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Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape Cod

by James A. Cooper · English · Gutenberg #14563 · 469,364 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape Cod

Author: James A. Cooper

Illustrator: Robert Emmett Owen


        
Release date: January 2, 2005 [eBook #14563]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHEILA OF BIG WRECK COVE: A STORY OF CAPE COD ***

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

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