin's," he observed, with a grin. "Didn't know you for a minute, with that shawl over your front crimps. What you got on your mind; anything except sawdust?" Jed was too much perturbed even to resent the loathed name "Jedidah." "Philander," he whispered, anxiously; "say, Philander, what does she want? Mrs. Armstrong, I mean? What is it you're comin' back for at four o'clock?" Philander looked down at the earnest face under the ancient sweater. Then he winked, solemnly. "Well, I tell you, Shavin's," he said. "You see, I don't know how 'tis, but woman folks always seem to take a terrible shine to me. Now this Mrs. Armstrong here-- Say, she's some peach, ain't she!-- she ain't seen me more'n half a dozen times, but here she is beggin' me to fetch her my photograph. 'It's rainin' pretty hard, to-day,' I says. 'Won't it do if I fetch it to-morrow?' But no, she--" Jed held up a protesting hand. "I don't doubt she wants your photograph, Philander," he drawled. "Your kind of face is rare. But I heard you say somethin' about comin' for trunks. Whose trunks?" "Whose? Why, hers and the young-one's, I presume likely. 'Twas them I fetched from Luretta Smalley's. Now she wants me to take 'em back there." A tremendous gust, driven in from the sea, tore the sweater from the Winslow head and shoulders and wrapped it lovingly about one of the posts in the yard. Jed did not offer to recover it; he scarcely seemed to know that it was gone. Instead he stood staring at the express driver, while the rain ran down his nose and dripped from its tip to his chin. "She--she's goin' back to Luretta Smalley's?" he repeated. "She--" He did not finish the sentence. Instead he turned on his heel and walked slowly back to the shop. The sweater, wrapped about the post where, in summer, a wooden sailor brandished his paddles, flapped soggily in the wind. Hardy gazed after him. "What in time--?" he exclaimed. Then, raising his voice, he called: "Hi, Jed! Jed! You crazy critter! What--Jed, hold on a minute, didn't you know she was goin'? Didn't she tell you? Jed!" But Jed had entered the shop and closed the door. Philander drove off, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. A few minutes later Mrs. Armstrong, hearing a knock at the rear door of the Winslow house, opened it to find her landlord standing on the threshold. He was bareheaded and he had no umbrella. "Why, Mr. Winslow!" she exclaimed. It was the first time that he had come to that house of his own accord since she had occupied it. Now he stood there, in the rain, looking at her without speaking. "Why, Mr. Winslow," she said again. "What is it? Come in, won't you? You're soaking wet. Come in!" Jed looked down at the sleeves of his jacket. "Eh?" he drawled, slowly. "Wet? Why, I don't know's I ain't--a little. It's--it's rainin'." "Raining! It's pouring. Come in." She took him by the arm and led him through the woodshed and into the kitchen. She would have led him further, into the sitting- room, but he hung back. "No, ma'am, no," he said. "I--I guess I'll stay here, if you don't mind." There was a patter of feet from the sitting-room and Barbara came running, Petunia in her arms. At the sight of their visitor's lanky form the child's face brightened. "Oh, Mr. Winslow!" she cried. "Did you come to see where Petunia and I were? Did you?" Jed looked down at her. "Why--why, I don't know's I didn't," he admitted. "I--I kind of missed you, I guess." "Yes, and we missed you. You see, Mamma said we mustn't go to the shop to-day because-- Oh, Mamma, perhaps he has come to tell you we won't have to--" Mrs. Armstrong interrupted. "Hush, Babbie," she said, quickly. "I told Barbara not to go to visit you to-day, Mr. Winslow. She has been helping me with the packing." Jed swallowed hard. "Packin'?" he repeated. "You've been packin'? Then 'twas true, what Philander Hardy said about your goin' back to Luretta's?" The lady nodded. "Yes," she replied. "Our month here ends to-day. Of course you knew that." Jed sighed miserably. "Yes, ma'am," he said, "I knew it, but I only just realized it, as you might say. I . . . Hum! . . . Well . . ." He turned away and walked slowly toward the kitchen door. Barbara would have followed but her mother laid a detaining hand upon her shoulder. On the threshold of the door between the dining-room and kitchen Jed paused. "Ma'am," he said, hesitatingly, "you--you don't cal'late there's anything I can do to--to help, is there? Anything in the packin' or movin' or anything like that?" "No, thank you, Mr. Winslow. The packing was very simple." "Er--yes, ma'am. . . . Yes, ma'am." He stopped, seemed about to speak again, but evidently changed his mind, for he opened the door and went out into the rain without another word. Barbara, very much surprised and hurt, looked up into her mother's face. "Why, Mamma," she cried, "has--has he GONE? He didn't say good-by to us or--or anything. He didn't even say he was sorry we were going." Mrs. Armstrong shook her head. "I imagine that is because he isn't sorry, my dear," she replied. "You must remember that Mr. Winslow didn't really wish to let any one live in this house. We only came here by--well, by accident." But Barbara was unconvinced. "He ISN'T glad," she declared, stoutly. "He doesn't act that way when he is glad about things. You see," she added, with the air of a Mrs. Methusaleh, "Petunia and I know him better than you do, Mamma; we've had more chances to get--to get acquainted." Perhaps an hour later there was another knock at the kitchen door. Mrs. Armstrong, when she opened it, found her landlord standing there, one of his largest windmills--a toy at least three feet high--in his arms. He bore it into the kitchen and stood it in the middle of the floor, holding the mammoth thing, its peaked roof high above his head, and peering solemnly out between one of its arms and its side. "Why, Mr. Winslow!" exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong. "Yes, ma'am," said Jed. "I--I fetched it for Babbie. I just kind of thought maybe she'd like it." Barbara clasped her hands. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, is it for me." Jed answered. "'Tis, if you want it," he said. "Want it? Why, Mamma, it's one of the very best mills! It's a five dollar one, Mamma!" Mrs. Armstrong protested. "Oh, I couldn't let you do that, Mr. Winslow," she declared. "It is much too expensive a present. And besides--" She checked herself just in time. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say that she did not know what they could do with it. Their rooms at Mrs. Smalley's were not large. It was as if a dweller in a Harlem flat had been presented with a hippopotamus. The maker of the mill looked about him, plainly seeking a place to deposit his burden. "'Tisn't anything much," he said, hastily. "I--I'm real glad for you to have it." He was about to put it on top of the cookstove, in which there was a roaring fire, but Mrs. Armstrong, by a startled exclamation and a frantic rush, prevented his doing so. So he put it on the table instead. Barbara thanked him profusely. She was overjoyed; there were no comparisons with hippopotami in HER mind. Jed seemed pleased at her appreciation, but he did not smile. Instead he sighed. "I--I just thought I wanted her to have it, ma'am," he said, turning to Mrs. Armstrong. "'Twould keep her from--from forgettin' me altogether, maybe. . . . Not that there's any real reason why she should remember me, of course," he added. Barbara was hurt and indignant. "Of COURSE I shan't forget you, Mr. Winslow," she declared. "Neither will Petunia. And neither will Mamma, I know. She feels awful bad because you don't want us to live here any longer, and--" "Hush, Babbie, hush!" commanded her mother. Barbara hushed, but she had said enough. Jed turned a wondering face in their direction. He stared without speaking. Mrs. Armstrong felt that some one must say something. "You mustn't mind what the child says, Mr. Winslow," she explained, hurriedly. "Of course I realize perfectly that this house is yours and you certainly have the right to do what you please with your own. And I have known all the time that we were here merely on trial." Jed lifted a big hand. "Er--er--just a minute, ma'am, please," he begged. "I--I guess my wooden head is beginnin' to splinter or somethin'. Please answer me just this--if--if you'd just as soon: Why are you movin' back to Luretta's?" It was her turn to look wonderingly at him. "Why, Mr. Winslow," she said, after a moment's hesitation, "isn't that rather an unnecessary question? When Babbie and I came here it was with the understanding that we were to be on trial for a month. We had gone into no details at all, except that the rent for this one month should be forty dollars. You were, as I understood it, to consider the question of our staying and, if you liked us and liked the idea of renting the house at all, you were to come to me and discuss the matter. The month is up and you haven't said a word on the subject. And, knowing what your feelings HAD been, I of course realized that you did not wish us to remain, and so, of course, we are going. I am sorry, very sorry. Babbie and I love this little house, and we wish you might have cared to have us stay in it, but--" "Hold on! hold on!" Jed was, for him, almost energetic. "Mrs. Armstrong, ma'am, do you mean to tell me you're goin' back to Luretta Smalley's because you think I don't want you to stay? Is that it, honest truth?" "Why, of course, it is. What else?" "And--and 'tain't because you can't stand me any longer, same as Mother used to say?" "Can't stand you? Your mother used to say? What DO you mean, Mr. Winslow?" "I mean--I mean you ain't goin' because I used to wash my face out in the yard, and--and holler and sing mornin's and look so everlastin' homely--and--and be what everybody calls a town crank-- and--" "Mr. Winslow! PLEASE!" "And--and you and Babbie would stay right here if--if you thought I wanted you to?" "Why, of course. But you don't, do you?" Before Jed could answer the outside door was thrown open without knock or preliminary warning, and Captain Sam Hunniwell, dripping water like a long-haired dog after a bath, strode into the kitchen. "Mornin', ma'am," he said, nodding to Mrs. Armstrong. Then, turning to the maker of windmills: "You're the feller I'm lookin' for," he declared. "Is what Philander Hardy told me just now true? Is it?" Jed was dreamily staring out of the window. He was smiling, a seraphic smile. Receiving no reply, Captain Sam angrily repeated his question. "Is it true?" he demanded. "No-o, no, I guess 'tisn't. I'd know better if I knew what he told you." "He told me that Mrs. Armstrong here was movin' back to Luretta Smalley's to-day. Jed Winslow, have you been big enough fool--" Jed held up the big hand. "Yes," he said. "I always am." "You always are--what?" "A big enough fool. Sam, what is a lease?" "What is a lease?" "Yes. Never mind tellin' me; show me. Make out a lease of this house to Mrs. Armstrong here." Mrs. Armstrong was, naturally, rather surprised. "Why, Mr. Winslow," she cried; "what are you talking about? We haven't agreed upon rent or--" "Yes, we have. We've agreed about everything. Er--Babbie, you get your things on and come on over to the shop. You and I mustn't be sittin' 'round here any longer. We've got to get to WORK." CHAPTER VII And so, in as sudden a fashion as he had granted the "month's trial," did Jed grant the permanent tenure of his property. The question of rent, which might easily have been, with the ordinary sort of landlord, a rock in the channel, turned out to be not even a pebble. Captain Hunniwell, who was handling the business details, including the making out of the lease, was somewhat troubled. "But, Jed," he protested, "you've GOT to listen to me. She won't pay forty a month, although she agrees with me that for a furnished house in a location like this it's dirt cheap. Of course she's takin' it for all the year, which does make consider'ble difference, although from May to October, when the summer folks are here, I could get a hundred and forty a month just as easy as . . . Eh? I believe you ain't heard a word I've been sayin'. Gracious king! If you ain't enough to drive the mate of a cattle boat into gettin' religion! Do you hear me? I say she won't pay--" Jed, who was sitting before the battered old desk in the corner of his workshop, did not look around, but he waved his right hand, the fingers of which held the stump of a pencil, over his shoulder. "Ssh-h, sh-h, Sam!" he observed, mildly. "Don't bother me now; please don't, there's a good feller. I'm tryin' to work out somethin' important." "Well, this is important. Or, if it ain't, there's plenty that is important waitin' for me up at the bank. I'm handlin' this house business as a favor to you. If you think I've got nothin' else to do you're mistaken." Jed nodded, contritely, and turned to face his friend. "I know it, Sam," he said, "I know it. I haven't got the least mite of excuse for troublin' you." "You ain't troublin' me--not that way. All I want of you is to say yes or no. I tell you Mrs. Armstrong thinks she can't afford to pay forty a month." "Yes." "And perhaps she can't. But you've got your own interests to think about. What shall I do?" "Yes." "YES! What in time are you sayin' yes for?" "Hum? Eh? Oh, excuse me, Sam; I didn't mean yes, I mean no." "Gracious king!" "Well--er--er--," desperately, "you told me to say yes or no, so I--" "See here, Jed Winslow, HAVE you heard what I've been sayin'?" "Why, no, Sam; honest I ain't. I've run across an idea about makin' a different kind of mill--one like a gull, you know, that'll flap its wings up and down when the wind blows--and--er--I'm afraid my head is solid full of that and nothin' else. There generally ain't more'n room for one idea in my head," he added, apologetically. "Sometimes that one gets kind of cramped." The captain snorted in disgust. Jed looked repentant and distressed. "I'm awful sorry, Sam," he declared. "But if it's about that house of mine--rent or anything, you just do whatever Mrs. Armstrong says." "Whatever SHE says? Haven't you got anything to say?" "No, no-o, I don't know's I have. You see, I've settled that she and Babbie are to have the house for as long as they want it, so it's only fair to let them settle the rest, seems to me. Whatever Mrs. Armstrong wants to pay'll be all right. You just leave it to her." Captain Sam rose to his feet. "I've a dum good mind to," he declared "'Twould serve you right if she paid you ten cents a year." Then, with a glance of disgust at the mountain of old letters and papers piled upon the top of the desk where his friend was at work, he added: "What do you clean that desk of yours with--a shovel?" The slow smile drifted across the Winslow face. "I cal'late that's what I should have to use, Sam," he drawled, "if I ever cleaned it." The captain and the widow agreed upon thirty-five dollars a month. It developed that she owned their former house in Middleford and that the latter had been rented for a very much higher rent. "My furniture," she added, "that which I did not sell when we gave up housekeeping, is stored with a friend there. I know it is extravagant, my hiring a furnished house, but I'm sure Mr. Winslow wouldn't let this one unfurnished and, besides, it would be a crime to disturb furniture and rooms which fit each other as these do. And, after all, at the end of a year I may wish to leave Orham. Of course I hope I shall not, but I may." Captain Sam would have asked questions concerning her life in Middleford, in fact he did ask a few, but the answers he received were unsatisfactory. Mrs. Armstrong evidently did not care to talk on the subject. The captain thought her attitude a little odd, but decided that the tragedy of her husband's death must be the cause of her reticence. Her parting remarks on this occasion furnished an explanation. "If you please, Captain Hunniwell," she said, "I would rather you did not tell any one about my having lived in Middleford and my affairs there. I have told very few people in Orham and I think on the whole it is better not to. What is the use of having one's personal history discussed by strangers?" She was evidently a trifle embarrassed and confused as she said this, for she blushed just a little. Captain Sam decided that the blush was becoming. Also, as he walked back to the bank, he reflected that Jed Winslow's tenant was likely to have her personal history and affairs discussed whether she wished it or not. Young women as attractive as she were bound to be discussed, especially in a community the size of Orham. And, besides, whoever else she may have told, she certainly had told him that Middleford had formerly been her home and he had told Maud and Jed. Of course they would say nothing if he asked them, but perhaps they had told it already. And why should Mrs. Armstrong care, anyway? "Let folks talk," he said that evening, in conversation with his daughter. "Let 'em talk, that's my motto. When they're lyin' about me I know they ain't lyin' about anybody else, that's some comfort. But women folks, I cal'late, feel different." Maud was interested and a little suspicious. "You don't suppose, Pa," she said, "that this Mrs. Armstrong has a past, do you?" "A past? What kind of a thing is a past, for thunder sakes?" "Why, I mean a--a--well, has she done something she doesn't want other people to know; is she trying to hide something, like--well, as people do in stories?" "Eh? Oh, in the books! I see. Well, young woman, I cal'late the first thing for your dad to do is to find out what sort of books you read. A past! Ho, ho! I guess likely Mrs. Armstrong is a plaguey sight more worried about the future than she is about the past. She has lived the past already, but she's got to live the future and pay the bills belongin' to it, and that's no triflin' job in futures like these days." Needless to say Jed Winslow did no speculating concerning his tenant's "past." Having settled the question of that tenancy definitely and, as he figured it, forever, he put the matter entirely out of his mind and centered all his energies upon the new variety of mill, the gull which was to flap its wings when the wind blew. Barbara was, of course, much interested in the working out of this invention, and her questions were many. Occasionally Mrs. Armstrong came into the shop. She and Jed became better acquainted. The acquaintanceship developed. Jed formed a daily habit of stopping at the Armstrong door to ask if there were any errands to be done downtown. "Goin' right along down on my own account, ma'am," was his invariable excuse. "Might just as well run your errands at the same time." Also, whenever he chopped a supply of kindling wood for his own use he chopped as much more and filled the oilcloth-covered box which stood by the stove in the Armstrong kitchen. He would not come in and sit down, however, in spite of Barbara's and her mother's urgent invitation; he was always too "busy" for that. But the time came when he did come in, actually come in and sit down to a meal. Barbara, of course, was partially responsible for this amazing invitation, but it was Heman Taylor's old brindle tomcat which really brought it to pass. The cat in question was a disreputable old scalawag, with tattered ears and a scarred hide, souvenirs of fights innumerable, with no beauty and less morals, and named, with appropriate fitness, "Cherub." It was a quarter to twelve on a Sunday morning and Jed was preparing his dinner. The piece de resistance of the dinner was, in this instance, to be a mackerel. Jed had bought the mackerel of the fish peddler the previous afternoon and it had been reposing on a plate in the little ancient ice-chest which stood by the back door of the Winslow kitchen. Barbara, just back from Sunday school and arrayed in her best, saw that back door open and decided to call. Jed, as always, was glad to see her. "You're getting dinner, aren't you, Mr. Winslow?" she observed. Jed looked at her over his spectacles. "Yes," he answered. "Unless somethin' happens I'm gettin' dinner." His visitor looked puzzled. "Why, whatever happened you would be getting dinner just the same, wouldn't you?" she said. "You might not have it, but you'd be getting it, you know." Jed took the mackerel out of the ice-chest and put the plate containing it on the top of the latter. "We-ell," he drawled, "you can't always tell. I might take so long gettin' it that, first thing I knew, 'twould be supper." Humming a hymn he took another dish from the ice-chest and placed it beside the mackerel plate. "What's that?" inquired Barbara. "That? Oh, that's my toppin'-off layer. That's a rice puddin', poor man's puddin', some folks call it. I cal'late your ma'd call it a man's poor puddin', but it makes good enough ballast for a craft like me." He began singing again. "'I know not, yea, I know not What bliss awaits me there. Di, doo de di di doo de--'" Breaking off to suggest: "Better stay and eat along with me to-day, hadn't you, Babbie?" Barbara tried hard not to seem superior. "Thank you," she said, "but I guess I can't. We're going to have chicken and lemon jelly." Then, remembering her manners, she added: "We'd be awful glad if you'd have dinner with us, Mr. Winslow." Jed shook his head. "Much obliged," he drawled, "but if I didn't eat that mackerel, who would?" The question was answered promptly. While Mr. Winslow and his small caller were chatting concerning the former's dinner, another eager personality was taking a marked interest in a portion of that dinner. Cherub, the Taylor cat, abroad on a foraging expedition, had scented from his perch upon a nearby fence a delicious and appetizing odor. Following his nose, literally, Cherub descended from the fence and advanced, sniffing as he came. The odor was fish, fresh fish. Cherub's green eyes blazed, his advance became crafty, strategical, determined. He crept to the Winslow back step, he looked up through the open door, he saw the mackerel upon its plate on the top of the ice-chest. "If I didn't eat that mackerel," drawled Jed, "who would?" There was a swoop through the air, a scream from Barbara, a crash-- two crashes, a momentary glimpse of a brindle cat with a mackerel crosswise in its mouth and the ends dragging on the ground, a rattle of claws on the fence. Then Jed and his visitor were left to gaze upon a broken plate on the floor, an overturned bowl on top of the ice-chest, and a lumpy rivulet of rice pudding trickling to the floor. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" cried Barbara, wringing her hands in consternation. Jed surveyed the ruin of the "poor man's pudding" and gazed thoughtfully at the top of the fence over which the marauder had disappeared. "Hum," he mused. "H-u-u-m. . . . Well, I did cal'late I could get a meal out of sight pretty fast myself, but--but--I ain't in that critter's class." "But your dinner!" wailed Barbara, almost in tears. "He's spoiled ALL your dinner! Oh, the BAD thing! I hate that Cherub cat! I HATE him!" Mr. Winslow rubbed his chin. "We-e-ll," he drawled again. "He does seem to have done what you might call a finished job. H-u-u-m! . . . 'Another offensive on the--er--no'theast'ard front; all objectives attained.' That's the way the newspapers tell such things nowadays, ain't it? . . . However, there's no use cryin' over spilt--er--puddin'. Lucky there's eggs and milk aboard the ship. I shan't starve, anyhow." Barbara was aghast. "Eggs and milk!" she repeated. "Is THAT all you've got for Sunday dinner, Mr. Winslow? Why, that's awful!" Jed smiled and began picking up the fragments of the plate. He went to the closet to get a broom and when he came out again the young lady had vanished. But she was back again in a few minutes, her eyes shining. "Mr. Winslow," she said, "Mamma sent me to ask if you could please come right over to our house. She--she wants to see you." Jed regarded her doubtfully. "Wants to see me?" he repeated. "What for?" The child shook her head; her eyes sparkled more than ever. "I'm not sure," she said, "but I think there's something she wants you to do." Wondering what the something might be, Jed promised to be over in a minute or two. Barbara danced away, apparently much excited. Mr. Winslow, remembering that it was Sunday, performed a hasty toilet at the sink, combed his hair, put on his coat and walked across the yard. Barbara met him at the side door of the house. "Mamma's in the dining-room," she said. "Come right in, Mr. Winslow." So Jed entered the dining-room, to find the table set and ready, with places laid for three instead of two, and Mrs. Armstrong drawing back one of three chairs. He looked at her. "Good mornin', ma'am," he stammered. "Babbie, she said--er--she said there was somethin' you wanted me to do." The lady smiled. "There is," she replied. "Babbie has told me what happened to your dinner, and she and I want you to sit right down and have dinner with us. We're expecting you, everything is ready, and we shall--yes, we shall be hurt if you don't stay. Shan't we, Babbie?" Barbara nodded vigorously. "Awf'ly," she declared; "'specially Petunia. You will stay, won't you, Mr. Winslow--please?" Poor Jed! His agitation was great, his embarrassment greater and his excuses for not accepting the invitation numerous if not convincing. But at last he yielded and sat reluctantly down to the first meal he had eaten in that house for five years. Mrs. Armstrong, realizing his embarrassment, did not urge him to talk and Barbara, although she chattered continuously, did not seem to expect answers to her questions. So Jed ate a little, spoke a little, and thought a great deal. And by the time dinner was over some of his shyness and awkwardness had worn away. He insisted upon helping with the dishes and, because she saw that he would be hurt if she did not, his hostess permitted him to do so. "You see, ma'am," he said, "I've been doin' dishes for a consider'ble spell, more years than I like to count. I ought to be able to do 'em fair to middlin' well. But," he added, as much to himself as to her, "I don't know as that's any sign. There's so many things I ought to be able to do like other folks--and can't. I'm afraid you may not be satisfied, after all, ma'am," he went on. "I suppose you're a kind of an expert, as you might say." She shook her head. "I fear I'm no expert, Mr. Winslow," she answered, just a little sadly, so it seemed to him. "Barbara and I are learning, that is all." "Nora used to do the dishes at home," put in Barbara. "Mamma hardly ever--" "Hush, dear," interrupted her mother. "Mr. Winslow wouldn't be interested." After considerable urging Jed consented to sit a while in the living-room. He was less reluctant to talk by this time and, the war creeping into the conversation, as it does into all conversations nowadays, they spoke of recent happenings at home and abroad. Mrs. Armstrong was surprised to find how well informed her landlord was concerning the world struggle, its causes and its progress. "Why, no, ma'am," he said, in answer to a remark of hers; "I ain't read it up much, as I know of, except in the newspapers. I ain't an educated man. Maybe--" with his slow smile--"maybe you've guessed as much as that already." "I know that you have talked more intelligently on this war than any one else I have heard since I came to this town," she declared, emphatically. "Even Captain Hunniwell has never, in my hearing, stated the case against Germany as clearly as you put it just now; and I have heard him talk a good deal." Jed was evidently greatly pleased, but he characteristically tried not to show it. "Well, now, ma'am," he drawled, "I'm afraid you ain't been to the post office much mail times. If you'd just drop in there some evenin' and hear Gabe Bearse and Bluey Batcheldor raise hob with the Kaiser you'd understand why the confidence of the Allies is unshaken, as the Herald gave out this mornin'." A little later he said, reflectively: "You know, ma'am, it's an astonishin' thing to me, I can't get over it, my sittin' here in this house, eatin' with you folks and talkin' with you like this." Mrs. Armstrong smiled. "I can't see anything so very astonishing about it," she said. "Can't you?" "Certainly not. Why shouldn't you do it--often? We are landlord and tenant, you and I, but that is no reason, so far as I can see, why we shouldn't be good neighbors." He shook his head. "I don't know's you quite understand, ma'am," he said. "It's your thinkin' of doin' it, your askin' me and--and WANTIN' to ask me that seems so kind of odd. Do you know," he added, in a burst of confidence, "I don't suppose that, leavin' Sam Hunniwell out, another soul has asked me to eat at their house for ten year. Course I'm far from blamin' 'em for that, you understand, but--" "Wait. Mr. Winslow, you had tenants in this house before?" "Yes'm. Davidson, their names was." "And did THEY never invite you here?" Jed looked at her, then away, out of the window. It was a moment or two before he answered. Then-- "Mrs. Armstrong," he said, "you knew, I cal'late, that I was--er-- kind of prejudiced against rentin' anybody this house after the Davidsons left?" The lady, trying not to smile, nodded. "Yes," she replied, "I--well, I guessed as much." "Yes'm, I was. They would have took it again, I'm pretty sartin, if I'd let 'em, but--but somehow I couldn't do it. No, I couldn't, and I never meant anybody else should be here. Seems funny to you, I don't doubt." "Why, no, it was your property to do what you pleased with, and I am sure you had a reason for refusing." "Yes'm. But I ain't ever told anybody what that reason was. I've told Sam a reason, but 'twan't the real one. I--I guess likely I'll tell it to you. I imagine 'twill sound foolish enough. 'Twas just somethin' I heard Colonel Davidson say, that's all." He paused. Mrs. Armstrong did not speak. After an interval he continued: "'Twas one day along the last of the season. The Davidsons had company and they'd been in to see the shop and the mills and vanes and one thing or 'nother. They seemed nice, pleasant enough folks; laughed a good deal, but I didn't mind that. I walked out into the yard along with 'em and then, after I left 'em, I stood for a minute on the front step of the shop, with the open door between me and this house here. A minute or so later I heard 'em come into this very room. They couldn't see me, 'count of the door, but I could hear them, 'count of the windows bein' open. And then . . . Huh . . . Oh, well." He sighed and lapsed into one of his long fits of abstraction. At length Mrs. Armstrong ventured to remind him. "And then--?" she asked. "Eh? Oh, yes, ma'am! Well, then I heard one of the comp'ny say: 'I don't wonder you enjoy it here, Ed,' he says. 'That landlord of yours is worth all the rent you pay and more. 'Tain't everybody that has a dime museum right on the premises.' All hands laughed and then Colonel Davidson said: 'I thought you'd appreciate him,' he says. 'We'll have another session with him before you leave. Perhaps we can get him into the house here this evenin'. My wife is pretty good at that, she jollies him along. Oh, he swallows it all; the poor simpleton don't know when he's bein' shown off.'" Mrs. Armstrong uttered an exclamation. "Oh!" she cried. "The brute!" "Yes'm," said Jed, quietly, "that was what he said. You see," with an apologetic twitch of the lip, "it came kind of sudden to me and-- and it hurt. Fact is, I--I had noticed he and his wife was--er-- well, nice and--er--folksy, as you might say, but I never once thought they did it for any reason but just because they--well, liked me, maybe. Course I'd ought to have known better. Fine ladies and gentlemen like them don't take much fancy to dime museum folks." There was just a trace of bitterness in his tone, the first Mrs. Armstrong had ever noticed there. Involuntarily she leaned toward him. "Don't, Mr. Winslow," she begged. "Don't think of it again. They must have been beasts, those people, and they don't deserve a moment's thought. And DON'T call them ladies and gentlemen. The only gentleman there was yourself." Jed shook his head. "If you said that around the village here," he drawled, "somebody might be for havin' you sent to the asylum up to Taunton. Course I'm much obliged to you, but, honest, you hadn't ought to take the risk." Mrs. Armstrong smiled slightly, but hers was a forced smile. What she had just heard, told in her guest's quaint language as a statement of fact and so obviously with no thought of effect, had touched her more than any plea for sympathy could have done. She felt as if she had a glimpse into this man's simple, trusting, sensitive soul. And with that glimpse came a new feeling toward him, a feeling of pity--yes, and more than that, a feeling of genuine respect. He sighed again and rose to go. "I declare," he said, apologetically, "I don't know what I've been botherin' you with all this for. As I said, I've never told that yarn to anybody afore and I never meant to tell it. I--" But she interrupted him. "Please don't apologize," she said. "I'm very glad you told it to me." "I cal'late you think it's a queer reason for lettin' this house stand empty all this time." "No, I think it was a very good one, and Babbie and I are honored to know that your estimate of us is sufficiently high to overcome your prejudice." "Well, ma'am, I--I guess it's goin' to be all right. If you feel you can get along with me for a landlord I'd ought sartin to be willin' to have you for tenants. Course I don't blame the Davidsons, in one way, you understand, but--" "I do. I blame them in every way. They must have been unspeakable. Mr. Winslow, I hope you will consider Babbie and me not merely tenants and neighbors, but friends--real friends." Jed did not reply for at least a minute. Then he said: "I'm afraid you'll be kind of lonesome; my friends are like corn sprouts in a henyard, few and scatterin'." "So much the better; we shall feel that we belong to select company." He did not thank her nor answer, but walked slowly on through the dining-room and kitchen, where he opened the door and stepped out upon the grass. There he stood for a moment, gazing at the sky, alternately puckering his lips and opening them, but without saying a word. Mrs. Armstrong and Barbara, who had followed him, watched these facial gymnastics, the lady with astonishment, her daughter with expectant interest. "I know what he is doing that for, Mamma," she whispered. "It's because he's thinking and don't know whether to whistle or not. When he thinks AWFUL hard he's almost sure to whistle--or sing." "Hush, hush, Babbie!" "Oh, he won't hear us. He hardly ever hears any one when he's thinking like that. And see, Mamma, he IS going to whistle." Sure enough, their guest whistled a few mournful bars, breaking off suddenly to observe: "I hope there wan't any bones in it." "Bones in what? What do you mean, Mr. Winslow?" queried Mrs. Armstrong, who was puzzled, to say the least. "Eh? Oh, I hope there wan't any bones in that mackerel Heman's cat got away with. If there was it might choke or somethin'." "Good gracious! I shouldn't worry over that possibility, if I were you. I should scarcely blame you for wishing it might choke, after stealing your dinner." Mr. Winslow shook his head. "That wouldn't do," solemnly. "If it choked it couldn't ever steal another one." "But you don't WANT it to steal another one, do you?" "We-ll, if every one it stole meant my havin' as good an afternoon as this one's been, I'd--" He stopped. Barbara ventured to spur him on. "You'd what?" she asked. "I'd give up whittlin' weather vanes and go mackerel-seinin' for the critter's benefit. Well--er--good day, ma'am." "Good afternoon, Mr. Winslow. We shall expect you again soon. You must be neighborly, for, remember, we are friends now." Jed was half way across the yard, but he stopped and turned. "My--my FRIENDS generally call me 'Jed,'" he said. Then, his face a bright red, he hurried into the shop and closed the door. CHAPTER VIII After this, having broken the ice, Jed, as Captain Sam Hunniwell might have expressed it, "kept the channel clear." When he stopped at the kitchen door of his tenants' house he no longer invariably refused to come in and sit down. When he inquired if Mrs. Armstrong had any errands to be done he also asked if there were any chores he might help out with. When the old clock--a genuine Seth Willard--on the wall of the living-room refused to go, he came in, sat down, took the refractory timepiece in his arms and, after an hour of what he called "putterin' and jackleggin'," hung it up again apparently in as good order as ever. During the process he whistled a little, sang a hymn or two, and talked with Barbara, who found the conversation a trifle unsatisfactory. "He hardly EVER finished what he was going to say," she confided to her mother afterward. "He'd start to tell me a story and just as he got to the most interesting part something about the clock would seem to--you know--trouble him and he'd stop and, when he began again, he'd be singing instead of talking. I asked him what made him do it and he said he cal'lated his works must be loose and every once in a while his speaking trumpet fell down into his music box. Isn't he a funny man, Mamma?" "He is indeed, Babbie." "Yes. Petunia and I think he's--he's perfectly scrushe-aking. 'Twas awful nice of him to fix our clock, wasn't it, Mamma." "Yes, dear." "Yes. And I know why he did it; he told me. 'Twas on Petunia's account. He said not to let her know it but he'd taken consider'ble of a shine to her. I think he's taken a shine to me, don't you, Mamma?" "I'm sure of it." "So am I. And I 'most guess he's taken one to you, too. Anyhow he watches you such a lot and notices so many things. He asked me to- day if you had been crying. I said no. You hadn't, had you, Mamma?" Mrs. Armstrong evaded the question by changing the subject. She decided she must be more careful in hiding her feelings when her landlord was about. She had had no idea that he could be so observing; certainly he did not look it. But her resolution was a little late. Jed had made up his mind that something was troubling his fair tenant. Again and again, now that he was coming to know her better and better, he had noticed the worn, anxious look on her face, and once before the day of the clock repairing he had seen her when it seemed to him that she had been crying. He did not mention his observations or inferences to any one, even Captain Sam, but he was sure he was right. Mrs. Armstrong was worried and anxious and he did not like the idea. He wished he might help her, but of course he could not. Another man, a normal man, one not looked upon by a portion of the community as "town crank," might have been able to help, might have known how to offer his services and perhaps have them accepted, but not he, not Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow. But he wished he could. She had asked him to consider her a real friend, and to Jed, who had so few, a friend was a possession holy and precious. Meanwhile the war was tightening its grip upon Orham as upon every city, town and hamlet in the land. At first it had been a thing to read about in the papers, to cheer for, to keep the flags flying. But it had been far off, unreal. Then came the volunteering, and after that the draft, and the reality drew a little nearer. Work upon the aviation camp at East Harniss had actually begun. The office buildings were up and the sheds for the workmen. They were erecting frames for the barracks, so Gabriel Bearse reported. The sight of a uniform in Orham streets was no longer such a novelty as to bring the population, old and young, to doors and windows. Miss Maud Hunniwell laughingly confided to Jed that she was beginning to have hopes, real hopes, of seeing genuine gold lace some day soon. Captain Sam, her father, was busy. Sessions of the Exemption Board were not quite as frequent as at first, but the captain declared them frequent enough. And volunteering went on steadily here and there among young blood which, having drawn a low number in the draft, was too impatient for active service to wait its turn. Gustavus Howes, bookkeeper at the bank, was one example. Captain Sam told Jed about it on one of his calls. "Yep," he said, "Gus has gone, cleared out yesterday afternoon. Goin' to one of the trainin' camps to try to learn to be an officer. Eh? What did I say to him? Why, I couldn't say nothin', could I, but 'Hurrah' and 'God bless you'? But it's leavin' a bad hole in the bank just the same." Jed asked if the bank had any one in view to fill that hole. Captain Sam looked doubtful. "Well," he replied, "we've got somebody in view that would like to try and fill it. Barzilla Small was in to see me yesterday afternoon and he's sartin that his boy Luther--Lute, everybody calls him--is just the one for the place. He's been to work up in Fall River in a bank, so Barzilla says; that would mean he must have had some experience. Whether he'll do or not I don't know, but he's about the only candidate in sight, these war times. What do you think of him, Jed?" Jed rubbed his chin. "To fill Gus Howes' place?" he asked. "Yes, of course. Didn't think I was figgerin' on makin' him President of the United States, did you?" "Hum! . . . W-e-e-ll. . . . One time when I was a little shaver, Sam, down to the fishhouse, I tried on a pair of Cap'n Jabe Kelly's rubber boots. You remember Cap'n Jabe, Sam, of course. Do you remember his feet?" The captain chuckled. "My dad used to say Jabe's feet reminded him of a couple of chicken-halibut." "Um-hm. . . . Well, I tried on his boots and started to walk across the wharf in em. . . ." "Well, what of it? Gracious king! hurry up. What happened?" "Eh? . . . Oh, nothin' much, only seemed to me I'd had half of my walk afore those boots began to move." Captain Hunniwell enjoyed the story hugely. It was not until his laugh had died away to a chuckle that its application to the bank situation dawned upon him. "Umph!" he grunted. "I see. You cal'late that Lute Small will fill Gus Howes' job about the way you filled those boots, eh? You may be right, shouldn't wonder if you was, but we've got to have somebody and we've got to have him now. So I guess likely we'll let Lute sign on and wait till later to find out whether he's an able seaman or a--a--" He hesitated, groping for a simile. Mr. Winslow supplied one. "Or a leak," he suggested. "Yes, that's it. Say, have you heard anything from Leander Babbitt lately?" "No, nothin' more than Gab Bearse was reelin' off last time he was in here. How is Phin Babbitt? Does he speak to you yet?" "Not a word. But the looks he gives me when we meet would sour milk. He's dead sartin that I had somethin' to do with his boy's volunteerin' and he'll never forgive me for it. He's the best hand at unforgivin' I ever saw. No, no! Wonder what he'd say if he knew 'twas you, Jed, that was really responsible?" Jed shook his head, but made no reply. His friend was at the door. "Any money to take to the bank?" he inquired. "Oh, no, I took what you had yesterday, didn't I? Any errands you want done over to Harniss? Maud and I are goin' over there in the car this afternoon." Jed seemed to reflect. "No-o," he said; "no, I guess not. . . . Why, yes, I don't know but there is, though. If you see one of those things the soldiers put on in the trenches I'd wish you'd buy it for me. You know what I mean--a gas mask." "A gas mask! Gracious king! What on earth?" Jed sighed. "'Twould be consider'ble protection when Gabe Bearse dropped in and started talkin'," he drawled, solemnly. October came in clear and fine and on a Saturday in that month Jed and Barbara went on their long anticipated picnic to the aviation camp at East Harniss. The affair was one which they had planned together. Barbara, having heard much concerning aviation during her days of playing and listening in the windmill shop, had asked questions. She wished to know what an aviation was. Jed had explained, whereupon his young visitor expressed a wish to go and see for herself. "Couldn't you take Petunia and me some time, Mr. Winslow?" she asked. "Guess maybe so," was the reply, "provided I don't forget it, same as you forget about not callin' me Mr. Winslow." "Oh, I'm so sorry. Petunia ought to have reminded me. Can't you take me some time, Uncle Jed?" He had insisted upon her dropping the "Mr." in addressing him. "Your ma's goin' to call me Jed," he told her; "that is to say, I hope she is, and you might just as well. I always answer fairly prompt whenever anybody says 'Jed,' 'cause I'm used to it. When they say 'Mr. Winslow' I have to stop and think a week afore I remember who they mean." But Barbara, having consulted her mother, refused to address her friend as "Jed." "Mamma says it wouldn't be respect--respectaful," she said. "And I don't think it would myself. You see, you're older than I am," she added. Jed nodded gravely. "I don't know but I am, a little, now you remind me of it," he admitted. "Well, I tell you--call me 'Uncle Jed.' That's got a handle to it but it ain't so much like the handle to an ice pitcher as Mister is. 'Uncle Jed' 'll do, won't it?" Barbara pondered. "Why," she said, doubtfully, "you aren't my uncle, really. If you were you'd be Mamma's brother, like--like Uncle Charlie, you know." It was the second time she had mentioned "Uncle Charlie." Jed had never heard Mrs. Armstrong speak of having a brother, and he wondered vaguely why. However, he did not wonder long on this particular occasion. "Humph!" he grunted. "Well, let's see. I tell you: I'll be your step-uncle. That'll do, won't it? You've heard of step-fathers? Um-hm. Well, they ain't real fathers, and a step-uncle ain't a real uncle. Now you think that over and see if that won't fix it first-rate." The child thought it over. "And shall I call you 'Step-Uncle Jed'?" she asked. "Eh? . . . Um. . . . No-o, I guess I wouldn't. I'm only a back step-uncle, anyway--I always come to the back steps of your house, you know--so I wouldn't say anything about the step part. You ask your ma and see what she says." So Barbara asked and reported as follows: "She says I may call you 'Uncle Jed' when it's just you and I together," she said. "But when other people are around she thinks 'Mr. Winslow' would be more respectaful." It was settled on that basis. "Can't you take me to the aviation place sometime, Uncle Jed?" asked Barbara. Jed thought he could, if he could borrow a boat somewhere and Mrs. Armstrong was willing that Barbara should go with him. Both permission and the boat were obtained, the former with little difficulty, after Mrs. Armstrong had made inquiries concerning Mr. Winslow's skill in handling a boat, the latter with more. At last Captain Perez Ryder, being diplomatically approached, told Jed he might use his eighteen foot power dory for a day, the only cost being that entailed by purchase of the necessary oil and gasoline. It was a beautiful morning when they started on their six mile sail, or "chug," as Jed called it. Mrs. Armstrong had put up a lunch for them, and Jed had a bucket of clams, a kettle, a pail of milk, some crackers, onions and salt pork, the ingredients of a possible chowder. "Little mite late for 'longshore chowder picnics, ma'am," he said, "but it's a westerly wind and I cal'late 'twill be pretty balmy in the lee of the pines. Soon's it gets any ways chilly we'll be startin' home. Wish you were goin' along, too." Mrs. Armstrong smiled and said she wished it had been possible for her to go, but it was not. She looked pale that morning, so it seemed to Jed, and when she smiled it was with an obvious effort. "You're not going without locking your kitchen door, are you, Mr. Jed?" she asked. Jed looked at her and at the door. "Why," he observed, "I ain't locked that door, have I! I locked the front one, the one to the shop, though. Did you see the sign I tacked on the outside of it?" "No, I didn't." "I didn't know but you might have. I put on it: 'Closed for the day. Inquire at Abijah Thompson's.' You see," he added, his eye twinkling ever so little, "'Bije Thompson lives in the last house in the village, two mile or more over to the west'ard." "He does! Then why in the world did you tell people to inquire there?" "Oh, if I didn't they'd be botherin' you, probably, and I didn't want 'em doin' that. If they want me enough to travel way over to 'Bije's they'll come back here to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder. I guess likely they'd have to; 'Bije don't know anything about me." He rubbed his chin and then added: "Maybe 'twould be a good notion to lock that kitchen door." They were standing at the edge of the bluff. He sauntered over to the kitchen, closed the door, and then, opening the window beside it, reached in through that window and turned the key in the lock of the door. Leaving the key in that lock and the window still open, he came sauntering back again. "There," he drawled, "I guess everything's safe enough now." Mrs. Armstrong regarded him in amused wonder. "Do you usually lock your door on the inside in that way?" she asked. "Eh? . . . Oh, yes'm. If I locked it on the outside I'd have to take the key with me, and I'm such an absent-minded dumb-head, I'd be pretty sure to lose it. Come on, Babbie. All aboard!" CHAPTER IX The "Araminta," which was the name of Captain Perez's power dory--a name, so the captain invariably explained, "wished onto her" before he bought her--chugged along steadily if not swiftly. The course was always in protected water, inside the outer beaches or through the narrow channels between the sand islands, and so there were no waves to contend with and no danger. Jed, in the course of his varied experience afloat and ashore, had picked up a working knowledge of gasoline engines and, anyhow, as he informed his small passenger, the "Araminta's" engine didn't need any expert handling. "She runs just like some folks' tongues; just get her started and she'll clack along all day," he observed, adding philosophically, "and that's a good thing--in an engine." "I know whose tongue you're thinking about, Uncle Jed," declared Barbara. "It's Mr. Gabe Bearse's." Jed was much amused; he actually laughed aloud. "Gabe and this engine are different in one way, though," he said. "It's within the bounds of human possibility to stop this engine." They threaded the last winding channel and came out into the bay. Across, on the opposite shore, the new sheds and lumber piles of what was to be the aviation camp loomed raw and yellow in the sunlight. A brisk breeze ruffled the blue water and the pines on the hilltops shook their heads and shrugged their green shoulders. The "Araminta" chugged across the bay, rising and falling ever so little on the miniature rollers. "What shall we do, Uncle Jed?" asked Barbara. "Shall we go to see the camp or shall we have our chowder and luncheon first and then go?" Jed took out his watch, shook it and held it to his ear--a precautionary process rendered necessary because of his habit of forgetting to wind it--then after a look at the dial, announced that, as it was only half-past ten, perhaps they had better go to the camp first. "You see," he observed, "if we eat now we shan't hardly know whether we're late to breakfast or early to dinner." Barbara was surprised. "Why, Uncle Jed!" she exclaimed, "I had breakfast ever so long ago! Didn't you?" "I had it about the same time you did, I cal'late. But my appetite's older than yours and it don't take so much exercise; I guess that's the difference. We'll eat pretty soon. Let's go and look the place over first." They landed in a little cove on the beach adjoining the Government reservation. Jed declared it a good place to make a fire, as it was sheltered from the wind. He anchored the boat at the edge of the channel and then, pulling up the tops of his long-legged rubber boots, carried his passenger ashore. Another trip or two landed the kettle, the materials for the chowder and the lunch baskets. Jed looked at the heap on the beach and then off at the boat. "Now," he said, slowly, "the question is what have I left aboard that I ought to have fetched ashore and what have I fetched here that ought to be left there? . . . Hum. . . . I wonder." "What makes you think you've done anything like that, Uncle Jed?" asked Barbara. "Eh? . . . Oh, I don't think it, I know it. I've boarded with myself for forty-five year and I know if there's anything I can get cross-eyed I'll do it. Just as likely as not I've made the bucket of clams fast to that rope out yonder and hove it overboard, and pretty soon you'll see me tryin' to make chowder out of the anchor. . . . Ah hum. . . well. . . . 'As numberless as the sands on the seashore, As numberless as the sands on the shore, Oh, what a sight 'twill be, when the ransomed host we see, As numberless as--' Well, what do you say? Shall we heave ahead for the place where Uncle Sam's birds are goin' to nest--his two-legged birds, I mean?" They walked up the beach a little way, then turned inland, climbed a dune covered with beachgrass and emerged upon the flat meadows which would soon be the flying field. They walked about among the sheds, the frames of the barracks, and inspected the office building from outside. There were gangs of workmen, carpenters, plumbers and shovelers, but almost no uniforms. Barbara was disappointed. "But there ARE soldiers here," she declared. "Mamma said there were, officer soldiers, you know." "I cal'late there ain't very many yet," explained her companion. "Only the few that's in charge, I guess likely. By and by there'll be enough, officers and men both, but now there's only carpenters and such." "But there are SOME officer ones--" insisted Babbie. "I wonder-- Oh, see, Uncle Jed, through that window--see, aren't those soldiers? They've got on soldier clothes." Jed presumed likely that they were. Barbara nodded, sagely. "And they're officers, too," she said, "I'm sure they are because they're in the office. Do they call them officers because they work in offices, Uncle Jed?" After an hour's walking about they went back to the place where they had left the boat and Jed set about making the chowder. Barbara watched him build the fire and open the clams, but then, growing tired of sitting still, she was seized with an idea. "Uncle Jed," she asked, "can't you whittle me a shingle boat? You know you did once at our beach at home. And there's the cunningest little pond to sail it on. Mamma would let me sail it there, I know, 'cause it isn't a bit deep. You come and see, Uncle Jed." The "pond" was a puddle, perhaps twenty feet across, left by the outgoing tide. Its greatest depth was not more than a foot. Jed absent-mindedly declared the pond to be safe enough but that he could not make a shingle boat, not having the necessary shingle. "Would you if you had one?" persisted the young lady. "Eh? . . . Oh, yes, sartin, I guess so." "All right. Here is one. I picked it up on top of that little hill. I guess it blew there. It's blowing ever so much harder up there than it is here on the beach." The shingle boat being hurriedly made, its owner begged for a paper sail. "The other one you made me had a paper sail, Uncle Jed." Jed pleaded that he had no paper. "There's some wrapped 'round the lunch," he said, "but it's all butter and such. 'Twouldn't be any good for a sail. Er--er--don't you think we'd better put off makin' the sail till we get home or--or somewheres? This chowder is sort of on my conscience this minute." Babbie evidently did not think so. She went away on an exploring expedition. In a few minutes she returned, a sheet of paper in her hand. "It was blowing around just where I found the shingle," she declared. "It's a real nice place to find things, up on that hill place, Uncle Jed." Jed took the paper, looked at it absently--he had taken off his coat during the fire-building and his glasses were presumably in the coat pocket--and then hastily doubled it across, thrust the mast of the "shingle boat" through it at top and bottom, and handed the craft to his small companion. "There!" he observed; "there she is, launched, rigged and all but christened. Call her the--the 'Geranium'--the 'Sunflower'--what's the name of that doll baby of yours? Oh, yes, the 'Petunia.' Call her that and set her afloat." But Barbara shook her head. "I think," she said, "if you don't mind, Uncle Jed, I shall call this one 'Ruth,' that's Mamma's name, you know. The other one you made me was named for Petunia, and we wouldn't want to name 'em ALL for her. It might make her too--too-- Oh, what ARE those things you make, Uncle Jed? In the shop, I mean." "Eh? Windmills?" "No. The others--those you tell the wind with. I know--vanes. It might make Petunia too vain. That's what Mamma said I mustn't be when I had my new coat, the one with the fur, you know." She trotted off. Jed busied himself with the chowder. A few minutes later a voice behind him said: "Hi, there!" He turned to see a broad-shouldered stranger, evidently a carpenter or workman of some sort, standing at the top of the sand dune and looking down at him with marked interest. "Hi, there!" repeated the stranger. Jed nodded; his attention was centered on the chowder. "How d'ye do?" he observed, politely. "Nice day, ain't it? . . . Hum. . . . About five minutes more." The workman strode down the bank. "Say," he demanded, "have you seen anything of a plan?" "Eh? . . . Hum. . . . Two plates and two spoons . . . and two tumblers. . . ." "Hey! Wake up! Have you seen anything of a plan, I ask you?" "Eh? . . . A plan? . . . No, I guess not. . . . No, I ain't. . . . What is it?" "What IS it? How do you know you ain't seen it if you don't know what it is?" "Eh? . . . I don't, I guess likely." "Say, you're a queer duck, it strikes me. What are you up to? What are you doin' here, anyway?" Jed took the cover from the kettle and stirred the fragrant, bubbling mass with a long-handled spoon. "About done," he mused, slowly. "Just . . . about . . . done. Give her two minutes more for luck and then. . . ." But his visitor was becoming impatient. "Are you deaf or are you tryin' to get my goat?" he demanded. "Because if you are you're pretty close to doin' it, I'll tell you that. You answer when I speak to you; understand? What are you doin' here?" His tone was so loud and emphatic that even Mr. Winslow could not help but hear and understand. He looked up, vaguely troubled. "I--I hope you'll excuse me, Mister," he stammered. "I'm afraid I haven't been payin' attention the way I'd ought to. You see, I'm makin' a chowder here and it's just about got to the place where you can't--" "Look here, you," began his questioner, but he was interrupted in his turn. Over the edge of the bank came a young man in the khaki uniform of the United States Army. He was an officer, a second lieutenant, and a very young and very new second lieutenant at that. His face was white and he seemed much agitated. "What's the matter here?" he demanded. Then, seeing Jed for the first time, he asked: "Who is this man and what is he doing here?" "That's just what I was askin' him, sir," blustered the workman. "I found him here with this fire goin' and I asked him who he was and what he was doin'. I asked him first if he'd seen the plan--" "Had he?" broke in the young officer, eagerly. Then, addressing Jed, he said: "Have you seen anything of the plan?" Jed slowly shook his head. "I don't know's I know what you mean by a plan," he explained. "I ain't been here very long. I just-- My soul and body!" He snatched the kettle from the fire, took off the cover, sniffed anxiously, and then added, with a sigh of relief, "Whew! I declare I thought I smelt it burnin'. Saved it just in time. Whew!" The lieutenant looked at Jed and then at the workman. The latter shook his head. "Don't ask me, sir," he said. "That's the way he's been actin' ever since I struck here. Either he's batty or else he's pretendin' to be, one or the other. Look here, Rube!" he roared at the top of his lungs, "can the cheap talk and answer the lieutenant's questions or you'll get into trouble. D'ye hear?" Jed looked up at him. "I'm pretty nigh sure I should hear if you whispered a little louder," he said, gently. The young officer drew himself up. "That's enough of this," he ordered. "A plan has been lost here on this reservation, a valuable plan, a drawing of--well, a drawing that has to do with the laying out of this camp and which might be of value to the enemy if he could get it. It was on my table in the office less than an hour ago. Now it is missing. What we are asking you is whether or not you have seen anything of it. Have you?" Jed shook his head. "I don't think I have," he replied. "You don't think? Don't you know? What is the matter with you? Is it impossible for you to answer yes or no to a question?" "Um--why, yes, I cal'late 'tis--to some questions." "Well, by George! You're fresh enough." "Now--now, if you please, I wasn't intendin' to be fresh. I just--" "Well, you are. Who is this fellow? How does he happen to be here? Does any one know?" Jed's first interrogator, the big workman, being the only one present beside the speaker and the object of the question, took it upon himself to answer. "I don't know who he is," he said. "And he won't tell why he's here. Looks mighty suspicious to me. Shouldn't wonder if he was a German spy. They're all around everywheres, so the papers say." This speech had a curious effect. The stoop in the Winslow shoulders disappeared. Jed's tall form straightened. When he spoke it was in a tone even more quiet and deliberate than usual, but there could be no shadow of a doubt that he meant what he said. "Excuse me, Mister," he drawled, "but there's one or two names that just now I can't allow anybody to call me. 'German' is one and 'spy' is another. And you put 'em both together. I guess likely you was only foolin', wasn't you?" The workman looked surprised. Then he laughed. "Shall I call a guard, sir?" he asked, addressing the lieutenant. "Better have him searched, I should say. Nine chances to one he's got the plan in his pocket." The officer--he was very young--hesitated. Jed, who had not taken his eyes from the face of the man who had called him a German spy, spoke again. "You haven't answered me yet," he drawled. "You was only foolin' when you said that, wasn't you?" The lieutenant, who may have felt that he had suddenly become a negligible factor in the situation, essayed to take command of it. "Shut up," he ordered, addressing Winslow. Then to the other, "Yes, call a guard. We'll see if we can't get a straight answer from this fellow. Hurry up." The workman turned to obey. But, to his surprise, his path was blocked by Jed, who quietly stepped in front of him. "I guess likely, if you wasn't foolin', you'd better take back what you called me," said Jed. They looked at each other. The workman was tall and strong, but Jed, now that he was standing erect, was a little taller. His hands, which hung at his sides, were big and his arms long. And in his mild blue eye there was a look of unshakable determination. The workman saw that look and stood still. "Hurry up!" repeated the lieutenant. Just how the situation might have ended is uncertain. How it did end was in an unexpected manner. From the rear of the trio, from the top of the sandy ridge separating the beach from the meadow, a new voice made itself heard. "Well, Rayburn, what's the trouble?" it asked. The lieutenant turned briskly, so, too, did Mr. Winslow and his vis-a-vis. Standing at the top of the ridge was another officer. He was standing there looking down upon them and, although he was not smiling, Jed somehow conceived the idea that he was much amused about something. Now he descended the ridge and walked toward the group by the fire. "Well, Rayburn, what is it?" he asked again. The lieutenant saluted. "Why--why, Major Grover," he stammered, "we--that is I found this man here on the Government property and--and he won't explain what he's doing here. I--I asked him if he had seen anything of the plan and he won't answer. I was just going to put him under arrest as--as a suspicious person when you came." Major Grover turned and inspected Jed, and Jed, for his part, inspected the major. He saw a well set-up man of perhaps thirty- five, dark-haired, brown-eyed and with a closely clipped mustache above a pleasant mouth and a firm chin. The inspection lasted a minute or more. Then the major said: "So you're a suspicious character, are you?" Jed's hand moved across his chin in the gesture habitual with him. "I never knew it afore," he drawled. "A suspicious character is an important one, ain't it? I--er--I'm flattered." "Humph! Well, you realize it now, I suppose?" "Cal'late I'll have to, long's your--er--chummie there says it's so." The expression of horror upon Lieutenant Rayburn's face at hearing himself referred to as "chummie" to his superior officer was worth seeing. "Oh, I say, sir!" he explained. The major paid no attention. "What were you and this man," indicating the big carpenter, "bristling up to each other for?" he inquired. "Well, this guy he--" began the workman. Major Grover motioned him to be quiet. "I asked the other fellow," he said. Jed rubbed his chin once more. "He said I was a German spy," he replied. "Are you?" "No." The answer was prompt enough and emphatic enough. Major Grover tugged at the corner of his mustache. "Well, I--I admit you don't look it," he observed, dryly. "What's your name and who are you?" Jed told his name, his place of residence and his business. "Is there any one about here who knows you, who could prove you were who you say you are?" Mr. Winslow considered. "Ye-es," he drawled. "Ye-es, I guess so. 'Thoph Mullett and 'Bial Hardy and Georgie T. Nickerson and Squealer Wixon, they're all carpenterin' over here and they're from Orham and know me. Then there's Bluey Batcheldor and Emulous Baker and 'Gawpy'--I mean Freddie G.--and--" "There, there! That's quite sufficient, thank you. Do you know any of those men?" he asked, turning to the workman. "Yes, sir, I guess I do." "Very well. Go up and bring two of them here; not more than two, understand." Jed's accuser departed. Major Grover resumed his catechizing. "What were you doing here?" he asked. "Eh? Me? Oh, I was just picnicin', as you might say, along with a little girl, daughter of a neighbor of mine. She wanted to see where the soldiers was goin' to fly, so I borrowed Perez Ryder's power dory and we came over. 'Twas gettin' along dinner time and I built a fire so as to cook. . . . My soul!" with a gasp of consternation, "I forgot all about that chowder. And now it's got stone cold. Yes, sir!" dropping on his knees and removing the cover of the kettle, "stone cold or next door to it. Ain't that a shame!" Lieutenant Rayburn snorted in disgust. His superior officer, however, merely smiled. "Never mind the chowder just now," he said. "So you came over here for a picnic, did you? Little late for picnics, isnt it?" "Yes--ye-es," drawled Jed, "'tis kind of late, but 'twas a nice, moderate day and Babbie she wanted to come, so--" "Babbie? That's the little girl? . . . Oh," with a nod, "I remember now. I saw a man with a little girl wandering about among the buildings a little while ago. Was that you?" "Ye-es, yes, that was me. . . . Tut, tut, tut! I'll have to warm this chowder all up again now. That's too bad!" Voices from behind the ridge announced the coming of the carpenter and the two "identifiers." The latter, Mr. Emulous Baker and Mr. "Squealer" Wixon, were on the broad grin. "Yup, that's him," announced Mr. Wixon. "Hello, Shavin's! Got you took up for a German spy, have they? That's a good one! haw, haw!" "Do you know him?" asked the major. "Know him?" Mr. Wixon guffawed again. "Known him all my life. He lives over to Orham. Makes windmills and whirlagigs and such for young-ones to play with. HE ain't any spy. His name's Jed Winslow, but we always call him 'Shavin's,' 'count of his whittlin' up so much good wood, you understand. Ain't that so, Shavin's? Haw, haw!" Jed regarded Mr. Wixon mournfully. "Um-hm," he admitted. "I guess likely you're right, Squealer." "I bet you! There's only one Shavin's in Orham." Jed sighed. "There's consider'ble many squealers," he drawled; "some in sties and some runnin' loose." Major Grover, who had appeared to enjoy this dialogue, interrupted it now. "That would seem to settle the spy question," he said. "You may go, all three of you," he added, turning to the carpenters. They departed, Jed's particular enemy muttering to himself and Mr. Wixon laughing uproariously. The major once more addressed Jed. "Where is the little girl you were with?" he asked. "Eh? Oh, she's over yonder just 'round the p'int, sailin' a shingle boat I made her. Shall I call her?" "No, it isn't necessary. Mr. Winslow, I'm sorry to have put you to all this trouble and to have cooled your--er--chowder. There is no regulation against visitors to our reservation here just now, although there will be, of course, later on. There is a rule against building fires on the beach, but you broke that in ignorance, I'm sure. The reason why you have been cross-questioned to-day is a special one. A construction plan has been lost, as Lieutenant Rayburn here informed you. It was on his desk in the office and it has disappeared. It may have been stolen, of course, or, as both windows were open, it may have blown away. You are sure you haven't seen anything of it? Haven't seen any papers blowing about?" "I'm sure it didn't blow away, sir," put in the lieutenant. "I'm positive it was stolen. You see--" He did not finish his sentence. The expression upon Jed's face caused him to pause. Mr. Winslow's mouth and eyes were opening wider and wider. "Sho!" muttered Jed. "Sho, now! . . . 'Tain't possible that . . . I snum if . . . Sho!" "Well, what is it?" demanded both officers, practically in concert. Jed did not reply. Instead he turned his head, put both hands to his mouth and shouted "Babbie!" through them at the top of his lungs. The third shout brought a faint, "Yes, Uncle Jed, I'm coming." "What are you calling her for?" asked Lieutenant Rayburn, forgetting the presence of his superior officer in his anxious impatience. Jed did not answer. He was kneeling beside his jacket, which he had thrown upon the sand when he landed, and was fumbling in the pockets. "Dear me! dear me!" he was muttering. "I'm sartin they must be here. I KNOW I put 'em here because . . . OW!" He was kneeling and holding the coat with one hand while he fumbled in the pockets with the other. Unconsciously he had leaned backward until he sat upon his heels. Now, with an odd expression of mingled pain and relief, he reached into the hip pocket of his trousers and produced a pair of spectacles. He smiled his slow, fleeting smile. "There!" he observed, "I found 'em my way--backwards. Anybody else would have found 'em by looking for 'em; I lost 'em lookin' for 'em and found 'em by sittin' on 'em. . . . Oh, here you are, Babbie! Sakes alive, you're sort of dampish." She was all of that. She had come running in answer to his call and had the shingle boat hugged close to her. The water from it had trickled down the front of her dress. Her shoes and stockings were splashed with wet sand. "Is dinner ready, Uncle Jed?" she asked, eagerly. Then becoming aware that the two strange gentlemen standing by the fire were really and truly "officer ones," she looked wide-eyed up at them and uttered an involuntary "Oh!" "Babbie," said Jed, "let me see that boat of yours a minute, will you?" Babbie obediently handed it over. Jed inspected it through his spectacles. Then he pulled the paper sail from the sharpened stick--the mast--unfolded it, looked at it, and then extended it at arm's length toward Major Grover. "That's your plan thing, ain't it?" he asked, calmly. Both officers reached for the paper, but the younger, remembering in time, drew back. The other took it, gave it a quick glance, and then turned again to Mr. Winslow. "Where did you get this?" he asked, crisply. Jed shook his head. "She gave it to me, this little girl here," he explained. She wanted a sail for that shingle craft I whittled out for her. Course if I'd had on my specs I presume likely I'd have noticed that 'twas an out of the common sort of paper, but--I was wearin' 'em in my pants pocket just then." "Where did you get it?" demanded Rayburn, addressing Barbara. The child looked frightened. Major Grover smiled reassuringly at her and she stammered a rather faint reply. "I found it blowing around up on the little hill there," she said, pointing. "It was blowing real hard and I had to run to catch it before it got to the edge of the water. I'm--I--I'm sorry I gave it to Uncle Jed for a sail. I didn't know--and--and he didn't either," she added, loyally. "That's all right, my dear. Of course you didn't know. Well, Rayburn," turning to the lieutenant, "there's your plan. You see it did blow away, after all. I think you owe this young lady thanks that it is not out in mid-channel by this time. Take it back to the office and see if the holes in it have spoiled its usefulness to any extent." The lieutenant, very red in the face, departed, bearing his precious plan. Jed heaved a sigh of relief. "There!" he exclaimed, "now I presume likely I can attend to my chowder." "The important things of life, eh?" queried Major Grover. "Um-hm. I don't know's there's anything much more important than eatin'. It's a kind of expensive habit, but an awful hard one to swear off of. . . . Hum. . . . Speakin' of important things, was that plan of yours very important, Mr.--I mean Major?" "Rather--yes." "Sho! . . . And I stuck it on a stick and set it afloat on a shingle. I cal'late if Sam Hunniwell knew of that he'd say 'twas characteristic. . . . Hum. . . . Sho! . . . I read once about a feller that found where the great seal of England was hid and he used it to crack nuts with. I guess likely that feller must have been my great, great, great granddad." Major Grover looked surprised. "I've read that story," he said, "but I can't remember where." Jed was stirring his chowder. "Eh?" he said, absently. "Where? Oh, 'twas in--the--er--'Prince and the Pauper,' you know. Mark Twain wrote it." "That's so; I remember now. So you've read 'The Prince and the Pauper'?" "Um-hm. Read about everything Mark Twain ever wrote, I shouldn't wonder." "Do you read a good deal?" "Some. . . . There! Now we'll call that chowder done for the second time, I guess. Set down and pass your plate, Babbie. You'll set down and have a bite with us, won't you, Mr.--Major--I snum I've forgot your name. You mustn't mind; I forget my own sometimes." "Grover. I am a major in the Engineers, stationed here for the present to look after this construction work. No, thank you, I should like to stay, but I must go back to my office." "Dear, dear! That's too bad. Babbie and I would like first-rate to have you stay. Wouldn't we, Babbie?" Barbara nodded. "Yes, sir," she said. "And the chowder will be awf'ly good. Uncle Jed's chowders always are." "I'm sure of it." Major Grover's look of surprise was more evident than ever as he gazed first at Barbara and then at Mr. Winslow. His next question was addressed to the latter. "So you are this young lady's uncle?" he inquired. It was Barbara who answered. "Not my really uncle," she announced. "He's just my make-believe uncle. He says he's my step-uncle 'cause he comes to our back steps so much. But he's almost better than a real uncle," she declared, emphatically. The major laughed heartily and said he was sure of it. He seemed to find the pair hugely entertaining. "Well, good-by," he said. "I hope you and your uncle will visit us again soon. And I hope next time no one will take him for a spy." Jed looked mournfully at the fire. "I've been took for a fool often enough," he observed, "but a spy is a consider'ble worse guess." Grover looked at him. "I'm not so sure," he said. "I imagine both guesses would be equally bad. Well, good-by. Don't forget to come again." "Thank you, thank you. And when you're over to Orham drop in some day and see Babbie and me. Anybody--the constable or anybody--will tell you where I live." Their visitor laughed, thanked him, and hurried away. Said Barbara between spoonfuls: "He's a real nice officer one, isn't he, Uncle Jed? Petunia and I like him." During the rest of the afternoon they walked along the beach, picked up shells, inspected "horse-foot" crabs, jelly fish and "sand collars," and enjoyed themselves so thoroughly that it was after four when they started for home. The early October dusk settled down as they entered the winding channel between the sand islands and the stretches of beaches. Barbara, wrapped in an old coat of Captain Perez's, which, smelling strongly of fish, had been found in a locker, seemed to be thinking very hard and, for a wonder, saying little. At last she broke the silence. "That Mr. Major officer man was 'stonished when I called you 'Uncle Jed,'" she observed. "Why, do you s'pose?" Jed whistled a few bars and peered over the side at the seaweed marking the border of the narrow, shallow channel. "I cal'late," he drawled, after a moment, "that he hadn't noticed how much we look alike." It was Barbara's turn to be astonished. "But we DON'T look alike, Uncle Jed," she declared. "Not a single bit." Jed nodded. "No-o," he admitted. "I presume that's why he didn't notice it." This explanation, which other people might have found somewhat unsatisfactory, appeared to satisfy Miss Armstrong; at any rate she accepted it without comment. There was another pause in the conversation. Then she said: "I don't know, after all, as I ought to call you 'Uncle Jed,' Uncle Jed." "Eh? Why not, for the land sakes?" "'Cause uncles make people cry in our family. I heard Mamma crying last night, after she thought I was asleep. And I know she was crying about Uncle Charlie. She cried when they took him away, you know, and now she cries when he's coming home again. She cried awf'ly when they took him away." "Oh, she did, eh?" "Yes. He used to live with Mamma and me at our house in Middleford. He's awful nice, Uncle Charlie is, and Petunia and I were very fond of him. And then they took him away and we haven't seen him since." "He's been sick, maybe." "Perhaps so. But he must be well again now cause he's coming home; Mamma said so." "Um-hm. Well, I guess that was it. Probably he had to go to the-- the hospital or somewhere and your ma has been worried about him. He's had an operation maybe. Lots of folks have operations nowadays; it's got to be the fashion, seems so." The child reflected. "Do they have to have policemen come to take you to the hospital?" she asked. "Eh? . . . Policemen?" "Yes. 'Twas two big policemen took Uncle Charlie away the first time. We were having supper, Mamma and he and I, and Nora went to the door when the bell rang and the big policemen came and Uncle Charlie went away with them. And Mamma cried so. And she wouldn't tell me a bit about. . . . Oh! OH! I've told about the policemen! Mamma said I mustn't ever, EVER tell anybody that. And--and I did! I DID!" Aghast at her own depravity, she began to sob. Jed tried to comfort her and succeeded, after a fashion, at least she stopped crying, although she was silent most of the way home. And Jed himself was silent also. He shared her feeling of guilt. He felt that he had been told something which neither he nor any outsider should have heard, and his sensitive spirit found little consolation in the fact that the hearing of it had come through no fault of his. Besides, he was not so sure that he had been faultless. He had permitted the child's disclosures to go on when, perhaps, he should have stopped them. By the time the "Araminta's" nose slid up on the sloping beach at the foot of the bluff before the Winslow place she held two conscience-stricken culprits instead of one. And if Ruth Armstrong slept but little that night, as her daughter said had been the case the night before, she was not the only wakeful person in that part of Orham. She would have been surprised if she had known that her eccentric neighbor and landlord was also lying awake and that his thoughts were of her and her trouble. For Jed, although he had heard but the barest fragment of the story of "Uncle Charlie," a mere hint dropped from the lips of a child who did not understand the meaning of what she said, had heard enough to make plain to him that the secret which the young widow was hiding from the world was a secret involving sorrow and heartbreak for herself and shame and disgrace for others. The details he did not know, nor did he wish to know them; he was entirely devoid of that sort of curiosity. Possession of the little knowledge which had been given him, or, rather, had been thrust upon him, and which Gabe Bearse would have considered a gossip treasure trove, a promise of greater treasures to be diligently mined, to Jed was a miserable, culpable thing, like the custody of stolen property. He felt wicked and mean, as if he had been caught peeping under a window shade. CHAPTER X That night came a sudden shift in the weather and when morning broke the sky was gray and overcast and the wind blew raw and penetrating from the northeast. Jed, at work in his stock room sorting a variegated shipment of mills and vanes which were to go to a winter resort on the west coast of Florida, was, as he might have expressed it, down at the mouth. He still felt the sense of guilt of the night before, but with it he felt a redoubled realization of his own incompetence. When he had surmised his neighbor and tenant to be in trouble he had felt a strong desire to help her; now that surmise had changed to certainty his desire to help was stronger than ever. He pitied her from the bottom of his heart; she seemed so alone in the world and so young. She needed a sympathetic counselor and advisor. But he could not advise or help because neither he nor any one else in Orham was supposed to know of her trouble and its nature. Even if she knew that he knew, would she accept the counsel of Shavings Winslow? Hardly! No sensible person would. How the townsfolk would laugh if they knew he had even so much as dreamed of offering it. He was too downcast even to sing one of his lugubrious hymns or to whistle. Instead he looked at the letter pinned on a beam beside him and dragged from the various piles one half-dozen crow vanes, one half-dozen gull vanes, one dozen medium-sized mills, one dozen small mills, three sailors, etc., etc., as set forth upon that order. One of the crows fell to the floor and he accidently stepped upon it and snapped its head off. He was gazing solemnly down at the wreck when the door behind him opened and a strong blast of damp, cold wind blew in. He turned and found that Mrs. Armstrong had opened the door. She entered and closed it behind her. "Good morning," she said. Jed was surprised to see her at such an early hour; also just at that time her sudden appearance was like a sort of miracle, as if the thoughts in his brain had taken shape, had materialized. For a moment he could not regain presence of mind sufficient to return her greeting. Then, noticing the broken vane on the floor, she exclaimed: "Oh, you have had an accident. Isn't that too bad! When did it happen?" He looked down at the decapitated crow and touched one of the pieces with the toe of his boot. "Just this minute," he answered. "I stepped on it and away she went. Did a pretty neat, clean job, didn't I? . . . Um-hm. . . . I wonder if anybody stepped on MY head 'twould break like that. Probably not; the wood in it is too green, I cal'late." She smiled, but she made no comment on this characteristic bit of speculation. Instead she asked: "Mr. Winslow, are you very busy this morning? Is your work too important to spare me just a few minutes?" Jed looked surprised; he smiled his one-sided smile. "No, ma'am," he drawled. "I've been pretty busy but 'twan't about anything important. I presume likely," he added, "there ain't anybody in Ostable County that can be so busy as I can be doin' nothin' important." "And you can spare a few minutes? I--I want to talk to you very much. I won't be long, really." He regarded her intently. Then he walked toward the door leading to the little workroom. "Come right in here, ma'am," he said, gravely; adding, after they had entered the other apartment, "Take that chair. I'll sit over here on the box." He pulled forward the box and turned to find her still standing. "Do sit down," he urged. "That chair ain't very comfortable, I know. Perhaps I'd better get you another one from my sittin'-room in yonder." He was on his way to carry out the suggestion, but she interrupted him. "Oh, no," she said. "This one will be perfectly comfortable, I'm sure, only--" "Yes? Is there somethin' the matter with it?" "Not the matter with it, exactly, but it seems to be--occupied." Jed stepped forward and peered over the workbench at the chair. Its seat was piled high with small pasteboard boxes containing hardware-screws, tacks and metal washers--which he used in his mill and vane-making. "Sho!" he exclaimed. "Hum! Does seem to be taken, as you say. I recollect now; a lot of that stuff came in by express day before yesterday afternoon and I piled it up there while I was unpackin' it. Here!" apparently addressing the hardware, "you get out of that. That seat's reserved." He stretched a long arm over the workbench, seized the chair by the back and tipped it forward. The pasteboard boxes went to the floor in a clattering rush. One containing washers broke open and the little metal rings rolled everywhere. Mr. Winslow did not seem to mind. "There!" he exclaimed, with evident satisfaction; "sit right down, ma'am." The lady sat as requested, her feet amid the hardware boxes and her hands upon the bench before her. She was evidently very nervous, for her fingers gripped each other tightly. And, when she next spoke, she did not look at her companion. "Mr. Winslow," she began, "I--I believe--that is, Babbie tells me that--that last evening, when you and she were on your way back here in the boat, she said something--she told you something concerning our--my--family affairs which--which--" She faltered, seeming to find it hard to continue. Jed did not wait. He was by this time at least as nervous as she was and considerably more distressed and embarrassed. He rose from the box and extended a protesting hand. "Now, now, ma'am," he begged. "Now, Mrs. Armstrong, please--please don't say any more. It ain't necessary, honest it ain't. She-- she--that child she didn't tell me much of anything anyhow, and she didn't mean to tell that. And if you knew how ashamed and--and mean I've felt ever since to think I let myself hear that much! I hope--I do hope you don't think I tried to get her to tell me anything. I do hope you don't think that." His agitation was so acute and so obvious that she looked at him in wonder for a moment. Then she hastened to reassure him. "Don't distress yourself, Mr. Winslow," she said, smiling sadly. "I haven't known you very long but I have already learned enough about you to know that you are an honorable man. If I did not know that I shouldn't be here now. It is true that I did not mean for you or any one here in Orham to learn of my--of our trouble, and if Babbie had not told you so much I probably should never have spoken to you about it. The poor child's conscience troubled her so last evening that she came crying to me and confessed, and it is because I gathered from her that she had told enough to make you at least guess the truth that I am here now. I prefer that you should hear the story just as it is from me, rather than imagine something which might be worse. Don't you see?" Jed saw, but he was still very much perturbed. "Now, now, Mrs. Armstrong," he begged, "don't tell me anything, please don't. I laid awake about all night thinkin' what I'd ought to do, whether I'd ought to tell you what Babbie said, or just not trouble you at all and try to forget I ever heard it. That's what I decided finally, to forget it; and I will--I vow and declare I will! Don't you tell me anything, and let me forget this. Now please." But she shook her head. "Things like that are not so easily forgotten," she said; "even when one tries as hard to forget as I am sure you would, Mr. Winslow. No, I want to tell you; I really do. Please don't say any more. Let me go on. . . . Oh," with a sudden burst of feeling "can't you see that I must talk with SOMEONE--I MUST?" Her clasped fingers tightened and the tears sprang to her eyes. Poor Jed's distress was greater than ever. "Now--now, Mrs. Armstrong," he stammered, "all I meant to say was that you mustn't feel you've got to tell me. Course if you want to, that's different altogether. What I'm tryin' to say," he added, with a desperate attempt to make his meaning perfectly clear, "is not to pay any attention to ME at all but do just what YOU want to, that's all." Even on the verge of tears as she was, she could not forbear smiling a little at this proclamation of complete self-effacement. "I fear I must pay some attention to you," she said, "if I am to confide in you and--and perhaps ask your help, your advice, afterwards. I have reached a point when I must ask some one's advice; I have thought myself into a maze and I don't know what to do--I don't know WHAT to do. I have no near relatives, no friends here in Orham--" Jed held up a protesting hand. "Excuse me, Mrs. Armstrong," he stammered; "I don't know as you recollect, probably it might not have meant as much to you as it did to me; but a spell ago you said somethin' about countin' me as a friend." "I know I did. And I meant it. You have been very kind, and Barbara is so fond of you. . . . Well, perhaps you can advise me, at least you can suggest--or--or--help me to think. Will you?" Jed passed his hand across his chin. It was obvious that her asking his counsel was simply a last resort, a desperate, forlorn hope. She had no real confidence in his ability to help. He would have been the last to blame her for this; her estimate of his capabilities was like his own, that was all. "W-e-e-ll," he observed, slowly, "as to givin' my advice, when a man's asked to give away somethin' that's worth nothin' the least he can do is say yes and try to look generous, I cal'late. If I can advise you any, why, I'll feel proud, of course." "Thank you. Mr. Winslow, for the past two years or more I have been in great trouble. I have a brother--but you knew that; Babbie told you." "Um-hm. The one she calls 'Uncle Charlie'?" "Yes. He is--he is serving his sentence in the Connecticut State Prison." Jed leaned back upon the box. His head struck smartly against the edge of the bandsaw bench, but he did not seem to be aware of the fact. "My Lord above!" he gasped. "Yes, it is true. Surely you must have guessed something of that sort, after Babbie's story of the policemen." "I--I--well, I did sort of--of presume likely he must have got into some sort of--of difficulty, but I never thought 'twas bad as that. . . . Dear me! . . . Dear me!" "My brother is younger than I; he is scarcely twenty-three years old. He and I are orphans. Our home was in Wisconsin. Father was killed in a railway accident and Mother and my brother Charles and I were left with very little money. We were in a university town and Mother took a few students as lodgers. Doctor Armstrong was one; I met him there, and before he left the medical college we were engaged to be married. Charlie was only a boy then, of course. Mother died three years later. Meanwhile Seymour--Doctor Armstrong--had located in Middleford, Connecticut, and was practicing medicine there. He came on, we were married, and I returned to Middleford with him. We had been married but a few years when he died--of pneumonia. That was the year after Babbie was born. Charles remained in Wisconsin, boarding with a cousin of Mother's, and, after he graduated from high school, entered one of the banks in the town. He was very successful there and the bank people liked him. After Seymour--my husband--died, he came East to see me at Middleford. One of Doctor Armstrong's patients, a bond broker in New Haven, took a fancy to him, or we thought he did, and offered him a position. He accepted, gave up his place at the bank in Wisconsin, and took charge of this man's Middleford office, making his home with Babbie and me. He was young, too young I think now, to have such a responsible position, but every one said he had a remarkably keen business mind and that his future was certain to be brilliant. And then--" She paused. It was evident that the hard part of her story was coming. After a moment she went on. "Charlie was popular with the young people there in Middleford. He was always a favorite, at home, at school, everywhere. Mother idolized him while she lived, so did I, so did Babbie. He was fond of society and the set he was friendly with was made up, for the most part, of older men with much more money than he. He was proud, he would not accept favors without repaying them, he liked a good time, perhaps he was a little fast; not dissipated--I should have known if he were that--but--careless--and what you men call a 'good fellow.' At any rate, he--" Again she paused. Jed, sitting on the box, clasping his knee between his hands, waited anxiously for her to continue. "Of course you can guess what happened," she said, sadly, after a moment. "It was the old story, that is all. Charlie was living beyond his means, got into debt and speculated in stocks, hoping to make money enough to pay those debts. The stocks went down and-- and--well, he took money belonging to his employer to protect his purchases." She waited, perhaps expecting her companion to make some comment. He did not and again she spoke. "I know he meant only to borrow it," she declared. "I KNOW it. He isn't bad, Mr. Winslow; I know him better than any one and he ISN'T bad. If he had only come to me when he got into the trouble! If he had only confided in me! But he was proud and--and he didn't. . . . Well, I won't tell you how his--his fault was discovered; it would take a long time and it isn't worth while. They arrested him, he was tried and--and sent to prison for two years." For the first time since she began her story Jed uttered a word. "Sho!" he exclaimed. "Sho, sho! Dear me! The poor young feller!" She looked up at him quickly. "Thank you," she said, gratefully. "Yes, he was sent to prison. He was calm and resigned and very brave about it, but to me it was a dreadful shock. You see, he had taken so little money, not much over two thousand dollars. We could have borrowed it, I'm sure; he and I could have worked out the debt together. We could have done it; I would have worked at anything, no matter how hard, rather than have my brother branded all his life with the disgrace of having been in prison. But the man for whom he had worked was furiously angry at what he called Charlie's ingratitude; he would teach the young thief a lesson, he said. Our lawyer went to him; I went to him and begged him not to press the case. Of course Charlie didn't know of my going; he never would have permitted it if he had. But I went and begged and pleaded. It did no good. Why, even the judge at the trial, when he charged the jury, spoke of the defendant's youth and previous good character. . . ." She covered her eyes with her hand. Poor Jed's face was a picture of distress. "Now--now, Mrs. Armstrong," he urged, "don't, please don't. I--I wouldn't tell me any more about it, if I was you. Of course I'm-- I'm proud to think you believed I was worth while tellin' it to and all that, but--you mustn't. You'll make yourself sick, you know. Just don't tell any more, please." She took her hand away and looked at him bravely. "There isn't any more to tell," she said. "I have told you this because I realized that Barbara had told you enough to make you imagine everything that was bad concerning my brother. And he is not bad, Mr. Winslow. He did a wrong thing, but I know--I KNOW he did not mean deliberately to steal. If that man he worked for had been--if he had been-- But there, he was what he was. He said thieves should be punished, and if they were punished when they were young, so much the better, because it might be a warning and keep them honest as they grew older. He told me that, Mr. Winslow, when I pleaded with him not to make Charles' disgrace public and not to wreck the boy's life. That was what he told me then. And they say," she added, bitterly, "that he prides himself upon being a staunch supporter of the church." Jed let go of his knee with one hand in order to rub his chin. "I have queer notions, I cal'late," he drawled. "If they wasn't queer they wouldn't be mine, I suppose. If I was--er--as you might say, first mate of all creation I'd put some church folks in jail and a good many jail folks in church. Seems's if the swap would be a help to both sides. . . . I--I hope you don't think I'm--er-- unfeelin', jokin', when you're in such worry and trouble," he added, anxiously. "I didn't mean it." His anxiety was wasted. She had heard neither his first remark nor the apology for it. Her thoughts had been far from the windmill shop and its proprietor. Now, apparently awakening to present realities, she rose and turned toward the door. "That was all," she said, wearily. "You know the whole truth now, Mr. Winslow. Of course you will not speak of it to any one else." Then, noticing the hurt look upon his face, she added, "Forgive me. I know you will not. If I had not known it I should not have confided in you. Thank you for listening so patiently." She was going, but he touched her arm. "Excuse me, Mrs. Armstrong," he faltered, "but--but wasn't there somethin' else? Somethin' you wanted to ask my advice about--or-- or--somethin'?" She smiled faintly. "Yes, there was," she admitted. "But I don't know that it is worth while troubling you, after all. It is not likely that you can help me. I don't see how any one can." "Probably you're right. I--I ain't liable to be much help to anybody. But I'm awful willin' to try. And sometimes, you know-- sometimes surprisin' things happen. 'Twas a--a mouse, or a ground mole, wasn't it, that helped the lion in the story book out of the scrape? . . . Not that I don't look more like a--er--giraffe than I do like a mouse," he added. Mrs. Armstrong turned and looked at him once more. "You're very kind," she said. "And I know you mean what you say. . . . Why, yes, I'll tell you the rest. Perhaps," with the slight smile, "you CAN advise me, Mr. Winslow. You see--well, you see, my brother will be freed very shortly. I have received word that he is to be pardoned, his sentence is to be shortened because of what they call his good conduct. He will be free--and then? What shall he do then? What shall we all do? That is my problem." She went on to explain. This was the situation: Her own income was barely sufficient for Barbara and herself to live, in the frugal way they were living, in a country town like Orham. That was why she had decided to remain there. No one in the village knew her story or the story of her brother's disgrace. But now, almost any day, her brother might be discharged from prison. He would be without employment and without a home. She would so gladly offer him a home with her--they could manage to live, to exist in some way, she said--but she knew he would not be content to have her support him. There was no chance of employment in Orham; he would therefore be forced to go elsewhere, to go wandering about looking for work. And that she could not bear to think of. "You see," she said, "I--I feel as if I were the only helper and-- well--guardian the poor boy has. I can imagine," smiling wanly, "how he would scorn the idea of his needing a guardian, but I feel as if it were my duty to be with him, to stand by him when every one else has deserted him. Besides," after an instant's hesitation, "I feel--I suppose it is unreasonable, but I feel as if I had neglected my duty before; as if perhaps I had not watched him as carefully as I should, or encouraged him to confide in me; I can't help feeling that perhaps if I had been more careful in this way the dreadful thing might not have happened. . . . Oh," she added, turning away again, "I don't know why I am telling all these things to you, I'm sure. They can't interest you much, and the telling isn't likely to profit either of us greatly. But I am so alone, and I have brooded over my troubles so much. As I said I have felt as if I must talk with some one. But there--good morning, Mr. Winslow." "Just a minute, please, Mrs. Armstrong; just a minute. Hasn't your brother got any friends in Middleford who could help him get some work--a job--you know what I mean? Seems as if he must have, or you must have." "Oh, we have, I suppose. We had some good friends there, as well as others whom we thought were friends. But--but I think we both had rather die than go back there; I am sure I should. Think what it would mean to both of us." Jed understood. She might have been surprised to realize how clearly he understood. She was proud, and it was plain to see that she had been very proud of her brother. And Middleford had been her home where she and her husband had spent their few precious years together, where her child was born, where, after her brother came, she had watched his rise to success and the apparent assurance of a brilliant future. She had begun to be happy once more. Then came the crash, and shame and disgrace instead of pride and confidence. Jed's imagination, the imagination which was quite beyond the comprehension of those who called him the town crank, grasped it all--or, at least, all its essentials. He nodded slowly. "I see," he said. "Yes, yes, I see. . . . Hum." "Of course, any one must see. And to go away, to some city or town where we are not known--where could we go? What should we live on? And yet we can't stay here; there is nothing for Charles to do." "Um. . . . He was a--what did you say his trade was?" "He was a bond broker, a kind of banker." "Eh? . . . A kind of banker. . . . Sho! Did he work in a bank?" "Why, yes, I told you he did, in Wisconsin, where he and I used to live." "Hum. . . . Pretty smart at it, too, seems to me you said he was?" "Yes, very capable indeed." "I want to know. . . . Hum. . . . Sho!" He muttered one or two more disjointed exclamations and then ceased to speak altogether, staring abstractedly at a crack in the floor. All at once he began to hum a hymn. Mrs. Armstrong, whose nerves were close to the breaking point, lost patience. "Good morning, Mr. Winslow," she said, and opened the door to the outer shop. This time Jed did not detain her. Instead he stared dreamily at the floor, apparently quite unconscious of her or his surroundings. "Eh?" he drawled. "Oh, yes, good mornin',--good mornin'. . . . Hum. . . . 'There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel's veins, And sinners plunged de de de de De de di dew dum de.'" His visitor closed the door. Jed still sat there gazing at vacancy and droning, dolefully. CHAPTER XI For nearly an hour he sat there, scarcely changing his position, and only varying his musical program by whistling hymns instead of singing them. Once, hearing a step in the yard, he looked through the window and saw Gabriel Bearse walking toward the gate from the direction of the shop door instead of in the opposite direction. Evidently he had at first intended to call and then had changed his mind. Mr. Winslow was duly grateful to whoever or whatever had inspired the change. He had no desire to receive a visit from "Gab" Bearse, at this time least of all. Later on he heard another step, and, again glancing through the window, saw Seth Wingate, the vegetable and fruit peddler, walking from the door to the gate, just as Mr. Bearse had done. Apparently Seth had changed his mind also. Jed thought this rather odd, but again he was grateful. He was thinking hard and was quite willing not to be disturbed. But the disturbing came ten minutes after Mr. Wingate's departure and came in the nature of a very distinct disturbance. There was a series of thunderous knocks on the front door, that door was thrown violently open, and, before the startled maker of mills could do much more than rise to his feet, the door to the workroom was pulled open also. Captain Hunniwell's bulk filled the opening. Captain Sam was red-faced and seemed excited. "Well, by the gracious king," he roared, "you're here, anyhow! What else is the matter with you?" Jed, who, after recognizing his visitor, had seated himself once more, looked up and nodded. "Hello, Sam," he observed. "Say, I was just thinkin' about you. That's kind of funny, ain't it?" "Funny! Just thinkin' about me! Well, I've been thinkin' about you, I tell you that: Have you been in this shop all the forenoon?" "Eh? . . . Why, yes. . . . Sartin. . . . I've been right here." "You HAVE? Gracious king! Then why in the Old Harry have you got that sign nailed on your front door out here tellin' all hands you're out for the day and for 'em to ask for you up at Abijah Thompson's?" Jed looked much surprised. His hand moved slowly across his chin. "Sho!" he drawled. "Sho! Has that sign been hangin' there all this forenoon?" "Don't ask me. I guess it has from what I've heard. Anyhow it's there now. And WHAT'S it there for? That's what I want to know." Jed's face was very solemn, but there was a faint twinkle in his eye. "That explains about Seth Wingate," he mused. "Yes, and Gab Bearse too. . . . Hum. . . . The Lord was better to me than I deserved. They say He takes care of children and drunken men and-- er--the critters that most folks think belong to my lodge. . . . Hum. . . . To think I forgot to take that sign down! Sho!" "Forgot to take it down! What in everlastin' blazes did you ever put it up for?" Jed explained why the placard had been prepared and affixed to the door. "I only meant it for yesterday, though," he added. "I'd intended takin' it down this mornin'." Captain Sam put back his head and laughed until the shop echoed. "Ho, ho, ho!" he roared. "And you mean to tell me that you put it up there because you was goin' cruisin' to the aviation camp and you didn't want callers disturbin' Mrs. Armstrong?" His friend nodded. "Um-hm," he admitted. "I sent 'em to 'Bije's because he was as far off as anybody I could think of. Pretty good idea, wasn't it?" The captain grinned. "Great!" he declared. "Fine! Wonderful! You wait till 'Bije comes to tell you how fine 'twas. He's in bed, laid up with neuralgia, and Emma J., his wife, says that every hour or less yesterday there was somebody bangin' at their door asking about you. Every time they banged she says that 'Bije, his nerves bein' on edge the way they are, would pretty nigh jump the quilts up to the ceilin' and himself along with 'em. And his remarks got more lit up every jump. About five o'clock when somebody came poundin' he let out a roar you could hear a mile. 'Tell 'em Shavin's Winslow's gone to the devil,' he bellowed, 'and that I say they can go there too.' And then Emma J. opened the door and 'twan't anybody askin' about you at all; 'twas the Baptist minister come callin'. I was drivin' past there just now and Emma J. came out to tell me about it. She wanted to know if you'd gone clear crazy instead of part way. I told her I didn't know, but I'd make it my business to find out. Tut, tut, tut! You are a wonder, Jed." Jed did not dispute the truth of this statement. He looked troubled, however. "Sho!" he said; "I'm sorry if I plagued 'Bijah that way. If I'd known he was sick I wouldn't have done it. I never once thought so many folks as one every hour would want to see me this time of year. Dear me! I'm sorry about 'Bije. Maybe I'd better go down and kind of explain it to him." Captain Sam chuckled. "I wouldn't," he said. "If I was you I'd explain over the long distance telephone. But, anyhow, I wouldn't worry much. I cal'late Emma J. exaggerated affairs some. Probably, if the truth was known, you'd find not more than four folks came there lookin' for you yesterday. Don't worry, Jed." Jed did not answer. The word "worry" had reminded him of his other visitor that morning. He looked so serious that his friend repeated his adjuration. "Don't worry, I tell you," he said, again. "'Tisn't worth it." "All right, I won't. . . . I won't. . . . Sam, I was thinkin' about you afore you came in. You remember I told you that?" "I remember. What have you got on your mind? Any more money kickin' around this glory-hole that you want me to put to your account?" "Eh? . . . Oh, yes, I believe there is some somewheres. Seems to me I put about a hundred and ten dollars, checks and bills and such, away day before yesterday for you to take when you came. Maybe I'll remember where I put it before you go. But 'twan't about that I was thinkin'. Sam, how is Barzilla Small's boy, Lute, gettin' along in Gus Howes' job at the bank?" Captain Sam snorted disgust. "Gettin' along!" he repeated. "He's gettin' along the way a squid swims, and that's backwards. And, if you asked me, I'd say the longer he stayed the further back he'd get." "Sho! then he did turn out to be a leak instead of an able seaman, eh?" "A leak! Gracious king! He's like a torpedo blow-up under the engine-room. The bank'll sink if he stays aboard another month, I do believe. And yet," he added, with a shake of the head, "I don't see but he'll have to stay; there ain't another available candidate for the job in sight. I 'phoned up to Boston and some of our friends are lookin' around up there, but so far they haven't had any success. This war is makin' young men scarce, that is young men that are good for much. Pretty soon it'll get so that a healthy young feller who ain't in uniform will feel about as much out of place as a hog in a synagogue. Yes, sir! Ho, ho!" He laughed in huge enjoyment of his own joke. Jed stared dreamily at the adjusting screw on the handsaw. His hands clasped his knee, his foot was lifted from the floor and began to swing back and forth. "Well," queried his friend, "what have you got on your mind? Out with it." "Eh? . . . On my mind?" "Yes. When I see you begin to shut yourself together in the middle like a jackknife and start swinging that number eleven of yours I know you're thinkin' hard about somethin' or other. What is it this time?" "Um . . . well . . . er . . . Sam, if you saw a chance to get a real smart young feller in Lute's place in the bank you'd take him, wouldn't you?" "Would I? Would a cat eat lobster? Only show him to me, that's all!" "Um-hm. . . . Now of course you know I wouldn't do anything to hurt Lute. Not for the world I wouldn't. It's only if you ARE goin' to let him go--" "IF I am. Either he'll have to let go or the bank will, one or t'other. United we sink, divided one of us may float, that's the way I look at it. Lute'll stay till we can locate somebody else to take his job, and no longer." "Ya-as. . . . Um-hm. . . . Well, I tell you, Sam: Don't you get anybody else till you and I have another talk. It may be possible that I could find you just the sort of young man you're lookin' for." "Eh? YOU can find me one? YOU can? What are you givin' me, Jed? Who is the young man; you?" Jed gravely shook his head. "No-o," he drawled. "I hate to disappoint you, Sam, but it ain't me. It's another--er--smart, lively young feller. He ain't quite so old as I am; there's a little matter of twenty odd years between us, I believe, but otherwise than that he's all right. And he knows the bankin' trade, so I'm told." "Gracious king! Who is he? Where is he?" "That I can't tell you just yet. But maybe I can by and by." "Tell me now." "No-o. No, I just heard about him and it was told to me in secret. All I can say is don't get anybody to fill Lute Small's place till you and I have another talk." Captain Sam stared keenly into his friend's face. Jed bore the scrutiny calmly; in fact he didn't seem to be aware of it. The captain gave it up. "All right," he said. "No use tryin' to pump you, I know that. When you make up your mind to keep your mouth shut a feller couldn't open it with a cold chisel. I presume likely you'll tell in your own good time. Now if you'll scratch around and find those checks and things you want me to deposit for you I'll take 'em and be goin'. I'm in a little bit of a hurry this mornin'." Jed "scratched around," finally locating the checks and bills in the coffee pot on the shelf in his little kitchen. "There!" he exclaimed, with satisfaction, "I knew I put 'em somewheres where they'd be safe and where I couldn't forget 'em." "Where you couldn't forget 'em! Why, you did forget 'em, didn't you?" "Um . . . yes . . . I cal'late I did this mornin', but that's because I didn't make any coffee for breakfast. If I'd made coffee same as I usually do I'd have found 'em." "Why didn't you make coffee this mornin'?" Jed's eye twinkled. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "to be honest with you, Sam, 'twas because I couldn't find the coffee pot. After I took it down to put this money in it I put it back on a different shelf. I just found it now by accident." As the captain was leaving Jed asked one more question. "Sam," he asked, "about this bank job now? If you had a chance to get a bright, smart young man with experience in bank work, you'd hire him, wouldn't you?" Captain Hunniwell's answer was emphatic. "You bet I would!" he declared. "If I liked his looks and his references were good I'd hire him in two minutes. And salary, any reasonable salary, wouldn't part us, either. . . . Eh? What makes you look like that?" For Jed's expression had changed; his hand moved across his chin. "Eh--er--references?" he repeated. "Why, why, of course. I'd want references from the folks he'd worked for, statin' that he was honest and capable and all that. With those I'd hire him in two minutes, as I said. You fetch him along and see. So long, Jed. See you later." He hustled out, stopping to tear from the outer door the placard directing callers to call at Abijah Thompson's. Jed returned to his box and sat down once more to ponder. In his innocence it had not occurred to him that references would be required. That evening, about nine, he crossed the yard and knocked at the back door of the little house. Mrs. Armstrong answered the knock; Barbara, of course, was in bed and asleep. Ruth was surprised to see her landlord at that, for him, late hour. Also, remembering the unceremonious way in which he had permitted her to depart at the end of their interview that forenoon, she was not as cordial as usual. She had made him her confidant, why she scarcely knew; then, after expressing great interest and sympathy, he had suddenly seemed to lose interest in the whole matter. She was acquainted with his eccentricities and fits of absent-mindedness, but nevertheless she had been hurt and offended. She told herself that she should have expected nothing more from "Shavings" Winslow, the person about whom two-thirds of Orham joked and told stories, but the fact remained that she was disappointed. And she was angry, not so much with him perhaps, as with herself. WHY had she been so foolish as to tell any one of their humiliation? So when Jed appeared at the back door she received him rather coldly. He was quite conscious of the change in temperature, but he made no comment and offered no explanation. Instead he told his story, the story of his interview with Captain Hunniwell. As he told it her face showed at first interest, then hope, and at the last radiant excitement. She clasped her hands and leaned toward him, her eyes shining. "Oh, Mr. Winslow," she cried, breathlessly, "do you mean it? Do you really believe Captain Hunniwell will give my brother a position in his bank?" Jed nodded slowly. "Yes," he said, "I think likely he might. Course 'twouldn't be any great of a place, not at first--nor ever, I cal'late, so far as that goes. 'Tain't a very big bank and wages ain't--" But she interrupted. "But that doesn't make any difference," she cried. "Don't you see it doesn't! The salary and all that won't count--now. It will be a start for Charles, an opportunity for him to feel that he is a man again, doing a man's work, an honest man's work. And he will be here where I can be with him, where we can be together, where it won't be so hard for us to be poor and where there will be no one who knows us, who knows our story. Oh, Mr. Winslow, is it really true? If it is, how--how can we ever thank you? How can I ever show you how grateful I feel?" Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted and joy shone in her eager eyes. Her voice broke a little as she uttered the words. Jed looked at her and then quickly looked away. "I--I--don't talk so, Mrs. Armstrong," he pleaded, hastily. "It-- it ain't anything, it ain't really. It just--" "Not anything? Not anything to find my brother the opportunity he and I have been praying for? To give me the opportunity of having him with me? Isn't that anything? It is everything. Oh, Mr. Winslow, if you can do this for us--" "Shsh! Sshh! Now, Mrs. Armstrong, please. You mustn't say I'm doin' it for you. I'm the one that just happened to think of it, that's all. You could have done it just as well, if you'd thought of it." "Perhaps," with a doubtful smile, "but I should never have thought of it. You did because you were thinking for me--for my brother and me. And--and I thought you didn't care." "Eh? . . . Didn't care?" "Yes. When I left you at the shop this morning after our talk. You were so--so odd. You didn't speak, or offer to advise me as I had asked you to; you didn't even say good-by. You just sat there and let me go. And I didn't understand and--" Jed put up a hand. His face was a picture of distress. "Dear, dear, dear!" he exclaimed. "Did I do that? I don't remember it, but of course I did if you say so. Now what on earth possessed me to? . . . Eh?" as the idea occurred to him. "Tell me, was I singin'?" "Why, yes, you were. That is, you were--were--" "Makin' a noise as if I'd swallowed a hymn book and one of the tunes was chokin' me to death? Um-hm, that's the way I sing. And I was singin' when you left me, eh? That means I was thinkin' about somethin'. I told Babbie once, and it's the truth, that thinkin' was a big job with me and when I did it I had to drop everything else, come up into the wind like a schooner, you know, and just lay to and think. . . . Oh, I remember now! You said somethin' about your brother's workin' in a bank and that set me thinkin' that Sam must be needin' somebody by this time in Lute Small's place." "You didn't know he needed any one?" "No-o, not exactly; but I knew Lute, and that amounted to the same thing. Mrs. Armstrong, I do hope you'll forgive me for--for singin' and--and all the rest of my foolish actions." "Forgive you! Will you forgive me for misjudging you?" "Land sakes, don't talk that way. But there's one thing I haven't said yet and you may not like it. I guess you and your brother'll have to go to Sam and tell him the whole story." Her expression changed. "The whole story?" she repeated. "Why, what do you mean? Tell him that Charles has been in--in prison? You don't mean THAT?" "Um-hm," gravely; "I'm afraid I do. It looks to me as if it was the only way." "But we can't! Oh, Mr. Winslow, we can't do that." "I know 'twill be awful hard for you. But, when I talked to Sam about my havin' a possible candidate for the bank place, the very last thing he said was that he'd be glad to see him providin' his references was all right. I give you my word I'd never thought of references, not till then." "But if we tell him--tell him everything, we shall only make matters worse, shan't we? Of course he won't give him the position then." "There's a chance he won't, that's true. But Sam Hunniwell's a fine feller, there ain't any better, and he likes you and--well, he and I have been cruisin' in company for a long spell. Maybe he'll give your brother a chance to make good. I hope he will." "You only hope? I thought you said you believed." "Well, I do, but of course it ain't sartin. I wish 'twas." She was silent. Jed, watching her, saw the last traces of happiness and elation fade from her face and disappointment and discouragement come back to take their places. He pitied her, and he yearned to help her. At last he could stand it no longer. "Now, Mrs. Armstrong," he pleaded, "of course--" She interrupted. "No," she said, as if coming to a final decision and speaking that decision aloud: "No, I can't do it." "Eh? Can't do--what?" "I can't have Captain Hunniwell know of our trouble. I came here to Orham, where no one knew me, to avoid that very thing. At home there in Middleford I felt as if every person I met was staring at me and saying, 'Her brother is in prison.' I was afraid to have Babbie play with the other children. I was--but there, I won't talk about it. I can't. And I cannot have it begin again here. I'll go away first. We will all go away, out West, anywhere-- anywhere where we can be--clean--and like other people." Jed was conscious of a cold sensation, like the touch of an icicle, up and down his spine. Going away! She and Babbie going away! In his mind's eye he saw a vision of the little house closed once more and shuttered tight as it used to be. He gasped. "Now, now, Mrs. Armstrong," he faltered. "Don't talk about goin' away. It--it isn't needful for you to do anything like that. Of course it ain't. You--you mustn't. I--we can't spare you." She drew a long breath. "I would go to the other end of the world," she said, "rather than tell Captain Hunniwell the truth about my brother. I told you because Babbie had told you so much already. . . . Oh," turning swiftly toward him, "YOU won't tell Captain Hunniwell, will you?" Before he could answer she stretched out her hand. "Oh, please forgive me," she cried. "I am not myself. I am almost crazy, I think. And when you first told me about the position in the bank I was so happy. Oh, Mr. Winslow, isn't there SOME way by which Charles could have that chance? Couldn't--couldn't he get it and-- and work there for--for a year perhaps, until they all saw what a splendid fellow he was, and THEN tell them--if it seemed necessary? They would know him then, and like him; they couldn't help it, every one likes him." She brushed the tears from her eyes. Poor Jed, miserable and most unreasonably conscience-stricken, writhed in his chair. "I--I don't know," he faltered. "I declare I don't see how. Er--er-- Out in that bank where he used to work, that Wisconsin bank, he-- you said he did first-rate there?" She started. "Yes, yes," she cried, eagerly. "Oh, he was splendid there! And the man who was the head of that bank when Charles was there is an old friend of ours, of the family; he has retired now but he would help us if he could, I know. I believe . . . I wonder if . . . Mr. Winslow, I can't tell any one in Orham of our disgrace and I can't bear to give up that opportunity for my brother. Will you leave it to me for a little while? Will you let me think it over?" Of course Jed said he would and went back to his little room over the shop. As he was leaving she put out her hand and said, with impulsive earnestness: "Thank you, Mr. Winslow. Whatever comes of this, or if nothing comes of it, I can never thank you enough for your great kindness." Jed gingerly shook the extended hand and fled, his face scarlet. During the following week, although he saw his neighbors each day, and several times a day, Mrs. Armstrong did not mention her brother or the chance of his employment in the Orham bank. Jed, very much surprised at her silence, was tempted to ask what her decision was, or even if she had arrived at one. On one occasion he threw out a broad hint, but the hint was not taken, instead the lady changed the subject; in fact, it seemed to him that she made it a point of avoiding that subject and was anxious that he should avoid it, also. He was sure she had not abandoned the idea which, at first, had so excited her interest and raised her hopes. She seemed to him to be still under a strong nervous strain, to speak and act as if under repressed excitement; but she had asked him to leave the affair to her, to let her think it over, so of course he could do or say nothing until she had spoken. But he wondered and speculated a good deal and was vaguely troubled. When Captain Sam Hunniwell called he did not again refer to his possible candidate for the position now held by Luther Small. And, singularly enough, the captain himself did not mention the subject. But one morning almost two weeks after Jed's discussion with the young widow she and Captain Hunniwell came into the windmill shop together. Mrs. Armstrong's air of excitement was very much in evidence. Her cheeks were red, her eyes sparkled, her manner animated. Her landlord had never seen her look so young, or, for that matter, so happy. Captain Sam began the conversation. He, too, seemed to be in high good humor. "Well, Jedidah Wilfred Shavin's'," he observed, facetiously, "what do you suppose I've got up my sleeve this mornin'?" Jed laid down the chisel he was sharpening. "Your arms, I presume likely," he drawled. "Yes, I've got my arms and there's a fist at the end of each one of 'em. Any more--er--flippity answers like that one and you're liable to think you're struck by lightnin'. This lady and I have got news for you. Do you know what 'tis?" Jed looked at Mrs. Armstrong and then at the speaker. "No-o," he said, slowly. "Well, to begin with it's this: Lute Small is leavin' the Orham National a week from next Saturday by a vote of eight to one. The directors and the cashier and I are the eight and he's the one. Ho, ho! And who do you suppose comes aboard on the next Monday mornin' to take over what Lute has left of the job? Eh? Who? Why, your own candidate, that's who." Jed started. Again he looked at Mrs. Armstrong and, as if in answer to that look, she spoke. "Yes, Mr. Winslow," she said, quickly, "my brother is coming to Orham and Captain Hunniwell has given him the position. It is really you to whom he owes it all. You thought of it and spoke to the captain and to me." "But why in time," demanded Captain Sam, "didn't you tell me right out that 'twas Mrs. Armstrong's brother you had in mind? Gracious king! if I'd known that I'd have had Lute out a fortni't sooner." Jed made no reply to this. He was still staring at the lady. "But--but--" he faltered, "did you--have you--" He stopped in the middle of a word. Ruth was standing behind the captain and he saw the frightened look in her eyes and the swift movement of her finger to her lips. "Oh, yes," she said. "I--I have. I told Captain Hunniwell of Charlie's experience in the bank in Wisconsin. He has written there and the answer is quite satisfactory, or so he seems to think." "Couldn't be better," declared Captain Sam. "Here's the letter from the man that used to be the bank president out there. Read it, Jed, if you want to." Jed took the letter and, with a hand which shook a little, adjusted his glasses and read. It was merely a note, brief and to the point. It stated simply that while Charles Phillips had been in the employ of their institution as messenger, bookkeeper and assistant teller, he had been found honest, competent, ambitious and thoroughly satisfactory. "And what more do I want than that?" demanded the captain. "Anybody who can climb up that way afore he's twenty-five will do well enough for yours truly. Course he and I haven't met yet, but his sister and I've met, and I'm not worryin' but what I'll like the rest of the family. Besides," he added, with a combination laugh and groan, "it's a case of desperation with us up at the bank. We've got to have somebody to plug that leak you was talkin' about, Jed, and we've got to have 'em immediate, right off quick, at once, or a little sooner. It's a providence, your brother is to us, Mrs. Armstrong," he declared; "a special providence and no mistake." He hurried off a moment later, affirming that he was late at the bank already. "Course the cashier's there and the rest of the help," he added, "but it takes all hands and the cat to keep Lute from puttin' the kindlin' in the safe and lightin' up the stove with ten dollar bills. So long." After he had gone Jed turned to his remaining visitor. His voice shook a little as he spoke. "You haven't told him!" he faltered, reproachfully. "You--you haven't told him!" She shook her head. "I couldn't--I couldn't," she declared. "DON'T look at me like that. Please don't! I know it is wrong. I feel like a criminal; I feel wicked. But," defiantly, "I should feel more wicked if I had told him and my brother had lost the only opportunity that might have come to him. He WILL make good, Mr. Winslow. I KNOW he will. He will make them respect him and like him. They can't help it. See!" she cried, her excitement and agitation growing; "see how Mr. Reed, the bank president there at home, the one who wrote that letter, see what he did for Charles! He knows, too; he knows the whole story. I--I wrote to him. I wrote that very night when you told me, Mr. Winslow. I explained everything, I begged him--he is an old, old friend of our family-- to do this thing for our sakes. You see, it wasn't asking him to lie, or to do anything wrong. It was just that he tell of Charles and his ability and character as he knew them. It wasn't wrong, was it?" Jed did not answer. "If it was," she declared, "I can't help it. I would do it again-- for the same reason--to save him and his future, to save us all. I can't help what you think of me. It doesn't matter. All that does matter is that you keep silent and let my brother have his chance." Jed, leaning forward in his chair by the workbench, put his hand to his forehead. "Don't--don't talk so, Mrs. Armstrong," he begged. "You know--you know I don't think anything you've done is wrong. I ain't got the right to think any such thing as that. And as for keepin' still-- why, I--I did hope you wouldn't feel 'twas necessary to ask that." "I don't--I don't. I know you and I trust you. You are the only person in Orham whom I have trusted. You know that." "Why, yes--why, yes, I do know it and--and I'm ever so much obliged to you. More obliged than I can tell you, I am. Now--now would you mind tellin' me just one thing more? About this Mr. What's- his-name out West in the bank there--this Mr. Reed--did he write you he thought 'twas all right for him to send Sam the--the kind of letter he did send him, the one givin' your brother such a good reference?" The color rose in her face and she hesitated before replying. "No," she confessed, after a moment. "He did not write me that he thought it right to give Captain Hunniwell such a reference. In fact he wrote that he thought it all wrong, deceitful, bordering on the dishonest. He much preferred having Charles go to the captain and tell the whole truth. On the other hand, however, he said he realized that that might mean the end of the opportunity here and perhaps public scandal and gossip by which we all might suffer. And he said he had absolute confidence that Charles was not a criminal by intent, and he felt quite sure that he would never go wrong again. If he were still in active business, he said, he should not hesitate to employ him. Therefore, although he still believed the other course safer and better, he would, if Captain Hunniwell wrote, answer as I had asked. And he did answer in that way. So, you see," she cried, eagerly, "HE believes in Charles, just as I do. And just as you will when you know, Mr. Winslow. Oh, WON'T you try to believe now?" A harder-hearted man than Jed Winslow would have found it difficult to refuse such a plea made in such a way by such a woman. And Jed's heart was anything but hard. "Now, now, Mrs. Armstrong," he stammered, "you don't have to ask me that. Course I believe in the poor young chap. And--and I guess likely everything's goin' to come out all right. That Mr. What's- his-name--er--Wright--no, Reed--I got read and write mixed up, I guess--he's a business man and he'd ought to know about such things better'n I do. I don't doubt it'll come out fine and we won't worry any more about it." "And we will still be friends? You know, Mr. Winslow, you are the only real friend I have in Orham. And you have been so loyal." Jed flushed with pleasure. "I--I told you once," he said, "that my friends generally called me 'Jed.'" She laughed. "Very well, I'll call you 'Jed,'" she said. "But turn about is fair play and you must call me 'Ruth.' Will you? Oh, there's Babbie calling me. Thank you again, for Charles' sake and my own. Good morning--Jed." "Er--er--good mornin', Mrs. Armstrong." "What?" "Er--I mean Mrs. Ruth." The most of that forenoon, that is the hour or so remaining, was spent by Mr. Winslow in sitting by the workbench and idly scratching upon a board with the point of the chisel. Sometimes his scratches were meaningless, sometimes they spelled a name, a name which he seemed to enjoy spelling. But at intervals during that day, and on other days which followed, he was conscious of an uneasy feeling, a feeling almost of guilt coupled with a dim foreboding. Ruth Armstrong had called him a friend and loyal. But had he been as loyal to an older friend, a friend he had known all his life? Had he been loyal to Captain Sam Hunniwell? That was the feeling of guilt. The foreboding was not as definite, but it was always with him; he could not shake it off. All his life he had dealt truthfully with the world, had not lied, or evaded, or compromised. Now he had permitted himself to become a silent partner in such a compromise. And some day, somehow, trouble was coming because of it. CHAPTER XII Before the end of another week Charles Phillips came to Orham. It was Ruth who told Jed the news. She came into the windmill shop and, standing beside the bench where he was at work, she said: "Mr. Winslow, I have something to tell you." Jed put down the pencil and sheet of paper upon which he had been drawing new patterns for the "gull vane" which was to move its wings when the wind blew. This great invention had not progressed very far toward practical perfection. Its inventor had been busy with other things and had of late rather lost interest in it. But Barbara's interest had not flagged and to please her Jed had promised to think a little more about it during the next day or so. "But can't you make it flap its wings, Uncle Jed?" the child had asked. Jed rubbed his chin. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "I don't know. I thought I could, but now I ain't so sure. I could make 'em whirl 'round and 'round like a mill or a set of sailor paddles, but to make 'em flap is different. They've got to be put on strong enough so they won't flop off. You see," he added, solemnly, "if they kept floppin' off they wouldn't keep flappin' on. There's all the difference in the world between a flap and flop." He was trying to reconcile that difference when Ruth entered the shop. He looked up at her absently. "Mr. Winslow," she began again, "I--" His reproachful look made her pause and smile slightly in spite of herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "Well, then--Jed--I have something to tell you. My brother will be here to-morrow." Jed had been expecting to hear this very thing almost any day, but he was a little startled nevertheless. "Sho!" he exclaimed. "You don't tell me!" "Yes. He is coming on the evening train to-morrow. I had word from him this morning." Jed's hand moved to his chin. "Hum . . ." he mused. "I guess likely you'll be pretty glad to see him." "I shall be at least that," with a little break in her voice. "You can imagine what his coming will mean to me. No, I suppose you can't imagine it; no one can." Jed did not say whether he imagined it or not. "I--I'm real glad for you, Mrs. Ruth," he declared. "Mrs. Ruth" was as near as he ever came to fulfilling their agreement concerning names. "I'm sure you are. And for my brother's sake and my own I am very grateful to you. Mr. Winslow--Jed, I mean--you have done so much for us already; will you do one thing more?" Jed's answer was given with no trace of his customary hesitation. "Yes," he said. "This is really for me, perhaps, more than for Charles--or at least as much." Again there was no hesitation in the Winslow reply. "That won't make it any harder," he observed, gravely. "Thank you. It is just this: I have decided not to tell my brother that I have told you of his--his trouble, of his having been--where he has been, or anything about it. He knows I have not told Captain Hunniwell; I'm sure he will take it for granted that I have told no one. I think it will be so much easier for the poor boy if he can come here to Orham and think that no one knows. And no one does know but you. You understand, don't you?" she added, earnestly. He looked a little troubled, but he nodded. "Yes," he said, slowly. "I understand, I cal'late." "I'm sure you do. Of course, if he should ask me point-blank if I had told any one, I should answer truthfully, tell him that I had told you and explain why I did it. And some day I shall tell him whether he asks or not. But when he first comes here I want him to be--to be--well, as nearly happy as is possible under the circumstances. I want him to meet the people here without the feeling that they know he has been--a convict, any of them. And so, unless he asks, I shall not tell him that even you know; and I am sure you will understand and not--not--" "Not say anything when he's around that might let the cat out of the bag. Yes, yes, I see. Well, I'll be careful; you can count on me, Mrs. Ruth." She looked down into his homely, earnest face. "I do," she said, simply, and went out of the room. For several minutes after she had gone Jed sat there gazing after her. Then he sighed, picked up his pencil and turned again to the drawing of the gull. And the following evening young Phillips came. Jed, looking from his shop window, saw the depot-wagon draw up at the gate. Barbara was the first to alight. Philander Hardy came around to the back of the vehicle and would have assisted her, but she jumped down without his assistance. Then came Ruth and, after her, a slim young fellow carrying a traveling bag. It was dusk and Jed could not see his face plainly, but he fancied that he noticed a resemblance to his sister in the way he walked and the carriage of his head. The two went into the little house together and Jed returned to his lonely supper. He was a trifle blue that evening, although he probably would not have confessed it. Least of all would he have confessed the reason, which was that he was just a little jealous. He did not grudge his tenant her happiness in her brother's return, but he could not help feeling that from that time on she would not be as intimate and confidential with him, Jed Winslow, as she had been. After this it would be to this brother of hers that she would turn for help and advice. Well, of course, that was what she should do, what any one of sense would do, but Jed was uncomfortable all the same. Also, because he was himself, he felt a sense of guilty remorse at being uncomfortable. The next morning he was presented to the new arrival. It was Barbara who made the presentation. She came skipping into the windmill shop leading the young man by the hand. "Uncle Jed," she said, "this is my Uncle Charlie. He's been away and he's come back and he's going to work here always and live in the bank. No, I mean he's going to work in the bank always and live-- No, I don't, but you know what I do mean, don't you, Uncle Jed?" Charles Phillips smiled. "If he does he must be a mind-reader, Babbie," he said. Then, extending his hand, he added: "Glad to know you, Mr. Winslow. I've heard a lot about you from Babbie and Sis." Jed might have replied that he had heard a lot about him also, but he did not. Instead he said "How d'ye do," shook the proffered hand, and looked the speaker over. What he saw impressed him favorably. Phillips was a good-looking young fellow, with a pleasant smile, a taking manner and a pair of dark eyes which reminded Mr. Winslow of his sister's. It was easy to believe Ruth's statement that he had been a popular favorite among their acquaintances in Middleford; he was the sort the average person would like at once, the sort which men become interested in and women spoil. He was rather quiet during this first call. Babbie did two-thirds of the talking. She felt it her duty as an older inhabitant to display "Uncle Jed" and his creations for her relative's benefit. Vanes, sailors, ships and mills were pointed out and commented upon. "He makes every one, Uncle Charlie," she declared solemnly. "He's made every one that's here and--oh, lots and lots more. He made the big mill that's up in our garret-- You haven't seen it yet, Uncle Charlie; it's going to be out on our lawn next spring--and he gave it to me for a--for a-- What kind of a present was that mill you gave me, Uncle Jed, that time when Mamma and Petunia and I were going back to Mrs. Smalley's because we thought you didn't want us to have the house any longer?" Jed looked puzzled. "Eh?" he queried. "What kind of a present? I don't know's I understand what you mean." "I mean what kind of a present was it. It wasn't a Christmas present or a birthday present or anything like that, but it must be SOME kind of one. What kind of present would you call it, Uncle Jed?" Jed rubbed his chin. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "I guess likely you might call it a forget- me-not present, if you had to call it anything." Barbara pondered. "A--a forget-me-not is a kind of flower, isn't it?" she asked. "Um-hm." "But this is a windmill. How can you make a flower out of a windmill, Uncle Jed?" Jed rubbed his chin. "Well, that's a question," he admitted. "But you can make flour IN a windmill, 'cause I've seen it done." More pondering on the young lady's part. Then she gave it up. "You mustn't mind if you don't understand him, Uncle Charlie," she said, in her most confidential and grown-up manner. "He says lots of things Petunia and I don't understand at all, but he's awful nice, just the same. Mamma says he's choking--no, I mean joking when he talks that way and that we'll understand the jokes lots better when we're older. SHE understands them almost always," she added proudly. Phillips laughed. Jed's slow smile appeared and vanished. "Looks as if facin' my jokes was no child's play, don't it," he observed. "Well, I will give in that gettin' any fun out of 'em is a man's size job." On the following Monday the young man took up his duties in the bank. Captain Hunniwell interviewed him, liked him, and hired him all in the same forenoon. By the end of the first week of their association as employer and employee the captain liked him still better. He dropped in at the windmill shop to crow over the fact. "He takes hold same as an old-time first mate used to take hold of a green crew," he declared. "He had his job jumpin' to the whistle before the second day was over. I declare I hardly dast to wake up mornin's for fear I'll find out our havin' such a smart feller is only a dream and that the livin' calamity is Lute Small. And to think," he added, "that you knew about him for the land knows how long and would only hint instead of tellin'. I don't know as you'd have told yet if his sister hadn't told first. Eh? Would you?" Jed deliberately picked a loose bristle from his paint brush. "Maybe not," he admitted. "Gracious king! Well, WHY not?" "Oh, I don't know. I'm kind of--er--funny that way. Like to take my own time, I guess likely. Maybe you've noticed it, Sam." "Eh? MAYBE I've noticed it? A blind cripple that was born deef and dumb would have noticed that the first time he ran across you. What on earth are you doin' to that paint brush; tryin' to mesmerize it?" His friend, who had been staring mournfully at the brush, now laid it down. "I was tryin' to decide," he drawled, "whether it needed hair tonic or a wig. So you like this Charlie Phillips, do you?" "Sartin sure I do! And the customers like him, too. Why, old Melissa Busteed was in yesterday and he waited on her for half an hour, seemed so, and when the agony was over neither one of 'em had got mad enough so anybody outside the buildin' would notice it. And that's a miracle that ain't happened in that bank for more'n ONE year. Why, I understand Melissa went down street tellin' all hands what a fine young man we'd got workin' for us. . . . Here, what are you laughin' at?" The word was ill-chosen; Jed seldom laughed, but he had smiled slightly and the captain noticed it. "What are you grinnin' at?" he repeated. Jed's hand moved across his chin. "Gab Bearse was in a spell ago," he replied, "and he was tellin' about what Melissa said." "Well, she said what I just said she said, didn't she?" Mr. Winslow nodded. "Um-hm," he admitted, "she said--er--all of that." "All of it? Was there some more?" "'Cordin' to Gabe there was. 'Cordin' to him she said . . . she said . . . er . . . Hum! this brush ain't much better'n the other. Seem to be comin' down with the mange, both of 'em." "Gracious king! Consarn the paint brushes! Tell me what Melissa said." "Oh, yes, yes. . . . Well, 'cordin' to Gabe she said 'twas a comfort to know there was a place in this town where an unprotected female could go and not be insulted." Captain Sam's laugh could have been heard across the road. "Ho, ho!" he roared. "An unprotected female, eh? 'Cordin' to my notion it's the male that needs protection when Melissa's around. I've seen Lute Small standin' in the teller's cage, tongue-tied and with the sweat standin' on his forehead, while Melissa gave him her candid opinion of anybody that would vote to allow alcohol to be sold by doctors in this town. And 'twas ten minutes of twelve Saturday mornin', too, and there was eight men waitin' their turn in line, and nary one of them or Lute either had the spunk to ask Melissa to hurry. Ho, ho! 'unprotected female' is good!" He had his laugh out and then added: "But there's no doubt that Charlie's goin' to be popular with the women. Why, even Maud seems to take a shine to him. Said she was surprised to have me show such good judgment. Course she didn't really mean she was surprised," he hastened to explain, evidently fearing that even an old friend like Jed might think he was criticizing his idolized daughter. "She was just teasin' her old dad, that's all. But I could see that Charlie kind of pleased her. Well, he pleases me and he pleases the cashier and the directors. We agree, all of us, that we're mighty lucky. I gave you some of the credit for gettin' him for us, Jed," he added magnanimously. "You don't really deserve much, because you hung back so and wouldn't tell his name, but I gave it to you just the same. What's a little credit between friends, eh? That's what Bluey Batcheldor said the other day when he came in and wanted to borrow a hundred dollars on his personal note. Ho! ho!" Captain Sam's glowing opinion of his paragon was soon echoed by the majority of Orham's population. Charlie Phillips, although quiet and inclined to keep to himself, was liked by almost every one. In the bank and out of it he was polite, considerate and always agreeable. During these first days Jed fancied that he detected in the young man a certain alert dread, a sense of being on guard, a reserve in the presence of strangers, but he was not sure that this was anything more than fancy, a fancy inspired by the fact that he knew the boy's secret and was on the lookout for something of the sort. At all events no one else appeared to notice it and it became more and more evident that Charlie, as nine-tenths of Orham called him within a fortnight, was destined to be the favorite here that, according to his sister, he had been everywhere else. Of course there were a few who did not, or would not, like him. Luther Small, the deposed bank clerk, was bitter in his sneers and caustic in his comments. However, as Lute loudly declared that he was just going to quit anyhow, that he wouldn't have worked for old Hunniwell another week if he was paid a million a minute for it, his hatred of his successor seemed rather unaccountable. Barzilla Small, Luther's fond parent, also professed intense dislike for the man now filling his son's position in the bank. "I don't know how 'tis," affirmed Barzilla, "but the fust time I see that young upstart I says to myself: 'Young feller, you ain't my kind.' This remark being repeated to Captain Sam, the latter observed: 'That's gospel truth and thank the Lord for it.'" Another person who refused to accept Phillips favorably was Phineas Babbitt. Phineas's bitterness was not the sort to sweeten over night. He disliked the new bank clerk and he told Jed Winslow why. They met at the post office--Phineas had not visited the windmill shop since the day when he received the telegram notifying him of his son's enlistment--and some one of the group waiting for the mail had happened to speak of Charlie Phillips. "He's a nice obligin' young chap," said the speaker, Captain Jeremiah Burgess. "I like him fust-rate; everybody does, I guess." Mr. Babbitt, standing apart from the group, his bristling chin beard moving as he chewed his eleven o'clock allowance of "Sailor's Sweetheart," turned and snarled over his shoulder. "I don't," he snapped. His tone was so sharp and his utterance so unexpected that Captain Jerry jumped. "Land of Goshen! You bark like a dog with a sore throat," he exclaimed. "Why don't you like him?" "'Cause I don't, that's all." "That ain't much of a reason, seems to me. What have you got against him, Phin? You don't know anything to his discredit, do you?" "Never you mind whether I do or not." Captain Jerry grunted but seemed disinclined to press the point further. Every one was surprised therefore when Jed Winslow moved across to where Phineas was standing, and looking mildly down at the little man, asked: "Do you know anything against him, Phin?" "None of your business. What are you buttin' in for, Shavin's?" "I ain't. I just asked you, that's all. DO you know anything against Charlie Phillips?" "None of your business, I tell you." "I know it ain't. But do you, Phin?" Each repetition of the question had been made in the same mild, monotonous drawl. Captain Jerry and the other loungers burst into a laugh. Mr. Babbitt's always simmering temper boiled over. "No, I don't," he shouted. "But I don't know anything in his favor, neither. He's a pet of Sam Hunniwell and that's enough for me. Sam Hunniwell and every one of his chums can go to the devil. Every one of 'em; do you understand that, Jed Winslow?" Jed rubbed his chin. The solemn expression of his face did not change an atom. "Thank you, Phin," he drawled. "When I'm ready to start I'll get you to give me a letter of introduction." Jed had been fearful that her brother's coming might lessen the intimate quality of Ruth Armstrong's friendship with and dependence upon him. He soon discovered, to his delight, that these fears were groundless. He found that the very fact that Ruth had made him her sole confidant provided a common bond which brought them closer together. Ruth's pride in her brother's success at the bank and in the encomiums of the townsfolk had to find expression somewhere. She could express them to her landlord and she did. Almost every day she dropped in at the windmill shop for a moment's call and chat, the subject of that chat always, of course, the same. "I told you he would succeed," she declared, her eyes shining and her face alight. "I told you so, Jed. And he has. Mr. Barber, the cashier, told me yesterday that Charles was the best man they had had in the bank for years. And every time I meet Captain Hunniwell he stops to shake hands and congratulates me on having such a brother. And they like him, not only because he is successful in the bank, but for himself; so many people have told me so. Why, for the first time since we came to Orham I begin to feel as if I were becoming acquainted, making friends." Jed nodded. "He's a nice young chap," he said, quietly. "Of course he is. . . . You mustn't mind my shameless family boasting," she added, with a little laugh. "It is only because I am so proud of him, and so glad--so glad for us all." Jed did not mind. It is doubtful if at that moment he was aware of what she was saying. He was thinking how her brother's coming had improved her, how well she was looking, how much more color there was in her cheeks, and how good it was to hear her laugh once more. The windmill shop was a different place when she came. It was a lucky day for him when the Powlesses frightened him into letting Barbara and her mother move into the old house for a month's trial. Of course he did not express these thoughts aloud, in fact he expressed nothing whatever. He thought and thought and, after a time, gradually became aware that there was absolute silence in the shop. He looked at his caller and found that she was regarding him intently, a twinkle in her eye and an amused expression about her mouth. He started and awoke from his day-dream. "Eh?" he exclaimed. "Yes--yes, I guess so." She shook her head. "You do?" she said. "Why, I thought your opinion was exactly the opposite." "Eh? Oh, yes, so 'tis, so 'tis." "Of course. And just what did you say about it?" Jed was confused. He swallowed hard, hesitated, swallowed again and stammered: "I-- Why, I--that is--you see--" She laughed merrily. "You are a very poor pretender, Jed," she declared. "Confess, you haven't the least idea what opinion I mean." "Well--well, to be right down honest, I--I don't know's I have, Mrs. Ruth." "Of course, you haven't. There isn't any opinion. You have been sitting there for the last five minutes, staring straight at me and picking that paint brush to pieces. I doubt if you even knew I was here." "Eh? Oh, yes, I know that, I know that all right. Tut! tut!" inspecting the damaged brush. "That's a nice mess, ain't it? Now what do you suppose I did that for? I'm scared to death, when I have one of those go-to-sleeptic fits, that I'll pick my head to pieces. Not that that would be as big a loss as a good paint brush," he added, reflectively. His visitor smiled. "I think it would," she said. "Neither Babbie nor I could afford to lose that head; it and its owner have been too thoughtful and kind. But tell me, what WERE you thinking about just then?" The question appeared to embarrass Mr. Winslow a good deal. He colored, fidgeted and stammered. "Nothin', nothin' of any account," he faltered. "My--er--my brain was takin' a walk around my attic, I cal'late. There's plenty of room up there for a tramp." "No, tell me; I want to know." Her expression changed and she added: "You weren't thinking of--of Charles'--his trouble at Middleford? You don't still think me wrong in not telling Captain Hunniwell?" "Eh? . . . Oh, no, no. I wasn't thinkin' that at all." "But you don't answer my question. Well, never mind. I am really almost happy for the first time in ever so long and I mean to remain so if I can. I am glad I did not tell--glad. And you must agree with me, Mr. Winslow--Jed, I mean--or I shall not run in so often to talk in this confidential way." "Eh? Not run in? Godfreys, Mrs. Ruth, don't talk so! Excuse my strong language, but you scared me, talkin' about not runnin' in." "You deserve to be scared, just a little, for criticizing me in your thoughts. Oh, don't think me frivolous," she pleaded, with another swift change. "I realize it was all wrong. And some time, by and by, after Charles has firmly established himself, after they really know him, I shall go to the bank people, or he will go to them, and tell the whole story. By that time I'm sure--I'm sure they will forgive us both. Don't you think so?" Jed would have forgiven her anything. He nodded. "Sartin sure they will," he said. Then, asking a question that had been in his thoughts for some time, he said: "How does your brother feel about it himself, Mrs. Ruth?" "At first he thought he should tell everything. He did not want to take the position under false pretenses, he said. But when I explained how he might lose this opportunity and what an opportunity it might be for us all he agreed that perhaps it was best to wait. And I am sure it is best, Jed. But then, I mean to put the whole dreadful business from my mind, if I can, and be happy with my little girl and my brother. And I am happy; I feel almost like a girl myself. So you mustn't remind me, Jed, and you mustn't criticize me, even though you and I both know you are right. You are my only confidant, you know, and I don't know what in the world I should do without you, so try to bear with me, if you can." Jed observed that he guessed likely there wouldn't be much trouble at his end of the line, providing she could manage to worry along with a feller that went to sleep sittin' up, and in the daytime, like an owl. After she had gone, however, he again relapsed into slumber, and his dreams, judging by his expression, must have been pleasant. That afternoon he had an unexpected visit. He had just finished washing his dinner dishes and he and Babbie were in the outer shop together, when the visitor came. Jed was droning "Old Hundred" with improvisations of his own, the said improvising having the effect of slowing down the already extremely deliberate anthem until the result compared to the original was for speed, as an oyster scow compared to an electric launch. This musical crawl he used as an accompaniment to the sorting and piling of various parts of an order just received from a Southern resort. Barbara was helping him, at least she called her activities "helping." When Jed had finished counting a pile of vanes or mill parts she counted them to make sure. Usually her count and his did not agree, so both counted again, getting in each other's way and, as Mr. Winslow expressed it, having a good time generally. And this remark, intended to be facetious, was after all pretty close to the literal truth. Certainly Babbie was enjoying herself, and Jed, where an impatient man would have been frantic, was enjoying her enjoyment. Petunia, perched in lopsided fashion on a heap of mill-sides was, apparently, superintending. "There!" declared Jed, stacking a dozen sailors beside a dozen of what the order called "birdhouses medium knocked down." "There! that's the livin' last one, I do believe. Hi hum! Now we've got to box 'em, haven't we? . . . Ye-es, yes, yes, yes. . . . Hum. . . . "'Di--de--di--de--di--de. . . ." "Where's that hammer? Oh, yes, here 'tis." "'Di--de--di--de--' "Now where on earth have I put that pencil, Babbie? Have I swallowed it? DON'T tell me you've seen me swallow it, 'cause that flavor of lead-pencil never did agree with me." The child burst into a trill of laughter. "Why, Uncle Jed," she exclaimed, "there it is, behind your ear." "Is it? Sho, so 'tis! Now that proves the instinct of dumb animals, don't it? That lead-pencil knew enough to realize that my ear was so big that anything short of a cord-wood stick could hide behind it. Tut, tut! Surprisin', surprisin'!" "But, Uncle Jed, a pencil isn't an animal." "Eh? Ain't it? Seemed to me I'd read somethin' about the ragin' lead-pencil seekin' whom it might devour. But maybe that was a-- er--lion or a clam or somethin'." Babbie looked at him in puzzled fashion for a moment. Then she sagely shook her head and declared: "Uncle Jed, I think you are perfectly scru-she-aking. Petunia and I are convulshed. We--" she stopped, listened, and then announced: "Uncle Jed, I THINK somebody came up the walk." The thought received confirmation immediately in the form of a knock at the door. Jed looked over his spectacles. "Hum," he mused, sadly, "there's no peace for the wicked, Babbie. No sooner get one order all fixed and out of the way than along comes a customer and you have to get another one ready. If I'd known 'twas goin' to be like this I'd never have gone into business, would you? But maybe 'tain't a customer, maybe it's Cap'n Sam or Gabe Bearse or somebody. . . . They wouldn't knock, though, 'tain't likely; anyhow Gabe wouldn't. . . . Come in," he called, as the knock was repeated. The person who entered the shop was a tall man in uniform. The afternoon was cloudy and the outer shop, piled high with stock and lumber, was shadowy. The man in uniform looked at Jed and Barbara and they looked at him. He spoke first. "Pardon me," he said, "but is your name Winslow?" Jed nodded. "Yes, sir," he replied, deliberately. "I guess likely 'tis." "I have come here to see if you could let me have--" Babbie interrupted him. Forgetting her manners in the excitement of the discovery which had just flashed upon her, she uttered an exclamation. "Oh, Uncle Jed!" she exclaimed. Jed, startled, turned toward her. "Yes?" he asked, hastily. "What's the matter?" "Don't you know? He--he's the nice officer one." "Eh? The nice what? What are you talkin' about, Babbie?" Babbie, now somewhat abashed and ashamed of her involuntary outburst, turned red and hesitated. "I mean," she stammered, "I mean he--he's the--officer one that-- that was nice to us that day." "That day? What day? . . . Just excuse the little girl, won't you?" he added, apologetically, turning to the caller. "She's made a mistake; she thinks she knows you, I guess." "But I DO, Uncle Jed. Don't you remember? Over at the flying place?" The officer himself took a step forward. "Why, of course," he said, pleasantly. "She is quite right. I thought your faces were familiar. You and she were over at the camp that day when one of our construction plans was lost. She found it for us. And Lieutenant Rayburn and I have been grateful many times since," he added. Jed recognized him then. "Well, I snum!" he exclaimed. "Of course! Sartin! If it hadn't been for you I'd have lost my life and Babbie'd have lost her clam chowder. That carpenter feller would have had me hung for a spy in ten minutes more. I'm real glad to see you, Colonel--Colonel Wood. That's your name, if I recollect right." "Not exactly. My name is Grover, and I'm not a colonel, worse luck, only a major." "Sho! Grover, eh? Now how in the nation did I get it Wood? Oh, yes, I cal'late 'twas mixin' up groves and woods. Tut, tut! Wonder I didn't call you 'Pines' or 'Bushes' or somethin'. . . . But there, sit down, sit down. I'm awful glad you dropped in. I'd about given up hopin' you would." He brought forward a chair, unceremoniously dumping two stacks of carefully sorted and counted vanes and sailors from its seat to the floor prior to doing so. Major Grover declined to sit. "I should like to, but I mustn't," he said. "And I shouldn't claim credit for deliberately making you a social call. I came--that is, I was sent here on a matter of--er--well, first aid to the injured. I came to see if you would lend me a crank." Jed looked at him. "A--a what?" he asked. "A crank, a crank for my car. I motored over from the camp and stopped at the telegraph office. When I came out my car refused to go; the self-starter appears to have gone on a strike. I had left my crank at the camp and my only hope seemed to be to buy or borrow one somewhere. I asked the two or three fellows standing about the telegraph office where I might be likely to find one. No one seemed to know, but just then the old grouch--excuse me, person who keeps the hardware store came along." "Eh? Phin Babbitt? Little man with the stub of a paint brush growin' on his chin?" "Yes, that's the one. I asked him where I should be likely to find a crank. He said if I came across to this shop I ought to find one." "He did, eh? . . . Hum!" "Yes, he did. So I came." "Hum!" This observation being neither satisfying nor particularly illuminating, Major Grover waited for something more explicit. He waited in vain; Mr. Winslow, his eyes fixed upon the toe of his visitor's military boot, appeared to be mesmerized. "So I came," repeated the major, after an interval. "Eh? . . . Oh, yes, yes. So you did, so you did. . . . Hum!" He rose and, walking to the window, peeped about the edge of the shade across and down the road in the direction of the telegraph office. "Phineas," he drawled, musingly, "and Squealer and Lute Small and Bluey. Hu-u-m! . . . Yes, yes." He turned away from the window and began intoning a hymn. Major Grover seemed to be divided between a desire to laugh and a tendency toward losing patience. "Well," he queried, after another interval, "about that crank? Have you one I might borrow? It may not fit, probably won't, but I should like to try it." Jed sighed. "There's a crank here," he drawled, "but it wouldn't be much use around automobiles, I'm afraid. I'm it." "What? I don't understand." "I say I'm it. My pet name around Orham is town crank. That's why Phineas sent you to my shop. He said you OUGHT to find a crank here. He was right, I'm 'most generally in." This statement was made quietly, deliberately and with no trace of resentment. Having made it, the speaker began picking up the vanes and sailors he had spilled when he proffered his visitor the chair. Major Grover colored, and frowned. "Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, "that that fellow sent me over here because--because--" "Because I'm town crank? Ye-es, that's what I mean." "Indeed! That is his idea of a joke, is it?" "Seems to be. He's an awful comical critter, Phin Babbitt is--in his own way." "Well, it's not my way. He sends me over here to make an ass of myself and insult you--" "Now, now, Major, excuse me. Phin didn't have any idea that you'd insult me. You see," with the fleeting smile, "he wouldn't believe anybody could do that." Grover turned sharply to the door. Mr. Winslow spoke his name. "Er--Major Grover," he said, gently, "I wouldn't." The major paused. "Wouldn't what?" he demanded. "Go over there and tell Phin and the rest what you think of 'em. If 'twould do 'em any good I'd say, 'For mercy sakes, go!' But 'twouldn't; they wouldn't believe it." Grover's lips tightened. "Telling it might do ME some good," he observed, significantly. "Yes, I know. But maybe we might get the same good or more in a different way. . . . Hum! . . . What--er--brand of automobile is yours?" The major told him. Jed nodded. "Hum . . . yes," he drawled. "I see. . . . I see." Grover laughed. "I'll be hanged if I do!" he observed. "Eh! . . . Well, I tell you; you sit down and let Babbie talk Petunia to you a minute or two. I'll be right back." He hurried into the back shop, closing the door after him. A moment later Grover caught a glimpse of him crossing the back yard and disappearing over the edge of the bluff. "Where in the world has the fellow gone?" he soliloquized aloud, amused although impatient. Barbara took it upon herself to answer. Uncle Jed had left the caller in her charge and she felt her responsibilities. "He's gone down the shore path," she said. "I don't know where else he's gone, but it's all right, anyway." "Oh, is it? You seem quite sure of it, young lady." "I am. Everything Uncle Jed does is right. Sometimes you don't think so at first, but it turns out that way. Mamma says he is petunia--no, I mean peculiar but--but very--re-li-a-ble," the last word conquered after a visible struggle. "She says if you do what he tells you to you will be 'most always glad. I think 'always' without any 'most,'" she added. Major Grover laughed. "That's a reputation for infallibility worth having," he observed. Barbara did not know what he meant but she had no intention of betraying that fact. "Yes," she agreed. A moment later she suggested: "Don't you think you'd better sit down? He told you to, you know." "Great Scott, so he did! I must obey orders, mustn't I? But he told you to talk--something or other to me, I think. What was it?" "He told me to talk Petunia to you. There she is--up there." The major regarded Petunia, who was seated upon the heap of mill- sides, in a most haphazard and dissipated attitude. "She is my oldest daughter," continued Barbara. "She's very advanced for her years." "Dear me!" "Yes. And . . . oh, here comes Mamma!" Mrs. Armstrong entered the shop. The major rose. Barbara did the honors. "I was just going to come in, Mamma," she explained, "but Uncle Jed asked me to stay and talk to Mr.--I mean Major--Grover till he came back. He's gone out, but he won't be long. Mamma, this is Mr. Major Grover, the one who kept Uncle Jed from being spied, over at the flying place that day when I found the plan paper and he made a shingle boat sail out of it." Ruth came forward. She had been walking along the edge of the bluff, looking out over the tumbled gray and white water, and the late October wind had tossed her hair and brought the color to her cheeks. She put out her hand. "Oh, yes," she said. "How do you do, Major Grover? I have heard a great deal about you since the day of Babbie's picnic. I'm sure I owe you an apology for the trouble my small daughter must have caused that day." She and the major shook hands. The latter expressed himself as being very glad to meet Mrs. Armstrong. He looked as if he meant it. "And no apologies are due, not from your side at least," he declared. "If it had not been for your little girl our missing plan might have been missing yet." Fifteen minutes elapsed before the owner of the windmill shop returned. When he did come hurrying up the bluff and in at the back door, heated and out of breath, no one seemed to have missed him greatly. Major Grover, who might reasonably have been expected to show some irritation at his long wait, appeared quite oblivious of the fact that he had waited at all. He and Barbara were seated side by side upon a packing case, while Ruth occupied the chair. When Jed came panting in it was Babbie who greeted him. "Oh, Uncle Jed!" she exclaimed, "you just ought to have been here. Mr.--I mean Major Grover has been telling Mamma and me about going up in a--in a diggible balloon. It was awf'ly interesting. Wasn't it, Mamma?" Her mother laughingly agreed that it was. Jed, whose hands were full, deposited his burden upon another packing case. The said burden consisted of no less than three motor car cranks. Grover regarded them with surprise. "Where in the world did you get those?" he demanded. "The last I saw of you you were disappearing over that bank, apparently headed out to sea. Do you dig those things up on the flats hereabouts, like clams?" Jed rubbed his chin. "Not's I know of," he replied. "I borrowed these down at Joshua Rogers' garage." "Rogers' garage?" repeated Grover. "That isn't near here, is it?" "It is an eighth of a mile from here," declared Ruth. "And not down by the beach, either. What do you mean, Jed?" Jed was standing by the front window, peeping out. "Um-hm," he said, musingly, "they're still there, the whole lot of 'em, waitin' for you to come out, Major. . . . Hum . . . dear, dear! And they're all doubled up now laughin' ahead of time. . . . Dear, dear! this is a world of disappointment, sure enough." "What ARE you talking about?" demanded Major Grover. "JED!" exclaimed Ruth. Barbara said nothing. She was accustomed to her Uncle Jed's vagaries and knew that, in his own good time, an explanation would be forthcoming. It came now. "Why, you see," said Jed, "Phin Babbitt and the rest sendin' you over here to find a crank was their little joke. They're enjoyin' it now. The one thing needed to make 'em happy for life is to see you come out of here empty-handed and so b'ilin' mad that you froth over. If you come out smilin' and with what you came after, why-- why, then the cream of their joke has turned a little sour, as you might say. See?" Grover laughed. "Yes, I see that plain enough," he agreed. "And I'm certainly obliged to you. I owed those fellows one. But what I don't see is how you got those cranks by going down to the seashore." "W-e-e-ll, if I'd gone straight up the road to Rogers's our jokin' friends would have known that's where the cranks came from. I wanted 'em to think they came from right here. So I went over the bank back of the shop, where they couldn't see me, along the beach till I got abreast of Joshua's and then up across lots. I came back the way I went. I hope those things 'll fit, Major. One of 'em will, I guess likely." The major laughed again. "I certainly am obliged to you, Mr. Winslow," he said. "And I must say you took a lot of trouble on my account." Jed sighed, although there was a little twinkle in his eye. "'Twan't altogether on your account," he drawled. "I owed 'em one, same as you did. I was the crank they sent you to." Their visitor bade Barbara and her mother good afternoon, gathered up his cranks and turned to the door. "I'll step over and start the car," he said. "Then I'll come back and return these things." Jed shook his head. "I wouldn't," he said. "You may stop again before you get back to Bayport. Rogers is in no hurry for 'em, he said so. You take 'em along and fetch 'em in next time you're over. I want you to call again anyhow and these cranks 'll make a good excuse for doin' it," he added. "Oh, I see. Yes, so they will. With that understanding I'll take them along. Thanks again and good afternoon." He hastened across the street. The two in the shop watched from the window until the car started and moved out of sight. The group by the telegraph office seemed excited about something; they laughed no longer and there was considerable noisy argument. Jed's lip twitched. "'The best laid plans of mice--and skunks,'" he quoted, solemnly. "Hm! . . . That Major Grover seems like a good sort of chap." "I think he's awful nice," declared Babbie. Ruth said nothing. CHAPTER XIII October passed and November came. The very last of the summer cottages were closed. Orham settled down for its regular winter hibernation. This year it was a bit less of a nap than usual because of the activity at the aviation camp at East Harniss. The swarm of carpenters, plumbers and mechanics was larger than ever there now and the buildings were hastening toward completion, for the first allotment of aviators, soldiers and recruits was due to arrive in March. Major Grover was a busy and a worried man, but he usually found time to drop in at the windmill shop for a moment or two on each of his brief motor trips to Orham. Sometimes he found Jed alone, more often Barbara was there also, and, semi- occasionally, Ruth. The major and Charles Phillips met and appeared to like each other. Charles was still on the rising tide of local popularity. Even Gabe Bearse had a good word to say for him among the many which he said concerning him. Phineas Babbitt, however, continued to express dislike, or, at the most, indifference. "I'm too old a bird," declared the vindictive little hardware dealer, "to bow down afore a slick tongue and a good-lookin' figgerhead. He's one of Sam Hunniwell's pets and that's enough for me. Anybody that ties up to Sam Hunniwell must have a rotten plank in 'em somewheres; give it time and 'twill come out." Charles and Jed Winslow were by this time good friends. The young man usually spent at least a few minutes of each day chatting with his eccentric neighbor. They were becoming more intimate, at times almost confidential, although Phillips, like every other friend or acquaintance of "Shavings" Winslow, was inclined to patronize or condescend a bit in his relations with the latter. No one took the windmill maker altogether seriously, not even Ruth Armstrong, although she perhaps came nearest to doing so. Charles would drop in at the shop of a morning, in the interval between breakfast and bank opening, and, perching on a pile of stock, or the workbench, would discuss various things. He and Jed were alike in one characteristic--each had the habit of absent-mindedness and lapsing into silence in the middle of a conversation. Jed's lapses, of course, were likely to occur in the middle of a sentence, even in the middle of a word; with the younger man the symptoms were not so acute. "Well, Charlie," observed Mr. Winslow, on one occasion, a raw November morning of the week before Thanksgiving, "how's the bank gettin' along?" Charles was a bit more silent that morning than he had been of late. He appeared to be somewhat reflective, even somber. Jed, on the lookout for just such symptoms, was trying to cheer him up. "Oh, all right enough, I guess," was the reply. "Like your work as well as ever, don't you?" "Yes--oh, yes, I like it, what there is of it. It isn't what you'd call strenuous." "No, I presume likely not, but I shouldn't wonder if they gave you somethin' more responsible some of these days. They know you're up to doin' it; Cap'n Sam's told me so more'n once." Here occurred one of the lapses just mentioned. Phillips said nothing for a minute or more. Then he asked: "What sort of a man is Captain Hunniwell?" "Eh? What sort of a man? You ought to know him yourself pretty well by this time. You see more of him every day than I do." "I don't mean as a business man or anything like that. I mean what sort of man is he--er--inside? Is he always as good-natured as he seems? How is he around his own house? With his daughter--or--or things like that? You've known him all your life, you know, and I haven't." "Um--ye-es--yes, I've known Sam for a good many years. He's square all through, Sam is. Honest as the day is long and--" Charles stirred uneasily. "I know that, of course," he interrupted. "I wasn't questioning his honesty." Jed's tender conscience registered a pang. The reference to honesty had not been made with any ulterior motive. "Sartin, sartin," he said; "I know you wasn't, Charlie, course I know that. You wanted to know what sort of a man Sam was in his family and such, I judge. Well, he's a mighty good father--almost too good, I suppose likely some folks would say. He just bows down and worships that daughter of his. Anything Maud wants that he can give her she can have. And she wants a good deal, I will give in," he added, with his quiet drawl. His caller did not speak. Jed whistled a few mournful bars and sharpened a chisel on an oilstone. "If John D. Vanderbilt should come around courtin' Maud," he went on, after a moment, "I don't know as Sam would cal'late he was good enough for her. Anyhow he'd feel that 'twas her that was doin' the favor, not John D. . . . And I guess he'd be right; I don't know any Vanderbilts, but I've known Maud since she was a baby. She's a--" He paused, inspecting a nick in the chisel edge. Again Phillips shifted in his seat on the edge of the workbench. "Well?" he asked. "Eh?" Jed looked up in mild inquiry. "What is it?" he said. "That's what I want to know--what is it? You were talking about Maud Hunniwell. You said you had known her since she was a baby and that she was--something or other; that was as far as you got." "Sho! . . . Hum. . . . Oh, yes, yes; I was goin' to say she was a mighty nice girl, as nice as she is good-lookin' and lively. There's a dozen young chaps in this county crazy about her this minute, but there ain't any one of 'em good enough for her. . . . Hello, you goin' so soon? 'Tisn't half-past nine yet, is it?" Phillips did not answer. His somber expression was still in evidence. Jed would have liked to cheer him up, but he did not know how. However he made an attempt by changing the subject. "How is Babbie this mornin'?" he asked. "She's as lively as a cricket, of course. And full of excitement. She's going to school next Monday, you know. You'll rather miss her about the shop here, won't you?" "Miss her! My land of Goshen! I shouldn't be surprised if I follered her to school myself, like Mary's little lamb. Miss her! Don't talk!" "Well, so long. . . . What is it?" "Eh?" "What is it you want to say? You look as if you wanted to say something." "Do I? . . . Hum. . . . Oh, 'twasn't anything special. . . . How's--er--how's your sister this mornin'?" "Oh, she's well. I haven't seen her so well since--that is, for a long time. You've made a great hit with Sis, Jed," he added, with a laugh. "She can't say enough good things about you. Says you are her one dependable in Orham, or something like that." Jed's face turned a bright red. "Oh, sho, sho!" he protested, "she mustn't talk that way. I haven't done anything." "She says you have. Well, by-by." He went away. It was some time before Jed resumed his chisel- sharpening. Later, when he came to reflect upon his conversation with young Phillips there were one or two things about it which puzzled him. They were still puzzling him when Maud Hunniwell came into the shop. Maud, in a new fall suit, hat and fur, was a picture, a fact of which she was as well aware as the next person. Jed, as always, was very glad to see her. "Well, well!" he exclaimed. "Talk about angels and--and they fly in, so to speak. Real glad to see you, Maud. Sit down, sit down. There's a chair 'round here somewheres. Now where--? Oh, yes, I'm sittin' in it. Hum! That's one of the reasons why I didn't see it, I presume likely. You take it and I'll fetch another from the kitchen. No, I won't, I'll sit on the bench. . . . Hum . . . has your pa got any money left in that bank of his?" Miss Hunniwell was, naturally, surprised at the question. "Why, I hope so," she said. "Did you think he hadn't?" "W-e-e-ll, I didn't know. That dress of yours, and that new bonnet, must have used up consider'ble, to say nothin' of that woodchuck you've got 'round your neck. 'Tis a woodchuck, ain't it?" he added, solemnly. "Woodchuck! Well, I like that! If you knew what a silver fox costs and how long I had to coax before I got this one you would be more careful in your language," she declared, with a toss of her head. Jed sighed. "That's the trouble with me," he observed. "I never know enough to pick out the right things--or folks--to be careful with. If I set out to be real toady and humble to what I think is a peacock it generally turns out to be a Shanghai rooster. And the same when it's t'other way about. It's a great gift to be able to tell the real--er--what is it?--gold foxes from the woodchucks in this life. I ain't got it and that's one of the two hundred thousand reasons why I ain't rich." He began to hum one of his doleful melodies. Maud laughed. "Mercy, what a long sermon!" she exclaimed. "No wonder you sing a hymn after it." Jed sniffed. "Um . . . ye-es," he drawled. "If I was more worldly-minded I'd take up a collection, probably. Well, how's all the United States Army; the gold lace part of it, I mean?" His visitor laughed again. "Those that I know seem to be very well and happy," she replied. "Um . . . yes . . . sartin. They'd be happy, naturally. How could they help it, under the circumstances?" He began picking over an assortment of small hardware, varying his musical accompaniment by whistling instead of singing. His visitor looked at him rather oddly. "Jed," she observed, "you're changed." Changed? I ain't changed my clothes, if that's what you mean. Course if I'd know I was goin' to have bankers' daughters with gold--er--muskrats 'round their necks come to see me I'd have dressed up." "Oh, I don't mean your clothes. I mean you--yourself--you've changed." "I've changed! How, for mercy sakes?" "Oh, lots of ways. You pay the ladies compliments now. You wouldn't have done that a year ago." "Eh? Pay compliments? I'm afraid you're mistaken. Your pa says I'm so absent-minded and forgetful that I don't pay some of my bills till the folks I owe 'em to make proclamations they're goin' to sue me; and other bills I pay two or three times over." "Don't try to escape by dodging the subject. You HAVE changed in the last few months. I think," holding the tail of the silver fox before her face and regarding him over it, "I think you must be in love." "Eh?" Jed looked positively frightened. "In love!" "Yes. You're blushing now." "Now, now, Maud, that ain't--that's sunburn." "No, it's not sunburn. Who is it, Jed?" mischievously. "Is it the pretty widow? Is it Mrs. Armstrong?" A good handful of the hardware fell to the floor. Jed thankfully scrambled down to pick it up. Miss Hunniwell, expressing contrition at being indirectly responsible for the mishap, offered to help him. He declined, of course, but in the little argument which followed the dangerous and embarrassing topic was forgotten. It was not until she was about to leave the shop that Maud again mentioned the Armstrong name. And then, oddly enough, it was she, not Mr. Winslow, who showed embarrassment. "Jed," she said, "what do you suppose I came here for this morning?" Jed's reply was surprisingly prompt. "To show your new rig-out, of course," he said. "'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' There, NOW I can take up a collection, can't I?" His visitor pouted. "If you do I shan't put anything in the box," she declared. "The idea of thinking that I came here just to show off my new things. I've a good mind not to invite you at all now." She doubtless expected apologies and questions as to what invitation was meant. They might have been forthcoming had not the windmill maker been engaged just at that moment in gazing abstractedly at the door of the little stove which heated, or was intended to heat, the workshop. He did not appear to have heard her remark, so the young lady repeated it. Still he paid no attention. Miss Maud, having inherited a goodly share of the Hunniwell disposition, demanded an explanation. "What in the world is the matter with you?" she asked. "Why are you staring at that stove?" Jed started and came to life. "Eh?" he exclaimed. "Oh, I was thinkin' what an everlastin' nuisance 'twas--the stove, I mean. It needs more wood about every five minutes in the day, seems to-- needs it now, that's what made me think of it. I was just wonderin' if 'twouldn't be a good notion to set it up out in the yard." "Out in the yard? Put the stove out in the yard? For goodness' sake, what for?" Jed clasped his knee in his hand and swung his foot back and forth. "Oh" he drawled, "if 'twas out in the yard I shouldn't know whether it needed wood or not, so 'twouldn't be all the time botherin' me." However, he rose and replenished the stove. Miss Hunniwell laughed. Then she said: "Jed, you don't deserve it, because you didn't hear me when I first dropped the hint, but I came here with an invitation for you. Pa and I expect you to eat your Thanksgiving dinner with us." If she had asked him to eat it in jail Jed could not have been more disturbed. "Now--now, Maud," he stammered, "I--I'm ever so much obliged to you, but I--I don't see how--" "Nonsense! I see how perfectly well. You always act just this way whenever I invite you to anything. You're not afraid of Pa or me, are you?" "W-e-e-ll, well, I ain't afraid of your Pa 's I know of, but of course, when such a fascinatin' young woman as you comes along, all rigged up to kill, why, it's natural that an old single relic like me should get kind of nervous." Maud clasped her hands. "Oh," she cried, "there's another compliment! You HAVE changed, Jed. I'm going to ask Father what it means." This time Jed was really alarmed. "Now, now, now," he protested, "don't go tell your Pa yarns about me. He'll come in here and pester me to death. You know what a tease he is when he gets started. Don't, Maud, don't." She looked hugely delighted at the prospect. Her eyes sparkled with mischief. "I certainly shall tell him," she declared, "unless you promise to eat with us on Thanksgiving Day. Oh, come along, don't be so silly. You've eaten at our house hundreds of times." This was a slight exaggeration. Jed had eaten there possibly five times in the last five years. He hesitated. "Ain't goin' to be any other company, is there?" he asked, after a moment. It was now that Maud showed her first symptoms of embarrassment. "Why," she said, twirling the fox tail and looking at the floor, "there may be one or two more. I thought--I mean Pa and I thought perhaps we might invite Mrs. Armstrong and Babbie. You know them, Jed, so they won't be like strangers. And Pa thinks Mrs. Armstrong is a very nice lady, a real addition to the town; I've heard him say so often," she added, earnestly. Jed was silent. She looked up at him from under the brim of the new hat. "You wouldn't mind them, Jed, would you?" she asked. "They wouldn't be like strangers, you know." Jed rubbed his chin. "I--I don't know's I would," he mused, "always providin' they didn't mind me. But I don't cal'late Mrs. Ruth--Mrs. Armstrong, I mean--would want to leave Charlie to home alone on Thanksgivin' Day. If she took Babbie, you know, there wouldn't be anybody left to keep him company." Miss Hunniwell twirled the fox tail in an opposite direction. "Oh, of course," she said, with elaborate carelessness, "we should invite Mrs. Armstrong's brother if we invited her. Of course we should HAVE to do that." Jed nodded, but he made no comment. His visitor watched him from beneath the hat brim. "You--you haven't any objection to Mr. Phillips, have you?" she queried. "Eh? Objections? To Charlie? Oh, no, no." "You like him, don't you? Father likes him very much." "Yes, indeed; like him fust-rate. All hands like Charlie, the women-folks especially." There was a perceptible interval before Miss Hunniwell spoke again. "What do you mean by that?" she asked. "Eh? Oh, nothin', except that, accordin' to your dad, he's a 'specially good hand at waitin' on the women and girls up at the bank, polite and nice to 'em, you know. He's even made a hit with old Melissy Busteed, and it takes a regular feller to do that." He would not promise to appear at the Hunniwell home on Thanksgiving, but he did agree to think it over. Maud had to be content with that. However, she declared that she should take his acceptance for granted. "We shall set a place for you," she said. "Of course you'll come. It will be such a nice party, you and Pa and Mrs. Armstrong and I and little Babbie. Oh, we'll have great fun, see if we don't." "And Charlie; you're leavin' out Charlie," Jed reminded her. "Oh, yes, so I was. Well, I suppose he'll come, too. Good-by." She skipped away, waving him a farewell with the tail of the silver fox. Jed, gazing after her, rubbed his chin reflectively. His indecision concerning the acceptance of the Hunniwell invitation lasted until the day before Thanksgiving. Then Barbara added her persuasions to those of Captain Sam and his daughter and he gave in. "If you don't go, Uncle Jed," asserted Babbie, "we're all goin' to be awfully disappointed, 'specially me and Petunia--and Mamma--and Uncle Charlie." "Oh, then the rest of you folks won't care, I presume likely?" Babbie thought it over. "Why, there aren't any more of us," she said. "Oh, I see! You're joking again, aren't you, Uncle Jed? 'Most everybody I know laughs when they make jokes, but you don't, you look as if you were going to cry. That's why I don't laugh sometimes right off," she explained, politely. "If you was really feeling so bad it wouldn't be nice to laugh, you know." Jed laughed then, himself. "So Petunia would feel bad if I didn't go to Sam's, would she?" he inquired. "Yes," solemnly. "She told me she shouldn't eat one single thing if you didn't go. She's a very high-strung child." That settled it. Jed argued that Petunia must on no account be strung higher than she was and consented to dine at the Hunniwells'. The day before Thanksgiving brought another visitor to the windmill shop, one as welcome as he was unexpected. Jed, hearing the door to the stock room open, shouted "Come in" from his seat at the workbench in the inner room. When his summons was obeyed he looked up to see a khaki-clad figure advancing with extended hand. "Why, hello, Major!" he exclaimed. "I'm real glad to-- Eh, 'tain't Major Grover, is it? Who-- Why, Leander Babbitt! Well, well, well!" Young Babbitt was straight and square-shouldered and brown. Military training and life at Camp Devens had wrought the miracle in his case which it works in so many. Jed found it hard to recognize the stoop-shouldered son of the hardware dealer in the spruce young soldier before him. When he complimented Leander upon the improvement the latter disclaimed any credit. "Thank the drill master second and yourself first, Jed," he said. "They'll make a man of a fellow up there at Ayer if he'll give 'em half a chance. Probably I shouldn't have had the chance if it hadn't been for you. You were the one who really put me up to enlisting." Jed refused to listen. "Can't make a man out of a punkinhead," he asserted. "If you hadn't had the right stuff in you, Leander, drill masters nor nobody else could have fetched it out. How do you like belongin' to Uncle Sam?" Young Babbitt liked it and said so. "I feel as if I were doing something at last," he said; "as if I was part of the biggest thing in the world. Course I'm only a mighty little part, but, after all, it's something." Jed nodded, gravely. "You bet it's somethin'," he argued. "It's a lot, a whole lot. I only wish I was standin' alongside of you in the ranks, Leander. . . . I'd be a sight, though, wouldn't I?" he added, his lip twitching in the fleeting smile. "What do you think the Commodore, or General, or whoever 'tis bosses things at the camp, would say when he saw me? He'd think the flagpole had grown feet, and was walkin' round, I cal'late." He asked his young friend what reception he met with upon his return home. Leander smiled ruefully. "My step-mother seemed glad enough to see me," he said. "She and I had some long talks on the subject and I think she doesn't blame me much for going into the service. I told her the whole story and, down in her heart, I believe she thinks I did right." Jed nodded. "Don't see how she could help it," he said. "How does your dad take it?" Leander hesitated. "Well," he said, "you know Father. He doesn't change his mind easily. He and I didn't get as close together as I wish we could. And it wasn't my fault that we didn't," he added, earnestly. Jed understood. He had known Phineas Babbitt for many years and he knew the little man's hard, implacable disposition and the violence of his prejudices. "Um-hm," he said. "All the same, Leander, I believe your father thinks more of you than he does of anything else on earth." "I shouldn't wonder if you was right, Jed. But on the other hand I'm afraid he and I will never be the same after I come back from the war--always providing I do come back, of course." "Sshh, sshh! Don't talk that way. Course you'll come back." "You never can tell. However, if I knew I wasn't going to, it wouldn't make any difference in my feelings about going. I'm glad I enlisted and I'm mighty thankful to you for backing me up in it. I shan't forget it, Jed." "Sho, sho! It's easy to tell other folks what to do. That's how the Kaiser earns his salary; only he gives advice to the Almighty, and I ain't got as far along as that yet." They discussed the war in general and by sections. Just before he left, young Babbitt said: "Jed, there is one thing that worries me a little in connection with Father. He was bitter against the war before we went into it and before he and Cap'n Sam Hunniwell had their string of rows. Since then and since I enlisted he has been worse than ever. The things he says against the government and against the country make ME want to lick him--and I'm his own son. I am really scared for fear he'll get himself jailed for being a traitor or something of that sort." Mr. Winslow asked if Phineas' feeling against Captain Hunniwell had softened at all. Leander's reply was a vigorous negative. "Not a bit," he declared. "He hates the cap'n worse than ever, if that's possible, and he'll do him some bad turn some day, if he can, I'm afraid. You must think it's queer my speaking this way of my own father," he added. "Well, I don't to any one else. Somehow a fellow always feels as if he could say just what he thinks to you, Jed Winslow. I feel that way, anyhow." He and Jed shook hands at the door in the early November twilight. Leander was to eat his Thanksgiving dinner at home and then leave for camp on the afternoon train. "Well, good-by," he said. Jed seemed loath to relinquish the handclasp. "Oh, don't say good-by; it's just 'See you later,'" he replied. Leander smiled. "Of course. Well, then, see you later, Jed. We'll write once in a while; eh?" Jed promised. The young fellow strode off into the dusk. Somehow, with his square shoulders and his tanned, resolute country face, he seemed to typify Young America setting cheerfully forth to face-- anything--that Honor and Decency may still be more than empty words in this world of ours. CHAPTER XIV The Hunniwell Thanksgiving dinner was an entire success. Even Captain Sam himself was forced to admit it, although he professed to do so with reluctance. "Yes," he said, with an elaborate wink in the direction of his guests, "it's a pretty good dinner, considerin' everything. Of course 'tain't what a feller used to get down at Sam Coy's eatin'- house on Atlantic Avenue, but it's pretty good--as I say, when everything's considered." His daughter was highly indignant. "Do you mean to say that this dinner isn't as good as those you used to get at that Boston restaurant, Pa?" she demanded. "Don't you dare say such a thing." Her father tugged at his beard and looked tremendously solemn. "Well," he observed, "as a boy I was brought up to always speak the truth and I've tried to live up to my early trainin'. Speakin' as a truthful man, then, I'm obliged to say that this dinner ain't like those I used to get at Sam Coy's." Ruth put in a word. "Well, then, Captain Hunniwell," she said, "I think the restaurant you refer to must be one of the best in the world." Before the captain could reply, Maud did it for him. "Mrs. Armstrong," she cautioned, "you mustn't take my father too seriously. He dearly loves to catch people with what he hopes is a joke. For a minute he caught even me this time, but I see through him now. He didn't say the dinner at his precious restaurant was BETTER than this one, he said it wasn't like it, that's all. Which is probably true," she added, with withering scorn. "But what I should like to know is what he means by his 'everything considered.'" Her father's gravity was unshaken. "Well," he said, "all I meant was that this was a pretty good dinner, considerin' who was responsible for gettin' it up." "I see, I see. Mrs. Ellis, our housekeeper, and I are responsible, Mrs. Armstrong, so you understand now who he is shooting at. Very well, Pa," she added, calmly, "the rest of us will have our dessert now. You can get yours at Sam Coy's." The dessert was mince pie and a Boston frozen pudding, the latter an especial favorite of Captain Sam's. He capitulated at once. "'Kamerad! Kamerad!'" he cried, holding up both hands. "That's what the Germans say when they surrender, ain't it? I give in, Maud. You can shoot me against a stone wall, if you want to, only give me my frozen puddin' first. It ain't so much that I like the puddin'," he explained to Mrs. Armstrong, "but I never can make out whether it's flavored with tansy or spearmint. Maud won't tell me, but I know it's somethin' old-fashioned and reminds me of my grandmother; or, maybe, it's my grandfather; come to think, I guess likely 'tis." Ruth grasped his meaning later when she tasted the pudding and found it flavored with New England rum. After dinner they adjourned to the parlor. Maud, being coaxed by her adoring father, played the piano. Then she sang. Then they all sang, all except Jed and the captain, that is. The latter declared that his voice had mildewed in the damp weather they had been having lately, and Jed excused himself on the ground that he had been warned not to sing because it was not healthy. Barbara was surprised and shocked. "Why, Uncle Jed!" she cried. "You sing EVER so much. I heard you singing this morning." Jed nodded. "Ye-es," he drawled, "but I was alone then and I'm liable to take chances with my own health. Bluey Batcheldor was in the shop last week, though, when I was tunin' up and it disagreed with HIM." "I don't believe it, Uncle Jed," with righteous indignation. "How do you know it did?" "'Cause he said so. He listened a spell, and then said I made him sick, so I took his word for it." Captain Sam laughed uproariously. "You must be pretty bad then, Jed," he declared. "Anybody who disagrees with Bluey Batcheldor must be pretty nigh the limit." Jed nodded. "Um-hm," he said, reflectively, "pretty nigh, but not quite. Always seemed to me the real limit was anybody who agreed with him." So Jed, with Babbie on his knee, sat in the corner of the bay window looking out on the street, while Mrs. Armstrong and her brother and Miss Hunniwell played and sang and the captain applauded vigorously and loudly demanded more. After a time Ruth left the group at the piano and joined Jed and her daughter by the window. Captain Hunniwell came a few minutes later. "Make a good-lookin' couple, don't they?" he whispered, bending down, and with a jerk of his head in the direction of the musicians. "Your brother's a fine-lookin' young chap, Mrs. Armstrong. And he acts as well as he looks. Don't know when I've taken such a shine to a young feller as I have to him. Yes, ma'am, they make a good-lookin' couple, even if one of 'em is my daughter." The speech was made without the slightest thought or suggestion of anything but delighted admiration and parental affection. Nevertheless, Ruth, to whom it was made, started slightly, and, turning, regarded the pair at the piano. Maud was fingering the pages of a book of college songs and looking smilingly up into the face of Charles Phillips, who was looking down into hers. There was, apparently, nothing in the picture--a pretty one, by the way-- to cause Mrs. Armstrong to gaze so fixedly or to bring the slight frown to her forehead. After a moment she turned toward Jed Winslow. Their eyes met and in his she saw the same startled hint of wonder, of possible trouble, she knew he must see in hers. Then they both looked away. Captain Hunniwell prated proudly on, chanting praises of his daughter's capabilities and talents, as he did to any one who would listen, and varying the monotony with occasional references to the wonderful manner in which young Phillips had "taken hold" at the bank. Ruth nodded and murmured something from time to time, but to any one less engrossed by his subject than the captain it would have been evident she was paying little attention. Jed, who was being entertained by Babbie and Petunia, was absently pretending to be much interested in a fairy story which the former was improvising--she called the process "making up as I go along"--for his benefit. Suddenly he leaned forward and spoke. "Sam," he said, "there's somebody comin' up the walk. I didn't get a good sight of him, but it ain't anybody that lives here in Orham regular." "Eh? That so?" demanded the captain. "How do you know 'tain't if you didn't see him?" "'Cause he's comin' to the front door," replied Mr. Winslow, with unanswerable logic. "There he is now, comin' out from astern of that lilac bush. Soldier, ain't he?" It was Ruth Armstrong who first recognized the visitor. "Why," she exclaimed, "it is Major Grover, isn't it?" The major it was, and a moment later Captain Hunniwell ushered him into the room. He had come to Orham on an errand, he explained, and had stopped at the windmill shop to see Mr. Winslow. Finding the latter out, he had taken the liberty of following him to the Hunniwell home. "I'm going to stay but a moment, Captain Hunniwell," he went on. "I wanted to talk with Winslow on a--well, on a business matter. Of course I won't do it now but perhaps we can arrange a time convenient for us both when I can." "Don't cal'late there'll be much trouble about that," observed the captain, with a chuckle. "Jed generally has time convenient for 'most everybody; eh, Jed?" Jed nodded. "Um-hm," he drawled, "for everybody but Gab Bearse." "So you and Jed are goin' to talk business, eh?" queried Captain Sam, much amused at the idea. "Figgerin' to have him rig up windmills to drive those flyin' machines of yours, Major?" "Not exactly. My business was of another kind, and probably not very important, at that. I shall probably be over here again on Monday, Winslow. Can you see me then?" Jed rubbed his chin. "Ye-es," he said, "I'll be on private exhibition to my friends all day. And children half price," he added, giving Babbie a hug. "But say, Major, how in the world did you locate me to-day? How did you know I was over here to Sam's? I never told you I was comin', I'll swear to that." For some reason or other Major Grover seemed just a little embarrassed. "Why no," he said, stammering a trifle, "you didn't tell me, but some one did. Now, who--" "I think I told you, Major," put in Ruth Armstrong. "Last evening, when you called to--to return Charlie's umbrella. I told you we were to dine here to-day and that Jed--Mr. Winslow--was to dine with us. Don't you remember?" Grover remembered perfectly then, of course. He hastened to explain that, having borrowed the umbrella of Charles Phillips the previous week, he had dropped in on his next visit to Orham to return it. Jed grunted. "Humph!" he said, "you never came to see me last night. When you was as close aboard as next door seems's if you might." The major laughed. "Well, you'll have to admit that I came to- day," he said. "Yes," put in Captain Sam, "and, now you are here, you're goin' to stay a spell. Oh, yes, you are, too. Uncle Sam don't need you so hard that he can't let you have an hour or so off on Thanksgiving Day. Maud, why in time didn't we think to have Major Grover here for dinner along with the rest of the folks? Say, couldn't you eat a plate of frozen puddin' right this minute? We've got some on hand that tastes of my grandfather, and we want to get rid of it." Their caller laughingly declined the frozen pudding, but he was prevailed upon to remain and hear Miss Hunniwell play. So Maud played and Charles turned the music for her, and Major Grover listened and talked with Ruth Armstrong in the intervals between selections. And Jed and Barbara chatted and Captain Sam beamed good humor upon every one. It was a very pleasant, happy afternoon. War and suffering and heartache and trouble seemed a long, long way off. On the way back to the shop in the chill November dusk Grover told Jed a little of what he had called to discuss with him. If Jed's mind had been of the super-critical type it might have deemed the subject of scarcely sufficient importance to warrant the major's pursuing him to the Hunniwells'. It was simply the subject of Phineas Babbitt and the latter's anti-war utterances and surmised disloyalty. "You see," explained Grover, "some one evidently has reported the old chap to the authorities as a suspicious person. The government, I imagine, isn't keen on sending a special investigator down here, so they have asked me to look into the matter. I don't know much about Babbitt, but I thought you might. Is he disloyal, do you think?" Jed hesitated. Things the hardware dealer had said had been reported to him, of course; but gossip--particularly the Bearse brand of gossip--was not the most reliable of evidence. Then he remembered his own recent conversation with Leander and the latter's expressed fear that his father might get into trouble. Jed determined, for the son's sake, not to bring that trouble nearer. "Well, Major," he answered, "I shouldn't want to say that he was. Phineas talks awful foolish sometimes, but I shouldn't wonder if that was his hot head and bull temper as much as anything else. As to whether he's anything more than foolish or not, course I couldn't say sartin, but I don't think he's too desperate to be runnin' loose. I cal'late he won't put any bombs underneath the town hall or anything of that sort. Phin and his kind remind me some of that new kind of balloon you was tellin' me they'd probably have over to your camp when 'twas done, that--er--er--dirigible; wasn't that what you called it?" "Yes. But why does Babbitt remind you of a dirigible balloon? I don't see the connection." "Don't you? Well, seems's if I did. Phin fills himself up with the gas he gets from his Anarchist papers and magazines--the 'rich man's war' and all the rest of it--and goes up in the air and when he's up in the air he's kind of hard to handle. That's what you told me about the balloon, if I recollect." Grover laughed heartily. "Then the best thing to do is to keep him on the ground, I should say," he observed. Jed rubbed his chin. "Um-hm," he drawled, "but shuttin' off his gas supply might help some. I don't think I'd worry about him much, if I was you." They separated at the front gate before the shop, where the rows of empty posts, from which the mills and vanes had all been removed, stood as gaunt reminders of the vanished summer. Major Grover refused Jed's invitation to come in and have a smoke. "No, thank you," he said, "not this evening. I'll wait here a moment and say good-night to the Armstrongs and Phillips and then I must be on my way to the camp. . . . Why, what's the matter? Anything wrong?" His companion was searching in his various pockets. The search completed, he proceeded to look himself over, so to speak, taking off his hat and looking at that, lifting a hand and then a foot and looking at them, and all with a puzzled, far-away expression. When Grover repeated his question he seemed to hear it for the first time and then not very clearly. "Eh?" he drawled. "Oh, why--er--yes, there IS somethin' wrong. That is to say, there ain't, and that's the wrong part of it. I don't seem to have forgotten anything, that's the trouble." His friend burst out laughing. "I should scarcely call that a trouble," he said. "Shouldn't you? No, I presume likely you wouldn't. But I never go anywhere without forgettin' somethin', forgettin' to say somethin' or do somethin' or bring somethin'. Never did in all my life. Now here I am home again and I can't remember that I've forgot a single thing. . . . Hum. . . . Well, I declare! I wonder what it means. Maybe, it's a sign somethin's goin' to happen." He said good night absent-mindedly. Grover laughed and walked away to meet Ruth and her brother, who, with Barbara dancing ahead, were coming along the sidewalk. He had gone but a little way when he heard Mr. Winslow shouting his name. "Major!" shouted Jed. "Major Grover! It's all right, Major, I feel better now. I've found it. 'Twas the key. I left it in the front door lock here when I went away this mornin'. I guess there's nothin' unnatural about me, after all; guess nothin's goin' to happen." But something did and almost immediately. Jed, entering the outer shop, closed the door and blundered on through that apartment and the little shop adjoining until he came to his living-room beyond. Then he fumbled about in the darkness for a lamp and matchbox. He found the latter first, on the table where the lamp should have been. Lighting one of the matches, he then found the lamp on a chair directly in front of the door, where he had put it before going away that morning, his idea in so doing being that it would thus be easier to locate when he returned at night. Thanking his lucky stars that he had not upset both chair and lamp in his prowlings, Mr. Winslow lighted the latter. Then, with it in his hand, he turned, to see the very man he and Major Grover had just been discussing seated in the rocker in the corner of the room and glaring at him malevolently. Naturally, Jed was surprised. Naturally, also, being himself, he showed his surprise in his own peculiar way. He did not start violently, nor utter an exclamation. Instead he stood stock still, returning Phineas Babbitt's glare with a steady, unwinking gaze. It was the hardware dealer who spoke first. And that, by the way, was precisely what he had not meant to do. "Yes," he observed, with caustic sarcasm, "it's me. You needn't stand there blinkin' like a fool any longer, Shavin's. It's me." Jed set the lamp upon the table. He drew a long breath, apparently of relief. "Why, so 'tis," he said, solemnly. "When I first saw you sittin' there, Phin, I had a suspicion 'twas you, but the longer I looked the more I thought 'twas the President come to call. Do you know," he added, confidentially, "if you didn't have any whiskers and he looked like you you'd be the very image of him." This interesting piece of information was not received with enthusiasm. Mr. Babbitt's sense of humor was not acutely developed. "Never mind the funny business, Shavin's," he snapped. "I didn't come here to be funny to-night. Do you know why I came here to talk to you?" Jed pulled forward a chair and sat down. "I presume likely you came here because you found the door unlocked, Phin," he said. "I didn't say HOW I came to come, but WHY I came. I knew where you was this afternoon. I see you when you left there and I had a good mind to cross over and say what I had to say before the whole crew, Sam Hunniwell, and his stuck-up rattle-head of a daughter, and that Armstrong bunch that think themselves so uppish, and all of 'em." Mr. Winslow stirred uneasily in his chair. "Now, Phin," he protested, "seems to me--" But Babbitt was too excited to heed. His little eyes snapped and his bristling beard quivered. "You hold your horses, Shavin's," he ordered. "I didn't come here to listen to you. I came because I had somethin' to say and when I've said it I'm goin' and goin' quick. My boy's been home. You knew that, I suppose, didn't you?" Jed nodded. "Yes," he said, "I knew Leander'd come home for Thanksgivin'." "Oh, you did! He came here to this shop to see you, maybe? Humph! I'll bet he did, the poor fool!" Again Jed shifted his position. His hands clasped about his knee and his foot lifted from the floor. "There, there, Phin," he said gently; "after all, he's your only son, you know." "I know it. But he's a fool just the same." "Now, Phin! The boy'll be goin' to war pretty soon, you know, and--" Babbitt sprang to his feet. His chin trembled so that he could scarcely speak. "Shut up!" he snarled. "Don't let me hear you say that again, Jed Winslow. Who sent him to war? Who filled his head full of rubbish about patriotism, and duty to the country, and all the rest of the rotten Wall Street stuff? Who put my boy up to enlistin', Jed Winslow?" Jed's foot swung slowly back and forth. "Well, Phin," he drawled, "to be real honest, I think he put himself up to it." "You're a liar. YOU did it." Jed sighed. "Did Leander tell you I did?" he asked. "No," mockingly, "Leander didn't tell me. You and Sam Hunniwell and the rest of the gang have fixed him so he don't come to his father to tell things any longer. But he told his step-mother this very mornin' and she told me. You was the one that advised him to enlist, he said. Good Lord; think of it! He don't go to his own father for advice; he goes to the town jackass instead, the critter that spends his time whittlin' out young-one's playthings. My Lord A'mighty!" He spat on the floor to emphasize his disgust. There was an interval of silence before Jed answered. "Well, Phin," he said, slowly, "you're right, in a way. Leander and I have always been pretty good friends and he's been in the habit of droppin' in here to talk things over with me. When he came to me to ask what he ought to do about enlistin', asked what I'd do if I was he, I told him; that's all there was to it." Babbitt extended a shaking forefinger. "Yes, and you told him to go to war. Don't lie out of it now; you know you did." "Um . . . yes . . . I did." "You did? You DID? And you have the cheek to own up to it right afore my face." Jed's hand stroked his chin. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "you just ordered me not to lie out of it, you know. Leander asked me right up and down if I wouldn't enlist if I was in his position. Naturally, I said I would." "Yes, you did. And you knew all the time how I felt about it, you SNEAK." Jed's foot slowly sank to the floor and just as slowly he hoisted himself from the chair. "Phin," he said, with deliberate mildness, "is there anything else you'd like to ask me? 'Cause if there isn't, maybe you'd better run along." "You sneakin' coward!" "Er--er--now--now, Phin, you didn't understand. I said 'ask' me, not 'call' me." "No, I didn't come here to ask you anything. I came here and waited here so's to be able to tell you somethin'. And that is that I know now that you're responsible for my son--my only boy, the boy I'd depended on--and--and--" The fierce little man was, for the moment, close to breaking down. Jed's heart softened; he felt almost conscience-stricken. "I'm sorry for you, Phineas," he said. "I know how hard it must be for you. Leander realized it, too. He--" "Shut up! Shavin's, you listen to me. I don't forget. All my life I've never forgot. And I ain't never missed gettin' square. I can wait, just as I waited here in the dark over an hour so's to say this to you. I'll get square with you just as I'll get square with Sam Hunniwell. . . . That's all. . . . That's all. . . . DAMN YOU!" He stamped from the room and Jed heard him stumbling through the littered darkness of the shops on his way to the front door, kicking at the obstacles he tripped over and swearing and sobbing as he went. It was ridiculous enough, of course, but Jed did not feel like smiling. The bitterness of the little man's final curse was not humorous. Neither was the heartbreak in his tone when he spoke of his boy. Jed felt no self-reproach; he had advised Leander just as he might have advised his own son had his life been like other men's lives, normal men who had married and possessed sons. He had no sympathy for Phineas Babbitt's vindictive hatred of all those more fortunate than he or who opposed him, or for his silly and selfish ideas concerning the war. But he did pity him; he pitied him profoundly. Babbitt had left the front door open in his emotional departure and Jed followed to close it. Before doing so he stepped out into the yard. It was pitch dark now and still. He could hear the footsteps of his recent visitor pounding up the road, and the splashy grumble of the surf on the bar was unusually audible. He stood for a moment looking up at the black sky, with the few stars shining between the cloud blotches. Then he turned and looked at the little house next door. The windows of the sitting-room were alight and the shades drawn. At one window he saw Charles Phillips' silhouette; he was reading, apparently. Across the other shade Ruth's dainty profile came and went. Jed looked and looked. He saw her turn and speak to some one. Then another shadow crossed the window, the shadow of Major Grover. Evidently the major had not gone home at once as he had told Jed he intended doing, plainly he had been persuaded to enter the Armstrong house and make Charlie and his sister a short call. This was Jed's estimate of the situation, his sole speculation concerning it and its probabilities. And yet Mr. Gabe Bearse, had he seen the major's shadow upon the Armstrong window curtain, might have speculated much. CHAPTER XV The pity which Jed felt for Phineas Babbitt caused him to keep silent concerning his Thanksgiving evening interview with the hardware dealer. At first he was inclined to tell Major Grover of Babbitt's expressions concerning the war and his son's enlistment. After reflection, however, he decided not to do so. The Winslow charity was wide enough to cover a multitude of other people's sins and it covered those of Phineas. The latter was to be pitied; as to fearing him, as a consequence of his threat to "get square," Jed never thought of such a thing. If he felt any anxiety at all in the matter it was a trifling uneasiness because his friends, the Hunniwells and the Armstrongs, were included in the threat. But he was inclined to consider Mr. Babbitt's wrath as he had once estimated the speech of a certain Ostable candidate for political office, to be "like a tumbler of plain sody water, mostly fizz and froth and nothin' very substantial or fillin'." He did not tell Grover of the interview in the shop; he told no one, not even Ruth Armstrong. The--to him, at least--delightful friendship and intimacy between himself and his friends and tenants continued. He and Charlie Phillips came to know each other better and better. Charles was now almost as confidential concerning his personal affairs as his sister had been and continued to be. "It's surprising how I come in here and tell you all my private business, Jed," he said, laughing. "I don't go about shouting my joys and troubles in everybody's ear like this. Why do I do it to you?" Jed stopped a dismal whistle in the middle of a bar. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "I don't know. When I was a young-one I used to like to holler out back of Uncle Laban Ryder's barn so's to hear the echo. When you say so and so, Charlie, I generally agree with you. Maybe you come here to get an echo; eh?" Phillips laughed. "You're not fair to yourself," he said. "I generally find when the echo in here says no after I've said yes it pays me to pay attention to it. Sis says the same thing about you, Jed." Jed made no comment, but his eyes shone. Charles went on. "Don't you get tired of hearing the story of my life?" he asked. "I--" He stopped short and the smile faded from his lips. Jed knew why. The story of his life was just what he had not told, what he could not tell. As January slid icily into February Mr. Gabriel Bearse became an unusually busy person. There were so many things to talk about. Among these was one morsel which Gabe rolled succulently beneath his tongue. Charles Phillips, "'cordin' to everybody's tell," was keeping company with Maud Hunniwell. "There ain't no doubt of it," declared Mr. Bearse. "All hands is talkin' about it. Looks's if Cap'n Sam would have a son-in-law on his hands pretty soon. How do you cal'late he'd like the idea, Shavin's?" Jed squinted along the edge of the board he was planing. He made no reply. Gabe tried again. "How do you cal'late Cap'n Sam'll like the notion of his pet daughter takin' up with another man?" he queried. Jed was still mute. His caller lost patience. "Say, what ails you?" he demanded. "Can't you say nothin'?" Mr. Winslow put down the board and took up another. "Ye-es," he drawled. "Then why don't you, for thunder sakes?" "Eh? . . . Um. . . Oh, I did." "Did what?" "Say nothin'." "Oh, you divilish idiot! Stop tryin' to be funny. I asked you how you thought Cap'n Sam would take the notion of Maud's havin' a steady beau? She's had a good many after her, but looks as if she was stuck on this one for keeps." Jed sighed and looked over his spectacles at Mr. Bearse. The latter grew uneasy under the scrutiny. "What in time are you lookin' at me like that for?" he asked, pettishly. The windmill maker sighed again. "Why--er--Gab," he drawled, "I was just thinkin' likely YOU might be stuck for keeps." "Eh? Stuck? What are you talkin' about?" "Stuck on that box you're sittin' on. I had the glue pot standin' on that box just afore you came in and . . . er . . . it leaks consider'ble." Mr. Bearse raspingly separated his nether garment from the top of the box and departed, expressing profane opinions. Jed's lips twitched for an instant, then he puckered them and began to whistle. But, although he had refused to discuss the matter with Gabriel Bearse, he realized that there was a strong element of probability in the latter's surmise. It certainly did look as if the spoiled daughter of Orham's bank president had lost her heart to her father's newest employee. Maud had had many admirers; some very earnest and lovelorn swains had hopefully climbed the Hunniwell front steps only to sorrowfully descend them again. Miss Melissa Busteed and other local scandal scavengers had tartly classified the young lady as the "worst little flirt on the whole Cape," which was not true. But Maud was pretty and vivacious and she was not averse to the society and adoration of the male sex in general, although she had never until now shown symptoms of preference for an individual. But Charlie Phillips had come and seen and, judging by appearances, conquered. Since the Thanksgiving dinner the young man had been a frequent visitor at the Hunniwell home. Maud was musical, she played well and had a pleasing voice. Charles' baritone was unusually good. So on many evenings Captain Sam's front parlor rang with melody, while the captain smoked in the big rocker and listened admiringly and gazed dotingly. At the moving-picture theater on Wednesday and Saturday evenings Orham nudged and winked when two Hunniwells and a Phillips came down the aisle. Even at the Congregational church, where Maud sang in the choir, the young bank clerk was beginning to be a fairly constant attendant. Captain Eri Hedge declared that that settled it. "When a young feller who ain't been to meetin' for land knows how long," observed Captain Eri, "all of a sudden begins showin' up every Sunday reg'lar as clockwork, you can make up your mind it's owin' to one of two reasons--either he's got religion or a girl. In this case there ain't any revival in town, so--" And the captain waved his hand. Jed was not blind and he had seen, perhaps sooner than any one else, the possibilities in the case. And what he saw distressed him greatly. Captain Sam Hunniwell was his life-long friend. Maud had been his pet since her babyhood; she and he had had many confidential chats together, over troubles at school, over petty disagreements with her father, over all sorts of minor troubles and joys. Captain Sam had mentioned to him, more than once, the probability of his daughter's falling in love and marrying some time or other, but they both had treated the idea as vague and far off, almost as a joke. And now it was no longer far off, the falling in love at least. And as for its being a joke--Jed shuddered at the thought. He was very fond of Charlie Phillips; he had made up his mind at first to like him because he was Ruth's brother, but now he liked him for himself. And, had things been other than as they were, he could think of no one to whom he had rather see Maud Hunniwell married. In fact, had Captain Hunniwell known the young man's record, of his slip and its punishment, Jed would have been quite content to see the latter become Maud's husband. A term in prison, especially when, as in this case, he believed it to be an unwarranted punishment, would have counted for nothing in the unworldly mind of the windmill maker. But Captain Sam did not know. He was tremendously proud of his daughter; in his estimation no man would have been quite good enough for her. What would he say when he learned? What would Maud say when she learned? for it was almost certain that Charles had not told her. These were some of the questions which weighed upon the simple soul of Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow. And heavier still there weighed the thought of Ruth Armstrong. He had given her his word not to mention her brother's secret to a soul, not even to him. And yet, some day or other, as sure and certain as the daily flowing and ebbing of the tides, that secret would become known. Some day Captain Sam Hunniwell would learn it; some day Maud would learn it. Better, far better, that they learned it before marriage, or even before the public announcement of their engagement--always provided there was to be such an engagement. In fact, were it not for Ruth herself, no consideration for Charles' feelings would have prevented Jed's taking the matter up with the young man and warning him that, unless he made a clean breast to the captain and Maud, he--Jed-- would do it for him. The happiness of two such friends should not be jeopardized if he could prevent it. But there was Ruth. She, not her brother, was primarily responsible for obtaining for him the bank position and obtaining it under fake pretenses. And she, according to her own confession to Jed, had urged upon Charles the importance of telling no one. Jed himself would have known nothing, would have had only a vague, indefinite suspicion, had she not taken him into her confidence. And to him that confidence was precious, sacred. If Charlie's secret became known, it was not he alone who would suffer; Ruth, too, would be disgraced. She and Babbie might have to leave Orham, might have to go out of his life forever. No wonder that, as the days passed, and Gabe Bearse's comments and those of Captain Eri Hedge were echoed and reasserted by the majority of Orham tongues, Jed Winslow's worry and foreboding increased. He watched Charlie Phillips go whistling out of the yard after supper, and sighed as he saw him turn up the road in the direction of the Hunniwell home. He watched Maud's face when he met her and, although the young lady was in better spirits and prettier than he had ever seen her, these very facts made him miserable, because he accepted them as proofs that the situation was as he feared. He watched Ruth's face also and there, too, he saw, or fancied that he saw, a growing anxiety. She had been very well; her spirits, like Maud's, had been light; she had seemed younger and so much happier than when he and she first met. The little Winslow house was no longer so quiet, with no sound of voices except those of Barbara and her mother. There were Red Cross sewing meetings there occasionally, and callers came. Major Grover was one of the latter. The major's errands in Orham were more numerous than they had been, and his trips thither much more frequent, in consequence. And whenever he came he made it a point to drop in, usually at the windmill shop first, and then upon Babbie at the house. Sometimes he brought her home from school in his car. He told Jed that he had taken a great fancy to the little girl and could not bear to miss an opportunity of seeing her. Which statement Jed, of course, accepted wholeheartedly. But Jed was sure that Ruth had been anxious and troubled of late and he believed the reason to be that which troubled him. He hoped she might speak to him concerning her brother. He would have liked to broach the subject himself, but feared she might consider him interfering. One day--it was in late February, the ground was covered with snow and a keen wind was blowing in over a sea gray-green and splashed thickly with white--Jed was busy at his turning lathe when Charlie came into the shop. Business at the bank was not heavy in mid- winter and, although it was but little after three, the young man was through work for the day. He hoisted himself to his accustomed seat on the edge of the workbench and sat there, swinging his feet and watching his companion turn out the heads and trunks of a batch of wooden sailors. He was unusually silent, for him, merely nodding in response to Jed's cheerful "Hello!" and speaking but a few words in reply to a question concerning the weather. Jed, absorbed in his work and droning a hymn, apparently forgot all about his caller. Suddenly the latter spoke. "Jed," he said, "when you are undecided about doing or not doing a thing, how do you settle it?" Jed looked up over his spectacles. "Eh?" he asked. "What's that?" "I say when you have a decision to make and your mind is about fifty-fifty on the subject, how do you decide?" Jed's answer was absently given. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "I generally--er--don't." "But suppose the time comes when you have to, what then?" "Eh? . . . Oh, then, if 'tain't very important I usually leave it to Isaiah." "Isaiah? Isaiah who?" "I don't know his last name, but he's got a whole lot of first ones. That's him, up on that shelf." He pointed to a much battered wooden figure attached to the edge of the shelf upon the wall. The figure was that of a little man holding a set of mill arms in front of him. The said mill arms were painted a robin's-egg blue, and one was tipped with black. "That's Isaiah," continued Jed. "Hum . . . yes . . . that's him. He was the first one of his kind of contraption that I ever made and, bein' as he seemed to bring me luck, I've kept him. He's settled a good many questions for me, Isaiah has." "Why do you call him Isaiah?" "Eh? Oh, that's just his to-day's name. I called him Isaiah just now 'cause that was the first of the prophet names I could think of. Next time he's just as liable to be Hosea or Ezekiel or Samuel or Jeremiah. He prophesies just as well under any one of 'em, don't seem to be particular." Charles smiled slightly--he did not appear to be in a laughing mood--and then asked: "You say he settles questions for you? How?" "How? . . . Oh. . . Well, you notice one end of that whirligig arm he's got is smudged with black?" "Yes." "That's Hosea's indicator. Suppose I've got somethin' on--on what complimentary folks like you would call my mind. Suppose, same as 'twas yesterday mornin', I was tryin' to decide whether or not I'd have a piece of steak for supper. I gave--er--Elisha's whirlagig here a spin and when the black end stopped 'twas p'intin' straight up. That meant yes. If it had p'inted down, 'twould have meant no." "Suppose it had pointed across--half way between yes and no?" "That would have meant that--er--what's-his-name--er--Deuteronomy there didn't know any more than I did about it." This time Phillips did laugh. "So you had the steak," he observed. Jed's lip twitched. "I bought it," he drawled. "I got so far all accordin' to prophecy. And I put it on a plate out in the back room where 'twas cold, intendin' to cook it when supper time came." "Well, didn't you?" "No-o; you see, 'twas otherwise provided. That everlastin' Cherub tomcat of Taylor's must have sneaked in with the boy when he brought the order from the store. When I shut the steak up in the back room I--er--er--hum. . . ." "You did what?" "Eh? . . . Oh, I shut the cat up with it. I guess likely that's the end of the yarn, ain't it?" "Pretty nearly, I should say. What did you do to the cat?" "Hum. . . . Why, I let him go. He's a good enough cat, 'cordin' to his lights, I guess. It must have been a treat to him; I doubt if he gets much steak at home. . . . Well, do you want to give Isaiah a whirl on that decision you say you've got to make?" Charles gave him a quick glance. "I didn't say I had one to make," he replied. "I asked how you settled such a question, that's all." "Um. . . . I see. . . . I see. Well, the prophet's at your disposal. Help yourself." The young fellow shook his head. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be very satisfactory," he said. "He might say no when I wanted him to say yes, you see." "Um-hm. . . . He's liable to do that. When he does it to me I keep on spinnin' him till we agree, that's all." Phillips made no comment on this illuminating statement and there was another interval of silence, broken only by the hum and rasp of the turning lathe. Then he spoke again. "Jed," he said, "seriously now, when a big question comes up to you, and you've got to answer it one way or the other, how do you settle with yourself which way to answer?" Jed sighed. "That's easy, Charlie," he declared. "There don't any big questions ever come up to me. I ain't the kind of feller the big things come to." Charles grunted, impatiently. "Oh, well, admitting all that," he said, "you must have to face questions that are big to you, that seem big, anyhow." Jed could not help wincing, just a little. The matter-of-fact way in which his companion accepted the estimate of his insignificance was humiliating. Jed did not blame him, it was true, of course, but the truth hurt--a little. He was ashamed of himself for feeling the hurt. "Oh," he drawled, "I do have some things--little no-account things-- to decide every once in a while. Sometimes they bother me, too-- although they probably wouldn't anybody with a head instead of a Hubbard squash on his shoulders. The only way I can decide 'em is to set down and open court, put 'em on trial, as you might say." "What do you mean?" "Why, I call in witnesses for both sides, seems so. Here's the reasons why I ought to tell; here's the reasons why I shouldn't. I--" "Tell? Ought to TELL? What makes you say that? What have YOU got to tell?" He was glaring at the windmill maker with frightened eyes. Jed knew as well as if it had been painted on the shop wall before him the question in the boy's mind, the momentous decision he was trying to make. And he pitied him from the bottom of his heart. "Tell?" he repeated. "Did I say tell? Well, if I did 'twas just a--er--figger of speech, as the book fellers talk about. But the only way to decide a thing, as it seems to me, is to try and figger out what's the RIGHT of it, and then do that." Phillips looked gloomily at the floor. "And that's such an easy job," he observed, with sarcasm. "The figgerin' or the doin'?" "Oh, the doing; the figuring is usually easy enough--too easy. But the doing is different. The average fellow is afraid. I don't suppose you would be, Jed. I can imagine you doing almost anything if you thought it was right, and hang the consequences." Jed looked aghast. "Who? Me?" he queried. "Good land of love, don't talk that way, Charlie! I'm the scarest critter that lives and the weakest-kneed, too, 'most generally. But--but, all the same, I do believe the best thing, and the easiest in the end, not only for you--or me--but for all hands, is to take the bull by the horns and heave the critter, if you can. There may be an awful big trouble, but big or little it'll be over and done with. THAT bull won't be hangin' around all your life and sneakin' up astern to get you--and those you--er--care for. . . . Mercy me, how I do preach! They'll be callin' me to the Baptist pulpit, if I don't look out. I understand they're candidatin'." His friend drew a long breath. "There is a poem that I used to read, or hear some one read," he observed, "that fills the bill for any one with your point of view, I should say. Something about a fellow's not being afraid to put all his money on one horse, or the last card--about his not deserving anything if he isn't afraid to risk everything. Wish I could remember it." Jed looked up from the lathe. "'He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch To win or lose it all.' That's somethin' like it, ain't it, Charlie?" he asked. Phillips was amazed. "Well, I declare, Winslow," he exclaimed, "you beat me! I can't place you at all. Whoever would have accused you of reading poetry--and quoting it." Jed rubbed his chin. "I don't know much, of course," he said, "but there's consider'ble many poetry books up to the library and I like to read 'em sometimes. You're liable to run across a--er--poem-- well, like this one, for instance--that kind of gets hold of you. It fills the bill, you might say, as nothin' else does. There's another one that's better still. About-- 'Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide. Do you know that one?" His visitor did not answer. After a moment he swung himself from the workbench and turned toward the door. "'He either fears his fate too much,'" he quoted, gloomily. "Humph! I wonder if it ever occurred to that chap that there might be certain kinds of fate that COULDN'T be feared too much? . . . Well, so long, Jed. Ah hum, you don't know where I can get hold of some money, do you?" Jed was surprised. "Humph!" he grunted. "I should say you HAD hold of money two-thirds of every day. Feller that works in a bank is supposed to handle some cash." "Yes, of course," with an impatient laugh, "but that is somebody else's money, not mine. I want to get some of my own." "Sho! . . . Well, I cal'late I could let you have ten or twenty dollars right now, if that would be any help to you." "It wouldn't; thank you just the same. If it was five hundred instead of ten, why--perhaps I shouldn't say no." Jed was startled. "Five hundred?" he repeated. "Five hundred dollars? Do you need all that so very bad, Charlie?" Phillips, his foot upon the threshold of the outer shop, turned and looked at him. "The way I feel now I'd do almost anything to get it," he said, and went out. Jed told no one of this conversation, although his friend's parting remark troubled and puzzled him. In fact it troubled him so much that at a subsequent meeting with Charles he hinted to the latter that he should be glad to lend the five hundred himself. "I ought to have that and some more in the bank," he said. "Sam would know whether I had or not. . . . Eh? Why, and you would, too, of course. I forgot you know as much about folks' bank accounts as anybody. . . . More'n some of 'em do themselves, bashfulness stoppin' me from namin' any names," he added. Charles looked at him. "Do you mean to tell me, Jed Winslow," he said, "that you would lend me five hundred dollars without any security or without knowing in the least what I wanted it for?" "Why--why, of course. 'Twouldn't be any of my business what you wanted it for, would it?" "Humph! Have you done much lending of that kind?" "Eh? . . . Um. . . . Well, I used to do consider'ble, but Sam he kind of put his foot down and said I shouldn't do any more. But I don't HAVE to mind him, you know, although I generally do because it's easier--and less noisy," he added, with a twinkle in his eye. "Well, you ought to mind him; he's dead right, of course. You're a good fellow, Jed, but you need a guardian." Jed shook his head sadly. "I hate to be so unpolite as to call your attention to it," he drawled, "but I've heard somethin' like that afore. Up to now I ain't found any guardian that needs me, that's the trouble. And if I want to lend you five hundred dollars, Charlie, I'm goin' to. Oh, I'm a divil of a feller when I set out to be, desperate and reckless, I am." Charlie laughed, but he put his hand on Jed's shoulder, "You're a brick, I know that," he said, "and I'm a million times obliged to you. But I was only joking; I don't need any five hundred." "Eh? . . . You don't? . . . Why, you said--" "Oh, I--er--need some new clothes and things and I was talking foolishness, that's all. Don't you worry about me, Jed; I'm all right." But Jed did worry, a little, although his worry concerning the young man's need of money was so far overshadowed by the anxiety caused by his falling in love with Maud Hunniwell that it was almost forgotten. That situation was still as tense as ever. Two- thirds of Orham, so it seemed to Jed, was talking about it, wondering when the engagement would be announced and speculating, as Gabe Bearse had done, on Captain Sam's reception of the news. The principals, Maud and Charles, did not speak of it, of course-- neither did the captain or Ruth Armstrong. Jed expected Ruth to speak; he was certain she understood the situation and realized its danger; she appeared to him anxious and very nervous. It was to him, and to him alone--her brother excepted--she could speak, but the days passed and she did not. And it was Captain Hunniwell who spoke first. CHAPTER XVI Captain Sam entered the windmill shop about two o'clock one windy afternoon in the first week of March. He was wearing a heavy fur overcoat and a motoring cap. He pulled off the coat, threw it over a pile of boards and sat down. "Whew!" he exclaimed. "It's blowing hard enough to start the bark on a log." Jed looked up. "Did you say log or dog?" he asked, solemnly. The captain grinned. "I said log," he answered. "This gale of wind would blow a dog away, bark and all. Whew! I'm all out of breath. It's some consider'ble of a drive over from Wapatomac. Comin' across that stretch of marsh road by West Ostable I didn't know but the little flivver would turn herself into a flyin'- machine and go up." Jed stopped in the middle of the first note of a hymn. "What in the world sent you autoin' way over to Wapatomac and back this day?" he asked. His friend bit the end from a cigar. "Oh, diggin' up the root of all evil," he said. "I had to collect a note that was due over there." "Humph! I don't know much about such things, but I never mistrusted 'twas necessary for you to go cruisin' like that to collect notes. Seems consider'ble like sendin' the skipper up town to buy onions for the cook. Couldn't the--the feller that owed the money send you a check?" Captain Sam chuckled. "He could, I cal'late, but he wouldn't," he observed. "'Twas old Sylvester Sage, up to South Wapatomac, the 'cranberry king' they call him up there. He owns cranberry bogs from one end of the Cape to the other. You've heard of him, of course." Jed rubbed his chin. "Maybe so," he drawled, "but if I have I've forgot him. The only sage I recollect is the sage tea Mother used to make me take when I had a cold sometimes. I COULDN'T forget that." "Well, everybody but you has heard of old Sylvester. He's the biggest crank on earth." "Hum-m. Seems 's if he and I ought to know each other. . . . But maybe he's a different kind of crank; eh?" "He's all kinds. One of his notions is that he won't pay bills by check, if he can possibly help it. He'll travel fifty miles to pay money for a thing sooner than send a check for it. He had this note--fourteen hundred dollars 'twas--comin' due at our bank to-day and he'd sent word if we wanted the cash we must send for it 'cause his lumbago was too bad for him to travel. I wanted to see him anyhow, about a little matter of a political appointment up his way, so I decided to take the car and go myself. Well, I've just got back and I had a windy v'yage, too. And cold, don't talk!" "Um . . . yes. . . . Get your money, did you?" "Yes, I got it. It's in my overcoat pocket now. I thought one spell I wasn't goin' to get it, for the old feller was mad about some one of his cranberry buyers failin' up on him and he was as cross-grained as a scrub oak root. He and I had a regular row over the matter of politics I went there to see him about 'special. I told him what he was and he told me where I could go. That's how we parted. Then I came home." "Hum. . . . You'd have had a warmer trip if you'd gone where he sent you, I presume likely. . . . Um. . . . Yes, yes. . . . 'There's a place in this chorus For you and for me, And the theme of it ever And always shall be: Hallelujah, 'tis do-ne! I believe. . . .' Hum! . . . I thought that paint can was full and there ain't more'n a half pint in it. I must have drunk it in my sleep, I guess. Do I look green around the mouth, Sam?" It was just before Captain Sam's departure that he spoke of his daughter and young Phillips. He mentioned them in a most casual fashion, as he was putting on his coat to go, but Jed had a feeling that his friend had stopped at the windmill shop on purpose to discuss that very subject and that all the detail of his Wapatomac trip had been in the nature of a subterfuge to conceal this fact. "Oh," said the captain, with somewhat elaborate carelessness, as he struggled into the heavy coat, "I don't know as I told you that the directors voted to raise Charlie's salary. Um-hm, at last Saturday's meetin' they did it. 'Twas unanimous, too. He's as smart as a whip, that young chap. We all think a heap of him." Jed nodded, but made no comment. The captain fidgeted with a button of his coat. He turned toward the door, stopped, cleared his throat, hesitated, and then turned back again. "Jed," he said, "has--has it seemed to you that--that he--that Charlie was--maybe--comin' to think consider'ble of--of my daughter--of Maud?" Jed looked up, caught his eye, and looked down again. Captain Sam sighed. "I see," he said. "You don't need to answer. I presume likely the whole town has been talkin' about it for land knows how long. It's generally the folks at home that don't notice till the last gun fires. Of course I knew he was comin' to the house a good deal and that he and Maud seemed to like each other's society, and all that. But it never struck me that--that it meant anything serious, you know--anything--anything--well, you know what I mean, Jed." "Yes. Yes, Sam, I suppose I do." "Yes. Well, I--I don't know why it never struck me, either. If Georgianna--if my wife had been alive, she'd have noticed, I'll bet, but I didn't. 'Twas only last evenin'; when he came to get her to go to the pictures, that it came across me, you might say, like--like a wet, cold rope's end' slappin' me in the face. I give you my word, Jed, I--I kind of shivered all over. She means--she means somethin' to me, that little girl and--and--" He seemed to find it hard to go on. Jed leaned forward. "I know, Sam, I know," he said. His friend nodded. "I know you do, Jed," he said. "I don't think there's anybody else knows so well. I'm glad I've got you to talk to. I cal'late, though," he added, with a short laugh, "if some folks knew I came here to--to talk over my private affairs they'd think I was goin' soft in the head." Jed smiled, and there was no resentment in the smile. "They'd locate the softness in t'other head of the two, Sam," he suggested. "I don't care where they locate it. I can talk to you about things I never mention to other folks. Guess it must be because you--you-- well, I don't know, but it's so, anyhow. . . . Well, to go ahead, after the young folks had gone I sat there alone in the parlor, in the dark, tryin' to think it out. The housekeeper had gone over to her brother's, so I had the place to myself. I thought and thought and the harder I thought the lonesomer the rest of my life began to look. And yet--and yet I kept tellin' myself how selfish and foolish that was. I knew 'twas a dead sartinty she'd be gettin' married some time. You and I have laughed about it and joked about it time and again. And I've joked about it with her, too. But-- but jokin's one thing and this was another. . . . Whew!" He drew a hand across his forehead. Jed did not speak. After a moment the captain went on. "Well," he said, "when she got home, and after he'd gone, I got Maud to sit on my knee, same as she's done ever since she was a little girl, and she and I had a talk. I kind of led up to the subject, as you might say, and by and by we--well, we talked it out pretty straight. She thinks an awful sight of him, Jed. There ain't any doubt about that, she as much as told me in those words, and more than told me in other ways. And he's the only one she's ever cared two straws for, she told me that. And--and--well, I think she thinks he cares for her that way, too, although of course she didn't say so. But he hasn't spoken to her yet. I don't know, but--but it seemed to me, maybe, that he might be waitin' to speak to me first. I'm his--er--boss, you know, and perhaps he may feel a little--little under obligations to me in a business way and that might make it harder for him to speak. Don't it seem to you maybe that might be it, Jed?" Poor Jed hesitated. Then he stammered that he shouldn't be surprised. Captain Sam sighed. "Well," he said, "if that's it, it does him credit, anyhow. I ain't goin' to be selfish in this thing, Jed. If she's goin' to have a husband--and she is, of course--I cal'late I'd rather 'twas Charlie than anybody else I've ever run across. He's smart and he'll climb pretty high, I cal'late. Our little single-sticked bankin' craft ain't goin' to be big enough for him to sail in very long. I can see that already. He'll be navigatin' a clipper one of these days. Well, that's the way I'd want it. I'm pretty ambitious for that girl of mine and I shouldn't be satisfied short of a top-notcher. And he's a GOOD feller, Jed; a straight, clean, honest and above-board young chap. That's the best of it, after all, ain't it?" Jed's reply was almost a groan, but his friend did not notice. He put on his overcoat and turned to go. "So, there you are," he said. "I had to talk to somebody, had to get it off my chest, and, as I just said, it seems to be easier to talk such things to you than anybody else. Now if any of the town gas engines--Gab Bearse or anybody else--comes cruisin' in here heavin' overboard questions about how I like the notion of Maud and Charlie takin' up with each other, you can tell 'em I'm tickled to death. That won't be all lie, neither. I can't say I'm happy, exactly, but Maud is and I'm goin' to make-believe be, for her sake. So long." He went out. Jed put his elbows on the workbench and covered his face with his hands. He was still in that position when Ruth Armstrong came in. He rose hastily, but she motioned him to sit again. "Jed," she said, "Captain Hunniwell was just here with you; I saw him go. Tell me, what was he talking about?" Jed was confused. "Why--why, Mrs. Ruth," he stammered, "he was just talkin' about--about a note he'd been collectin', and--and such." "Wasn't he speaking of his daughter--and--and my brother?" This time Jed actually gasped. Ruth drew a long breath. "I knew it," she said. "But--but, for mercy sakes, HOW did you know? Did he--?" "No, he didn't see me at all. I was watching him from the window. But I saw his face and--" with a sudden gesture of desperation, "Oh, it wasn't that at all, Jed. It was my guilty conscience, I guess. I've been expecting him to speak to you--or me--have been dreading it every day--and now somehow I knew he had spoken. I KNEW it. What did he say, Jed?" Jed told the substance of what Captain Sam had said. She listened. When he finished her eyes were wet. "Oh, it is dreadful," she moaned. "I--I was so hoping she might not care for Charlie. But she does--of course she does. She couldn't help it," with a sudden odd little flash of loyalty. Jed rubbed his chin in desperation. "And--and Charlie?" he asked, anxiously. "Does he--" "Yes, yes, I'm sure he does. He has never told me so, never in so many words, but I can see. I know him better than any one else in the world and I can see. I saw first, I think, on Thanksgiving Day; at least that is when I first began to suspect--to fear." Jed nodded. "When they was at the piano together that time and Sam said somethin' about their bein' a fine-lookin' couple?" he said. "Why, yes, that was it. Are you a mind reader, Jed?" "No-o, I guess not. But I saw you lookin' kind of surprised and-- er--well, scared for a minute. I was feelin' the same way just then, so it didn't need any mind reader to guess what had scared you." "I see. But, oh, Jed, it is dreadful! What SHALL we do? What will become of us all? And now, when I--I had just begun to be happy, really happy." She caught her breath in a sob. Jed instinctively stretched out his hand. "But there," she went on, hurriedly wiping her eyes, "I mustn't do this. This is no time for me to think of myself. Jed, this mustn't go any further. He must not ask her to marry him; he must not think of such a thing." Jed sadly shook his head. "I'm afraid you're right," he said. "Not as things are now he surely mustn't. But--but, Mrs. Ruth--" "Oh, don't!" impatiently. "Don't use that silly 'Mrs.' any longer. Aren't you the--the best friend I have in the world? Do call me Ruth." If she had been looking at his face just then she might have seen-- things. But she was not looking. There was an interval of silence before he spoke. "Well, then--er--Ruth--" he faltered. "That's right. Go on." "I was just goin' to ask you if you thought Charlie was cal'latin' to ask her. I ain't so sure that he is." He told of Charles' recent visit to the windmill shop and the young man's query concerning the making of a decision. She listened anxiously. "But don't you think that means that he was wondering whether or not he should ask her?" she said. "No. That is, I don't think it's sartin sure it means that. I rather had the notion it might mean he was figgerin' whether or not to go straight to Sam and make a clean breast of it." "You mean tell--tell everything?" "Yes, all about the--the business at Middleford. I do honestly believe that's what the boy's got on his mind to do. It ain't very surprisin' that he backs and fills some before that mind's made up. See what it might mean to him: it might mean the loss of his prospects here and his place in the bank and, more'n everything else, losin' Maud. It's some decision to make. If I had to make it I-- Well, I don't know." She put her hand to her eyes. "The POOR boy," she said, under her breath. "But, Jed, DO you think that is the decision he referred to? And why hasn't he said a word to me, his own sister, about it? I'm sure he loves me." "Sartin he does, and that's just it, as I see it. It ain't his own hopes and prospects alone that are all wrapped up in this thing, it's yours--and Babbie's. He's troubled about what'll happen to you. That's why he hasn't asked your advice, I believe." They were both silent for a moment. Then she said, pleadingly, "Oh, Jed, it is up to you and me, isn't it? What shall we do?" It was the "we" in this sentence which thrilled. If she had bade him put his neck in front of the handsaw just then Jed would have obeyed, and smilingly have pulled the lever which set the machine in motion. But the question, nevertheless, was a staggerer. "W-e-e-ll," he admitted, "I--I hardly know what to say, I will give in. To be right down honest--and the Lord knows I hate to say it-- it wouldn't do for a minute to let those two young folks get engaged--to say nothin' of gettin' married--with this thing between 'em. It wouldn't be fair to her, nor to Sam--no, nor to him or you, either. You see that, don't you?" he begged. "You know I don't say it for any reason but just--just for the best interests of all hands. You know that, don't you--Ruth?" "Of course, of course. But what then?" "I don't really know what then. Seems to me the very first thing would be for you to speak to him, put the question right up to him, same as he's been puttin' it to himself all this time. Get him to talk it over with you. And then--well, then--" "Yes?" "Oh, I don't know! I declare I don't." "Suppose he tells me he means to marry her in spite of everything? Suppose he won't listen to me at all?" That possibility had been in Jed's mind from the beginning, but he refused to consider it. "He will listen," he declared, stoutly. "He always has, hasn't he?" "Yes, yes, I suppose he has. He listened to me when I persuaded him that coming here and hiding all--all that happened was the right thing to do. And now see what has come of it! And it is all my fault. Oh, I have been so selfish!" "Sshh! sshh! You ain't; you couldn't be if you tried. And, besides, I was as much to blame as you. I agreed that 'twas the best thing to do." "Oh," reproachfully, "how can you say that? You know you were opposed to it always. You only say it because you think it will comfort me. It isn't true." "Eh? Now--now, don't talk so. Please don't. If you keep on talkin' that way I'll do somethin' desperate, start to make a johnny cake out of sawdust, same as I did yesterday mornin', or somethin' else crazy." "Jed!" "It's true, that about the johnny cake. I came pretty nigh doin' that very thing. I bought a five-pound bag of corn meal yesterday and fetched it home from the store all done up in a nice neat bundle. Comin' through the shop here I had it under my arm, and-- hum--er--well, to anybody else it couldn't have happened, but, bein' Jed Shavin's Winslow, I was luggin' the thing with the top of the bag underneath. I got about abreast of the lathe there when the string came off and in less'n two thirds of a shake all I had under my arm was the bag; the meal was on the floor--what wasn't in my coat pocket and stuck to my clothes and so on. I fetched the water bucket and started to salvage what I could of the cargo. Pretty soon I had, as nigh as I could reckon it, about fourteen pound out of the five scooped up and in the bucket. I begun to think the miracle of loaves and fishes was comin' to pass again. I was some shy on fish, but I was makin' up on loaves. Then I sort of looked matters over and found what I had in the bucket was about one pound of meal to seven of sawdust. Then I gave it up. Seemed to me the stuff might be more fillin' than nourishin'." Ruth smiled faintly. Then she shook her head. "Oh, Jed," she said, "you're as transparent as a windowpane. Thank you, though. If anything could cheer me up and help me to forget I think you could." Jed looked repentant. "I'd no business to tell you all that rigamarole," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm always doin' the wrong thing, seems so. But," he added, earnestly, "I don't want you to worry too much about your brother--er--Ruth. It's goin' to come out all right, I know it. God won't let it come out any other way." She had never heard him speak in just that way before and she looked at him in surprise. "And yet God permits many things that seem entirely wrong to us humans," she said. "I know. Things like the Kaiser, for instance. Well, never mind; this one's goin' to come out all right. I feel it in my bones. And," with a return of his whimsical drawl, "I may be short on brains, but a blind man could see they never skimped me when they passed out the bones." She looked at him a moment. Then, suddenly leaning forward, she put her hand upon his big red one as it lay upon the bench. "Jed," she said, earnestly, "what should I do without you? You are my one present help in time of trouble. I wonder if you know what you have come to mean to me." It was an impulsive speech, made from the heart, and without thought of phrasing or that any meaning other than that intended could be read into it. A moment later, and without waiting for an answer, she hurried from the shop. "I must go," she said. "I shall think over your advice, Jed, and I will let you know what I decide to do. Thank you ever and ever so much." Jed scarcely heard her. After she had gone, he sat perfectly still by the bench for a long period, gazing absently at the bare wall of the shop and thinking strange thoughts. After a time he rose and, walking into the little sitting-room, sat down beside the ugly little oak writing table he had bought at a second-hand sale and opened the upper drawer. Weeks before, Ruth, yielding to Babbie's urgent appeal, had accompanied the latter to the studio of the local photographer and there they had been photographed, together, and separately. The results, although not artistic triumphs, being most inexpensive, had been rather successful as likenesses. Babbie had come trotting in to show Jed the proofs. A day or so later he found one of the said proofs on the shop floor where the little girl had dropped it. It happened to be a photograph of Ruth, sitting alone. And then Jed Winslow did what was perhaps the first dishonest thing he had ever done. He put that proof in the drawer of the oak writing table and said nothing of his having found it. Later he made a wooden frame for it and covered it with glass. It faded and turned black as all proofs do, but still Jed kept it in the drawer and often, very often, opened that drawer and looked at it. Now he looked at it for a long, long time and when he rose to go back to the shop there was in his mind, along with the dream that had been there for days and weeks, for the first time the faintest dawning of a hope. Ruth's impulsive speech, hastily and unthinkingly made, was repeating itself over and over in his brain. "I wonder if you know what you have come to mean to me?" What had he come to mean to her? An hour later, as he sat at his bench, Captain Hunniwell came banging in once more. But this time the captain looked troubled. "Jed," he asked, anxiously, "have you found anything here since I went out?" Jed looked up. "Eh?" he asked, absently. "Found? What have you found, Sam?" "I? I haven't found anything. I've lost four hundred dollars, though. You haven't found it, have you?" Still Jed did not appear to comprehend. He had been wandering the rose-bordered paths of fairyland and was not eager to come back to earth. "Eh?" he drawled. "You've--what?" His friend's peppery temper broke loose. "For thunder sakes wake up!" he roared. "I tell you I've lost four hundred dollars of the fourteen hundred I told you I collected from Sylvester Sage over to Wapatomac this mornin'. I had three packages of bills, two of five hundred dollars each and one of four hundred. The two five hundred packages were in the inside pocket of my overcoat where I put 'em. But the four hundred one's gone. What I want to know is, did it drop out when I took off my coat here in the shop? Do you get that through your head, finally?" It had gotten through. Jed now looked as troubled as his friend. He rose hastily and went over to the pile of boards upon which Captain Sam had thrown his coat upon entering the shop on his previous visit that day. Together they searched, painstakingly and at length. The captain was the first to give up. "'Tain't here," he snapped. "I didn't think 'twas. Where in time is it? That's what I want to know." Jed rubbed his chin. "Are you sure you had it when you left Wapatomac?" he asked. "Sure? No, I ain't sure of anything. But I'd have sworn I did. The money was on the table along with my hat and gloves. I picked it up and shoved it in my overcoat pocket. And that was a darned careless place to put it, too," he added, testily. "I'd have given any feller that worked for me the devil for doin' such a thing." Jed nodded, sympathetically. "But you might have left it there to Sylvester's," he said. "Have you thought of telephonin' to find out?" "Have I thought? Tut, tut, tut! Do you think I've got a head like a six-year-old young-one--or you? Course I've thought--and 'phoned, too. But it didn't do me any good. Sylvester's house is shut up and the old man's gone to Boston, so the postmaster told me when I 'phoned and asked him. Won't be back for a couple of days, anyhow. I remember he told me he was goin'!" "Sho, sho! that's too bad." "Bad enough, but I don't think it makes any real difference. I swear I had that money when I left Sage's. I came in here and then I went straight to the bank." "And after you got there?" "Oh, when I got there I found no less than three men, not countin' old Mrs. Emmeline Bartlett, in my room waitin' to see me. Nellie Hall--my typewriter, you know--she knew where I'd been and what a crank old Sage is and she says: 'Did you get the money, Cap'n?' And I says: 'Yes, it's in my overcoat pocket this minute.' Then I hurried in to 'tend to the folks that was waitin' for me. 'Twas an hour later afore I went to my coat to get the cash. Then, as I say, all I could find was the two five hundred packages. The four hundred one was gone." "Sho, sho! Tut, tut, tut! Where did you put the coat when you took it off?" "On the hook in the clothes closet where I always put it." "Hum-m! And--er--when you told Nellie about it did you speak loud?" "Loud? No louder'n I ever do." "Well--er--that ain't a--er--whisper, Sam, exactly." "Don't make any difference. There wasn't anybody outside the railin' that minute to hear if I'd bellered like a bull of Bashan. There was nobody in the bank, I tell you, except the three men and old Aunt Emmeline and they were waitin' in my private room. And except for Nellie and Eddie Ellis, the messenger, and Charlie Phillips, there wan't a soul around, as it happened. The money hasn't been stolen; I lost it somewheres--but where? Well, I can't stop here any longer. I'm goin' back to the bank to have another hunt." He banged out again. Fortunately he did not look at his friend's face before he went. For that face had a singular expression upon it. Jed sat heavily down in the chair by the bench. A vivid recollection of a recent remark made in that very shop had suddenly come to him. Charlie Phillips had made it in answer to a question of his own. Charlie had declared that he would do almost anything to get five hundred dollars. CHAPTER XVII The next morning found Jed heavy-eyed and without appetite, going through the form of preparing breakfast. All night, with the exception of an hour or two, he had tossed on his bed alternately fearing the worst and telling himself that his fears were groundless. Of course Charlie Phillips had not stolen the four hundred dollars. Had not he, Jed Winslow, loudly proclaimed to Ruth Armstrong that he knew her brother to be a fine young man, one who had been imprudent, it is true, but much more sinned against than sinning and who would henceforth, so he was willing to swear, be absolutely upright and honest? Of course the fact that a sum of money was missing from the Orham National Bank, where Phillips was employed, did not necessarily imply that the latter had taken it. Not necessarily, that was true; but Charlie had, in Jed's presence, expressed himself as needing money, a sum approximately that which was missing; and he had added that he would do almost anything to get it. And--there was no use telling oneself that the fact had no bearing on the case, because it would bear heavily with any unprejudiced person--Charlie's record was against him. Jed loyally told himself over and over again that the boy was innocent, he KNEW he was innocent. But-- The dreadful "but" came back again and again to torment him. All that day he went about in an alternate state of dread and hope. Hope that the missing four hundred might be found, dread of--many possibilities. Twice he stopped at the bank to ask Captain Sam concerning it. The second time the captain was a trifle impatient. "Gracious king, Jed," he snapped. "What's the matter with you? 'Tain't a million. This institution'll probably keep afloat even if it never turns up. And 'twill turn up sooner or later; it's bound to. There's a chance that I left it at old Sage's. Soon's the old cuss gets back and I can catch him by telephone I'll find out. Meanwhile I ain't worryin' and I don't know why you should. The main thing is not to let anybody know anything's missin'. Once let the news get out 'twill grow to a hundred thousand afore night. There'll be a run on us if Gab Bearse or Melissa Busteed get goin' with their throttles open. So don't you whisper a word to anybody, Jed. We'll find it pretty soon." And Jed did not whisper a word. But he anxiously watched the inmates of the little house, watched Charles' face when he came home after working hours, watched the face of his sister as she went forth on a marketing expedition, even scrutinized Babbie's laughing countenance as she came dancing into the shop, swinging Petunia by one arm. And it was from Babbie he first learned that, in spite of all Captain Hunniwell's precautions, some one had dropped a hint. It may as well be recorded here that the identity of that some one was never clearly established. There were suspicions, centering about the bank messenger, but he stoutly denied having told a living soul. Barbara, who was on her way home from school, and had rescued the long-suffering Petunia from the front fence where she had been left suspended on a picket to await her parent's return, was bubbling over with news and giggles. "Oh, Uncle Jed," she demanded, jumping up to perch panting upon a stack of the front elevations of birdhouses, "isn't Mr. Gabe Bearse awfully funny?" Jed sighed. "Yes," he said, "Gabe's as funny as a jumpin' toothache." The young lady regarded him doubtfully. "I see," she said, after a moment, "you're joking again. I wish you'd tell me when you're going to do it, so Petunia and I would know for sure." "All right, I'll try not to forget to remember. But how did you guess I was jokin' this time?" "'Cause you just had to be. A jumping toothache isn't funny. I had one once and it made me almost sick." "Um-hm. W-e-e-ll, Gabe Bearse makes 'most everybody sick. What set you thinkin' about him?" "'Cause I just met him on the way home and he acted so funny. First he gave me a stick of candy." Mr. Winslow leaned back in his chair. "What?" he cried. "He gave you a stick of candy? GAVE it to you?" "Yes. He said: 'Here, little girl, don't you like candy?' And when I said I did he gave me a stick, the striped peppermint kind it was. I'd have saved a bite for you, Uncle Jed, only I and the rest ate it all before I remembered. I'm awfully sorry." "That's all right. Striped candy don't agree with me very well, anyway; I'm liable to swallow the stripes crossways, I guess likely. But tell me, did Gabe look wild or out of his head when he gave it to you?" "Why, no. He just looked--oh--oh, you know, Uncle Jed--MYSter'ous-- that's how he looked, MYSter'ous." "Hum! Well, I'm glad to know he wan't crazy. I've known him a good many years and this is the first time I ever knew him to GIVE anybody anything worth while. When I went to school with him he gave me the measles, I remember, but even then they was only imitation--the German kind. And now he's givin' away candy: Tut, tut! No wonder he looked--what was it?--mysterious. . . . Hum. . . . Well, he wanted somethin' for it, didn't he? What was it?" "Why, he just wanted to know if I'd heard Uncle Charlie say anything about a lot of money being gone up to the bank. He said he had heard it was ever and ever so much--a hundred hundred dollars--or a thousand dollars, or something--I don't precactly remember, but it was a great, big lot. And he wanted to know if Uncle Charlie had said how much it was and what had become of it and--and everything. When I said Uncle Charlie hadn't said a word he looked so sort of disappointed and funny that it made me laugh." It did not make Jed laugh. The thought that the knowledge of the missing money had leaked out and was being industriously spread abroad by Bearse and his like was very disquieting. He watched Phillips more closely than before. He watched Ruth, and, before another day had passed, he had devised a wonderful plan, a plan to be carried out in case of alarming eventualities. On the afternoon of the third day he sat before his workbench, his knee clasped between his hands, his foot swinging, and his thoughts busy with the situation in all its alarming phases. It had been bad enough before this new development, bad enough when the always present danger of Phillips' secret being discovered had become complicated by his falling in love with his employer's daughter. But now-- Suppose the boy had stolen the money? Suppose he was being blackmailed by some one whom he must pay or face exposure? Jed had read of such things; they happened often enough in novels. He did not hear the door of the outer shop open. A month or more ago he had removed the bell from the door. His excuse for so doing had been characteristic. "I can't stand the wear and tear on my morals," he told Ruth. "I ain't sold anything, except through the mail, since the winter really set in. And yet every time that bell rings I find myself jumpin' up and runnin' to wait on a customer. When it turns out to be Gabe Bearse or somebody like him I swear, and swearin' to me is like whiskey to some folks--comfortin' but demoralizin'." So the bell having been removed, Jed did not hear the person who came into and through the outer shop. The first sign of that person's presence which reached his ears was an unpleasant chuckle. He turned, to see Mr. Phineas Babbitt standing in the doorway of the inner room. And--this was the most annoying and disturbing fact connected with the sight--the hardware dealer was not scowling, he was laughing. The Winslow foot fell to the floor with a thump and its owner sat up straight. "He, he, he!" chuckled Phineas. Jed regarded him silently. Babbitt's chuckle subsided into a grin. Then he spoke. "Well," he observed, with sarcastic politeness, "how's the great Shavin's Jedidah, the famous inventor of whirlagigs? He, he, he!" Jed slowly shook his head. "Phin," he said, "either you wear rubbers or I'm gettin' deaf, one or the other. How in the world did you get in here this time without my hearin' you?" Phineas ignored the question. He asked one of his own. "How's the only original high and mighty patriot this afternoon?" he sneered. The Winslow hand caressed the Winslow chin. "If you mean me, Phin," drawled Jed, "I'm able to sit up and take nourishment, thank you. I judge you must be kind of ailin', though. Take a seat, won't you?" "No, I won't. I've got other fish to fry, bigger fish than you, at that" "Um-hm. Well, they wouldn't have to be sperm whales to beat me, Phin. Be kind of hard to fry 'em if they was too big, wouldn't it?" "They're goin' to fry, you hear me. Yes, and they're goin' to sizzle. He, he, he!" Mr. Winslow sadly shook his head. "You must be awful sick, Phin," he drawled. "That's the third or fourth time you've laughed since you came in here." His visitor stopped chuckling and scowled instead. Jed beamed gratification. "That's it," he said. "Now you look more natural. Feelin' a little better . . . eh?" The Babbitt chin beard bristled. Its wearer leaned forward. "Shut up," he commanded. "I ain't takin' any of your sass this afternoon, Shavin's, and I ain't cal'latin' to waste much time on you, neither. You know where I'm bound now? Well, I'm bound up to the Orham National Bank to call on my dear friend Sam Hunniwell. He, he, he! I've got a little bit of news for him. He's in trouble, they tell me, and I want to help him out. . . . Blast him!" This time Jed made no reply; but he, too, leaned forward and his gaze was fixed upon the hardware dealer's face. There was an expression upon his own face which, when Phineas saw it, caused the latter to chuckle once more. "He, he!" he laughed. "What's the matter, Shavin's? You look kind of scared about somethin'. 'Tain't possible you've known all along what I've just found out? I wonder if you have. Have you?" Still Jed was silent. Babbit grunted. "It don't make any difference whether you have or not," he said. "But if you ain't I wonder what makes you look so scared. There's nothin' to be scared about, as I see. I'm just cal'latin' to do our dear old chummie, Cap'n Sam, a kindness, that's all. He's lost some money up there to the bank, I understand. Some says it's four thousand dollars and some says it's forty. It don't make any difference, that part don't. Whatever 'tis it's missin' and I'm going to tell him where to find it. That's real good of me, ain't it? Ain't it, Shavin's; eh?" The little man's malignant spite and evident triumph were actually frightening. And it was quite evident that Jed was frightened. Yet he made an effort not to appear so. "Yes," he agreed. "Yes, yes, seems 's if 'twas. Er--er-- Where is it, Phin?" Phineas burst out laughing. "'Where is it, Phin?'" he repeated, mockingly. "By godfreys mighty, I believe you do know where 'tis, Shavin's! You ain't gettin' any of it, are you? You ain't dividin' up with the blasted jailbird?" Jed was very pale. His voice shook as he essayed to speak. "Wh-what jailbird?" he faltered. "What do you mean? What--what are you talkin' about, Phin?" "'What are you talkin' about, Phin?' God sakes, hear him, will you! All right, I'll tell you what I'm talkin' about. I'm talkin' about Sam Hunniwell's pet, his new bookkeeper up there to the bank. I'm talkin' about that stuck-up, thievin' hypocrite of a Charlie Phillips, that's who I'm talkin' about. I called him a jailbird, didn't I? Well, he is. He's served his term in the Connecticut State's prison for stealin'. And I know it." Jed groaned aloud. Here it was at last. The single hair had parted and the sword had fallen. And now, of all times, now! He made a pitiful attempt at denial. "It ain't so," he protested. "Oh, yes, it is so. Six or eight weeks ago--in January 'twas-- there was a drummer in my store sellin' a line of tools and he was lookin' out of the window when this Phillips cuss went by with Maud Hunniwell, both of 'em struttin' along as if common folks, honest folks, was dirt under their feet. And when this drummer see 'em he swore right out loud. 'Why,' says he, 'that's Charlie Phillips, of Middleford, ain't it?' 'His name's Phillips and he comes from Connecticut somewheres,' says I. 'I thought he was in state's prison,' says he. 'What do you mean?' says I. And then he told me. 'By godfreys,' says I, 'if you can fix it so's I can prove that's true I'll give you the biggest order you ever got in this store.' ''Twon't be any trouble to prove it,' says he. 'All you've got to do is look up his record in Middleford.' And I've looked it up. Yes, sir-ee, I've looked it up. Ho, ho!" Jed, white and shaking, made one more attempt. "It's all a lie," he cried. "Of course it is. Besides, if you knew so much why have you been waitin' all this time before you told it? If you found out all this--this pack of rubbish in January why did you wait till March before you told it? Humph! That's pretty thin, I--" Phineas interrupted. "Shut up!" he ordered. "Why did I wait? Well, now, Shavin's, seein' it's you and I love you so, I'll tell you. At first I was for runnin' right out in the street and hollerin' to all hands to come and hear the good news about Sam Hunniwell's pet. And then thinks I: 'Hold on! don't be in any hurry. There's time enough. Just wait and see what happens. A crook that steals once is liable to try it again. Let's wait and see.' And I waited, and-- He, he, he!--he has tried it again. Eh, Shavin's?" Jed was speechless. Babbitt, looking like a triumphantly vicious Bantam rooster, crowed on. "You don't seem to be quite so sassy and talky as you was when I first came in, Shavin's," he sneered. "Guess likely YOU ain't feelin' well now . . . eh? Do you remember what I told you last time I was in this shop? I told you I'd pay my debts to you and Sam Hunniwell if I waited fifty year. Well, here's Hunniwell's pay comin' to him now. He's praised that Phillips thief from one end of Ostable county to the other, told how smart he was and how honest and good he was till--Lord A'mighty, it's enough to turn a decent man's stomach! And not only that, but here's the feller courtin' his daughter. Oh, ho, ho, ho! that's the best of the whole business. That was another thing made me hang off and wait; I wanted to see how the courtin' came along. And it's come along all right. Everybody's onto 'em, hangin' over each other, and lookin' soft at each other. She's just fairly heavin' herself at his head, all hands says so. There ain't been anybody in this town good enough for her till he showed up. And now it's comin' out that he's a crook and a jailbird! And he'll be jailed for stealin' THIS time, too. Ho, ho!" He stopped, out of breath, to indulge in another long chuckle. Jed leaned forward. "What are you talkin' about, Phin?" he demanded. "Even allowin' all this--this rigmarole of yours about--about Middleford business-- was true--" "It is true and you know it is. I believe you've known it all along." "I say allowin' it is, you haven't any right to say Charlie took this money from the Orham bank. You can't prove any such thing." "Aw, be still! Prove--prove nothin'. When a cat and a sasser of milk's shut up together and the milk's gone, you don't need proof to know where it's gone, do you? Don't talk to me about proof, Jed Winslow. Put a thief alongside of money and anybody knows what'll happen. Why, YOU know what's happened yourself. You know darn well Charlie Phillips has stole the money that's gone from the bank. Down inside you you're sartin sure of it; and I don't want any better proof of THAT than just your face, Shavin's." This time Jed did not attempt to contradict. Instead he tried a new hazard. "Phin," he pleaded, "don't be too hard. Just think of what'll happen if you come out with that--that wild-goose yarn of yours. Think of Maud, poor girl. You haven't got anything against her, have you?" "Yes, I have. She's stuck-up and nose in the air and looks at me as if I was some sort of--of a bug she wouldn't want to step on for fear of mussin' up her shoes. I never did like her, blast her. But leavin' that all to one side, she's Sam Hunniwell's young-one and that's enough for me." "But she's his only child, Phin." "Good enough! I had a boy; he was an only child, too, you'll remember. Where is he now? Out somewheres where he don't belong, fightin' and bein' killed to help Wall Street get rich. And who sent him there? Why, Sam Hunniwell and his gang. You're one of 'em, Jed Winslow. To hell with you, every one of you, daughters and all hands." "But, Phin--just a minute. Think of what it'll mean to Charlie, poor young feller. It'll mean--" "It'll mean ten years this time, and a good job, too. You poor fool, do you think you can talk me out of this? You, you sawdust- head? What do you think I came into your hole here for? I came here so's you'd know what I was goin' to do to your precious chums. I wanted to tell you and have the fun of watchin' you squirm. Well, I'm havin' the fun, plenty of it. Squirm, you Wall Street bloodsucker, squirm." He fairly stood on tiptoe to scream the last command. To a disinterested observer the scene might have had some elements of farce comedy. Certainly Phineas, his hat fallen off and under foot, his scanty gray hair tousled and his pugnacious chin beard bristling, was funny to look at. And the idea of calling Jed Winslow a "Wall Street bloodsucker" was the cream of burlesque. But to Jed himself it was all tragedy, deep and dreadful. He made one more desperate plea. "But, Phin," he begged, "think of his--his sister, Charlie's sister. What'll become of her and--and her little girl?" Phineas snorted. "His sister," he sneered. "All right, I'll think about her all right. She's another stuck-up that don't speak to common folks. Who knows anything about her any more'n they did about him? Better look up her record, I guess. The boy's turned out to be a thief; maybe the sister'll turn out to be--" "Stop! Be still!" Jed actually shouted it. Babbitt stopped, principally because the suddenness of the interruption had startled him into doing so. But the pause was only momentary. He stared at the interrupter in enraged amazement for an instant and then demanded: "Stop? Who are you tellin' to stop?" "You." "I want to know! Well, I'll stop when I get good and ready and if you don't like it, Shavin's, you can lump it. That Phillips kid has turned out to be a thief and, so far as anybody 'round here knows, his sister may be--" "Stop!" Again Jed shouted it; and this time he rose to his feet. Phineas glared at him. "Humph!" he grunted. "You'll make me stop, I presume likely." "Yes." "Is that so?" "Yes, it's got to be so. Look here, Phin, I realize you're mad and don't care much what you say, but there's a limit, you know. It's bad enough to hear you call poor Charlie names, but when you start in on Ruth--on Mrs. Armstrong, I mean--that's too much. You've got to stop." This speech was made quietly and with all the customary Winslow deliberation and apparent calm, but there was one little slip in it and that slip Babbitt was quick to notice. "Oh, my!" he sneered. "Ruth's what we call her, eh? Ruth! Got so chummy we call each other by our first names. Ruthie and Jeddie, I presume likely. Aw, haw, haw!" Jed's pallor was, for the moment, succeeded by a vivid crimson. He stammered. Phineas burst into another scornful laugh. "Haw, haw, haw!" he crowed. "She lets him call her Ruth. Oh, my Lord A'mighty! Let's Shavin's Winslow call her that. Well, I guess I sized her up all right. She must be about on her brother's level. A thief and--" "Shut up, Phin!" "Shut up? YOU tell me to shut up!" "Yes." "Well, I won't. Ruth Armstrong! What do I care for--" The speech was not finished. Jed had taken one long stride to where Babbitt was standing, seized the furious little creature by the right arm with one hand and with the other covered his open mouth, covered not only the mouth, but a large section of face as well. "You keep quiet, Phin," he drawled. "I want to think." Phineas struggled frantically. He managed to get one corner of his mouth from behind that mammoth hand. "Ruth Armstrong!" he screamed. "Ruth Armstrong is--" The yell died away to a gurgle, pinched short by the Winslow fingers. Then the door leading to the kitchen, the door behind the pair, opened and Ruth Armstrong herself came in. She was pale and she stared with frightened eyes at the little man struggling in the tall one's clutch. "Oh, Jed," she breathed, "what is it?" Jed did not reply. Phineas could not. "Oh, Jed, what is it?" repeated Ruth. "I heard him shouting my name. I was in the yard and I heard it. . . . Oh, Jed, what IS it?" Babbitt at last managed to wriggle partially clear. He was crazy with rage, but he was not frightened. Fear of physical violence was not in his make-up; he was no coward. "I'll tell you what it is," he screamed. "I'll tell you what it is: I've found out about you and that stuck-up crook of a brother of yours. He's a thief. That's what he is, a thief and a jailbird. He stole at Middleford and now he's stole again here. And Jed Winslow and you are--" He got no further, being once more stoppered like a bottle by the Winslow grip and the Winslow hand. He wriggled and fought, but he was pinned and helpless, hands, feet and vocal organs. Jed did not so much as look at him; he looked only at Ruth. Her pallor had increased. She was trembling. "Oh, Jed," she cried, "what does he mean? What does he mean by--by 'again--here'?" Jed's grip tightened over his captive's mouth. "He doesn't mean anything," he declared, stoutly. "He don't know what he means." From behind the smothering fingers came a defiant mumble. Ruth leaned forward. "Jed," she begged, "does he--does he know about--about--" Jed nodded. She closed her eyes and swayed slightly, but she did not collapse or give way. "And he is going to tell?" she whispered. A furious mumble from behind the fingers and a venomous flash from the Babbitt eyes were answers sufficient. "Oh, Jed," she pleaded, "what SHALL we do?" For the instant a bit of the old Jed came to the surface. His lip twitched grimly as he looked down at the crimson face above his own hand. "I ain't sartin--yet," he drawled. "How do you start in killin' a--a snappin' turtle? I ain't tackled the job since I was a boy." Phineas looked as if he could have furnished some points on the subject. His eyes were bulging. Then all three heard the door of the outer shop open. Ruth looked desperately about her. She hastened to the door by which she had entered. "There's some one coming," she whispered. Jed glanced over his shoulder. "You go away," he whispered in reply. "Go away, Ruth. Hurry!" Her hand was on the latch of the door, but before she could open it the other door, that leading from the outer shop, opened and Leonard Grover came in. He stared at the picture before him--at Ruth Armstrong's pale, frightened face, at Babbitt struggling in his captor's clutch, at Jed. "Why!" he exclaimed. "What is it?" No one answered. Phineas was the only one who stirred. He seemed anxious to turn the tableau into a moving picture, but his success was limited. The Major turned to Ruth. "What is it?" he asked again. She was silent. Grover repeated his question, addressing Jed this time. "Well?" he asked, sharply. "What is the trouble here? What has that fellow been doing?" Jed looked down at his wriggling captive. "He's--he's--" he stammered. "Well, you see, Major, he . . . Hum . . . well, I'm afraid I can't tell you." "You can't tell me! What on earth-- Mrs. Armstrong, will you tell me?" She looked at him appealingly, pitifully, but she shook her head. "I--I can't," she said. He looked from one to the other. Then, with a shrug, he turned to the door. "Pardon me for interrupting," he observed. "Good afternoon." It was Ruth who detained him. "Oh, please!" she cried, involuntarily. He turned again. "You wish me to stay?" he asked. "Oh--oh, I don't know. I--" She had not finished the sentence; she was falteringly trying to finish it when Mr. Babbitt took the center of the stage. Once more he managed to free himself from Jed's grip and this time he darted across the shop and put the workbench between himself and his enemy. "I'll tell you what it is," he screamed. "I've found out some things they don't want anybody to know, that's what. I've found out what sort of folks they are, she and her brother. He's a common-- Let go of me! By--" The scream ended in another mumble. Jed had swarmed over the bench and once more pinned him fast. "You'll have to excuse me, Major," he panted. "I--I can't help it. This feller's got what ailed the parrot--he talks too darn much. He's got to stop! He's GOT to!" But Grover was paying little attention. He was looking at Ruth. "Mrs. Armstrong," he asked, "has he been saying--saying things he should not say about you? Is that the trouble?" She answered without returning his look. "Yes," she said, almost in a whisper. "About me and--and my-- Yes, that was it." The Major's eyes flashed. "Let go of him, Jed," he commanded. Jed hesitated. "If I do he'll blow up again," he said. "Let go of him." Jed let go. Phineas caught his breath and opened his mouth. Major Grover stepped in front of him and leveled a forefinger straight at the crimson Babbitt nose. "Stop!" he ordered, sharply. "Stop? What right have you got to tell me to stop? By--" "Stop! Listen to me. I don't know what you've been saying about this lady--" "I ain't been saying anything, except what I know, and that is that--" "Stop! And I don't care. But I know about you, sir, because it is my business to know. The Government has had its eye on you for some time and it has asked me to look into your record. I have looked into it. You are not a very dangerous person, Mr. Babbitt, but that is because of your lack of ability to harm, not because of any good will on your part toward the United States. You have done all the harm you could, you have talked sedition, you've written and talked against the draft, you have corresponded with German agents in Boston and New York." "That's a lie." "No, it's the truth. I have copies of your letters and the Government has the originals. They are not very dangerous, but that is because you are not big enough to be dangerous. The authorities have left you pretty much to my discretion, sir. It rests with me whether to have you taken in charge and held for trial or merely to warn you and watch you. Very well. I warn you now and you may be certain that you are watched. You'll stop your silly, seditious talk at once and you'll write no more letters like those I have seen. If you do it will be a prison term for you as sure as I stand here. Do you understand?" Apparently Phineas understood. His face was not as red as it had been and there was a different look in his eye. Jed's rough handling had not frightened him, but the Major's cold, incisive tones and the threat of a term in prison had their effect. Nevertheless he could still bluster. "You can't talk to me that way," he sputtered. "I--I ain't scared of you even if you are all dressed up in fuss and feathers like a hand-organ monkey. This is a free country." "Yes, it is. For decent people it is absolutely free. The other sort have to be put where they can't interfere with that freedom. Whether you, Babbit, remain free or not depends entirely upon what you do--and say. Is this perfectly clear?" Phineas did not answer the question directly. For a moment he stood there, his fists clenching and unclenching, and his eyes snapping. Then he turned away. "All right," he said, sullenly. "I hear what you say. Now I can go, I presume likely--unless you've got some more lyin' and bullyin' to do. Get out of my way, Shavin's, you fool." But Grover had not finished with him. "Just a minute," he said. "There is one thing more. I don't know what it is, and I don't wish to know, but evidently you have been saying, or threatening to say, something concerning this lady, Mrs. Armstrong, which should not be said. You are not to mention her name. Do you understand that?" The little hardware dealer almost jumped from the floor as his rage again got the better of him. "The blazes I ain't!" he shrieked. "Who says I ain't? Is that any of your business, Mr.--Mr. Brass Monkey? What's you or the United States gov'ment got to say about my mentionin' names? To the devil with the United States and you, too! You hear that?" Major Grover smiled. "Yes," he said, quietly. "I hear it. So does Mr. Winslow here, and Mrs. Armstrong. They can be called as witnesses if it is necessary. You had better let me finish, Babbitt. As I say, you are not to mention Mrs. Armstrong's name, you are not to repeat or circulate any scandal or story reflecting upon her character--" "Or her brother's either," put in Jed, eagerly. "Tell him he can't talk against Charlie, either." "Certainly. You are not to repeat or circulate anything derogatory to the character of either Mrs. Armstrong or Mr. Phillips. In any way derogatory." Phineas tossed both fists in the air. "You can't order me around that way," he yelled. "Besides, if you knew what I know about that gang you'd--" "Hush! I don't want to know anything you know--or pretend to know. As for ordering you about--well, we'll see." "I tell you you can't. You ain't got the right." "Perhaps not. But I have the right to use my discretion--my judgment in your case. And my judgment is that if I hear one scandalous story about town reflecting upon the character of Mrs. Armstrong or her brother--yes, or her friends--I shall know who is responsible and I shall have you arrested and held for trial as an enemy of the country. You condemned the United States to the devil only a moment ago in my hearing. Do you think that would help you in court, Babbitt? I don't." The little man's face was a sight. As Jed said afterward, he looked as if he would have enjoyed biting his way out of the shop. "Huh!" he snarled; "I see. You're all in together, the whole lot of you. And you, you brass buttons, you're usin' your soldierin' job to keep your friends out of trouble. . . . Huh! Yes, that's what you're doin'." The Major's smile was provokingly cool. "Perhaps I am," he admitted. "But I shouldn't advise you to forget what I have just told you, Babbitt. I mean every word of it." It was Ruth who spoke next. She uttered a startled exclamation. "There's some one coming up the walk," she cried. "Listen." Sure enough, heavy footsteps sounded upon the walk leading from the front gate to the shop. Jed ran to the window. "It's Sam," he exclaimed. "Good heavens above! It's Sam Hunniwell, of all folks--now!" Grover looked from one face to the other. "Is there any particular reason why Captain Hunniwell shouldn't come?" he asked. Jed and Ruth were silent. Phineas chuckled malevolently. Jed heard the chuckle and spoke. "'Twas--'twas Cap'n Sam he was goin' to tell," he whispered, pointing at Babbitt. Ruth caught her breath with a frightened gasp. Grover nodded. "Oh, I see," he said. "Well, I don't think he will. He'll be more--more--careful, I'm sure. Babbitt, remember." They heard the captain rattle the latch of the front door. Ruth opened the door behind her. "I must go, Jed," she whispered. "I--I can't stay." The Major turned. "I'll go with you, Mrs. Armstrong," he said. But Jed leaned forward. "I--I wish you'd stay, Major Grover," he whispered. "I--I'd like to have you stay here just a minute or two." Grover hesitated. Ruth went out, closing the living-room door after her. A moment later Captain Sam came into the workshop. "Hello, Jed!" he hailed. "Why, hello, Major! What--" Then for the first time he saw and recognized the third member of the group. He looked at Phineas and the little man looked at him. The looks were studies in expression. "Humph!" grunted Captain Sam. "What in time--? . . . Humph! . . . Well, Phin, you look awful glad to see me, I must say. Gracious king, man, don't glower at me like that! I haven't done anything to you, if you'd only have sense enough to believe it." Babbitt did not answer. He looked as if he were going to burst. Major Grover was regarding him with a whimsical twinkle in his eye. "Mr. Babbitt and I have just been discussing some points connected with the war," he observed. "I don't know that we agree, exactly, but we have--well, we have reached an understanding." The captain was plainly puzzled. "Humph!" he grunted. "You don't say! . . . Well, I-- Eh, what is it, Jed?" If any one had been watching Jed particularly during the recent few minutes they might have observed in his face the dawning of an idea and the changing of that idea into a set purpose. The idea seemed to dawn the moment after he saw Captain Hunniwell coming up the walk. It had become a purpose by the time the captain rattled the latch. While Captain Sam and the major were speaking he had hastened to the old desk standing by the wall and was rummaging in one of the drawers. Now he came forward. "Sam--" he began, but broke off to address Mr. Babbitt, who was striding toward the door. "Don't go, Phin," he cried. "I'd rather you didn't go just this minute. I'd like to have you stay. Please." Phineas answered over his shoulder. The answer was a savage snarl and a command for "Shavings" to mind his own business. Grover spoke then. "Mr. Babbitt," he suggested, "don't you think you had better stay a moment? Mr. Winslow seems to wish it." Babbitt reached for the handle of the door, but Grover's hand was lightly laid on his shoulder. "Do stay, Mr. Babbitt," begged the Major, sweetly. "To oblige me, you know." Phineas swore with such vehemence that the oath might have been heard across the road. What he might have said thereafter is a question. At that moment his attention was caught by something which Jed Winslow had in his hands and he stayed to stare at it. The something was a bundle of crumpled banknotes. CHAPTER XVIII Jed came forward, the roll of bills in his hand. He seemed quite oblivious of the Babbitt stare, or, for that matter, of the complete silence which had so suddenly fallen upon the group in the shop. He came forward, smoothing the crumpled notes with fingers which shook a little. He stopped in front of Captain Hunniwell. The captain was gazing at him and at the money. Jed did not meet his friend's eye; he continued to smooth the banknotes. Captain Sam spoke first. "What's that?" he demanded. "What money's that?" Jed's fingers moved back and forth across the bills and he answered without looking up. He seemed much embarrassed. "Sam," he faltered. "Sam--er--you remember you told me you'd--er-- lost some money a spell ago? Some--er--money you'd collected over to Wapatomac. You remember that, don't you?" Captain Sam looked at him in puzzled surprise. "Remember it?" he repeated. "Course I remember it. Gracious king, 'tain't likely I'd forget it, is it?" Jed nodded. "No-o," he drawled, solemnly. "No, course you couldn't. 'Twas four hundred dollars you was short, wan't it?" The Captain's puzzled look was still there. "Yes," he replied. "What of it?" "Why--why, just this, Sam: I--I want it to be plain, you understand. I want Major Grover and Phineas here to understand the--the whole of it. There's a lot of talk, seems so, around town about money bein' missin' from the bank--" Captain Sam interrupted. "The deuce there is!" he exclaimed. "That's the first I've heard of any such talk. Who's talkin'?" "Oh, a--a good many folks, I judge likely. Gabe Bearse asked Babbie about it, and Phin here he--" "Eh?" The captain turned to face his old enemy. "So you've been talkin', have you?" he asked. Mr. Babbitt leaned forward. "I ain't begun my talkin' yet, Sam Hunniwell," he snarled. "When I do you'll--" He stopped. Grover had touched him on the shoulder. "Sshh!" said the Major quietly. To the absolute amazement of Captain Sam, Phineas subsided. His face was blazing red and he seemed to be boiling inside, but he did not say another word. Jed seized the opportunity to continue. "I--I just want to get this all plain, Sam," he put in, hastily. "I just want it so all hands'll understand it, that's all. You went over to Sylvester Sage's in Wapatomac and he paid you four hundred dollars. When you got back home here fourteen hundred of it was missin'. No, no, I don't mean that. I mean you couldn't find fourteen hundred--I mean--" The captain's patience was, as he himself often said, moored with a short cable. The cable parted now. "Gracious king!" he snapped. "Jed, if that yarn you're tryin' to spin was wound in a ball and a kitten was playin' with it you couldn't be worse snarled up. What he's tryin' to tell you," he explained, turning to Grover, "is that the other day, when I was over to Wapatomac, old Sylvester Sage over there paid me fourteen hundred dollars in cash and when I got back here all I could find was a thousand. That's what you're tryin' to say, ain't it?" turning to Jed once more. "Yes--yes, that's it, Sam. That's it." "Course it's it. But what do you want me to say it for? And what are you runnin' around with all that money in your hands for? That's what I want to know." Jed swallowed hard. "Well, Sam," he stammered, "that--that's what I was goin' to tell you. You see--you see, that's the four hundred you lost. I--I found it." Major Grover looked surprised. Phineas Babbitt looked more surprised. But, oddly enough, it was Captain Sam Hunniwell who appeared to be most surprised by his friend's statement. The captain seemed absolutely dumbfounded. "You--you WHAT?" he cried. Jed smoothed the bills in his hand. "I found it, Sam," he repeated. "Here 'tis--here." He extended the bundle of banknotes. The captain made no move to take them. Jed held them a little nearer. "You--you'd better take it, Sam," he urged. "It might get lost again, you know." Still Captain Sam made no move. He looked from the bills in Jed's hands to Jed's face and back again. The expression on his own face was a strange one. "You found it," he repeated. "YOU did?" "Yes--yes, I found it, Sam. Just happened to." "Where did you find it?" "Over yonder behind that pile of boards. You know you said the money was in your overcoat pocket and--and when you came in here on your way back from Sylvester's you hove your coat over onto those boards. I presume likely the--the money must have fell out of the pocket then. You see, don't you, Sam?" The tone in which the question was asked was one, almost, of pleading. He appeared very, very anxious to have the captain "see." But the latter seemed as puzzled as ever. "Here's the money, Sam," urged Jed. "Take it, won't you?" Captain Sam took it, but that is all he did. He did not count it or put it in his pocket. He merely took it and looked at the man who had given it to him. Jed's confusion seemed to increase. "Don't you--don't you think you'd better count it, Sam?" he stammered. "If--if the Major here and Phin see you count it and--and know it's all right, then they'll be able to contradict the stories that's goin' around about so much bein' stolen, you know." The captain grunted. "Stolen?" he repeated. "You said folks were talkin' about money bein' lost. Have they been sayin' 'twas stolen?" It was Grover who answered. "I haven't heard any such rumors," he said. "I believe Lieutenant Rayburn said he heard some idle report about the bank's having lost a sum of money, but there was no hint at dishonesty." Captain Sam turned to Mr. Babbitt. "YOU haven't heard any yarns about money bein' stolen at the bank, have you?" he demanded. Before Phineas could answer Grover's hand again fell lightly on his shoulder. "I'm sure he hasn't," observed the Major. The captain paid no attention to him. "Have you?" he repeated, addressing Babbitt. The little man shook from head to foot. The glare with which he regarded his hated rival might have frightened a timid person. But Captain Sam Hunniwell was distinctly not timid. "Have you?" he asked, for the third time. Phineas' mouth opened, but Grover's fingers tightened on his shoulder and what came out of that mouth was merely a savage repetition of his favorite retort, "None of your darned business." "Yes, 'tis my business," began Captain Sam, but Jed interrupted. "I don't see as it makes any difference whether he's heard anything or not, Sam," he suggested eagerly. "No matter what he's heard, it ain't so, because there couldn't have been anything stolen. There was only four hundred missin'. I've found that and you've got it back; so that settles it, don't it?" "It certainly would seem as if it did," observed Grover. "Congratulations, Captain Hunniwell. You're fortunate that so honest a man found the money, I should say." The captain merely grunted. The odd expression was still on his face. Jed turned to the other two. "Er--er--Major Grover," he said, "if--if you hear any yarns now about money bein' missin'--or--or stolen you can contradict 'em now, can't you?" "I certainly can--and will." "And you'll contradict 'em, too, eh, Phin?" Babbitt jerked his shoulder from Grover's grasp and strode to the door. "Let me out of here," he snarled. "I'm goin' home." No one offered to detain him, but as he threw open the door to the outer shop Leonard Grover followed him. "Just a moment, Babbitt," he said. "I'll go as far as the gate with you, if you don't mind. Good afternoon, Jed. Good afternoon, Captain, and once more--congratulations. . . . Here, Babbitt, wait a moment." Phineas did not wait, but even so his pursuer caught him before he reached the gate. Jed, who had run to the window, saw the Major and the hardware dealer in earnest conversation. The former seemed to be doing most of the talking. Then they separated, Grover remaining by the gate and Phineas striding off in the direction of his shop. He was muttering to himself and his face was working with emotion. Between baffled malice and suppressed hatred he looked almost as if he were going to cry. Even amid his own feelings of thankfulness and relief Jed felt a pang of pity for Phineas Babbitt. The little man was the incarnation of spite and envy and vindictive bitterness, but Jed was sorry for him, just as he would have been sorry for a mosquito which had bitten him. He might be obliged to crush the creature, but he would feel that it was not much to blame for the bite; both it and Phineas could not help being as they were--they were made that way. He heard an exclamation at his shoulder and turned to find that Captain Sam had also been regarding the parting at the gate. "Humph!" grunted the captain. "Phin looks as if he'd been eatin' somethin' that didn't set any too good. What's started him to obeyin' orders from that Grover man all to once? I always thought he hated soldierin' worse than a hen hates a swim. . . . Humph! . . . Well, that's the second queerest thing I've run across to-day." Jed changed the subject, or tried to change it. "What's the first one, Sam?" he hastened to ask. His friend looked at him for an instant before he answered. "The first one?" he repeated, slowly. "Well, I'll tell you, Jed. The first one--and the queerest of all--is your findin' that four hundred dollars." Jed was a good deal taken aback. He had not expected an answer of that kind. His embarrassment and confusion returned. "Why--why," he stammered, "is--is that funny, Sam? I don't--I don't know's I get what you mean. What's--what is there funny about my findin' that money?" The captain stepped across the shop, pulled forward a chair and seated himself. Jed watched him anxiously. "I--I don't see anything very funny about my findin' that money, Sam," he said, again. Captain Sam grunted. "Don't you?" he asked. "Well, maybe my sense of humor's gettin' cross-eyed or--or somethin'. I did think I could see somethin' funny in it, but most likely I was mistaken. Sit down, Jed, and tell me all about how you found it." Jed hesitated. His hand moved slowly across his chin. "Well, now, Sam," he faltered, "there ain't nothin' to tell. I just--er--found it, that's all. . . . Say, you ain't seen that new gull vane of mine lately, have you? I got her so she can flop her wings pretty good now." "Hang the gull vane! I want to hear how you found that money. Gracious king, man, you don't expect I'm goin' to take the gettin' back of four hundred dollars as cool as if 'twas ten cents, do you? Sit down and tell me about it." So Jed sat, not with eagerness, but more as if he could think of no excuse for refusing. His companion tilted back in his chair, lit a cigar, and bade him heave ahead. "Well," began Jed, "I--I--you see, Sam, I happened to look behind that heap of boards there and--" "What made you think of lookin' behind those boards?" "Eh? Why, nothin' 'special. I just happened to look. That's where your coat was, you know. So I looked and--and there 'twas." "I see. There 'twas, eh? Where?" "Why--why, behind the boards. I told you that, you know." "Gracious king, course I know! You've told me that no less than ten times. But WHERE was it? On the boards? On the floor?" "Eh? . . . Oh, . . . oh, seems to me 'twas on the floor." "Don't you KNOW 'twas on the floor?" "Why . . . why, yes, sartin." "Then what made you say 'seems as if' it was there?" "Oh, . . . oh, I don't know. Land sakes, Sam, what are you askin' me all these questions for?" "Just for fun, I guess. I'm interested, naturally. Tell me some more. How was the money--all together, or kind of scattered 'round?" "Eh? . . . Oh, all together." "Sure of that?" "Course I'm sure of it. I can see it just as plain as day, now I come to think of it. 'Twas all together, in a heap like." "Um-hm. The band that was round it had come off, then?" "Band? What band?" "Why, the paper band with '$400' on it. That had come off when it fell out of my pocket, I presume likely." "Yes. . . . Yes, I guess likely it did. Must have. . . . Er-- Sam, let me show you that gull vane. I got it so now that--" "Hold on a minute. I'm mighty interested about your findin' this money. It's so--so sort of unexpected, as you might say. If that band came off it must have broke when the money tumbled down behind the boards. Let's see if it did." He rose and moved toward the pile of boards. Jed also rose. "What are you goin' to look for?" he asked, anxiously. "Why, the paper band with the '$400' on it. I'd like to see if it broke. . . . Humph!" he added, peering down into the dark crevice between the boards and the wall of the shop. "Can't see anything of it, can you?" Jed, peering solemnly down, shook his head. "No," he said. "I can't see anything of it." "But it may be there, for all that." He reached down. "Humph!" he exclaimed. "I can't touch bottom. Jed, you've got a longer arm than I have; let's see if you can." Jed, sprawled upon the heap of lumber, stretched his arm as far as it would go. "Hum," he drawled, "I can't quite make it, Sam. . . . There's a place where she narrows way down here and I can't get my fingers through it." "Is that so? Then we'd better give up lookin' for the band, I cal'late. Didn't amount to anything, anyhow. Tell me more about what you did when you found the money. You must have been surprised." "Eh? . . . Land sakes, I was. I don't know's I ever was so surprised in my life. Thinks I, 'Here's Sam's money that's missin' from the bank.' Yes, sir, and 'twas, too." "Well, I'm much obliged to you, Jed, I surely am. And when you found it-- Let's see, you found it this mornin', of course?" "Eh? Why--why, how--what makes you think I found it this mornin'?" "Oh, because you must have. 'Cause if you'd found it yesterday or the day before you'd have told me right off." "Yes--oh, yes, that's so. Yes, I found it this mornin'." "Hadn't you thought to hunt for it afore?" "Eh? . . . Land sakes, yes . . . yes, I'd hunted lots of times, but I hadn't found it." "Hadn't thought to look in that place, eh?" "That's it. . . . Say, Sam, what--" "It's lucky you hadn't moved those boards. If you'd shifted them any since I threw my coat on 'em you might not have found it for a month, not till you used up the whole pile. Lucky you looked afore you shifted the lumber." "Yes . . . yes, that's so. That's a fact. But, Sam, hadn't you better take that money back to the bank? The folks up there don't know it's been found yet. They'll be some surprised, too." "So they will. All hands'll be surprised. And when I tell 'em how you happened to see that money lyin' in a pile on the floor behind those boards and couldn't scarcely believe your eyes, and couldn't believe 'em until you'd reached down and picked up the money, and counted it-- That's about what you did, I presume likely, eh?" "Yes. . . . Yes, that's just it." "They'll be surprised then, and no wonder. But they'd be more surprised if I should bring 'em here and show 'em the place where you found it. 'Twould surprise 'most anybody to know that there was a man livin' who could see down a black crack four foot deep and two inches wide and around a corner in that crack and see money lyin' on the floor, and know 'twas money, and then stretch his arm out a couple of foot more and thin his wrist down until it was less than an inch through and pick up that money. That WOULD surprise em. Don't you think 'twould, Jed?" The color left Jed's face. His mouth fell open and he stared blankly at his friend. The latter chuckled. "Don't you think 'twould surprise 'em, Jed?" he repeated. "Seems likely as if 'twould. It surprised me all right enough." The color came surging back. Jed's cheeks flamed. He tried to speak, but what he said was not coherent nor particularly intelligible. "Now--now--now, Sam," he stammered. "I--I-- You don't understand. You ain't got it right. I--I--" The captain interrupted. "Don't try so hard, Jed," he continued. "Take time to get your steam up. You'll bust a b'iler if you puff that way. Let's see what it is I don't understand. You found this money behind those boards?" "Eh? Yes . . . yes . . . but--" "Wait. And you found it this mornin'?" "Yes . . . yes . . . but, Sam--" "Hold on. You saw it layin' on the floor at the bottom of that crack?" "Well--well, I don't know as I saw it exactly, but--but-- No, I didn't see it. I--I felt it." "Oh, you felt it! Thought you said you saw it. Well, you reached down and felt it, then. How did you get your arm stretched out five foot long and three-quarters of an inch thick? Put it under the steam roller, did you?" Jed swallowed twice before replying. "I--I--" he began. "Well-- well, come to think of it, Sam, I--I guess I didn't feel it with my fingers. I--I took a stick. Yes, that was it. I poked in behind there with a stick." "Oh, you felt it with a stick. And knew 'twas money? Tut, tut! You must have a good sense of touch, Jed, to know bills when you scratch across 'em with the far end of a five foot stick. Pick 'em up with a stick, too, did you?" Mr. Winslow was speechless. Captain Sam shook his head. "And that ain't the most astonishin' part either," he observed. "While those bills were in the dark at the bottom of that crack they must have sprouted. They went in there nothin' but tens and twenties. These you just gave me are fives and twos and all sorts. You'd better poke astern of those boards again, Jed. The roots must be down there yet; all you've scratched up are the sprouts." His only answer was a hopeless groan. Captain Sam rose and, walking over to where his friend sat with his face buried between his hands, laid his own hand on the latter's shoulder. "There, there, Jed," he said, gently. "I beg your pardon. I'm sorry I stirred you up this way. 'Twas mean of me, I know, but when you commenced givin' me all this rigmarole I couldn't help it. You never was meant for a liar, old man; you make a mighty poor fist at it. What is it all about? What was you tryin' to do it for?" Another groan. The captain tried again. "What's the real yarn?" he asked. "What are you actin' this way for? Course I know you never found the money. Is there somebody--" "No! No, no!" Jed's voice rose almost to a shout. He sprang to his feet and clutched at Captain Sam's coat-sleeve. "No," he shouted. "Course there ain't anybody. Wh-what makes you say such a thing as that? I--I tell you I did find the money. I did--I did." "Jed! Of course you didn't. I know you didn't. I KNOW. Gracious king, man, be sensible." "I did! I did! I found it and now I give it back to you. What more do you want, Sam Hunniwell? Ain't that enough?" "Enough! It's a darned sight too much. I tell you I know you didn't find it." "But I did." "Rubbish! In the first place, you and I hunted every inch behind those boards the very day the money was missin', and 'twa'n't there then. And, besides, this isn't the money I lost." "Well--well, what if 'tain't? I don't care. I--I know 'tain't. I--I spent your money." "You SPENT it? When? You told me you only found it this mornin'." "I--I know I did, but 'twan't so. I--I--" Jed was in an agony of alarm and frantic haste. "I found your money two or three days ago. Yes, sir, that's when I found it. . . . Er. . . er . . ." "Humph! Why didn't you tell me you found it then? If you'd found it what made you keep runnin' into the bank to ask me if I'D found it? Why didn't you give it back to me right off? Oh, don't be so ridiculous, Jed." "I--I ain't. It's true. I--I didn't give it back to you because-- because I--I thought first I'd keep it." "Keep it? KEEP it? Steal it, do you mean?" "Yes--yes, that's what I mean. I--I thought first I'd do that and then I got--got kind of sorry and--and scared and I got some more money--and now I'm givin' it back to you. See, don't you, Sam? That's the reason." Captain Sam shook his head. "So you decided to be a thief, did you, Jed?" he said, slowly. "Well, the average person never'd have guessed you was such a desperate character. . . . Humph! . . . Well, well! . . . What was you goin' to do with the four hundred, provided you had kept it? You spent the money I lost anyway; you said you did. What did you spend it for?" "Oh--oh, some things I needed." "Sho! Is that so? What things?" Jed's shaking hand moved across his chin. "Oh--I--I forget," he faltered. Then, after a desperate struggle, "I--I--I bought a suit of clothes." The effort of this confession was a peculiar one. Captain Sam Hunniwell put back his head and roared with laughter. He was still laughing when he picked up his hat and turned to the door. Jed sprang from his seat. "Eh? . . . You're not GOIN', are you, Sam?" he cried. The captain, wiping his eyes, turned momentarily. "Yes, Jed," he said, chokingly, "I'm goin'. Say, if--if you get time some of these days dress up in that four hundred dollar suit you bought and then send me word. I'd like to see it." He went out. The door of the outer shop slammed. Jed wiped the perspiration from his forehead and groaned helplessly and hopelessly. The captain had reached the gate when he saw Phillips coming along the road toward him. He waited until the young man arrived. "Hello, Captain," hailed Charles. "So you decided not to come back to the bank this afternoon, after all?" His employer nodded. "Yes," he said. "I've been kept away on business. Funny kind of business, too. Say, Charlie," he added, "suppose likely your sister and you would be too busy to see me for a few minutes now? I'd like to see if you've got an answer to a riddle." "A riddle?" "Um-hm. I've just had the riddle sprung on me and it's got MY head whirlin' like a bottle in a tide rip. Can I come into your house for a minute and spring it on you?" The young man looked puzzled, which was not surprising, but his invitation to come into the house was most cordial. They entered by the front door. As they came into the little hall they heard a man's voice in the living-room beyond. It was Major Grover's voice and they heard the major say: "It doesn't matter at all. Please understand I had no thought of asking. I merely wanted you to feel that what that fellow said had no weight with me whatever, and to assure you that I will make it my business to see that he keeps his mouth shut. As for the other question, Ruth--" Ruth Armstrong's voice broke in here. "Oh, please," she begged, "not now. I--I am so sorry I can't tell you everything, but--but it isn't my secret and--and I can't. Perhaps some day-- But please believe that I am grateful, very, very grateful. I shall never forget it." Charlie, with an anxious glance at Captain Hunniwell, cleared his throat loudly. The captain's thoughts, however, were too busy with his "riddle" to pay attention to the voices in the living-room. As he and Phillips entered that apartment Major Grover came into the hall. He seemed a trifle embarrassed, but he nodded to Captain Sam, exchanged greetings with Phillips, and hurried out of the house. They found Ruth standing by the rear window and looking out toward the sea. The captain plunged at once into his story. He began by asking Mrs. Armstrong if her brother had told her of the missing four hundred dollars. Charles was inclined to be indignant. "Of course I haven't," he declared. "You asked us all to keep quiet about it and not to tell a soul, and I supposed you meant just that." "Eh? So I did, Charlie, so I did. Beg your pardon, boy. I might have known you'd keep your hatches closed. Well, here's the yarn, Mrs. Armstrong. It don't make me out any too everlastin' brilliant. A grown man that would shove that amount of money into his overcoat pocket and then go sasshayin' from Wapatomac to Orham ain't the kind I'd recommend to ship as cow steward on a cattle boat, to say nothin' of president of a bank. But confessin's good for the soul, they say, even if it does make a feller feel like a fool, so here goes. I did just that thing." He went on to tell of his trip to Wapatomac, his interview with Sage, his visit to the windmill shop, his discovery that four hundred of the fourteen hundred had disappeared. Then he told of his attempts to trace it, of Jed's anxious inquiries from day to day, and, finally, of the scene he had just passed through. "So there you are," he concluded. "I wish to mercy you'd tell me what it all means, for I can't tell myself. If it hadn't been so-- so sort of pitiful, and if I hadn't been so puzzled to know what made him do it, I cal'late I'd have laughed myself sick to see poor old Jed tryin' to lie. Why, he ain't got the first notion of how to begin; I don't cal'late he ever told a real, up-and-down lie afore in his life. That was funny enough--but when he began to tell me he was a thief! Gracious king! And all he could think of in the way of an excuse was that he stole the four hundred to buy a suit of clothes with. Ho, ho, ho!" He roared again. Charlie Phillips laughed also. But his sister did not laugh. She had seated herself in the rocker by the window when the captain began his tale and now she had drawn back into the corner where the shadows were deepest. "So there you are," said Captain Sam, again. "There's the riddle. Now what's the answer? Why did he do it? Can either of you guess?" Phillips shook his head. "You have got me," he declared. "And the money he gave you was not the money you lost? You're sure of that?" "Course I'm sure of it. In the first place I lost a packet of clean tens and twenties; this stuff I've got in my pocket now is all sorts, ones and twos and fives and everything. And in the second place--" "Pardon me, just a minute, Captain Hunniwell. Where did he get the four hundred to give you, do you think? He hasn't cashed any large checks at the bank within the last day or two, and he would scarcely have so much on hand in his shop." "Not as much as that--no. Although I've known the absent-minded, careless critter to have over two hundred knockin' around among his tools and chips and glue pots. Probably he had some to start with, and he got the rest by gettin' folks around town and over to Harniss to cash his checks. Anthony Hammond over there asked me a little while ago, when I met him down to the wharf, if I thought Shavin's Winslow was good for a hundred and twenty-five. Said Jed had sent over by the telephone man's auto and asked him to cash a check for that much. Hammond said he thought 'twas queer he hadn't cashed it at our bank; that's why he asked me about it." "Humph! But why should he give his own money away in that fashion? And confess to stealing and all that stuff? I never heard of such a thing." "Neither did anybody else. I've known Jed all my life and I never can tell what loony thing he's liable to do next. But this beats all of 'em, I will give in." "You don't suppose--you don't suppose he is doing it to help you, because you are his friend? Because he is afraid the bank--or you-- may get into trouble because of--well, because of having been so careless?" Captain Sam laughed once more. "No, no," he said. "Gracious king, I hope my reputation's good enough to stand the losin' of four hundred dollars. And Jed knows perfectly well I could put it back myself, if 'twas necessary, without runnin' me into the poorhouse. No, 'tain't for me he's doin' it. I ain't the reason." "And you're quite sure his story is ALL untrue. You don't imagine that he did find the money, your money, and then, for some reason or other, change it with smaller bills, and--" "Sshh, sshh, Charlie, don't waste your breath. I told you I KNEW he hadn't found the four hundred dollars I lost, didn't I? Well, I do know it and for the very best of reasons; in fact, my stoppin' into his shop just now was to tell him what I'd heard. You see, Charlie, old Sylvester Sage has got back from Boston and opened up his house again. And he telephoned me at two o'clock to say that the four hundred dollar packet was layin' on his sittin'-room table just where I left it when he and I parted company four days or so ago. That's how I KNOW Jed didn't find it." From the shadowy corner where Ruth Armstrong sat came a little gasp and an exclamation. Charles whistled. "Well, by George!" he exclaimed. "That certainly puts a crimp in Jed's confession." "Sartin sure it does. When Sylvester and I parted we was both pretty hot under the collar, havin' called each other's politics about every mean name we could think of. I grabbed up my gloves, and what I thought was my money from the table and slammed out of the house. Seems all I grabbed was the two five hundred packages; the four hundred one was shoved under some papers and magazines and there it stayed till Sylvester got back from his Boston cruise. "But that don't answer my riddle," he added, impatiently. "What made Jed act the way he did? Got the answer, Charlie?" The young man shook his head. "No, by George, I haven't!" he replied. "How about you, Mrs. Armstrong? Can you help us out?" Ruth's answer was brief. "No, I'm afraid not," she said. There was a queer note in her voice which caused her brother to glance at her, but Captain Hunniwell did not notice. He turned to go. "Well," he said, "I wish you'd think it over and see if you can spy land anywheres ahead. I need a pilot. This course is too crooked for me. I'm goin' home to ask Maud; maybe she can see a light. So long." He went out. When Charles returned, having accompanied his employer as far as the door, he found Ruth standing by her chair and looking at him. A glance at her face caused him to stop short and look at her. "Why, Ruth," he asked, "what is it?" She was pale and trembling. There were tears in her eyes. "Oh, Charlie," she cried, "can't you see? He--he did it for you." "Did it for me? Did what? Who? What are you talking about, Sis?" "Jed. Jed Winslow. Don't you see, Charlie? He pretended to have found the money and to have stolen it just to save you. He thought you--he thought you had taken it." "WHAT? Thought I had taken it? I had? Why in the devil should he think--" He stopped. When he next spoke it was in a different tone. "Sis," he asked, slowly, "do you mean that he thought I took this money because he knew I had--had done that thing at Middleford? Does he know--about that?" The tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Yes, Charlie," she said, "he knows. He found it out, partly by accident, before you came here. And--and think how loyal, how wonderful he has been! It was through him that you got your opportunity there at the bank. And now--now he has done this to save you. Oh, Charlie!" CHAPTER XIX The clock in the steeple of the Methodist church boomed eleven times and still the lights shone from the sitting-room windows of the little Winslow house and from those of Jed's living quarters behind his windmill shop. At that time of year and at that time of night there were few windows alight in Orham, and Mr. Gabe Bearse, had he been astir at such an hour, might have wondered why the Armstrongs and "Shavings" were "settin' up." Fortunately for every one except him, Gabe was in bed and asleep, otherwise he might have peeped under Jed's kitchen window shade--he had been accused of doing such things--and had he done so he would have seen Jed and Charlie Phillips in deep and earnest conversation. Neither would have wished to be seen just then; their interview was far too intimate and serious for that. They had been talking since eight. Charles and his sister had had a long conversation following Captain Hunniwell's visit and then, after a pretense at supper--a pretense made largely on Babbie's account--the young man had come straight to the shop and to Jed. He had found the latter in a state of extreme dejection. He was sitting before the little writing table in his living-room, his elbows on the desk and his head in his hands. The drawer of the table was open and Jed was, apparently, gazing intently at something within. When Phillips entered the room he started, hastily slammed the drawer shut, and raised a pale and distressed face to his visitor. "Eh?" he exclaimed. "Oh, it's you, Charlie, ain't it? I--I--er-- good mornin'. It's--it's a nice day." Charles smiled slightly and shook his head. "You're a little mixed on the time, aren't you, Jed?" he observed. "It WAS a nice day, but it is a nice evening now." "Eh? Is it? Land sakes, I presume likely 'tis. Must be after supper time, I shouldn't wonder." "Supper time! Why, it's after eight o'clock. Didn't you know it?" "No-o. No, I guess not. I--I kind of lost run of the time, seems so." "Haven't you had any supper?" "No-o. I didn't seem to care about supper, somehow." "But haven't you eaten anything?" "No. I did make myself a cup of tea, but twan't what you'd call a success. . . . I forgot to put the tea in it. . . . But it don't make any difference; I ain't hungry--or thirsty, either." Phillips leaned forward and laid a hand on the older man's shoulder. "Jed," he said gently, "I know why you're not hungry. Oh, Jed, what in the world made you do it?" Jed started back so violently that his chair almost upset. He raised a hand with the gesture of one warding off a blow. "Do?" he gasped. "Do what?" "Why, what you did about that money that Captain Hunniwell lost. What made you do it, Jed?" Jed's eyes closed momentarily. Then he opened them and, without looking at his visitor, rose slowly to his feet. "So Sam told you," he said, with a sigh. "I--I didn't hardly think he'd do that. . . . Course 'twas all right for him to tell," he added hastily. "I didn't ask him not to, but--but, he and I havin' been--er--chums, as you might say, for so long, I--I sort of thought. . . . Well, it don't make any difference, I guess. Did he tell your--your sister? Did he tell her how I--how I stole the money?" Charles shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "No, he didn't tell either of us that. He told us that you had tried to make him believe you took the money, but that he knew you were not telling the truth. He knew you didn't take it." "Eh? Now . . . now, Charlie, that ain't so." Jed was even more disturbed and distressed than before. "I--I told Sam I took it and--and kept it. I TOLD him I did. What more does he want? What's he goin' around tellin' folks I didn't for? What--" "Hush, Jed! He knows you didn't take it. He knew it all the time you were telling him you did. In fact he came into your shop this afternoon to tell you that the Sage man over at Wapatomac had found the four hundred dollars on the table in his sitting-room just where the captain left it. Sage had just 'phoned him that very thing. He would have told you that, but you didn't give him the chance. Jed, I--" But Jed interrupted. His expression as he listened had been changing like the sky on a windy day in April. "Here, here!" he cried wildly. "What--what kind of talk's that? Do--do you mean to tell me that Sam Hunniwell never lost that money at all? That all he did was leave it over at Wapatomac?" "Yes, that's just what I mean." "Then--then all the time when I was--was givin' him the--the other money and tellin' him how I found it and--and all--he knew--" "Certainly he knew. I've just told you that he knew." Jed sat heavily down in the chair once more. He passed his hand slowly across his chin. "He knew!" he repeated. "He knew! . . ." Then, with a sudden gasp as the full significance of the thought came to him, he cried: "Why, if--if the money wasn't ever lost you couldn't--you--" Charles shook his head: "No, Jed," he said, "I couldn't have taken it. And I didn't take it." Jed gasped again. He stretched out a hand imploringly. "Oh, Lord," he exclaimed, "I never meant to say that. I--I--" "It's all right, Jed. I don't blame you for thinking I might have taken it. Knowing what you did about--well, about my past record, it is not very astonishing that you should think almost anything." Jed's agonized contrition was acute. "Don't talk so, Charlie!" he pleaded. "Don't! I--I'd ought to be ashamed of myself. I am--mercy knows I am! But . . . Eh? Why, how did you know I knew about--that?" "Ruth told me just now. After Captain Hunniwell had gone, she told me the whole thing. About how Babbie let the cat out of the bag and how she told you for fear you might suspect something even worse than the truth; although," he added, "that was quite bad enough. Yes, she told me everything. You've been a brick all through, Jed. And now--" "Wait, Charlie, wait. I--I don't know what to say to you. I don't know what you must think of me for ever--ever once suspectin' you. If you hadn't said to me only such a little spell ago that you needed money so bad and would do most anything to get five hundred dollars--if you hadn't said that, I don't think the notion would ever have crossed my mind." Phillips whistled. "Well, by George!" he exclaimed. "I had forgotten that. No wonder you thought I had gone crooked again. Humph! . . . Well, I'll tell you why I wanted that money. You see, I've been trying to pay back to the man in Middleford the money of his which--which I took before. It is two thousand dollars and," with a shrug, "that looks a good deal bigger sum to me now than it used to, you can bet on that. I had a few hundred in a New York savings bank before I--well, before they shut me up. No one knew about it, not even Sis. I didn't tell her because-- well, I wish I could say it was because I was intending to use it to pay back what I had taken, but that wasn't the real reason why I kept still about it. To tell you the truth, Jed, I didn't feel-- no, I don't feel yet any too forgiving or kindly toward that chap who had me put in prison. I'm not shirking blame; I was a fool and a scamp and all that; but he is--he's a hard man, Jed." Jed nodded. "Seems to me Ru--your sister said he was a consider'ble of a professer," he observed. "Professor? Why no, he was a bond broker." "I mean that he professed religion a good deal. Called himself a Christian and such kind of names." Phillips smiled bitterly. "If he is a Christian I prefer to be a heathen," he observed. "Um-hm. Well, maybe he ain't one. You could teach a parrot to holler 'Praise the Lord,' I cal'late, and the more crackers he got by it the louder he'd holler. So you never said anything about the four hundred you had put by, Charlie." "No. I felt that I had been treated badly and--why, Jed, the man used to urge me to dress better than I could afford, to belong to the most expensive club and all that sort of thing. He knew I was in with a set sporting ten times the money I could muster, and spending it, too, but he seemed to like to have me associate with them. Said it was good for the business." "Sartin! More crackers for Polly. Go on." "I intended that he should never have that money, but after I came here, after I had been here for a time, I changed my mind. I saw things in a different light. I wrote him a letter, told him I meant to pay back every cent of the two thousand I had taken and enclosed my check for the seven hundred and fifty I had put by. Since then I have paid him two hundred and fifty more, goodness knows how. I have squeezed every penny from my salary that I could spare. I have paid him half of the two thousand and, if everything had gone on well, some day or other I would have paid the other half." Jed laid a hand on his companion's knee. "Good boy, Charlie," he said. "And how did the--er--professin' poll parrot act about your payin' it back?" Charles smiled faintly. "Just before I talked with you that day, Jed," he said, "I received a letter from him stating that he did not feel I was paying as rapidly as I could and that, if he did not receive another five hundred shortly he should feel it his duty to communicate with my present employers. Do you wonder I said I would do almost anything to get the money?" Jed's hand patted the knee sympathetically. "Sho, sho, sho!" he exclaimed. "Have you heard from him since?" "No, I wrote him that I was paying as fast as I could and that if he communicated with my employers that would end any chances of his ever getting more. He hasn't written since; afraid of stopping the golden egg supply, I presume. . . . But there," he added, "that's enough of that. Jed, how could you do it--just for me? Of course I had come to realize that your heart was as big as a bushel basket, and that you and I were friends. But when a fellow gives up four hundred dollars of his own money, and, not only does that, but deliberately confesses himself a thief--when he does that to save some one else who, as he knew, had really been a thief and who he was pretty sure must have stolen again--why, Jed, it is unbelievable. Why did you do it? What can I say to you?" Jed held up a protesting hand. "Don't say anything," he stammered. "Don't! It's--it's all foolishness, anyhow." "Foolishness! It's--oh, I don't know what it is! And to sacrifice your reputation and your character and your friendship with Captain Hunniwell, all for me! I can't understand it." "Now--now--now, Charlie, don't try to. If I can't understand myself more'n half the time, what's the use of your strainin' your brains? I--I just took a notion, that's all. I--" "But, Jed, why did you do it--for me? I have heard of men doing such things for--for women, sacrificing themselves to save a woman they were in love with. You read of that in books and--yes, I think I can understand that. But for you to do it--for ME!" Jed waved both hands this time. "Sshh! sshh!" he cried, in frantic protest. His face was a brilliant crimson and his embarrassment and confusion were so acute as to be laughable, although Phillips was far from laughing. "Sshh, sshh, Charlie," pleaded Jed. "You-- you don't know what you're talkin' about. You're makin' an awful fuss about nothin'. Sshh! Yes, you are, too. I didn't have any notion of tellin' Sam I stole that four hundred when I first gave it to him. I was goin' to tell him I found it, that's all. That would keep him bottled up, I figgered, and satisfied and then--then you and I'd have a talk and I'd tell you what I'd done and--well, some day maybe you could pay me back the money; don't you see? I do hope," he added anxiously, "you won't hold it against me, for thinkin' maybe you had taken it. Course I'd ought to have known better. I would have known better if I'd been anybody but Shavin's Winslow. HE ain't responsible." "Hush, Jed, hush! But why did you say you had--kept it?" "Eh? Oh, that was Sam's doin's. He commenced to ask questions, and, the first thing I knew, he had me on the spider fryin' over a hot fire. The more I sizzled and sputtered and tried to get out of that spider, the more he poked up the fire. I declare, I never knew lyin' was such a job! When I see how easy and natural it comes to some folks I feel kind of ashamed to think what a poor show I made at it. Well, Sam kept pokin' the fire and heatin' me up till I got desperate and swore I stole the money instead of findin' it. And that was hoppin' out of the fryin' pan INTO the fire," he drawled reflectively. Charles smiled. "Captain Sam said you told him you took the money to buy a suit of clothes with," he suggested. "Eh? Did I? Sho! That was a real bright idea of mine, wasn't it? A suit of clothes. Humph! Wonder I didn't say I bought shoe laces or collar buttons or somethin'. . . . Sho! . . . Dear, dear! Well, they say George Washin'ton couldn't tell a lie and I've proved I can't either; only I've tried to tell one and I don't recollect that he ever did that. . . . Humph! . . . A suit of clothes. . . . Four hundred dollars. . . . Solomon in all his glory would have looked like a calico shirt and a pair of overalls alongside of me, eh? . . . Humph!" Phillips shook his head. "Nevertheless, Jed," he declared, "I can't understand why you did it and I never--never shall forget it. Neither will Ruth. She will tell you so to-morrow." Jed was frightened. "No, no, no, she mustn't," he cried, quickly. "I--I don't want her to talk about it. I--I don't want anybody to talk about it. Please tell her not to, Charlie! Please! It's-- it's all such foolishness anyhow. Let's forget it." "It isn't the sort of thing one forgets easily. But we won't talk of it any more just now, if that pleases you better. I have some other things to talk about and I must talk about them with some one. I MUST--I've got to." Jed looked at him. The words reminded him forcibly of Ruth's on that day when she had come to the windmill shop to tell him her brother's story and to discuss the question of his coming to Orham. She, too, had said that she must talk with some one--she MUST. "Have--you talked 'em over with--with your sister?" he asked. "Yes. But she and I don't agree completely in the matter. You see, Ruth thinks the world of me, she always did, a great deal more than I deserve, ever have deserved or ever will. And in this matter she thinks first of all of me--what will become of me provided--well, provided things don't go as I should like to have them. That isn't the way I want to face the question. I want to know what is best for every one, for her, for me and--and for some one else--most of all for some one else, I guess," he added. Jed nodded slowly. "For Maud," he said. Charles looked at him. "How on earth--?" he demanded. "What in blazes are you--a clairvoyant?" "No-o. No. But it don't need a spirit medium to see through a window pane, Charlie; that is, the average window pane," he added, with a glance at his own, which were in need of washing just then. "You want to know," he continued, "what you'd ought to do now that will be the right thing, or the nighest to the right thing, for your sister and Babbie and yourself--and Maud." "Yes, I do. It isn't any new question for me. I've been putting it up to myself for a long time, for months; by, George, it seems years." "I know. I know. Well, Charlie, I've been puttin' it up to myself, too. Have you got any answer?" "No, none that exactly suits me. Have you?" "I don't know's I have--exactly." "Exactly? Well, have you any, exact or otherwise?" "Um. . . . Well, I've got one, but . . . but perhaps it ain't an answer. Perhaps it wouldn't do at all. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . ." "Never mind the perhapses. What is it?" "Um. . . . Suppose we let it wait a little spell and talk the situation over just a little mite. You've been talkin' with your sister, you say, and she don't entirely agree with you." "No. I say things can't go on as they've been going. They can't." "Um-hm. Meanin'--what things?" "Everything. Jed, do you remember that day when you and I had the talk about poetry and all that? When you quoted that poem about a chap's fearing his fate too much? Well, I've been fearing my fate ever since I began to realize what a mess I was getting into here in Orham. When I first came I saw, of course, that I was skating on thin ice, and it was likely to break under me at any time. I knew perfectly well that some day the Middleford business was bound to come out and that my accepting the bank offer without telling Captain Hunniwell or any one was a mighty risky, not to say mean, business. But Ruth was so very anxious that I should accept and kept begging me not to tell, at least until they had had a chance to learn that I was worth something, that I gave in and . . . I say, Jed," he put in, breaking his own sentence in the middle, "don't think I'm trying to shove the blame over on to Sis. It's not that." Jed nodded. "Sho, sho, Charlie," he said, "course 'tain't. I understand." "No, I'll take the blame. I was old enough to have a mind of my own. Well, as I was saying, I realized it all, but I didn't care so much. If the smash did come, I figured, it might not come until I had established myself at the bank, until they might have found me valuable enough to keep on in spite of it. And I worked mighty hard to make them like me. Then--then--well, then Maud and I became friends and--and--oh, confound it, you see what I mean! You must see." The Winslow knee was clasped between the Winslow hands and the Winslow foot was swinging. Jed nodded again. "I see, Charlie," he said. "And--and here I am. The smash has come, in a way, already. Babbitt, so Ruth tells me, knows the whole story and was threatening to tell, but she says Grover assures her that he won't tell, that he, the major, has a club over the old fellow which will prevent his telling. Do you think that's true?" "I shouldn't be surprised. Major Grover sartinly did seem to put the fear of the Lord into Phin this afternoon. . . . And that's no one-horse miracle," he drawled, "when you consider that all the ministers in Orham haven't been able to do it for forty odd years. . . . Um. . . . Yes, I kind of cal'late Phin'll keep his hatches shut. He may bust his b'iler and blow up with spite, but he won't talk about you, Charlie, I honestly believe. And we can all thank the major for that." "I shall thank him, for one!" "Mercy on us! No, no. He doesn't know your story at all. He just thinks Babbitt was circulatin' lies about Ruth--about your sister. You mustn't mention the Middleford--er--mess to Major Grover." "Humph! Well, unless I'm greatly mistaken, Ruth--" "Eh? Ruth--what?" "Oh, nothing. Never mind that now. And allowing that Babbitt will, as you say, keep his mouth shut, admitting that the situation is just what it was before Captain Hunniwell lost the money or Babbitt came into the affair at all, still I've made up my mind that things can't go on as they are. Jed, I--it's a mighty hard thing to say to another man, but--the world--my world--just begins and ends with--with her." His fists clenched and his jaw set as he said it. Jed bowed his head. "With Maud, you mean," he said. "Yes. I--I don't care for anything else or anybody else. . . . Oh, of course I don't mean just that, you know. I do care for Sis and Babbie. But--they're different." "I understand, Charlie." "No, you don't. How can you? Nobody can understand, least of all a set old crank like you, Jed, and a confirmed bachelor besides. Beg pardon for contradicting you, but you don't understand, you can't." Jed gazed soberly at the floor. "Maybe I can understand a little, Charlie," he drawled gently. "Well, all right. Let it go at that. The fact is that I'm at a crisis." "Just a half minute, now. Have you said anything to Maud about-- about how you feel?" "Of course I haven't," indignantly. "How could I, without telling her everything?" "That's right, that's right. Course you couldn't, and be fair and honorable. . . . Hum. . . . Then you don't know whether or not she--er--feels the same way about--about you?" Charles hesitated. "No-o," he hesitated. "No, I don't know, of course. But I--I feel--I--" "You feel that that part of the situation ain't what you'd call hopeless, eh? . . . Um. . . . Well, judgin' from what I've heard, I shouldn't call it that, either. Would it surprise you to know, Charlie, that her dad and I had a little talk on this very subject not so very long ago?" Evidently it did surprise him. Charles gasped and turned red. "Captain Hunniwell!" he exclaimed. "Did Captain Hunniwell talk with you about--about Maud and--and me?" "Yes." "Well, by George! Then he suspected--he guessed that-- That's strange." Jed relinquished the grip of one hand upon his knee long enough to stroke his chin. "Um . . . yes," he drawled drily. "It's worse than strange, it's-- er--paralyzin'. More clairvoyants in Orham than you thought there was; eh, Charlie?" "But why should he talk with you on that subject; about anything so--er--personal and confidential as that? With YOU, you know!" Jed's slow smile drifted into sight and vanished again. He permitted himself the luxury of a retort. "Well," he observed musingly, "as to that I can't say for certain. Maybe he did it for the same reason you're doin' it now, Charlie." The young man evidently had not thought of it in just that light. He looked surprised and still more puzzled. "Why, yes," he admitted. "So I am, of course. And I do talk to you about things I never would think of mentioning to other people. And Ruth says she does. That's queer, too. But we are--er-- neighbors of yours and--and tenants, you know. We've known you ever since we came to Orham." "Ye-es. And Sam's known me ever since I came. Anyhow he talked with me about you and Maud. I don't think I shall be sayin' more'n I ought to if I tell you that he likes you, Charlie." "Does he?" eagerly. "By George, I'm glad of that! But, oh, well," with a sigh, "he doesn't know. If he did know my record he might not like me so well. And as for my marrying his daughter--good NIGHT!" with hopeless emphasis. "No, not good night by any means. Maybe it's only good mornin'. Go on and tell me what you mean by bein' at a crisis, as you said a minute ago." "I mean just that. The time has come when I must speak to Maud. I must find out if--find out how she feels about me. And I can't speak to her, honorably, without telling her everything. And suppose she should care enough for me to--to--suppose she should care in spite of everything, there's her father. She is his only daughter; he worships the ground she steps on. Suppose I tell him I've been," bitterly, "a crook and a jailbird; what will HE think of me--as a son-in-law? And now suppose he was fool enough to consent--which isn't supposable--how could I stay here, working for him, sponging a living from him, with this thing hanging over us all? No, I can't--I can't. Whatever else happens I can't do that. And I can't go on as I am--or I won't. Now what am I going to do?" He had risen and was pacing the floor. Jed asked a question. "What does your sister want you to do?" he asked. "Ruth? Oh, as I told you, she thinks of no one but me. How dreadful it would be for me to tell of my Middleford record! How awful if I lost my position in the bank! Suppose they discharged me and the town learned why! I've tried to make her see that, compared to the question of Maud, nothing else matters at all, but I'm afraid she doesn't see it as I do. She only sees--me." "Her brother. Um . . . yes, I know." "Yes. Well, we talked and talked, but we got nowhere. So at last I said I was coming out to thank you for what you did to save me, Jed. I could hardly believe it then; I can scarcely believe it now. It was too much for any man to do for another. And she said to talk the whole puzzle out with you. She seems to have all the confidence on earth in your judgment, Jed. She is as willing to leave a decision to you, apparently, as you profess to be to leave one to your wooden prophet up on the shelf there; what's-his-name-- er--Isaiah." Jed looked greatly pleased, but he shook his head. "I'm afraid her confidence ain't founded on a rock, like the feller's house in the Bible," he drawled. "My decisions are liable to stick half way betwixt and between, same as--er--Jeremiah's do. But," he added, gravely, "I have been thinkin' pretty seriously about you and your particular puzzle, Charlie, and--and I ain't sure that I don't see one way out of the fog. It may be a hard way, and it may turn out wrong, and it may not be anything you'll agree to. But--" "What is it? If it's anything even half way satisfactory I'll believe you're the wisest man on earth, Jed Winslow." "Well, if I thought you was liable to believe that I'd tell you to send your believer to the blacksmith's 'cause there was somethin' wrong with it. No, I ain't wise, far from it. But, Charlie, I think you're dead right about what you say concernin' Maud and her father and you. You CAN'T tell her without tellin' him. For your own sake you mustn't tell him without tellin' her. And you shouldn't, as a straight up and down, honorable man keep on workin' for Sam when you ask him, under these circumstances, to give you his daughter. You can't afford to have her say 'yes' because she pities you, nor to have him give in to her because she begs him to. No, you want to be independent, to go to both of 'em and say: 'Here's my story and here am I. You know now what I did and you know, too, what I've been and how I've behaved since I've been with you.' You want to say to Maud: 'Do you care enough for me to marry me in spite of what I've done and where I've been?' And to Sam: 'Providin' your daughter does care for me, I mean to marry her some day or other. And you can't be on his pay roll when you say that, as I see it." Phillips stopped in his stride. "You've put it just as it is," he declared emphatically. "There's the situation--what then? For I tell you now, Jed Winslow, I won't give her up until she tells me to." "Course not, Charlie, course not. But there's one thing more--or two things, rather. There's your sister and Babbie. Suppose you do haul up stakes and quit workin' for Sam at the bank; can they get along without your support? Without the money you earn?" The young man nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," he replied, "I see no reason why they can't. They did before I came, you know. Ruth has a little money of her own, enough to keep her and Barbara in the way they live here in Orham. She couldn't support me as a loafer, of course, and you can bet I should never let her try, but she could get on quite well without me. . . . Besides, I am not so sure that . . ." "Eh? What was you goin' to say, Charlie?" "Oh, nothing, nothing. I have had a feeling, a slight suspicion, recently, that-- But never mind that; I have no right to even hint at such a thing. What are you trying to get at, Jed?" "Get at?" "Yes. Why did you ask that question about Ruth and Barbara? You don't mean that you see a way out for me, do you?" "W-e-e-ll, I . . . er . . . I don't cal'late I'd want to go so far as to say that, hardly. No-o, I don't know's it's a way out-- quite. But, as I've told you I've been thinkin' about you and Maud a pretty good deal lately and . . . er . . . hum . . ." "For heaven's sake, hurry up! Don't go to sleep now, man, of all times. Tell me, what do you mean? What can I do?" Jed's foot dropped to the floor. He sat erect and regarded his companion intently over his spectacles. His face was very grave. "There's one thing you can do, Charlie," he said. "What is it? Tell me, quick." "Just a minute. Doin' it won't mean necessarily that you're out of your worries and troubles. It won't mean that you mustn't make a clean breast of everything to Maud and to Sam. That you must do and I know, from what you've said to me, that you feel you must. And it won't mean that your doin' this thing will necessarily make either Maud or Sam say yes to the question you want to ask 'em. That question they'll answer themselves, of course. But, as I see it, if you do this thing you'll be free and independent, a man doin' a man's job and ready to speak to Sam Hunniwell or anybody else LIKE a man. And that's somethin'." "Something! By George, it's everything! What is this man's job? Tell me, quick." And Jed told him. CHAPTER XX Mr. Gabe Bearse lost another opportunity the next morning. The late bird misses the early worm and, as Gabriel was still slumbering peacefully at six A. M., he missed seeing Ruth Armstrong and her brother emerge from the door of the Winslow house at that hour and walk to the gate together. Charles was carrying a small traveling bag. Ruth's face was white and her eyes were suspiciously damp, but she was evidently trying hard to appear calm and cheerful. As they stood talking by the gate, Jed Winslow emerged from the windmill shop and, crossing the lawn, joined them. The three talked for a moment and then Charles held out his hand. "Well, so long, Jed," he said. "If all goes well I shall be back here to-morrow. Wish me luck." "I'll be wishin' it for you, Charlie, all day and all night with double time after hours and no allowance for meals," replied Jed earnestly. "You think Sam'll get your note all right?" "Yes, I shall tuck it under the bank door as I go by. If he should ask what the business was which called me to Boston so suddenly, just dodge the question as well as you can, won't you, Jed?" "Sartin sure. He'll think he's dealin' with that colored man that sticks his head through the sheet over to the Ostable fair, the one the boys heave baseballs at. No, he won't get anything out of me, Charlie. And the other letter; that'll get to--to her?" The young man nodded gravely. "I shall mail it at the post-office now," he said. "Don't talk about it, please. Well, Sis, good-by-- until to-morrow." Jed turned his head. When he looked again Phillips was walking rapidly away along the sidewalk. Ruth, leaning over the fence, watched him as long as he was in sight. And Jed watched her anxiously. When she turned he ventured to speak. "Don't worry," he begged. "Don't. He's doin' the right thing. I know he is." She wiped her eyes. "Oh, perhaps he is," she said sadly. "I hope he is." "I know he is. I only wish I could do it, too. . . . I would," he drawled, solemnly, "only for nineteen or twenty reasons, the first one of 'em bein' that they wouldn't let me." She made no comment on this observation. They walked together back toward the house. "Jed," she said, after a moment, "it has come at last, hasn't it, the day we have foreseen and that I have dreaded so? Poor Charlie! Think what this means to him." Jed nodded. "He's puttin' it to the touch, to win or lose it all," he agreed, "same as was in the poem he and I talked about that time. Well, I honestly believe he feels better now that he's made up his mind to do it, better than he has for many a long day." "Yes, I suppose he does. And he is doing, too, what he has wanted to do ever since he came here. He told me so when he came in from his long interview with you last night. He and I talked until it was almost day and we told each other--many things." She paused. Jed, looking up, caught her eye. To his surprise she colored and seemed slightly confused. "He had not said anything before," she went on rather hurriedly, "because he thought I would feel so terribly to have him do it. So I should, and so I do, of course--in one way, but in another I am glad. Glad, and very proud." "Sartin. He'll make us all proud of him, or I miss my guess. And, as for the rest of it, the big question that counts most of all to him, I hope--yes, I think that's comin' out all right, too. Ruth," he added, "you remember what I told you about Sam's talk with me that afternoon when he came back from Wapatomac. If Maud cares for him as much as all that she ain't goin' to throw him over on account of what happened in Middleford." "No--no, not if she really cares. But does she care--enough?" "I hope so. I guess so. But if she doesn't it's better for him to know it, and know it now. . . . Dear, dear!" he added, "how I do fire off opinions, don't I? A body'd think I was loaded up with wisdom same as one of those machine guns is with cartridges. About all I'm loaded with is blanks, I cal'late." She was not paying attention to this outburst, but, standing with one hand upon the latch of the kitchen door, she seemed to be thinking deeply. "I think you are right," she said slowly. "Yes, I think you are right. It IS better to know. . . . Jed, suppose--suppose you cared for some one, would the fact that her brother had been in prison make any difference in--in your feeling?" Jed actually staggered. She was not looking at him, nor did she look at him now. "Eh?" he cried. "Why--why, Ruth, what--what--?" She smiled faintly. "And that was a foolish question, too," she said. "Foolish to ask you, of all men. . . . Well, I must go on and get Babbie's breakfast. Poor child, she is going to miss her Uncle Charlie. We shall all miss him. . . . But there, I promised him I would be brave. Good morning, Jed." "But--but, Ruth, what-what--?" She had not heard him. The door closed. Jed stood staring at it for some minutes. Then he crossed the lawn to his own little kitchen. The performances he went through during the next hour would have confirmed the opinion of Mr. Bearse and his coterie that "Shavings" Winslow was "next door to loony." He cooked a breakfast, but how he cooked it or of what it consisted he could not have told. The next day he found the stove-lid lifter on a plate in the ice chest. Whatever became of the left-over pork chop which should have been there he had no idea. Babbie came dancing in at noon on her way home from school. She found her Uncle Jed in a curious mood, a mood which seemed to be a compound of absent-mindedness and silence broken by sudden fits of song and hilarity. He was sitting by the bench when she entered and was holding an oily rag in one hand and a piece of emery paper in the other. He was looking neither at paper nor rag, nor at anything else in particular so far as she could see, and he did not notice her presence at all. Suddenly he began to rub the paper and the rag together and to sing at the top of his voice: "'He's my lily of the valley, My bright and mornin' star; He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul--Hallelujah! He's my di-dum-du-dum-di-dum-- Di--'" Barbara burst out laughing. Mr. Winslow's hallelujah chorus stopped in the middle and he turned. "Eh?" he exclaimed, looking over his spectacles. "Oh, it's you! Sakes alive, child, how do you get around so quiet? Haven't borrowed the cat's feet to walk, on, have you?" Babbie laughed again and replied that she guessed the cat wouldn't lend her feet. "She would want 'em herself, prob'ly, Uncle Jed," she added. "Don't you think so?" Jed appeared to consider. "Well," he drawled, "she might, I presume likely, be as selfish and unreasonable as all that. But then again she might . . . hum . . . what was it the cat walked on in that story you and I was readin' together a spell ago? That--er--Sure Enough story--you know. By Kipling, 'twas." "Oh, I know! It wasn't a Sure Enough story; it was a 'Just So' story. And the name of it was 'The Cat Who Walked by His Wild Lone.'" Jed looked deeply disappointed. "Sho!" he sighed. "I thought 'twas on his wild lone he walked. I was thinkin' that maybe he'd gone walkin' on that for a spell and had lent you his feet. . . . Hum. . . . Dear, dear! "'Oh, trust and obey, For there's no other way To be de-de-de-di-dum-- But to trust and obey.'" Here he relapsed into another daydream. After waiting for a moment, Babbie ventured to arouse him. "Uncle Jed," she asked, "what were you doing with those things in your hand--when I came in, you know? That cloth and that piece of paper. You looked so funny, rubbing them together, that I couldn't help laughing." Jed regarded her solemnly. "It's emery paper," he said; "like fine sandpaper, you know. And the cloth's got ile in it. I'm cleanin' the rust off this screwdriver. I hadn't used it for more'n a fortni't and it got pretty rusty this damp weather." The child looked at him wonderingly. "But, Uncle Jed," she said, "there isn't any screwdriver. Anyhow I don't see any. You were just rubbing the sandpaper and the cloth together and singing. That's why it looked so funny." Jed inspected first one hand and then the other. "Hum!" he drawled. "Hu-um! . . . Well, I declare! . . . Now you mention it, there don't seem to be any screwdriver, does there? . . . Here 'tis on the bench. . . . And I was rubbin' the sandpaper with ile, or ilin' the sandpaper with the rag, whichever you like. . . . Hum, ye-es, I should think it might have looked funny. . . . Babbie, if you see me walkin' around without any head some mornin' don't be scared. You'll know that that part of me ain't got out of bed yet, that's all." Barbara leaned her chin on both small fists and gazed at him. "Uncle Jed," she said, "you've been thinking about something, haven't you?" "Eh? . . . Why, yes, I--I guess likely maybe I have. How did you know?" "Oh, 'cause I did. Petunia and I know you ever and ever so well now and we're used to--to the way you do. Mamma says things like forgetting the screwdriver are your ex-eccen-tricks. Is this what you've been thinking about a nice eccen-trick or the other kind?" Jed slowly shook his head. "I--I don't know," he groaned. "I dasn't believe-- There, there! That's enough of my tricks. How's Petunia's hair curlin' this mornin'?" After the child left him he tried to prepare his dinner, but it was as unsatisfactory a meal as breakfast had been. He couldn't eat, he couldn't work. He could only think, and thinking meant alternate periods of delirious hope and black depression. He sat down before the little table in his living-room and, opening the drawer, saw Ruth Armstrong's pictured face looking up at him. "Jed! Oh, Jed!" It was Maud Hunniwell's voice. She had entered the shop and the living-room without his hearing her and now she was standing behind him with her hand upon his shoulder. He started, turned and looked up into her face. And one glance caused him to forget himself and even the pictured face in the drawer for the time and to think only of her. "Maud!" he exclaimed. "Maud!" Her hair, usually so carefully arranged, was disordered; her hat was not adjusted at its usual exact angle; and as for the silver fox, it hung limply backside front. Her eyes were red and she held a handkerchief in one hand and a letter in the other. "Oh, Jed!" she cried. Jed put out his hands. "There, there, Maud!" he said. "There, there, little girl." They had been confidants since her babyhood, these two. She came to him now, and putting her head upon his shoulder, burst into a storm of weeping. Jed stroked her hair. "There, there, Maud," he said gently. "Don't, girlie, don't. It's goin' to be all right, I know it. . . . And so you came to me, did you? I'm awful glad you did, I am so." "He asked me to come," she sobbed. "He wrote it--in--in the letter." Jed led her over to a chair. "Sit down, girlie," he said, "and tell me all about it. You got the letter, then?" She nodded. "Yes," she said, chokingly; "it--it just came. Oh, I am so glad Father did not come home to dinner to-day. He would have--have seen me and--and--oh, why did he do it, Jed? Why?" Jed shook his head. "He had to do it, Maud," he answered. "He wanted to do the right thing and the honorable thing. And you would rather have had him do that, wouldn't you?" "Oh--oh, I don't know. But why didn't he come to me and tell me? Why did he go away and--and write me he had gone to enlist? Why didn't he come to me first? Oh. . . . Oh, Jed, how COULD he treat me so?" She was sobbing again. Jed took her hand and patted it with his own big one. "Didn't he tell you in the letter why?" he asked. "Yes--yes, but--" "Then let me tell you what he told me, Maud. He and I talked for up'ards of three solid hours last night and I cal'late I understood him pretty well when he finished. Now let me tell you what he said to me." He told her the substance of his long interview with Phillips. He told also of Charles' coming to Orham, of why and how he took the position in the bank, of his other talks with him--Winslow. "And so," said Jed, in conclusion, "you see, Maud, what a dreadful load the poor young feller's been carryin' ever since he came and especially since he--well, since he found out how much he was carin' for you. Just stop for a minute and think what a load 'twas. His conscience was troublin' him all the time for keepin' the bank job, for sailin' under false colors in your eyes and your dad's. He was workin' and pinchin' to pay the two thousand to the man in Middleford. He had hangin' over him every minute the practical certainty that some day--some day sure--a person was comin' along who knew his story and then the fat would all be in the fire. And when it went into that fire he wouldn't be the only one to be burnt; there would be his sister and Babbie--and you; most of all, you." She nodded. "Yes, yes, I know," she cried. "But why--oh, why didn't he come to me and tell me? Why did he go without a word? He must have known I would forgive him, no matter what he had done. It wouldn't have made any difference, his having been in--in prison. And now--now he may be--oh, Jed, he may be killed!" She was sobbing again. Jed patted her hand. "We won't talk about his bein' killed," he said stoutly. "I know he won't be; I feel it in my bones. But, Maud, can't you see why he didn't come and tell you before he went to enlist? Suppose he had. If you care for him so much--as much as I judge you do--" She interrupted. "Care for him!" she repeated. "Oh, Jed!" "Yes, yes, dearie, I know. Well, then, carin' for him like that, you'd have told him just what you told me then; that about his havin' done what he did and havin' been where he's been not makin' any difference. And you'd have begged and coaxed him to stay right along in the bank, maybe? Eh?" "Yes," defiantly. Of course I would. Why not?" "And your father, would you have told him?" She hesitated. "I don't know," she said, but with less assurance. "Perhaps so, later on. It had all been kept a secret so far, all the whole dreadful thing, why not a little longer? Besides-- besides, Father knows how much Charlie means to me. Father and I had a long talk about him one night and I--I think he knows. And he is very fond of Charlie himself; he has said so so many times. He would have forgiven him, too, if I had asked him. He always does what I ask." "Yes, ye-es, I cal'late that's so. But, to be real honest now, Maud, would you have been satisfied to have it that way? Would you have felt that it was the honorable thing for Charlie to do? Isn't what he has done better? He's undertakin' the biggest and finest job a man can do in this world to-day, as I see it. It's the job he'd have taken on months ago if he'd felt 'twas right to leave Ruth--Mrs. Armstrong--so soon after--after bein' separated from her so long. He's taken on this big job, this man's job, and he says to you: 'Here I am. You know me now. Do you care for me still? If you do will you wait till I come back?' And to your dad, to Sam, he says: 'I ain't workin' for you now. I ain't on your payroll and so I can speak out free and independent. If your daughter'll have me I mean to marry her some day.' Ain't that the better way, Maud? Ain't that how you'd rather have him feel--and do?" She sighed and shook her head. "I--I suppose so," she admitted. "Oh, I suppose that you and he are right. In his letter he says just that. Would you like to see it; that part of it, I mean?" Jed took the crumpled and tear-stained letter from her hand. "I think I ought to tell you, Maud," he said, "that writin' this was his own idea. It was me that suggested his enlistin', although I found he'd been thinkin' of it all along, but I was for havin' him go and enlist and then come back and tell you and Sam. But he says, 'No. I'll tell her in a letter and then when I come back she'll have had time to think it over. She won't say 'yes' then simply because she pities me or because she doesn't realize what it means. No, I'll write her and then when I come back after enlistin' and go to her for my answer, I'll know it's given deliberate.'" She nodded. "He says that there," she said chokingly. "But he--he must have known. Oh, Jed, how CAN I let him go--to war?" That portion of the letter which Jed was permitted to read was straightforward and honest and manly. There were no appeals for pity or sympathy. The writer stated his case and left the rest to her, that was all. And Jed, reading between the lines, respected Charles Phillips more than ever. He and Maud talked for a long time after that. And, at last, they reached a point which Jed had tried his best to avoid. Maud mentioned it first. She had been speaking of his friendship for her lover and for herself. "I don't see what we should have done without your help, Jed," she said. "And when I think what you have done for Charlie! Why, yes-- and now I know why you pretended to have found the four hundred dollars Father thought he had lost. Pa left it at Wapatomac, after all; you knew that?" Jed stirred uneasily. He was standing by the window, looking out into the yard. "Yes, yes," he said hastily, "I know. Don't talk about it, Maud. It makes me feel more like a fool than usual and . . . er . . . don't seem as if that was hardly necessary, does it?" "But I shall talk about it. When Father came home that night he couldn't talk of anything else. He called it the prize puzzle of the century. You had given him four hundred dollars of your own money and pretended it was his and that you had--had stolen it, Jed. He burst out laughing when he told me that and so did I. The idea of your stealing anything! You!" Jed smiled, feebly. "'Twas silly enough, I give in," he admitted. "You see," he added, in an apologetic drawl, "nine-tenths of this town think I'm a prize idiot and sometimes I feel it's my duty to live up--or down--to my reputation. This was one of the times, that's all. I'm awful glad Sam got his own money back, though." "The money didn't amount to anything. But what you did was the wonderful thing. For now I understand why you did it. You thought--you thought Charlie had taken it to--to pay that horrid man in Middleford. That is what you thought and you--" Jed broke in. "Don't! Don't put me in mind of it, Maud," he begged. "I'm so ashamed I don't know what to do. You see--you see, Charlie had said how much he needed about that much money and-- and so, bein' a--a woodenhead, I naturally--" "Oh, don't! Please don't! It was wonderful of you, Jed. You not only gave up your own money, but you were willing to sacrifice your good name; to have Father, your best friend, think you a thief. And you did it all to save Charlie from exposure. How could you, Jed?" Jed didn't answer. He did not appear to have heard her. He was gazing steadily out into the yard. "How could you, Jed?" repeated Maud. "It was wonderful! I can't understand. I--" She stopped at the beginning of the sentence. She was standing beside the little writing-table and the drawer was open. She looked down and there, in that drawer, she saw the framed photograph of Ruth Armstrong. She remembered that Jed had been sitting at that desk and gazing down into that drawer when she entered the room. She looked at him now. He was standing by the window peering out into the yard. Ruth had come from the back door of the little Winslow house and was standing on the step looking up the road, evidently waiting for Barbara to come from school. And Jed was watching her. Maud saw the look upon his face--and she understood. A few moments later she and Ruth met. Maud had tried to avoid that meeting by leaving Jed's premises by the front door, the door of the outer shop. But Ruth had walked to the gate to see if Babbie was coming and, as Maud emerged from the shop, the two women came face to face. For an instant they did not speak. Maud, excited and overwrought by her experience with the letter and her interview with Jed, was still struggling for self-control, and Ruth, knowing that the other must by this time have received that letter and learned her brother's secret, was inclined to be coldly defiant. She was the first to break the silence. She said "Good afternoon" and passed on. But Maud, after another instant of hesitation, turned back. "Oh, Mrs. Armstrong," she faltered, "may I speak with you just-- just for a few minutes?" And now Ruth hesitated. What was it the girl wished to speak about? If it was to reproach her or her brother, or to demand further explanations or apologies, the interview had far better not take place. She was in no mood to listen to reproaches. Charles was, in her eyes, a martyr and a hero and now, largely because of this girl, he was going away to certain danger, perhaps to death. She had tried, for his sake, not to blame Maud Hunniwell because Charles had fallen in love with her, but she was not, just then, inclined toward extreme forbearance. So she hesitated, and Maud spoke again. "May I speak with you for just a few minutes?" she pleaded. "I have just got his letter and--oh, may I?" Ruth silently led the way to the door of the little house. "Come in," she said. Together they entered the sitting-room. Ruth asked her caller to be seated, but Maud paid no attention. "I have just got his letter," she faltered. "I--I wanted you to know--to know that it doesn't make any difference. I--I don't care. If he loves me, and--and he says he does--I don't care for anything else. . . . Oh,' PLEASE be nice to me," she begged, holding out her hands. "You are his sister and--and I love him so! And he is going away from both of us." So Ruth's coldness melted like a fall of snow in early April, and the April showers followed it. She and Maud wept in each other's arms and were femininely happy accordingly. And for at least a half hour thereafter they discussed the surpassing excellencies of Charlie Phillips, the certainty that Captain Hunniwell would forgive him because he could not help it and a variety of kindred and satisfying subjects. And at last Jed Winslow drifted into the conversation. "And so you have been talking it over with Jed," observed Ruth. "Isn't it odd how we all go to him when we are in trouble or need advice or anything? I always do and Charlie did, and you say that you do, too." Maud nodded. "He and I have been what Pa calls 'chummies' ever since I can remember," she said simply. "I don't know why I feel that I can confide in him to such an extent. Somehow I always have. And, do you know, his advice is almost always good? If I had taken it from the first we might, all of us, have avoided a deal of trouble. I have cause to think of Jed Winslow as something sure and safe and trustworthy. Like a nice, kindly old watch dog, you know. A queer one and a funny one, but awfully nice. Babbie idolizes him." Maud nodded again. She was regarding her companion with an odd expression. "And when I think," continued Ruth, "of how he was willing to sacrifice his character and his honor and even to risk losing your father's friendship--how he proclaimed himself a thief to save Charlie! When I think of that I scarcely know whether to laugh or cry. I want to do both, of course. It was perfectly characteristic and perfectly adorable--and so absolutely absurd. I love him for it, and as yet I haven't dared thank him for fear I shall cry again, as I did when Captain Hunniwell told us. Yet, when I think of his declaring he took the money to buy a suit of clothes, I feel like laughing. Oh, he IS a dear, isn't he?" Now, ordinarily, Maud would have found nothing in this speech to arouse resentment. There was the very slight, and in this case quite unintentional, note of patronage in it that every one used when referring to Jed Winslow. She herself almost invariably used that note when speaking of him or even to him. But now her emotions were so deeply stirred and the memories of her recent interview with Jed, of his understanding and his sympathy, were so vivid. And, too, she had just had that glimpse into his most secret soul. So her tone, as she replied to Ruth's speech, was almost sharp. "He didn't do it for Charlie," she declared. "That is, of course he did, but that wasn't the real reason." "Why, what do you mean?" "Don't you know what I mean? Don't you really know?" "Why, of course I don't. What ARE you talking about? Didn't do it for Charlie? Didn't say that he was a thief and give your father his own money, do you mean? Do you mean he didn't do that for Charlie?" "Yes. He did it for you." "For me? For ME?" "Yes. . . . Oh, can't you understand? It's absurd and foolish and silly and everything, but I know it's true. Jed Winslow is in love with you, Mrs. Armstrong." Ruth leaned back in her chair and stared at her as if she thought her insane. "In love with ME?" she repeated. "Jed Winslow! Maud, don't!" "It's true, I tell you. I didn't know until just now, although if it had been any one but Jed I should have suspected for some time. But to-day when I went in there I saw him sitting before his desk looking down into an open drawer there. He has your photograph in that drawer. And, later on, when you came out into the yard, I saw him watching you; I saw his face and that was enough. . . . Oh, don't you SEE?" impatiently. "It explains everything. You couldn't understand, nor could I, why he should sacrifice himself so for Charlie. But because Charlie was your brother--that is another thing. Think, just think! You and I would have guessed it before if he had been any one else except just Jed. Yes, he is in love with you. . . . It's crazy and it's ridiculous and--and all that, of course it is. But," with a sudden burst of temper, "if you--if you dare to laugh I'll never speak to you again." But Ruth was not laughing. It was a cloudy day and Jed's living-room was almost dark when Ruth entered it. Jed, who had been sitting by the desk, rose when she came in. "Land sakes, Ruth," he exclaimed, "it's you, ain't it? Let me light a lamp. I was settin' here in the dark like a . . . like a hen gone to roost. . . . Eh? Why, it's 'most supper 'time, ain't it? Didn't realize 'twas so late. I'll have a light for you in a jiffy." He was on his way to the kitchen, but she stopped him. "No," she said quickly. "Don't get a light. I'd rather not, please. And sit down again, Jed; just as you were. There, by the desk; that's it. You see," she added, "I--I--well, I have something to tell you, and--and I can tell it better in the dark, I think." Jed looked at her in surprise. He could not see her face plainly, but she seemed oddly confused and embarrassed. "Sho!" he drawled. "Well, I'm sure I ain't anxious about the light, myself. You know, I've always had a feelin' that the dark was more becomin' to my style of beauty. Take me about twelve o'clock in a foggy night, in a cellar, with the lamp out, and I look pretty nigh handsome--to a blind man. . . . Um-hm." She made no comment on this confession. Jed, after waiting an instant for her to speak, ventured a reminder. "Don't mind my talkin' foolishness," he said, apologetically. "I'm feelin' a little more like myself than I have for--for a week or so, and when I feel that way I'm bound to be foolish. Just gettin' back to nature, as the magazine folks tell about, I cal'late 'tis." She leaned forward and laid a hand on his sleeve. "Don't!" she begged. "Don't talk about yourself in that way, Jed. When I think what a friend you have been to me and mine I--I can't bear to hear you say such things. I have never thanked you for what you did to save my brother when you thought he had gone wrong again. I can't thank you now--I can't." Her voice broke. Jed twisted in his seat. "Now--now, Ruth," he pleaded, "do let's forget that. I've made a fool of myself a good many times in my life--more gettin' back to nature, you see--but I hope I never made myself out quite such a blitherin' numbskull as I did that time. Don't talk about it, don't. I ain't exactly what you'd call proud of it." "But I am. And so is Charlie. But I won't talk of it if you prefer I shouldn't. . . . Jed--" she hesitated, faltered, and then began again: "Jed," she said, "I told you when I came in that I had something to tell you. I have. I have told no one else, not even Charlie, because he went away before I was--quite sure. But now I am going to tell you because ever since I came here you have been my father confessor, so to speak. You realize that, don't you?" Jed rubbed his chin. "W-e-e-ll," he observed, with great deliberation, "I don't know's I'd go as far as to say that. Babbie and I've agreed that I'm her back-step-uncle, but that's as nigh relation as I've ever dast figure I was to the family." "Don't joke about it. You know what I mean. Well, Jed, this is what I am going to tell you. It is very personal and very confidential and you must promise not to tell any one yet. Will you?" "Eh? Why, sartin, of course." "Yes. I hope you may be glad to hear it. It would make you glad to know that I was happy, wouldn't it?" For the first time Jed did not answer in the instant. The shadows were deep in the little living-room now, but Ruth felt that he was leaning forward and looking at her. "Yes," he said, after a moment. "Yes . . . but--I don't know as I know exactly what you mean, do I?" "You don't--yet. But I hope you will be glad when you do. Jed, you like Major Grover, don't you?" Jed did not move perceptibly, but she heard his chair creak. He was still leaning forward and she knew his gaze was fixed upon her face. "Yes," he said very slowly. "I like him first-rate." "I'm glad. Because--well, because I have come to like him so much. Jed, he--he has asked me to be his wife." There was absolute stillness in the little room. Then, after what seemed to her several long minutes, he spoke. "Yes . . . yes, I see . . ." he said. "And you? You've . . ." "At first I could not answer him. My brother's secret was in the way and I could not tell him that. But last night--or this morning--Charlie and I discussed all our affairs and he gave me permission to tell--Leonard. So when he came to-day I told him. He said it made no difference. And--and I am going to marry him, Jed." Jed's chair creaked again, but that was the only sound. Ruth waited until she felt that she could wait no longer. Then she stretched out a hand toward him in the dark. "Oh, Jed," she cried, "aren't you going to say anything to me-- anything at all?" She heard him draw a long breath. Then he spoke. "Why--why, yes, of course," he said. "I--I--of course I am. I-- you kind of got me by surprise, that's all. . . . I hadn't--hadn't expected it, you see." "I know. Even Charlie was surprised. But you're glad, for my sake, aren't you, Jed?" "Eh? . . . Yes, oh, yes! I'm--I'm glad." "I hope you are. If it were not for poor Charlie's going away and the anxiety about him and his problem I should be very happy-- happier than I believed I ever could be again. You're glad of that, aren't you, Jed?" "Eh? . . . Yes, yes, of course. . . ." "And you will congratulate me? You like Major Grover? Please say you do." Jed rose slowly from his chair. He passed a hand in dazed fashion across his forehead. "Yes," he said, again. "The major's a fine man. . . . I do congratulate you, ma'am." "Oh, Jed! Not that way. As if you meant it." "Eh? . . . I--I do mean it. . . . I hope--I hope you'll be real happy, both of you, ma'am." "Oh, not that--Ruth." "Yes--yes, sartin, of course . . . Ruth, I mean." She left him standing by the writing table. After she had gone he sank slowly down into the chair again. Eight o'clock struck and he was still sitting there. . . . And Fate chose that time to send Captain Sam Hunniwell striding up the walk and storming furiously at the back door. "Jed!" roared the captain. "Jed Winslow! Jed!" Jed lifted his head from his hands. He most decidedly did not wish to see Captain Sam or any one else. "Jed!" roared the captain again. Jed accepted the inevitable. "Here I am," he groaned, miserably. The captain did not wait for an invitation to enter. Having ascertained that the owner of the building was within, he pulled the door open and stamped into the kitchen. "Where are you?" he demanded. "Here," replied Jed, without moving. "Here? Where's here? . . . Oh, you're in there, are you? Hidin' there in the dark, eh? Afraid to show me your face, I shouldn't wonder. By the gracious king, I should think you would be! What have you got to say to me, eh?" Apparently Jed had nothing to say. Captain Sam did not wait. "And you've called yourself my friend!" he sneered savagely. "Friend--you're a healthy friend, Jed Winslow! What have you got to say to me . . . eh?" Jed sighed. "Maybe I'd be better able to say it if I knew what you was talkin' about, Sam," he observed, drearily. "Know! I guess likely you know all right. And according to her you've known all along. What do you mean by lettin' me take that-- that state's prison bird into my bank? And lettin' him associate with my daughter and--and . . . Oh, by gracious king! When I think that you knew what he was all along, I--I--" His anger choked off the rest of the sentence. Jed rubbed his eyes and sat up in his chair. For the first time since the captain's entrance he realized a little of what the latter said. Before that he had been conscious only of his own dull, aching, hopeless misery. "Hum. . . . So you've found out, Sam, have you?" he mused. "Found out! You bet I've found out! I only wish to the Lord I'd found out months ago, that's all." "Hum. . . . Charlie didn't tell you? . . . No-o, no, he couldn't have got back so soon." "Back be hanged! I don't know whether he's back or not, blast him. But I ain't a fool ALL the time, Jed Winslow, not all the time I ain't. And when I came home tonight and found Maud cryin' to herself and no reason for it, so far as I could see, I set out to learn that reason. And I did learn it. She told me the whole yarn, the whole of it. And I saw the scamp's letter. And I dragged out of her that you--you had known all the time what he was, and had never told me a word. . . . Oh, how could you, Jed! How could you!" Jed's voice was a trifle less listless as he answered. "It was told me in confidence, Sam," he said. "I COULDN'T tell you. And, as time went along and I began to see what a fine boy Charlie really was, I felt sure 'twould all come out right in the end. And it has, as I see it." "WHAT?" "Yes, it's come out all right. Charlie's gone to fight, same as every decent young feller wants to do. He thinks the world of Maud and she does of him, but he was honorable enough not to ask her while he worked for you, Sam. He wrote the letter after he'd gone so as to make it easier for her to say no, if she felt like sayin' it. And when he came back from enlistin' he was goin' straight to you to make a clean breast of everything. He's a good boy, Sam. He's had hard luck and he's been in trouble, but he's all right and I know it. And you know it, too, Sam Hunniwell. Down inside you you know it, too. Why, you've told me a hundred times what a fine chap Charlie Phillips was and how much you thought of him, and--" Captain Hunniwell interrupted. "Shut up!" he commanded. "Don't talk to me that way! Don't you dare to! I did think a lot of him, but that was before I knew what he'd done and where he'd been. Do you cal'late I'll let my daughter marry a man that's been in state's prison?" "But, Sam, it wan't all his fault, really. And he'll go straight from this on. I know he will." "Shut up! He can go to the devil from this on, but he shan't take her with him. . . . Why, Jed, you know what Maud is to me. She's all I've got. She's all I've contrived for and worked for in this world. Think of all the plans I've made for her!" "I know, Sam, I know; but pretty often our plans don't work out just as we make 'em. Sometimes we have to change 'em--or give 'em up. And you want Maud to be happy." "Happy! I want to be happy myself, don't I? Do you think I'm goin' to give up all my plans and all my happiness just--just because she wants to make a fool of herself? Give 'em up! It's easy for you to say 'give up.' What do you know about it?" It was the last straw. Jed sprang to his feet so suddenly that his chair fell to the floor. "Know about it!" he burst forth, with such fierce indignation that the captain actually gasped in astonishment. "Know about it!" repeated Jed. "What do I know about givin' up my own plans and-- and hopes, do you mean? Oh, my Lord above! Ain't I been givin' 'em up and givin' 'em up all my lifelong? When I was a boy didn't I give up the education that might have made me a--a MAN instead of--of a town laughin' stock? While Mother lived was I doin' much but give up myself for her? I ain't sayin' 'twas any more'n right that I should, but I did it, didn't I? And ever since it's been the same way. I tell you, I've come to believe that life for me means one 'give up' after the other and won't mean anything but that till I die. And you--you ask me what I know about it! YOU do!" Captain Sam was so taken aback that he was almost speechless. In all his long acquaintance with Jed Winslow he had never seen him like this. "Why--why, Jed!" he stammered. But Jed was not listening. He strode across the room and seized his visitor by the arm. "You go home, Sam Hunniwell," he ordered. "Go home and think-- THINK, I tell you. All your life you've had just what I haven't. You married the girl you wanted and you and she were happy together. You've been looked up to and respected here in Orham; folks never laughed at you or called you 'town crank.' You've got a daughter and she's a good girl. And the man she wants to marry is a good man, and, if you'll give him a chance and he lives through the war he's goin' into, he'll make you proud of him. You go home, Sam Hunniwell! Go home, and thank God you're what you are and AS you are. . . . No, I won't talk! I don't want to talk! . . . Go HOME." He had been dragging his friend to the door. Now he actually pushed him across the threshold and slammed the door between them. "Well, for . . . the Lord . . . sakes!" exclaimed Captain Hunniwell. The scraping of the key in the lock was his only answer. CHAPTER XXI A child spends time and thought and energy upon the building of a house of blocks. By the time it is nearing completion it has become to him a very real edifice. Therefore, when it collapses into an ungraceful heap upon the floor it is poor consolation to be reminded that, after all, it was merely a block house and couldn't be expected to stand. Jed, in his own child-like fashion, had reared his moonshine castle beam by beam. At first he had regarded it as moonshine and had refused to consider the building of it anything but a dangerously pleasant pastime. And then, little by little, as his dreams changed to hopes, it had become more and more real, until, just before the end, it was the foundation upon which his future was to rest. And down it came, and there was his future buried in the ruins. And it had been all moonshine from the very first. Jed, sitting there alone in his little living-room, could see now that it had been nothing but that. Ruth Armstrong, young, charming, cultured-- could she have thought of linking her life with that of Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow, forty-five, "town crank" and builder of windmills? Of course not--and again of course not. Obviously she never had thought of such a thing. She had been grateful, that was all; perhaps she had pitied him just a little and behind her expressions of kindliness and friendship was pity and little else. Moonshine--moonshine--moonshine. And, oh, what a fool he had been! What a poor, silly fool! So the night passed and morning came and with it a certain degree of bitterly philosophic acceptance of the situation. He WAS a fool; so much was sure. He was of no use in the world, he never had been. People laughed at him and he deserved to be laughed at. He rose from the bed upon which he had thrown himself some time during the early morning hours and, after eating a cold mouthful or two in lieu of breakfast, sat down at his turning lathe. He could make children's whirligigs, that was the measure of his capacity. All the forenoon the lathe hummed. Several times steps sounded on the front walk and the latch of the shop door rattled, but Jed did not rise from his seat. He had not unlocked that door, he did not mean to for the present. He did not want to wait on customers; he did not want to see callers; he did not want to talk or be talked to. He did not want to think, either, but that he could not help. And he could not shut out all the callers. One, who came a little after noon, refused to remain shut out. She pounded the door and shouted "Uncle Jed" for some few minutes; then, just as Jed had begun to think she had given up and gone away, he heard a thumping upon the window pane and, looking up, saw her laughing and nodding outside. "I see you, Uncle Jed," she called. "Let me in, please." So Jed was obliged to let her in and she entered with a skip and a jump, quite unconscious that her "back-step-uncle" was in any way different, either in feelings or desire for her society, than he had been for months. "Why did you have the door locked, Uncle Jed?" she demanded. "Did you forget to unlock it?" Jed, without looking at her, muttered something to the effect that he cal'lated he must have. "Um-hm," she observed, with a nod of comprehension. "I thought that was it. You did it once before, you know. It was a ex-eccen- trick, leaving it locked was, I guess. Don't you think it was a-- a--one of those kind of tricks, Uncle Jed?" Silence, except for the hum and rasp of the lathe. "Don't you, Uncle Jed?" repeated Barbara. "Eh? . . . Oh, yes, I presume likely so." Babbie, sitting on the lumber pile, kicked her small heels together and regarded him with speculative interest. "Uncle Jed," she said, after a few moments of silent consideration, "what do you suppose Petunia told me just now?" No answer. "What do you suppose Petunia told me?" repeated Babbie. "Something about you 'twas, Uncle Jed." Still Jed did not reply. His silence was not deliberate; he had been so absorbed in his own pessimistic musings that he had not heard the question, that was all. Barbara tried again. "She told me she guessed you had been thinking AWF'LY hard about something this time, else you wouldn't have so many eccen-tricks to-day." Silence yet. Babbie swallowed hard: "I--I don't think I like eccen-tricks, Uncle Jed," she faltered. Not a word. Then Jed, stooping to pick up a piece of wood from the pile of cut stock beside the lathe, was conscious of a little sniff. He looked up. His small visitor's lip was quivering and two big tears were just ready to overflow her lower lashes. "Eh? . . . Mercy sakes alive!" he exclaimed. "Why, what's the matter?" The lip quivered still more. "I--I don't like to have you not speak to me," sobbed Babbie. "You--you never did it so--so long before." That appeal was sufficient. Away, for the time, went Jed's pessimism and his hopeless musings. He forgot that he was a fool, the "town crank," and of no use in the world. He forgot his own heartbreak, chagrin and disappointment. A moment later Babbie was on his knee, hiding her emotion in the front of his jacket, and he was trying his best to soothe her with characteristic Winslow nonsense. "You mustn't mind me, Babbie," he declared. "My--my head ain't workin' just right to-day, seems so. I shouldn't wonder if--if I wound it too tight, or somethin' like that." Babbie's tear-stained face emerged from the jacket front. "Wound your HEAD too tight, Uncle Jed?" she cried. "Ye-es, yes. I was kind of extra absent-minded yesterday and I thought I wound the clock, but I couldn't have done that 'cause the clock's stopped. Yet I know I wound somethin' and it's just as liable to have been my head as anything else. You listen just back of my starboard ear there and see if I'm tickin' reg'lar." The balance of the conversation between the two was of a distinctly personal nature. "You see, Uncle Jed," said Barbara, as she jumped from his knee preparatory to running off to school, "I don't like you to do eccen-tricks and not talk to me. I don't like it at all and neither does Petunia. You won't do any more--not for so long at a time, will you, Uncle Jed?" Jed sighed. "I'll try not to," he said, soberly. She nodded. "Of course," she observed, "we shan't mind you doing a few, because you can't help that. But you mustn't sit still and not pay attention when we talk for ever and ever so long. I--I don't know precactly what I and Petunia would do if you wouldn't talk to us, Uncle Jed." "Don't, eh? Humph! I presume likely you'd get along pretty well. I ain't much account." Barbara looked at him in horrified surprise. "Oh, Uncle Jed!" she cried, "you mustn't talk so! You MUSTN'T! Why--why, you're the bestest man there is. And there isn't anybody in Orham can make windmills the way you can. I asked Teacher if there was and she said no. So there! And you're a GREAT cons'lation to all our family," she added, solemnly. "We just couldn't ever--EVER do without you." When the child went Jed did not take the trouble to lock the door after her; consequently his next callers entered without difficulty and came directly to the inner shop. Jed, once more absorbed in gloomy musings--not quite as gloomy, perhaps; somehow the clouds had not descended quite so heavily upon his soul since Babbie's visit--looked up to see there standing behind him Maud Hunniwell and Charlie Phillips. He sprang to his feet. "Eh?" he cried, delightedly. "Well, well, so you're back, Charlie, safe and sound. Well, well!" Phillips grasped the hand which Jed had extended and shook it heartily. "Yes, I'm back," he said. "Um-hm. . . . And--er--how did you leave Uncle Sam? Old feller's pretty busy these days, 'cordin' to the papers." "Yes, I imagine he is." "Um-hm. . . . Well, did you--er--make him happy? Give his army the one thing needful to make it--er--perfect?" Charlie laughed. "If you mean did I add myself to it," he said, "I did. I am an enlisted man now, Jed. As soon as Von Hindenburg hears that, he'll commit suicide, I'm sure." Jed insisted on shaking hands with him again. "You're a lucky feller, Charlie," he declared. "I only wish I had your chance. Yes, you're lucky--in a good many ways," with a glance at Maud. "And, speaking of Uncle Sam," he added, "reminds me of--well, of Daddy Sam. How's he behavin' this mornin'? I judge from the fact that you two are together he's a little more rational than he was last night. . . . Eh?" Phillips looked puzzled, but Maud evidently understood. "Daddy has been very nice to-day," she said, demurely. "Charlie had a long talk with him and--and--" "And he was mighty fine," declared Phillips with emphasis. "We had a heart to heart talk and I held nothing back. I tell you, Jed, it did me good to speak the truth, whole and nothing but. I told Captain Hunniwell that I didn't deserve his daughter. He agreed with me there, of course." "Nonsense!" interrupted Maud, with a happy laugh. "Not a bit of nonsense. We agreed that no one was good enough for you. But I told him I wanted that daughter very much indeed and, provided she was agreeable and was willing to wait until the war was over and I came back; taking it for granted, of course, that I--" He hesitated, bit his lip and looked apprehensively at Miss Hunniwell. Jed obligingly helped him over the thin ice. "Provided you come back a major general or--or a commodore or a corporal's guard or somethin'," he observed. "Yes," gratefully, "that's it. I'm sure to be a high private at least. Well, to cut it short, Jed, I told Captain Hunniwell all my past and my hopes and plans for the future. He was forgiving and forbearing and kinder than I had any right to expect. We understand each other now and he is willing, always provided that Maud is willing, too, to give me my opportunity to make good. That is all any one could ask." "Yes, I should say 'twas. . . . But Maud, how about her? You had consider'ble of a job makin' her see that you was worth waitin' for, I presume likely, eh?" Maud laughed and blushed and bade him behave himself. Jed demanded to be told more particulars concerning the enlisting. So Charles told the story of his Boston trip, while Maud looked and listened adoringly, and Jed, watching the young people's happiness, was, for the time, almost happy himself. When they rose to go Charlie laid a hand on Jed's shoulder. "I can't tell you," he said, "what a brick you've been through all this. If it hadn't been for you, old man, I don't know how it might have ended. We owe you about everything, Maud and I. You've been a wonder, Jed." Jed waved a deprecating hand. "Don't talk so, Charlie," he said, gruffly. "But, I tell you, I--" "Don't. . . . You see," with a twist of the lip, "it don't do to tell a--a screech owl he's a canary. He's liable to believe it by and by and start singin' in public. . . . Then he finds out he's just a fool owl, and has been all along. Humph! Me a wonder! . . . A blunder, you mean." Neither of the young people had ever heard him use that tone before. They both cried out in protest. "Look here, Jed--" began Phillips. Maud interrupted. "Just a moment, Charlie," she said. "Let me tell him what Father said last night. When he went out he left me crying and so miserable that I wanted to die. He had found Charlie's letter and we--we had had a dreadful scene and he had spoken to me as I had never heard him speak before. And, later, after he came back I was almost afraid to have him come into the room where I was. But he was just as different as could be. He told me he had been thinking the matter over and had decided that, perhaps, he had been unreasonable and silly and cross. Then he said some nice things about Charlie, quite different from what he said at first. And when we had made it all up and I asked him what had changed his mind so he told me it was you, Jed. He said he came to you and you put a flea in his ear. He wouldn't tell me what he meant, but he simply smiled and said you had put a flea in his ear." Jed, himself, could not help smiling faintly. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "I didn't use any sweet ile on the job, that's sartin. If he said I pounded it in with a club 'twouldn't have been much exaggeration." "So we owe you that, too," continued Maud. "And, afterwards, when Daddy and I were talking we agreed that you were probably the best man in Orham. There!" And she stooped impulsively and kissed him. Jed, very much embarrassed, shook his head. "That--er--insect I put in your pa's ear must have touched both your brains, I cal'late," he drawled. But he was pleased, nevertheless. If he was a fool it was something to have people think him a good sort of fool. It was almost four o'clock when Jed's next visitor came. He was the one man whom he most dreaded to meet just then. Yet he hid his feelings and rose with hand outstretched. "Why, good afternoon, Major!" he exclaimed. "Real glad to see you. Sit down." Grover sat. "Jed," he said, "Ruth tells me that you know of my good fortune. Will you congratulate me?" Jed's reply was calm and deliberate and he did his best to make it sound whole-hearted and sincere. "I sartin do," he declared. "Anybody that wouldn't congratulate you on that could swap his head for a billiard ball and make money on the dicker; the ivory he'd get would be better than the bone he gave away. . . . Yes, Major Grover, you're a lucky man." To save his life he could not entirely keep the shake from his voice as he said it. If Grover noticed it he put it down to the sincerity of the speaker. "Thank you," he said. "I realize my luck, I assure you. And now, Jed, first of all, let me thank you. Ruth has told me what a loyal friend and counselor you have been to her and she and I both are very, very grateful." Jed stirred uneasily. "Sho, sho!" he protested. "I haven't done anything. Don't talk about it, please. I--I'd rather you wouldn't." "Very well, since you wish it, I won't. But she and I will always think of it, you may be sure of that. I dropped in here now just to tell you this and to thank you personally. And I wanted to tell you, too, that I think we need not fear Babbitt's talking too much. Of course it would not make so much difference now if he did; Charlie will be away and doing what all decent people will respect him for doing, and you and I can see that Ruth does not suffer. But I think Babbitt will keep still. I hope I have frightened him; I certainly did my best." Jed rubbed his chin. "I'm kind of sorry for Phin," he observed. "Are you? For heaven's sake, why?" "Oh, I don't know. When you've been goin' around ever since January loaded up to the muzzle with spite and sure-thing vengeance, same as an old-fashioned horse pistol used to be loaded with powder and ball, it must be kind of hard, just as you're set to pull trigger, to have to quit and swaller the whole charge. Liable to give you dyspepsy, if nothin' worse, I should say." Grover smiled. "The last time I saw Babbitt he appeared to be nearer apoplexy than dyspepsia," he said. "Ye-es. Well, I'm sorry for him, I really am. It must be pretty dreadful to be so cross-grained that you can't like even your own self without feelin' lonesome. . . . Yes, that's a bad state of affairs. . . . I don't know but I'd almost rather be 'town crank' than that." The Major's farewell remark, made as he rose to go, contained an element of mystery. "I shall have another matter to talk over with you soon, Jed," he said. "But that will come later, when my plans are more complete. Good afternoon and thank you once more. You've been pretty fine through all this secret-keeping business, if you don't mind my saying so. And a mighty true friend. So true," he added, "that I shall, in all probability, ask you to assume another trust for me before long. I can't think of any one else to whom I could so safely leave it. Good-by." One more visitor came that afternoon. To be exact, he did not come until evening. He opened the outer door very softly and tiptoed into the living-room. Jed was sitting by the little "gas burner" stove, one knee drawn up and his foot swinging. There was a saucepan perched on top of the stove. A small hand lamp on the table furnished the only light. He did not hear the person who entered and when a big hand was laid upon his shoulder he started violently. "Eh?" he exclaimed, his foot falling with a thump to the floor. "Who? . . . Oh, it's you, ain't it, Sam? . . . Good land, you made me jump! I must be gettin' nervous, I guess." Captain Sam looked at him in some surprise. "Gracious king, I believe you are," he observed. "I didn't think you had any nerves, Jed. No, nor any temper, either, until last night. You pretty nigh blew me out of water then. Ho, ho!" Jed was much distressed. "Sho, sho, Sam," he stammered; "I'm awful sorry about that. I--I wasn't feelin' exactly--er--first rate or I wouldn't have talked to you that way. I--I--you know I didn't mean it, don't you, Sam?" The captain pulled forward a chair and sat down. He chuckled. "Well, I must say it did sound as if you meant it, Jed," he declared. "Yes, sir, I cal'late the average person would have been willin' to risk a small bet--say a couple of million--that you meant it. When you ordered me to go home I just tucked my tail down and went. Yes, sir, if you didn't mean it you had ME fooled. Ho, ho!" Jed's distress was keener than ever. "Mercy sakes alive!" he cried. "Did I tell you to go home, Sam? Yes, yes, I remember I did. Sho, sho! . . . Well, I'm awful sorry. I hope you'll forgive me. 'Twan't any way for a feller like me to talk--to you." Captain Sam's big hand fell upon his friend's knee with a stinging slap. "You're wrong there, Jed," he declared, with emphasis. "'Twas just the way for you to talk to me. I needed it; and," with another chuckle, "I got it, too, didn't I? Ho, ho!" "Sam, I snum, I--" "Sshh! You're goin' to say you're sorry again; I can see it in your eye. Well, don't you do it. You told me to go home and think, Jed, and those were just the orders I needed. I did go home and I did think. . . . Humph! Thinkin's a kind of upsettin' job sometimes, ain't it, especially when you sit right down and think about yourself, what you are compared to what you think you are. Ever think about yourself that way, Jed?" It was a moment before Jed answered. Then all he said was, "Yes." "I mean have you done it lately? Just given yourself right up to doin' it?" Jed sighed. "Ye-es," he drawled. "I shouldn't wonder if I had, Sam." "Well, probably 'twan't as disturbin' a job with you as 'twas for me. You didn't have as high a horse to climb down off of. I thought and thought and thought and the more I thought the meaner the way I'd acted and talked to Maud seemed to me. I liked Charlie; I'd gone around this county for months braggin' about what a smart, able chap he was. As I told you once I'd rather have had her marry him than anybody else I know. And I had to give in that the way he'd behaved--his goin' off and enlistin', settlin' that before he asked her or spoke to me, was a square, manly thing to do. The only thing I had against him was that Middleford mess. And I believe he's a GOOD boy in spite of it." "He is, Sam. That Middleford trouble wan't all his fault, by any means!" "I know. He told me this mornin'. Well, then, if he and Maud love each other, thinks I, what right have I to say they shan't be happy, especially as they're both willin' to wait? Why should I say he can't at least have his chance to make good? Nigh's I could make out the only reason was my pride and the big plans I'd made for my girl. I came out of my thinkin' spell with my mind made up that what ailed me was selfishness and pride. So I talked it over with her last night and with Charlie to-day. The boy shall have his chance. Both of 'em shall have their chance, Jed. They're happy and--well, I feel consider'ble better myself. All else there is to do is to just hope to the Lord it turns out right." "That's about all, Sam. And I feel pretty sure it's goin' to." "Yes, I know you do. Course those big plans of mine that I used to make--her marryin' some rich chap, governor or senator or somethin'--they're all gone overboard. I used to wish and wish for her, like a young-one wishin' on a load of hay, or the first star at night, or somethin'. But if we can't have our wishes, why--why-- then we'll do without 'em. Eh?" Jed rubbed his chin. "Sam," he said, "I've been doin' a little thinkin' myself. . . . Ye-es, consider'ble thinkin'. . . . Fact is, seems now as if I hadn't done anything BUT think since the world was cranked up and started turnin' over. And I guess there's only one answer. When we can't have our wishes then it's up to us to--to--" "Well, to what?" "Why, to stick to our jobs and grin, that's about all. 'Tain't much, I know, especially jobs like some of us have, but it's somethin'." Captain Sam nodded. "It's a good deal, Jed," he declared. "It's some stunt to grin--in these days." Jed rose slowly to his feet. He threw back his shoulders with the gesture of one determined to rid himself of a burden. "It is--it is so, Sam," he drawled. "But maybe that makes it a little more worth while. What do you think?" His friend regarded him thoughtfully. "Jed," he said, "I never saw anybody who had the faculty of seein' straight through to the common sense inside of things the way you have. Maud and I were talkin' about that last night. 'Go home and think and thank God,' you said to me. And that was what I needed to do. 'Enlist and you'll be independent,' you said to Charlie and it set him on the road. 'Stick to your job and grin,' you say now. How do you do it, Jed? Remember one time I told you I couldn't decide whether you was a dum fool or a King Solomon? I know now. Of the two of us I'm nigher to bein' the dum fool; and, by the gracious king, you ARE a King Solomon." Jed slowly shook his head. "Sam," he said, sadly, "if you knew what I know about me you'd . . . but there, you're talkin' wild. I was cal'latin' to have a cup of tea and you'd better have one, too. I'm heatin' some water on top of the stove now. It must be about ready." He lifted the saucepan from the top of the "gas burner" and tested the water with his finger. "Hum," he mused, "it's stone cold. I can't see why it hasn't het faster. I laid a nice fresh fire, too." He opened the stove door and looked in. "Hum . . ." he said, again. "Yes, yes . . . I laid it but, I--er-- hum . . . I forgot to light it, that's all. Well, that proves I'm King Solomon for sartin. Probably he did things like that every day or so. . . . Give me a match, will you, Sam?" CHAPTER XXII It had been a chill morning in early spring when Charlie Phillips went to Boston to enlist. Now it was a balmy evening in August and Jed sat upon a bench by his kitchen door looking out to sea. The breeze was light, barely sufficient to turn the sails of the little mills, again so thickly sprinkled about the front yard, or to cause the wooden sailors to swing their paddles. The August moon was rising gloriously behind the silver bar of the horizon. From the beach below the bluff came the light laughter of a group of summer young folk, strolling from the hotel to the post-office by the shore route. Babbie, who had received permission to sit up and see the moon rise, was perched upon the other end of the bench, Petunia in her arms. A distant drone, which had been audible for some time, was gradually becoming a steady humming roar. A few moments later and a belated hydro-aeroplane passed across the face of the moon, a dragon-fly silhouette against the shining disk. "That bumble-bee's gettin' home late," observed Jed. "The rest of the hive up there at East Harniss have gone to roost two or three hours ago. Wonder what kept him out this scandalous hour. Had tire trouble, think?" Barbara laughed. "You're joking again, Uncle Jed," she said. "That kind of aeroplane couldn't have any tire trouble, 'cause it hasn't got any tires." Mr. Winslow appeared to reflect. "That's so," he admitted, "but I don't know as we'd ought to count too much on that. I remember when Gabe Bearse had brain fever." This was a little deep for Babbie, whose laugh was somewhat uncertain. She changed the subject. "Oh!" she cried, with a wiggle, "there's a caterpillar right here on this bench with us, Uncle Jed. He's a fuzzy one, too; I can see the fuzz; the moon makes it shiny." Jed bent over to look. "That?" he said. "That little, tiny one? Land sakes, he ain't big enough to be more than a kitten-pillar. You ain't afraid of him, are you?" "No-o. No, I guess I'm not. But I shouldn't like to have him walk on me. He'd be so--so ticklesome." Jed brushed the caterpillar off into the grass. "There he goes," he said. "I've got to live up to my job as guardian, I expect. Last letter I had from your pa he said he counted on my lookin' out for you and your mamma. If he thought I let ticklesome kitten-pillars come walkin' on you he wouldn't cal'late I amounted to much." For this was the "trust" to which Major Grover had referred in his conversation with Jed. Later he explained his meaning. He was expecting soon to be called to active service "over there." Before he went he and Ruth were to be married. "My wife and Barbara will stay here in the old house, Jed," he said, "if you are willing. And I shall leave them in your charge. It's a big trust, for they're pretty precious articles, but they'll be safe with you." Jed looked at him aghast. "Good land of love!" he cried. "You don't mean it?" "Of course I mean it. Don't look so frightened, man. It's just what you've been doing ever since they came here, that's all. Ruth says she has been going to you for advice since the beginning. I just want her to keep on doing it." "But--but, my soul, I--I ain't fit to be anybody's guardian. . . . I--I ought to have somebody guardin' me. Anybody'll tell you that. . . . Besides, I--I don't think--" "Yes, you do; and you generally think right. Oh, come, don't talk any more about it. It's a bargain, of course. And if there's anything I can do for you on the other side, I'll be only too happy to oblige." Jed rubbed his chin. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "there's one triflin' thing I've been hankerin' to do myself, but I can't, I'm afraid. Maybe you can do it for me." "All right, what is the trifling thing?" "Eh? . . . Oh, that--er---Crown Prince thing. Do him brown, if you get a chance, will you?" Of course, the guardianship was, in a sense, a joke, but in another it was not. Jed knew that Leonard Grover's leaving his wife and Babbie in his charge was, to a certain extent, a serious trust. And he accepted it as such. "Has your mamma had any letters from the major the last day or so?" he inquired. Babbie shook her head. "No," she said, "but she's expecting one every day. And Petunia and I expect one, too, and we're just as excited about it as we can be. A letter like that is most par- particklesome exciting. . . . No, I don't mean particklesome--it was the caterpillar made me think of that. I mean partickle-ar exciting. Don't you think it is, Uncle Jed?" Captain Sam Hunniwell came strolling around the corner of the shop. Jed greeted him warmly and urged him to sit down. The captain declined. "Can't stop," he declared. "There's a letter for Maud from Charlie in to-night's mail and I want to take it home to her. Letters like that can't be held up on the way, you know." Charlie Phillips, too, was in France with his regiment. "I presume likely you've heard the news from Leander Babbitt, Jed?" asked Captain Sam. "About his bein' wounded? Yes, Gab flapped in at the shop this afternoon to caw over it. Said the telegram had just come to Phineas. I was hopin' 'twasn't so, but Eri Hedge said he heard it, too. . . . Serious, is it, Sam?" "They don't say, but I shouldn't wonder. The boy was hit by a shell splinter while doin' his duty with exceptional bravery, so the telegram said. 'Twas from Washin'ton, of course. And there was somethin' in it about his bein' recommended for one of those war crosses." Jed sat up straight on the bench. "You don't mean it!" he cried. "Well, well, well! Ain't that splendid! I knew he'd do it, too. 'Twas in him. Sam," he added, solemnly, "did I tell you I got a letter from him last week?" "From Leander?" "Yes. . . . And before I got it he must have been wounded. . . . Yes, sir, before I got his letter. . . . 'Twas a good letter, Sam, a mighty good letter. Some time I'll read it to you. Not a complaint in it, just cheerfulness, you know, and--and grit and confidence, but no brag." "I see. Well, Charlie writes the same way." "Ye-es. They all do, pretty much. Well, how about Phineas? How does the old feller take the news? Have you heard?" "Why, yes, I've heard. Of course I haven't talked with him. He'd no more speak to me than he would to the Evil One." Jed's lip twitched. "Why, probably not quite so quick, Sam," he drawled. "Phin ought to be on pretty good terms with the Old Scratch. I've heard him recommend a good many folks to go to him." "Ho, ho! Yes, that's so. Well, Jim Bailey told me that when Phin had read the telegram he never said a word. Just got up and walked into his back shop. But Jerry Burgess said that, later on, at the post-office somebody said somethin' about how Leander must be a mighty good fighter to be recommended for that cross, and Phineas was openin' his mail box and heard 'em. Jerry says old Phin turned and snapped out over his shoulder: 'Why not? He's my son, ain't he?' So there you are. Maybe that's pride, or cussedness, or both. Anyhow, it's Phin Babbitt." As the captain was turning to go he asked his friend a question. "Jed," he asked, "what in the world have you taken your front gate off the hinges for?" Jed, who had been gazing dreamily out to sea for the past few minutes, started and came to life. "Eh?" he queried. "Did--did you speak, Sam?" "Yes, but you haven't yet. I asked you what you took your front gate off the hinges for." "Oh, I didn't. I took the hinges off the gate." "Well, it amounts to the same thing. The gate's standin' up alongside the fence. What did you do it for?" Jed sighed. "It squeaked like time," he drawled, "and I had to stop it." "So you took the hinges off? Gracious king! Why didn't you ile 'em so they wouldn't squeak?" "Eh? . . . Oh, I did set out to, but I couldn't find the ile can. The only thing I could find was the screwdriver and at last I came to the conclusion the Almighty must have meant me to use it; so I did. Anyhow, it stopped the squeakin'." Captain Sam roared delightedly. "That's fine," he declared. "It does me good to have you act that way. You haven't done anything so crazy as that for the last six months. I believe the old Jed Winslow's come back again. That's fine." Jed smiled his slow smile. "I'm stickin' to my job, Sam," he said. "And grinnin'. Don't forget to grin, Jed." "W-e-e-ll, when I stick to MY job, Sam, 'most everybody grins." Babbie accompanied the captain to the place where the gate had been. Jed, left alone, hummed a hymn. The door of the little house next door opened and Ruth came out into the yard. "Where is Babbie?" she asked. "She's just gone as far as the sidewalk with Cap'n Sam Hunniwell," was Jed's reply. "She's all right. Don't worry about her." Ruth laughed lightly. "I don't," she said. "I know she is all right when she is with you, Jed." Babbie came dancing back. Somewhere in a distant part of the village a dog was howling dismally. "What makes that dog bark that way, Uncle Jed?" asked Babbie. Jed was watching Ruth, who had walked to the edge of the bluff and was looking off over the water, her delicate face and slender figure silver-edged by the moonlight. "Eh? . . . That dog?" he repeated. "Oh, he's barkin' at the moon, I shouldn't wonder." "At the moon? Why does he bark at the moon?" "Oh, he thinks he wants it, I cal'late. Wants it to eat or play with or somethin'. Dogs get funny notions, sometimes." Babbie laughed. "I, think he's awf'ly silly," she said. "He couldn't have the moon, you know, could he? The moon wasn't made for a dog." Jed, still gazing at Ruth, drew a long breath. "That's right," he admitted. The child listened to the lugubrious canine wails for a moment; then she said thoughtfully: "I feel kind of sorry for this poor dog, though. He sounds as if he wanted the moon just dreadf'ly." "Um . . . yes . . . I presume likely he thinks he does. But he'll feel better about it by and by. He'll realize that, same as you say, the moon wasn't made for a dog. Just as soon as he comes to that conclusion, he'll be a whole lot better dog. . . . Yes, and a happier one, too," he added, slowly. Barbara did not speak at once and Jed began to whistle a doleful melody. Then the former declared, with emphasis: "I think SOME dogs are awf'ly nice." "Um? . . . What? . . . Oh, you do, eh?" She snuggled close to him on the bench. "I think you're awf'ly nice, too, Uncle Jed," she confided. Jed looked down at her over his spectacles. "Sho! . . . Bow, wow!" he observed. Babbie burst out laughing. Ruth turned and came toward them over the dew-sprinkled grass. "What are you laughing at, dear?" she asked. "Oh, Uncle Jed was so funny. He was barking like a dog." Ruth smiled. "Perhaps he feels as if he were our watchdog, Babbie," she said. "He guards us as if he were." Babbie hugged her back-step-uncle's coat sleeve. "He's a great, big, nice old watchdog," she declared. "We love him, don't we, Mamma?" Jed turned his head to listen. "Hum . . ." he drawled. "That dog up town has stopped his howlin'. Perhaps he's beginnin' to realize what a lucky critter he is." As usual, Babbie was ready with a question. "Why is he lucky, Uncle Jed?" she asked. "Why? Oh, well, he . . . he can LOOK at the moon, and that's enough to make any dog thankful."