Cap'n Jonah's fortune
Date: 2025-03-10T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Cape Cod (Mass.) -- Fiction

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Title: Cap'n Jonah's fortune

A story of Cape Cod

Author: James A. Cooper

Illustrator: A. O. Scott

Release date: March 10, 2025 [eBook #75584]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: George Sully and Company, 1919

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75584

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAP'N JONAH'S FORTUNE ***

Cap'n Jonah's Fortune

A STORY OF CAPE COD

BY JAMES A. COOPER

ILLUSTRATED BY
A. O. SCOTT

NEW YORK
GEORGE SULLY AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1919, by
GEORGE SULLY AND COMPANY

All rights reserved

Printed in U. S. A.

BOOKS BY JAMES A. COOPER

Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper
Cap'n Jonah's Fortune

CONTENTS

I. | Pearl of the Clothesline
II. | A Blind Young Man
III. | Cap'n Jonah Settles Down
IV. | Tom Petty Reveals Himself
V. | "Better a Dinner of Herbs"
VI. | Romance and Pearl Holden
VII. | Getting Acquainted
VIII. | The Bald Truth
IX. | A Shell Road Idyl
X. | "Pearly"
XI. | An Evening with Cap'n Abe
XII. | The Apostate Santa Claus
XIII. | Fair and Foul Weather
XIV. | Veering Winds
XV. | Misunderstandings
XVI. | The Allegory
XVII. | The Strong Box
XVIII. | Sarah Petty Trims Her Sails
XIX. | The High Hand
XX. | The Root of All Evil
XXI. | The Wise Men Out of the South
XXII. | The Sting of Hypocrisy
XXIII. | The Christmas Gale
XXIV. | The Mistletoe Bough
XXV. | The Price of Heroism
XXVI. | Cap'n Jonah's Challenge
XXVII. | A Rift in the Clouds
XXVIII. | All About a Bad Smell
XXIX. | Christmas Eve at Cap'n Abe's
XXX. | "Christmas Gift"

ILLUSTRATIONS

"My goodness! Comp'ny?" gasped Pearl, staring wide-eyed at the broadly smiling visitor
"Belay that!" he commanded in a deep sea growl
One after another Cap'n Jonah called off the amount on the certificates
He swung to her side, landed with both boots digging into the frozen sand for a foothold

CAP'N JONAH'S FORTUNE

CHAPTER I

PEARL OF THE CLOTHESLINE

Washy Gallup, who was general handy man along the Shell Road, came wheeling a barrow past Liphalet Truitt's and the Mariner's Chapel from the direction of Cardhaven proper and the docks. On the barrow was an iron-strapped sea-chest, of a bright blue color and with tarred rope handles.

"Wal, Cap'n, we're nigh to your anchorage," Washy declared, setting down the barrow to spit on his hands.

"Yes, yes! I reckernize the channel buoys. That's Orrin Petty's place on our weather bow, ain't it?"

The speaker, who closely followed Washy and the barrow, would have attracted attention anywhere, certainly here on the Shell Road had it not been that hour of the afternoon when most of the neighborhood womenfolk were engaged in supper preparations and were not, therefore, in sight of the highway.

He was a solidly built man without being at all pursy. He had wind-bitten cheeks and a flame in his black eyes that belied his age. Although he walked with a cane and his hair and beard were gray, there was a brisk air about the man that at the very start seemed to reduce his actual age by half a score of years.

A fringe of whisker framed his mahogany face and his lips were cleanly shaven. Nowhere out of Ireland save in longshore communities or among old-fashioned seafaring men are these "galways" still popular. He was dressed in a pilot-cloth suit, much wrinkled from lying, in all probability, for more than one voyage in that same chest that Washy Gallup now proceeded to wheel before him.

"Here we be, Cap'n," observed Washy finally, turning into the lane that led to the house already identified.

"I see! I see!" agreed the mariner, staring curiously at the high-shouldered, unpainted frame dwelling which stood with an unsocial end to the road.

But there was a pleasant side yard into which the lane led—grassy, with trees bordering it and a clothes'-drying green in the middle. There was a girl taking clothes from the lines in this yard and it was upon her the visitor's gaze became fixed.

She was of a slim figure, yet with prettily rounded limbs, as he could easily see while she stood with the fresh breeze blowing the scant gingham frock about her. Her arms were bare almost to her shoulders, displaying dimpled elbows and wrists. The short skirt became even shorter as she stood on tip-toes to reach a particularly obdurate clothespin, and the turn of her leg and ankle was as trim as that of a yacht's spars.

The neck of the simple frock she wore was cut square. As she turned toward the two men approaching, there was revealed the rising and falling of her full bosom—like the swell of the sea itself before a storm. But her face, save the dimpled, pink chin, was smothered in an enormous sunbonnet.

"Where's your Uncle Orrin, Pearly?" asked Washy, dropping the handles of the wheelbarrow once more.

The girl let fall the last garment she had taken from the line—a voluminous blue starched skirt—into the clothesbasket and vigorously punched it into smaller compass. Then she stood up again to face her questioner. The captain obtained a flashing glimpse of clouded dark eyes and little, even white teeth between full red lips.

"He isn't my uncle!" said the girl with emphasis. "He's my mother's step-brother's cousin-by-marriage, Orrin Petty is. And if I had any livin' relative in the world to go to, I'd leave here just as fast as I could travel, Washy Gallup—so there!"

"Hoity-toity!" murmured Washy. "What's dragged anchor an' gone to sea on this tide, I want to know? Where's Orrin?"

There was a flurry of tears in the girl's voice as she uttered her emphatic speech. She jerked another starched piece from the line and crowded it with the clothespins into the basket.

"He isn't at home; nor Miz Petty; nor Tom. They all went to the county fair down to Harwich."

"I snum! And left you to home, did they?" ejaculated Washy, suddenly seeing a great light.

"And I made this very dress to go to the fair in," confided Pearl. "Got the pattern out of the Ladies' Home Provider. And I picked out the very prettiest bolt of gingham Cap'n Abe had in his store. Now I've washed in it, and I'm going to iron in it. This was the day I meant to wear it, and I have wore it!"

She snapped her pretty teeth together on this remark and jerked back her sunbonnet so that the captain could see her face. Despite the storm upon it, it was well worth seeing, as he was confident it would be. With all her fairness of skin and almost flaxen hair, Pearl's eyes were dark, and smoldering now with indignation.

The situation was too much for Washy. He had no further comment to make. But he waved an introductory hand toward the silent man in the pilot-cloth suit.

"This here's Cap'n Jonah Hand, Miz Petty's uncle," he said. "He's come to visit a spell. Come up on the two-master from Chatham, and fouled my hawse at Durgin's dock. So I helped him over with his chist."

"My goodness! Comp'ny?" gasped Pearl, staring wide-eyed at the broadly smiling visitor. "And there isn't a thing baked in the house but doughnuts!"

"My goodness! Comp'ny?" gasped Pearl, staring wide-eyed at the broadly smiling visitor.

"Wal," observed Cap'n Jonah Hand, slowly, "I reckon I can fare on them, seein's I ain't set a tooth into one for many a long year. 'Way 'cross the world in Chinese waters, I took a hankerin' last year for 'fried holes,' as we used to call 'em when I was a boy. I told Ming, my Chinese cook, how they'd ought to be made, and he tackled 'em. Ming was putty nigh the bravest feller I ever did see. He'd tackle anything.

"When he got through with them doughnuts you could have used 'em for grommets. They warn't nothin' fit for a man's stomach. Don't worry about feedin' me, gal. I had a snack before I got off the Chatham schooner."

"You come right in, sir," said Pearl, recovering from her surprise and her natural Cape hospitality asserting itself. "You give him a hand with his chist, Washy."

She tripped up the steps in advance and opened the green slatted door. It was cool and dark in the hall, promising an interior speckless and flyless. There was barely light enough by which the two men might stumble up the ingrain-carpeted stair.

Pearl threw open the door of the guest room with a flourish. Its white and blue braided mats and counterpane to match, made the darkened chamber seem invitingly cool. Pearl seized the blue-banded water pitcher and went down to the pump while Cap'n Jonah paid Washy for his assistance.

She returned with the brimming pitcher and a cake of home-molded soap. There were already towels hanging upon the washstand rack.

"You come right down, sir, when you've freshened up," the girl said. "I'll put the coffee pot over and you can sample the doughnuts. Miz Petty and the others won't be home till late, like enough."

"All right, my gal," replied Cap'n Jonah. "But don't you go for to put yourself out none. I've seen lots worse quarters than these, I do assure you."

She descended the stairs and closed the door after Washy, who was already trundling the barrow down the lane. She desired to ask a few questions of the gossipy Mr. Gallup about Cap'n Jonah Hand; but she would not run after Washy.

Taking down the remainder of the clotheslines' burden she pressed down the running-over basket and, seizing it by its two handles, started for the kitchen door. The basket was so big and the wash so bulky that Pearl was very nearly hidden from sight as she came up the steps of the porch.

Cap'n Jonah had quickly made his toilet and found his way down to the kitchen. Pearl heard the latch of the screen door lifted and his voice say:

"You've got consider'ble of a haul there, ain't you?"

She set the basket down on one of the broad tables, panting and laughing. Her indignation seemed to have evaporated. The sunbonnet had fallen back, hanging by its strings tied under her chin. She had a lot of fluffy hair, and it was braided in two plaits which hung below her waist.

Hers was not a childish looking face, however, for her eyes had a steady, direct expression and her lips were molded in firm lines.

"How old be you, gal?" asked the captain.

"Goin' on eighteen. Miz Petty makes out I'm not seventeen yet. But I remember how old I was when I came here, and I know she can't keep me after I'm eighteen, if I don't want to stay."

"I take it you're not happy 'long o' Sarah Petty?"

"Do you reckon anybody'd be happy with Miz Petty? Tom's the only person on top of this foot-stool she's re'lly fond of; and she 'most nags him to death."

"Hum!" commented the captain. There did not seem much else to say. Yet, for the sake of sociability, he ventured: "So you'd like to get away from Sarah?"

"I'd have gone to the Cardhaven Inn to work this season, takin' Gusty Durgin's place—she that's gone to be a moving picture actress—" said Pearl briskly, "only Miz Petty said I couldn't. She claims me till I'm eighteen. Unless I get married before that time."

"Whatever!" gasped Cap'n Jonah. "You don't mean to say you're thinking of getting merried—a gal like you?"

"What girl doesn't think of it—even if she hasn't a living chance?" demanded Pearl, in her crisp, assertive way. "Of course I'm thinking of it; but that isn't saying I'm likely to be anything but a sour-cranberry old maid. That's what most of us Cape Cod girls turn out to be. There aren't men enough—real men, I mean—on the Cape to go 'round."

She dimpled, and her expression took all the sting out of her words. She was a pretty girl—the prettiest girl Cap'n Jonah remembered ever to have seen. Being a childless widower, for many years he had "paid little attention to the sect," as he frequently stated. But there was a freshness and sweetness about Pearl, in addition to her physical gifts, that charmed the old sea captain.

She stirred the fire, set the kettle forward to boil, and measured the aromatic coffee—as it seemed, all in one motion. Her activity and litheness delighted his seaman's eye.

"A tidy craft!" he muttered admiringly. There was a wistful thought in the captain's mind, too. He wished he had been vouchsafed a daughter like this girl.

"What's your name, Pearly?" he asked. "'Tain't Petty, I warrant."

"No, sir. My name's Pearl Holden. The Holdens belong Paulmouth way. But there aren't any of 'em belonging to me—worse luck! Orrin Petty put in a claim for me after my maw's sister—Aunt Becky—died, and the selectmen let him have me. Bein' parceled out like you belonged to a litter of puppies isn't as pleasant as you might think it."

"No. I guess not. I'd ought to know, too," said the captain. "I was bound out myself when I was a little skeezicks. But I run away and went to sea. Not that I bettered myself much by so doing—not for a spell," and he shook his head thoughtfully.

"I guess bad luck stuck to me like a barnacle, 'cause of my name. You'd think they'd make it a crime punishable by law to give the name of 'Jonah' to a helpless child. But 'twas taken out of the Bible, and therefore bound to be a good one, my folks thought like enough. I heard of a Cape Cod man once that was named Beelzebub for the same reason."

"I guess you've found," said the practical Pearl, "that a name isn't of much importance after all. Folks can be what they've a mind to be, I guess. Your name, for instance, didn't keep you from risin' to the quarterdeck."

"No. I riz in spite of it," the visitor said complacently.

He sat down at one end of the deal table where Pearl had spread a snowy napkin. In rapid succession she set before him cold baking-powder biscuit, as white and fluffy as down; a golden square of butter on a flowered plate; a wedge of creamy cheese; and a bowl heaped with flaky brown rings—the delight of the hearty appetite and despair of the dyspeptic.

"Them look some diff'rent from Ming's," said the captain dryly.

He "tucked away" a hearty meal and drank his third cup of coffee before he rose from the table. Pearl was busy sprinkling the clothes. She rolled each large piece tightly, finishing with a capable thump of her dimpled fist. The slanting rays of the sun touched her hair, revealing golden strands in it.

Cap'n Jonah seemed rather uncertain in his mind when he pushed his chair back to the wall after brushing the doughnut crumbs from his blue vest to the table. He stood at the screen door, looking out into the yard and to the vista of white shell road that led seaward.

Finally he drew from his pocket a battered silver box, the lid of which he snapped open. But the box was just as empty as he knew it to be.

"I say, Pearly," he said hopefully, "didn't I hear you speak of some store 'round here?"

"Cap'n Abe's; yes, sir," replied the girl. "Right down the road there."

"Does he sell anything besides caliker for dresses and other folderols?"

"Why, Cap'n Abe sells most ev'rything," laughed the girl. "From a thimble to a bow anchor, I do believe."

"Tobacker?"

"Of course. And snuff, Cap'n Hand. I see that's a snuff box in your hand."

"Ye-as. I do drift kinder to snuff when I can get it," confessed the captain. "Ye see, for many a v'y'ge I carried passengers, an' a feller can't smoke on duty nor yet chew in the presence of lady passengers. But they tell me kings and cardinals have used snuff; so I reckon it's allowable for an old sea cap'n. I'll step down the road and see what this storekeeper ye speak of carries in my line."

He set his glazed hat carefully upon his head, got his cane, and stepped through the kitchen doorway into the evening sunlight.

CHAPTER II

A BLIND YOUNG MAN

Willy Peeble's autocar brought the Petty family home from the Paulmouth depot.

Orrin Petty, who was notoriously as close as the skin to an eel, would never have willingly agreed to such an expense. But county fair day was the one day in the year when his wife put her foot down and insisted upon the family making what the son, Tom, called "a splurge."

At Harwich Fair they were sure to meet all the Pettys that were worth meeting, as well as many of Mrs. Petty's girlhood friends. Harwich was a long way from Cardhaven, and Cape Cod folk are not given to useless "visiting around." The neighbors well knew Orrin's cheese-paring ways and Sarah's temper, as well as Tom Petty's utter uselessness. But the family had a reputation to keep up with their relatives and friends at a distance.

So Sarah Petty thought. That was one reason why Pearl had been left at home. Mrs. Orrin Petty wanted no poor relation tagging them around at the fair. Besides, Pearly's skimpy wardrobe might be difficult to explain in the light of the rest of the family flaunting their Sunday best.

Mrs. Petty was a little, trig, birdlike woman, with all the scrappy temper of that curse of birddom, the English sparrow. She hopped out of the autocar, paid Willy Peebles his fare to a penny—and no more—and went into the house clacking smart heels, while Orrin and Tom followed more slowly, laden with samples, prize packets, catalogs, and that wealth of useless lumber always to be gathered at a county fair.

The menfolk were rather glum. Orrin because of the heavy expenses of the day; Tom for a secret trouble that bore upon his soul. But Sarah Petty was as spry and spiteful as usual.

"What I want to know first of all, Pearl Holden, is why them blinds is open?" she demanded bustling into the house.

Pearl was just rolling the last piece of the huge wash into a hard damp ball, and she tucked it down into the tightly packed basket with vigor. She asked, however, quite mildly:

"What blinds, Miz Petty?"

"Them best room blinds, with the sun pourin' in all aft'noon onto my new rugs and that counterpane."

"I didn't know he did that," said Pearl composedly.

"Who d'you mean—'he'?" Then she almost screamed as she saw the empty plates and the coffee pot. "Who you been feedin', Pearl Holden? At my expense, too, and jest as soon as my back's turned. Some tramp?"

"It's your uncle," Pearl explained, and it seemed that for once Mrs. Petty could neither irritate nor browbeat her.

"My what?"

"Your Uncle Jonah. Cap'n Jonah Hand," said Pearl placidly. "He's come to stop a spell. Brought his chest. Him and Washy Gallup took it up to the best chamber."

"Them two tramps a-trackin' up the front stairs and that best room?" shrieked Mrs. Petty, falling into a kitchen chair and staring at Pearl as though she thought the girl had taken leave of her senses.

"Where would you have me put your uncle? In the woodshed?" asked Pearl, with much more courage than usual. "He looks perfectly respectable to me. And he's your own uncle."

"Who's this is your own uncle?" demanded Orrin Petty, coming heavily into the kitchen and piling his armful of trash on the table.

"Jonah Hand. You've heard of him enough, Orrin Petty," said his wife rather breathlessly. "And you'll remember he was here once—years ago, when Tommy was a baby."

"That's all right, then," said her husband. "He don't visit often."

"But he writ me last year he thought of givin' up follerin' the sea and comin' here to Cardhaven to settle down."

"Goshamighty!"

"I never thought the old fool would take me up," said Sarah Petty viciously. "But I wrote him he'd be welcome."

"You did? Was you crazy?" demanded Orrin, his pale eyes suddenly firing. "You reckon on havin' your pauper relations come here to live on us?"

"Don't you say nothin' like that to me, Orrin Petty!" flared his wife. "There's paupers on your side of the family, too," and she glanced significantly at Pearl.

The girl was too used to such unkind remarks to take open offense.

"Besides," added Sarah Petty with hesitation, "Uncle Jonah Hand might make some trouble for us, Orrin. I dunno. Where is he, Pearl?"

"He just stepped down to Cap'n Abe's store to buy him some snuff."

"Faugh! I might ha' knowed he'd be a nasty, old sailor, full o' filthy habits."

"Well," drawled Master Tom, who was a lout of a youth several years older than Pearl, "I reckon Pop and I can set his chist out in the lane, if you say so, Marm."

"I—I dunno's that's best," said the woman, again strangely uncertain for so assured a character. She turned sharply upon Pearl, whose ears might be more acute than she cared to have them for the moment. "Take that clothes-basket into the storeroom. It's little you've been doing to-day, I can see, you good-for-nothing. Not a scrap of the wash as yet ironed. And you flaunting that new dress. Hurry back, now, and draw the tea. I'm famished for a cup."

She gave her attention swiftly to the two men as soon as Pearl left the room.

"This Uncle Jonah, now," she hissed. "You remember well enough, Orrin. I told you all about it when father died and I fell heir to what he had. The money I got from him just about paid for the building of this house."

"Wal, ye needn't throw it up to me so often. I know it," Orrin said glumly enough.

"I'm talking about Jonah Hand now," snapped his wife. "He lent father a power of money years and years ago. It was two thousand dollars. Uncle Jonah had just sold his sheer in the Wildwind brig. Father put his name on a rascal's note an' got into trouble. Father was dreadful easy that-a-way, an' I guess Uncle Jonah was like him.

"Anyway, Jonah Hand lent him the two thousand without a written scrap of paper between 'em. But afterward father was silly enough to send Uncle Jonah his note for the amount. He never paid no interest to Uncle Jonah, and Uncle Jonah never presented the note for payment; but if it's in existence yet he might ask for an accounting of father's estate."

"Goshamighty!" ejaculated Orrin.

"That note wouldn't be good in law after this time," squealed Tom hopefully.

"You don't know that," snarled his father. "That's only one of your smart-Aleck sayings."

"Anyway," said Sarah Petty, wringing her hands on her narrow knees, "he could make it awful unpleasant for us if he wanted to—Uncle Jonah could. Ev'rybody would know about it. What would your A'nt Apollo Heath say, Orrin? And Enoch Petty, he that's a State legislator? No, no! 'Twill never do to get the ill will of Uncle Jonah."

"What are you going to do, then, Marm?" asked the curious Tom.

"This dratted girl!" said Sarah Petty. "Mebbe she did just the right thing for once. She put him in my best room. He's been treated nice right at the start, I must say. He can't make no complaint that we didn't meet him as relations should. If we treat him pleasant, but hint how it's sort o' puttin' us out, his being here, mebbe he'll make his visit and go, an' leave us in peace."

Orrin Petty had been thinking. Rather, he had been scheming. Orrin seldom put his wits to work unless his intent was for his own betterment and to the undoing of somebody else.

"Hush-a-that, Sarah!" he said. "What's this Uncle Jonah of yourn been all his life?"

"Seafarin', I tell ye."

"Before the mast?"

"Owned his own craft, or had sheers in 'em. Been master of ships since before Tommy was born," Sarah said. "I know that much."

"We know another thing," said the scheming Orrin. "If he 'cumulated two thousand dollars to lend your father once't, he might well have 'cumulated more since that time. Ye don't know what he's mebbe got laid away. Lots o' them old salts line their nests mighty well. Look at 'Liphalet Truitt—and him only a steward all the years he went to sea. Ain't you this here Uncle Jonah's only livin' rel'tive?"

The three Pettys looked at each other silently for a full minute. They knew each other's minds so well that some things needed not to be said at all between them. Pearl came back into the kitchen and bustled about the stove with the preparations for supper.

"Well, of course," Sarah Petty said in an entirely different tone, "Uncle Jonah's an old man now, and we air his only relatives. It's true. And it's quite according that he should come here to stay—for a while, anyway.

"You be polite to him, Tommy. Better set the table with the gold-banded china to-night, Pearl. I'll beat up a mess of sour-milk pancakes. I warrant Uncle Jonah ain't had nothing like 'em on shipboard. An' step lively for once't—do!"

For Pearl was staring at her, round-eyed. Sarah Petty's wind had shifted so startlingly that the girl felt quite confounded.

Cap'n Jonah Hand strode down the Shell Road, his cane tapping smartly and his blue-coated figure very erect. There was a nattiness in the captain's appearance not always found among masters in the merchant marine. His experience had been as varied as any skipper's who ever sailed from the Cape; but as he told Pearl, for many years he was master of passenger-carrying craft, and a certain behavior is demanded of a man in that position.

On his quarterdeck and sitting at the head of his table in the saloon-cabin, Cap'n Jonah must display a courtesy, even an urbanity, not usually demanded of merchant skippers. A certain dignity sat upon Cap'n Jonah's countenance, and his manner impressed all who even casually met him.

He came to the wide-porched store, over the steps of which was nailed the weather-beaten sign:

A. SILT
General Merchandise

There was nobody on the porch, but the two-leaved door to the store was open. Inside was a rusty-legged stove, in which a handful of fire burned despite the warmth of the late October sun. It was cool indoors and a little damp.

Before the visitor mounted the steps he saw that a full quorum of the Loungers' Club held sway around Cap'n Abe's stove. The few decrepit armchairs, as well as several boxes, an overturned nail keg or two, and even an upended chopping block were occupied by an audience that listened with more or less impatience to a booming voice that dominated them in spite of themselves.

"There the Betsy Brown was, hove to and with a sea-anchor to lee'ard, kickin' up didoes like one o' these busted broncos ye hear tell of in the Wild West shows. There warn't a feller aboard but the supercargo that warn't down with the fever, an' he didn't scurcely know the maintruck from the keelson.

"He didn't durst tetch the tiller, nor bear a hand with sheet nor halyard. All he could do was to drag himself by aid of a lubberline from fo'c'stle to after cabin, and give the hands and the afterguard water to drink. Water and ship's biscuit soaked in it was all the hull ship's comp'ny put past their lips for two endurin' weeks.

"Yes, sir! The old Betsy Brown strained every timber in her frame an' when the crew began to crawl about deck again—naught but skeletons of what they had been—the water was seepin' through half a hundred seams, with the bilge oozing through the lower deck-planks. Her cargo of box-shooks was 'bout all that kep' her afloat.

"You kin figger," went on the voice, "in what shape the crew was for a spell at the pumps and caulkin' ship, even when the sea and gale went down. It would ha' been a mess in a dead ca'm——

"Af'noon, sir! What can I do for you?"

The booming voice changed instantly to the brisk challenge of the merchant. Through the brown gloom of the place the visitor saw the guernsey-coated figure of the man behind the hacked counter, his hairy fists resting easily upon it. Above his torso thus revealed was a sweeping beard, humorous and twinkling blue eyes, and a pair of silver-bowed spectacles pushed high upon a very bald forehead. The storekeeper wore an old tarpaulin stuck upon the back of his head, and altogether made a very salt-flavored picture indeed.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he repeated, leaving his audience to wait with more or less apathy for the remainder of his tale.

The group around the stove divided to allow Cap'n Jonah to stride through. The stock in trade of this seamanlike looking storekeeper was of such variety, and in such quantity, that there was not much room in the passage to the counter. As Pearl Holden had intimated, Cap'n Abe's stock included an incongruous collection of wares.

Here hung oilskins and guernseys, hats and caps with strings of ear-muffs and woolen mittens and "wristers" for winter work on the banks. Flannel shirts and jumpers, with overalls of dungaree, and even a lone dress-shirt, fly-specked, but still highly polished, aided in making a forest of clothing at one side of the room, and quite shrouding the show window.

Piled on the other side of the stove was a miscellany of hardware of a nautical nature, with oars, oarlocks in clusters, lanterns plain and those in gimbals, a small capstan or two—indeed, a multitudinous collection of ship-chandlery in which one might find the furnishings of a dozen fashions of small craft. On the counter and on the shelves behind it were piled groceries and drygoods, fishing tackle and garden supplies, woodenware and crockery, in an equally confusing and astonishing variety.

The loiterers in the store who made way for the newcomer gazed at him with more or less curiosity. The storekeeper bustled away for the snuff for which Cap'n Jonah asked.

"That come in fresh this week," he said, returning with the snuff. "I keep that kind pertic'lar for Marm Coe who lives out yonder on the Neck. It's what keeps her alive, she says; and as she's got a round sum o' money laid away I expect her nephews an' nieces wish't I couldn't buy no more of it," and Cap'n Abe chuckled, "for they'll never git a smell of her fortune while Marm Coe's on airth."

Cap'n Jonah opened the packet and poured the snuff into his silver box. Then he took a pinch neatly, sneezed with gusto, and wiped his nose with a spotless silk handkerchief.

"Yes; I allow that's the stuff," he said.

"You're Cap'n Jonah Hand, ain't you?" observed the storekeeper with quite as much cordiality as curiosity. "Washy Gallup was speakin' of you jest now. You're stoppin' up at Orrin Petty's?"

Cap'n Jonah acknowledged these facts. The bewhiskered storekeeper waved an introductory hand.

"I'd like to make you acquainted, Cap'n Hand, with Cap'n Joab Beecher, once master of the clipper-built Ivanhoe." The crippled Cap'n Joab arose with the help of his cane to give the newcomer a hearty handshake.

"And here's Mr. 'Liphalet Truitt, as sailed steward many a v'y'ge in the Blue Ball Line o' windjammers. 'Liphalet's settled down here on the Shell Road, too. You old salts'll find much in common to talk about, I ain't a doubt.

"These other fellers, Cap'n Hand," the storekeeper went on to say, "air Milt Baker an' Amiel Perdue, an'——Scuse me, Mr. Helmford!" He indicated a tall young man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles who stood back against a showcase, taking in the scene with quiet enjoyment. He was not of longshore origin, it was evident; yet he did not hold himself apart from the group around Cap'n Abe's stove.

"Mr. Helmford," pursued Cap'n Abe, "is skipper of the fish hatchery the United States Government's located up Salt Creek. We old hardshells sort of admire Mr. Helmford 'cause we've found out he knows more about fish than even we do; and we calc'lated before he come that we knowed a plenty."

"Don't spread the butter too thick, Cap'n Abe," said Helmford, good-naturedly, coming forward with an outstretched hand for Cap'n Jonah. He was a pleasant looking young fellow, although his features were rather gaunt and by no means handsome. Behind the round glasses his eyes twinkled merrily; but his high, broad brow was that of the dreamer.

Cap'n Abe did not overwhelm the visitor with attentions. He swung back into the moving tale of the Betsy Brown almost at once:

"So, as I was sayin', the hull crew an' the supercargo had their work cut out for them on board that Betsy Brown. When the sea went down——"

"I reckon Mandy'll be lookin' for me," observed the hatchet-faced Milt Baker, working his way toward the door. "Comin', Amiel?"

"Yep. It's getting' chore time," agreed his particular crony.

"You're right for onc't, Amiel. It's time I catted my anchor an' made sail," said Cap'n Beecher. "The missus'll be flyin' signals if I don't."

"I calc'late I'll ha'f to be goin,' too," said 'Liphalet Truitt. "It's prayer an' conference meetin' night, and they'll expect me to ring the chapel bell and light up. Gimme my package, Cap'n Abe."

The company around the stove broke up so quickly that Cap'n Abe was left almost with his mouth open between sentences.

"Hi-mighty!" he ejaculated, "I was jest goin' to tell you fellers the wind-up of that story."

"My cracky, Cap'n Abe," observed Milt, as he slid out through the doorway, "you don't mean to say there is a wind-up to that yarn, do ye?"

Young Helmford was chuckling softly to himself as he strolled out of the store beside Cap'n Jonah.

"Whatever!" gasped the latter. "What's the matter with that feller? He had his ship hove to with a sea-anchor out. What d'you know about that, young man?"

"Not much, Cap'n Hand," answered Helmford, "for I am no sailor, I am sorry to say. I wouldn't know how to 'heave to' in any case."

"Why," said the old man, "on a craft like what I s'pose that Betsy Brown was, to heave to ye'd put the tiller down, brail up the fores'l, haul aft the weather jib sheet, and put the main boom amidships. Unless she'd lost her rudder no navigator would use a sea-anchor to bring her head up into the wind. Simple enough."

"I presume that's so," admitted Helmford, glancing at the briskly speaking master mariner curiously. "But it's all Greek to me, Captain."

"Ye-as. I s'pose it is," Cap'n Jonah said. "So you hatch fish for a livin', do ye? An' that's all Greek to me. I allus had an idee fish did their own hatchin' and could 'tend to it right an' proper without no help from Government sharps."

Helmford continued to smile. "You know almost everything in this world will stand improvement—and a man knows more than a fish."

"Hum! Does he?" rejoined Cap'n Jonah dryly. "He's never l'arned to swim as good as a fish. I turn up here, young feller," and he halted at the Petty lane. Pearl came out on the porch and waved her hand to Cap'n Jonah. The late supper was ready. "Tidy craft that, I do say!" murmured the captain; gazing admiringly at Pearl's trim figure and flushed face as she stood there in the afterglow of the sunset.

"What?" responded the young man, unappreciatively. "Oh, yes. Mr. Orrin Petty's place is one of the most attractive along the Shell Road." Cap'n Jonah stared at him. "Well, good-night, Captain Hand. I am glad to have met you."

"Good-night!" grunted the captain, shortly. Then he stared after the tall, rather round-shouldered figure as it swung up the road with never a backward glance. "Whatever!" he exclaimed vigorously. "That young feller needs somethin' stronger than them goggles of his'n to make him see what's wuth seein' along this road. Why, he's blind!"

CHAPTER III

CAP'N JONAH SETTLES DOWN

"Well, Uncle!" exclaimed Sarah Petty, meeting the old man at the door with outstretched hand and a sharp smile upon her sharper face. "You air a stranger! You come clean across the world to see us."

"Wal, I was in the China trade last," admitted Cap'n Jonah; "so naturally I had to come a fur ways to get to Cardhaven. I come through the canal. Whatever! that's a snorting big job. I got to Boston on a fruit steamer; and then I caught a trawler goin' down to Chatham and me an' my chist come up from there on the freightin' schooner."

He had entered the kitchen now and released Sarah's hand to take Orrin's. The latter said in lieu of too warm a greeting, for Orrin's was a cautious soul: "Why didn't you come down from Boston by rail? The steam cars bring ye a sight quicker, even if the fare is somethin' more."

"No," said Cap'n Jonah. "I never go nowhere by these railroads if I can help it. Ye never know when the b'iler's like to bust or the hull contraption run off the track."

"Hoh!" snorted Tom in the background. "Marm said you'd sailed master o' steam vessels. Warn't you afraid of the boiler's bustin' on them?"

"Now, Tom!" fluttered his mother.

"I could keep away from the b'ilers on them iron pots I was master of," said Cap'n Jonah, dryly. "And there's plenty of leeway in the open sea. Wal, Orrin, I see the Haven's much as it looked aforetime, when I was here. I liked the look of it then."

"Do you calc'late on stayin' quite a spell?" queried the anxious Mr. Petty.

"I'm a-goin' to settle down. Yes, sir! I got enough sea-goin'. The rheumatiz has got a grip on me anyway. And I want to stretch my old bones in a bed that ain't forever pitchin' an' tossin'. I was took with Cardhaven when I saw it years ago—when this feller was a baby," and he jerked a forefinger, as hard as a spike, into the soft muscles covering the surprised Tom's ribs.

"Hoh!" ejaculated Tom. "What you doin'?"

"Now, Tom," came the admonitory voice of his mother again. Then she hastened to say: "Pull right up, Uncle Jonah. Never mind your pipe, Orrin. Sit down and eat first. Pearly will finish these cakes."

She sat down herself behind an enormous teapot. Orrin drank quantities of tea. It was filling, he said, and cheap.

Pearl had taken the captain's hardshell hat and his cane. He smiled at her, and she dimpled in return. There was already a bond of sympathy between the two.

"That there ox of Silas Peebles' we seen at the fair to-day was a master big one," observed Orrin, already gulping down with gusto the hot tea from a deep saucer.

Tom's face immediately fell again on this reminder of the fair. Pearl eyed the young fellow suspiciously from her station at the stove. Something had gone all wrong with Tom on this outing.

"I did admire the way your Cousin Ida was dressed, Orrin," said Sarah Petty. "That orange and blue certainly did set her off."

"Huh!" returned her husband, "she looked like a lapstreak sloop goin' to a regatta. What you women see in sech folderols is beyond me. I can't make head nor tail of the fashions."

"A woman, like a ship, I reckon, ought to put her best foot for'ard. I like to see 'em flyin' their pretty duds an' duffel."

"I can see you 'preciate the sect," said Sarah Petty, preening. "You ain't too old, Uncle Jonah, to marry and have a home of your own again."

She said it with hidden anxiety. What Orrin had suggested about the old mariner's possible wealth had begun to work like yeast in Sarah Petty's mind.

"No. I guess not," Cap'n Jonah said thoughtfully. "I was married once, and she was a good woman. If there is a next world, as the preachers say there is (and they ought to know, considerin' as they're always studyin' the chart of them waters an' can box the heavenly compass so slick), why," continued the captain, "I wouldn't want to mix two women in my mind. They say heaven's a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary air at rest. But it's borne in on my mind that two good women, let alone wicked ones, could make a feller a lot of trouble, even in the heavenly pastures. I don't want to run no sech risk. I will stay single for the rest of my natural life, I guess.

"Ye-as, Pearly. I don't care if I do take another heap o' them griddle cakes. They're lickin' good."

Cap'n Jonah Hand was an old-fashioned seaman. No matter how long he had sailed master of passenger or merchant ships, the Cape Cod tang clung to his speech. Especially did he clip his words and use provincial turns of speech now that he was among those who habitually took such liberties with academic English.

"I suppose," began Sarah Petty, trying to drive a conversational wedge in the right direction, "that well-to-do widowers do have to dodge the wiles of designing females. We've got some along the Shell Road that you'll ha'f to keep your sails trimmed for, Uncle Jonah."

"Oh, pshaw!" ejaculated the captain, rather sheepishly, "I guess the women'll leave me alone—'specially when they l'arn I ain't no millionaire."

The flashed glances between Sarah Petty and her husband were laden with suspicion. Sarah's sharp voice punctured the following silence as a needle might prick a toy balloon.

"I presume you've got aplenty saved up after all these years for your board and keep, Uncle? You was the forehandedest of all the Hands, I guess."

"Oh," said the captain dryly, "I can pay my way for quite a spell yet, before I ha'f to look up lodgin's at the poor farm. And that brings up a leetle matter we might's well discuss right now at the start, Niece Sarah.

"O' course," the old man went on placidly, "you air my only livin' relative, Sarah. If I should drag my anchor to-night you'd stand to git sech prop'ty as I might die possessed of. But a straight out and out understanding, even betwixt kith and kin, is the only way to fend off friction. I want, if I won't be crowdin' you an' your folks, Sarah, to stop along o' you instead of tryin' to bach it as so many of us old salts have to when we leave the sea for good and all. I ain't never been used to doin' for myself, and I shouldn't know how to tackle the job. I sh'd be jest as awkward about housework as a whale."

"Well, now, Uncle!" ejaculated Sarah in much perturbation.

"Belay there!" interrupted Cap'n Jonah. "I ain't finished payin' out my line yet. What I want to know is, will you board an' lodge me, and do for me as the sayin' is, an' for how much a month? I ain't no millionaire, as I tell you, but I have always paid my shot an' I allus calc'late to while there's any shot left in the locker."

Sarah's smile fairly dripped honey again. Orrin's expression of countenance changed so suddenly that it must have hurt him. Tom looked relieved.

"Well, now, Uncle!" his niece again ejaculated as though the subject of money was quite a painful one.

And it was. She was in a nervous flutter for fear she would not tax the old sea captain all that he would possibly stand. The thought of fixing his monthly stipend below the figure Uncle Jonah might be willing to pay was positively torturing to Sarah's mind.

Yet, for a very good reason, she wished to appear generous to her relative. Not only might it be true that Cap'n Jonah was wealthy, but that old note given by her father for two thousand dollars might still be in existence. She must show herself liberal to her uncle, for she might yet have to plead for mercy. It was true that she was Cap'n Jonah's natural heiress, but he possibly had not made his will in her favor (she determined to find that out immediately) and it would never do to display a nature too grasping in the interim.

"I don't expect you to cramp yourself none, Sarah," Cap'n Jonah said. "That's a mighty nice room Pearly give me."

"She done jest what I would have done myself if I'd been to home," murmured Sarah Petty.

"I like it 'cause it's nothin' at all like the close quarters of a ship's cabin."

"It's our very best room, Uncle Jonah," she added. "I'm glad you like it."

Secretly she could have shaken Pearl Holden for ever putting the old man in that chamber. There was one over the kitchen, in the ell, that would have been good enough for him, and probably pleased him quite as well. What did an old sailor like him want of such nice quarters?

"Well, I tell you how 'tis, Uncle Jonah," she said aloud and at length. "Orrin and me ain't none too rich, as you can see. We have to stretch ends sometimes to make 'em meet. In the summer when I let out that best chamber I get six dollars a week for it from city folks that come down here to the Cape. It's quite a help. That's six dollars a week with board, of course. I should have to charge extry for wash and mendin' and the like——"

"Whatever!" exploded Cap'n Jonah, and he would have changed color had his countenance not been burned so deeply that a surge of blood into it made little difference in its hue.

"But if you don't mind sleepin' in another room, Uncle Jonah, supposin' I had a chance to let that best one at a good price, I'd be only too glad to take you in for two dollars less a week—say twenty dollars a month," Sarah hastened to say. "The wash and mendin' we'd consider later. I wouldn't want it to seem at all like I was gouging a relative, Uncle Jonah. But ev'rything does cost so much nowadays that I tell you, free and frank, we have to figger even what it costs to keep a cat."

"Have to depend on mousetraps, I do suppose," murmured the old mariner. "I can see it's close sailin' for you to get along, Sarah. Wal! if that's the best you can do, I'll agree. Twenty dollars a month it is."

"And washin' extry," added Sarah, her little green eyes sparking. She was not after all altogether sure that she had not underrated what Cap'n Jonah would have paid. Still, she was getting a five-week month's board out of him at the price she had set; and he certainly must be good for fifty cents a week wash money.

She saw that his blue suit, though wrinkled and well worn, was of an excellent quality of cloth. His hat was a good one, too, and his stick was a fine Malacca cane with a gold top to it. He wore a heavy cable watchchain of gold, and when he drew, out the timepiece it proved to be a valuable, if ancient, one.

"Now, I reckon I'll turn in, if it's all the same to you folks," Cap'n Jonah said, seeing the lateness of the hour. "I sha'n't need no rockin' to put me to sleep. We'll talk more to-morrow," and he started for the front of the house.

Sarah had been taking sharp note of his footgear.

"I'm sartain pleased to see that you wear middlin' light boots, Uncle Jonah," she said pointedly. "I never let Orrin nor Tom go through the house 'cept in their stockin' feet or their slippers. Men's boots is that trackin'."

"Oh, I'll take heed of your decks when you've jest holystoned 'em, Sarah," Cap'n Jonah rejoined easily.

This pleased Pearl. It seemed that the old captain was not to be easily nagged. He went off cheerfully after bidding them good-night.

"Well," said Sarah, "we'll get something out of him, anyway. He can't be an absolute pauper. And I'll soon have him out o' that best room and into where he belongs."

"Have a care, Sarah. Have a care," advised Orrin Petty. "He's a quiet-talkin' man. Mebbe he's got more cash than he's willin' to tell about. We don't want to rile him."

"If he was rich as cream I wouldn't have him messin' up my best bedroom for long. I tell you that, now, Orrin Petty!" Then she turned on Tom with one of her sudden, birdlike motions. "Where's that Ladies Aid money I give you, Tom, to buy that lamp with at the Harwich Emporium, and you never done it? I sartain sure thought you could do that for me while I was visitin' with your A'nt Poley Heath."

"I tell you they didn't have no more of the kind you women picked out for the chapel," growled Tom, stuffing his pipe from his father's tobacco pouch. "Have 'em in again next month."

"Well, gi'me the money."

"Let a feller light his pipe, won't you?" growled Tom, getting up to take a spill from the vase on the mantelpiece, and proceeding to ignite it at the lamp. Then as his mother's attention was diverted by some household matter, he slipped out of the door.

The captain did not go directly to bed. He sat by his window, of which he had opened wide the blinds, much to his niece's rage and disgust. He looked out into the soft darkness that had now settled down on sea and land.

A red light sparked, went out, sparked again. That was the revolving lamp at the lighthouse on The Neck, the narrow strip of land which stretched a defense between the Haven and the open sea. Nearer were the lamps of other dwellings. The surf sighed along the Beaches, beyond Cap'n Abe's store.

"It does seem," murmured Cap'n Jonah, rather enigmatically, "that the sea and the air and the peaceful land air more to be depended on than folks. Most folks, at least. Howsomever, that there Pearly gal——"

He heard her voice on the porch below his window. She must have come outside to rest and cool off after washing the supper dishes. The incense of burning tobacco rose to his nostrils, and then Tom Petty said:

"Well, you needn't blame me, Pearly. I didn't keep you from going along of us to that blamed cattle show. You didn't miss much. I wish I hadn't gone myself."

"Why, didn't you have a good time?" Pearl Holden asked. There was weariness in her tone and not much curiosity.

"By hokey!" exclaimed Tom, "there warn't nothin' there but silly gals, an' silly cows an' such, and—and cheatin' plays."

"What do you mean? What kind of plays?"

"All kinds of games—an' there warn't none of 'em square, I don't guess. Pop won a se-gar battin' a spike on the head with a maul, to show how strong he was. But when he tried to smoke the se-gar he mighty near smothered me and Marm and she made him throw it away," and Tom suddenly chuckled at the remembrance of his father's indignation.

"But there! Considerin' some of 'em, I reckon that test-your-muscle machine was fair, se-gar and all. Others! Well! I made a tarnal fool of myself, Pearly, and I dunno how I'm goin' to square myself about it," he added desperately.

"What did you do, Tom?" the girl asked with more interest.

"Well, there was a feller in an alley there, 'twixt two buildings, and he'd got a crowd in front of him. The alley was clear behind him and had a gate at the end; but we didn't notice that at the start. Oh, he was a slick one!

"Well, he had a little foldin' table, and on it he had three little tin cups and a pea. He was an awful quick movin' feller—or 'peared to be—and he told us his hands could move quicker than the eye could foller."

"So can my hands," interposed Pearl. "I can count beans faster than I can see 'em."

"Hoh! Listen here!" growled Tom. "It didn't look at first as though that feller could do what he said. He made some passes with his hands and said some hocus-pocus over them three cups and the pea, and then he dared any feller to say under which of the cups the pea was. A feller in a white hat and them gaiter things they wear over their shoes now, said right away he knew where it was.

"'How much'll you bet?' says the feller. 'You're a sport, I can see—and you think you're smart. Say what you'll bet.'

"And after a little urging the feller in the white hat bet two dollars against the other feller's two dollars, an' sure enough, he did point out the right cup where the pea was."

"And won two dollars?" gasped Pearl. "Why, Tom! That's gambling—and it's wicked!"

"It's wicked all right when you lose," grumbled Tom. "But we didn't lose much first along."

"'We?'" cried Pearl. "You didn't bet, too, Tom?"

"Sh! Don't let the old lady hear you," snapped Tom. "Course I tried it. I won two dollars, and then I won three. The white-hatted feller was skinnin' that feller with the cups and the pea every time. You could see he felt pretty meachin' about it Got all red and flustered-like. Why, I could spot where he hid that pea just as e-easy!"

"And then?" Cap'n Jonah, grinning widely in the dark, heard the girl gasp.

"Why, we all got excited. There was a dozen or more of us bettin'. That pea-and-cup feller had a slather of money.

"'You got to give me a chance, boys,' he says. 'Give me a show for my white alley. This time I'm a-goin' to fool you.'

"And he kep' on like that, urgin' us to bet our pile against his pile. Why, I could see where he put that pea just as plain! So I went with the rest. I bet twenty-five dollars—all I'd won and all I had."

"Oh, Tommy Petty!"

"Now, don't you begin," cried Tom hoarsely. "I warn't the only fool. The feller bet us two to one, and it looked like a sure thing. Some bet on one cup and some on another; but I knowed just where the pea went, and I bet on the right one."

"Then you didn't lose, Tom?" murmured Pearl with a relieved sigh.

"I didn't lose honest," growled the young fellow. "That feller with the pea and the tin cups had been foolin' us all along. He got a heap of money piled up in front of him—a stack big enough to choke a cow! And then he just whipped all three of the cups off the table and the pea warn't under airy one of 'em!

"The white-hatted feller just then saw Dave Milliken, the constable, comin' and he yelled: 'Cheese it! We'll all get arrested!' and he beat it down the alley with the pea-and-cup man, who grabbed all the money and the cups and the foldin' table and stuffed the whole b'ilin' into a suit case he had ready.

"Why, Pearly! them fellers was through the alley gate and locked it after 'em before we any of us 'woke up to it that they was in cahoots and was a couple of sharks. An' we couldn't do a thing!"

"Tom!" gasped the girl. "You lost all your money?"

"Hoh! That wouldn't figger too much," said the young fellow hoarsely. "But I did more than that. I lost all the money I had."

"My goodness, Tom! The Ladies Aid money for the chapel lamp?" Pearl emitted in horrified staccato.

CHAPTER IV

TOM PETTY REVEALS HIMSELF

Cap'n Jonah's quiet amusement, secured through his unintentional eavesdropping at the bedroom window, was mixed with a certain satisfaction in learning the sort of fellow his grand-nephew was. Tom Petty was evidently "no brighter than the law allows," as the captain expressed it to himself.

Pearl, he was pleased to see, was just the sort of girl he had believed her—sympathetic and good, with a strain of old-fashioned piety that the captain was glad to see had not run out here on the Cape. Nor was the girl impractical.

Her amazement and horror over the denouement of Tom's story assured Cap'n Jonah that young Tom was in serious trouble. He had gambled away money that did not belong to him and it was pretty certain that he had no resources from which to make good the sum thus squandered.

"Tom Petty!" Pearl said again, "what will your mother say to you?"

"By hokey! if she hears 'bout it, Pearly, she'll near 'bout nail me to the barn door like a salt haddock. I got to fool her someway; but how can I? I can keep her from knowing it till about breakfast time to-morrow morning. Then if I don't pony up that eighteen-seventy-five that belonged to the Ladies Aid that she's treasurer of—Well, she's bound to throw a conniption fit and step in it, that's what she'll do!" concluded the young fellow, both inelegantly and unfilially.

"My goodness!" the girl murmured. "Don't let her know you took the money, Tom. It's bad enough for you to have gambled. But don't ever let her know it was with money that wasn't yours. Especially money she'd trusted you with."

"Aw, cat's foot!" exclaimed Tom. "I wouldn't care so much if the whole twenty-five dollars was somebody else's money and I didn't have to pay any of it back."

Captain Jonah Hand certainly was learning what his grand-nephew was.

"But if Marm knows it she'll stew about it, and fuss an' fume till all git out!"

"Tell your father," suggested Pearl.

"Hoh! Where will he get money to help me—if he would? Marm keeps him as close—or closer—than she does me."

"Oh!" said Pearl with a sudden change in her tone. "Do you want to borrow the money to pay back the Ladies Aid?"

"That's what I've got to do, Pearly," Tom said hastily. "I don't mind the money I lost; but I've got to borrow that eighteen-seventy-five. No two ways about it. Why! I'd rob a bank 'fore I'd let Marm know about this."

"Sh!" it was then Pearl's turn to say warningly. "Don't talk so recklessly, Tom. Who can you borrow of if your father hasn't it?"

"You know mighty well that Pop never has any money that Marm don't keep strict account of," growled Tom's voice.

"I don't see——"

"By hokey!" ejaculated the young man. "I've a mind to strike the old codger for a loan."

"Who do you mean?" demanded Pearl.

"This Uncle Jonah of Marm's."

"Tom Petty! You wouldn't?" cried the girl, aghast.

"I tell you I'm desperate, Pearly. And you don't seem to care a dern!" and Tom's voice seemed actually to foretell tears. "We've been friends for years, Pearly, and you know well 'nough what I think of you. I'd dearly love to have you for my gal——"

"Now, Tom! don't talk that-a-way," said Pearl, sharply, and evidently much worried. Then added: "There must be some way out of your pickle."

"I'd like to know what it is. I've got to get money to satisfy Marm, or I've got to get out. That's all there is to it. And that's all you care! Aw, Pearly, I'd just be finished complete if I had to leave you," and Tom's voice dropped to a maudlin tone that could not be mistaken.

"Run away!" exclaimed the girl, but apparently responding not at all to his tender advances. "You wouldn't do that?"

"I'm my own man I guess. I'd like to see anybody try to stop me. Hoh! Unless 'twas a policeman 'long o' losin' that money," added Tom, his sudden boastfulness evaporating.

"You ought to go to work, Tom," Pearl said thoughtfully. "But you don't need to run away and break your mother's heart. No. Cap'n Durgin will give you a berth on the Tryout, you know. And if you borrow that money to pay back the Ladies Aid, you'll have to go to work to earn money to repay what you borrow."

"I suppose so."

"But, don't you intend to?" demanded the girl sharply.

"Well, I don't know as he'd want it back," said Tom slowly.

"Who are you talkin' about, Tom Petty?" Pearl demanded with sudden exasperation.

"Uncle Jonah."

"You're not going to Cap'n Hand to borrow money, Tom Petty!" ejaculated the girl. "You got no call to. It isn't decent—and he just come here."

"Well," whined Tom, "I dunno what to do then."

"You'll borrow it of me," said Pearl decisively. "You know I've got 'most twenty dollars saved up—what with picking cranberries last fall and selling blueberries to the hotel this summer. You know I've got that money."

"That don't help me none," growled Tom.

"Why not?"

"As long as you've got it, it don't help me," said the lout, already in a lighter mood.

"I'll get it and give it to you before breakfast time," promised Pearl briskly. "But you've got to go to work and pay it back 'fore Christmas."

"I ain't goin' with Cap'n Durgin, just the same," grumbled Tom. "He's a reg'lar driver."

"You can work in the cranberry bogs, then. You'll earn two dollars and a half a day there," said the practical Pearl.

"Well." If it was a promise, it was given under duress.

Cap'n Jonah heard the screen door click again and the light tap of Pearl's heels upon the kitchen floor. The girl was coming up to bed. The old mariner felt some mixed emotions astir within him. He had a mind for a moment to call the girl into his room and talk to her "like a Dutch uncle," as he expressed it.

Then he thought of Tom, and his soul was filled with disgust. Tom was worse than a fool. He had not only allowed himself to be gulled by a trick that had been in disfavor "when Adam was a boy" (so grumbled the captain), but he had run squealing to a girl about it and had worked on that girl's sympathies until she had agreed to help him out of his predicament.

"And it's in my mind," muttered Cap'n Jonah, as he pulled on a stockinet nightcap a little later, and got into bed, "that the young sculpin ain't no idee of ever payin' the gal back her money if she lends it to him. He's a sweet May blossom, he is! We'll see 'bout that." But these several discoveries about the Petty household did not keep Cap'n Jonah Hand awake.

The bell-like note of a bird rising from the clashing cat-tail rushes was the first sound to assail the waking senses of the newcomer to the Orrin Petty homestead on the following morning. Cap'n Jonah was an early riser both because of his advanced years and from habit. He got out of bed as quietly as a cat. The family was sleeping later than usual because of the outing the day before.

From long sea going habit the captain was already half dressed. He doused his head and face in a brimming basin, combed his thinning locks and beard, and got into his outer garments, even to his hat. Then, with his shoes in his hand, he stole out of the room and down the stairs.

Cape Cod people have no particular reason for locking their doors. The tramp was not known in Cardhaven, although Sarah Petty was so given to using the expression. Cap'n Jonah found the kitchen door unfastened, and he stepped out, stopping in the porch to pull on his shoes, which were of the elastic-sided congress variety.

The sun had not yet thrust even his upper rim above the distant sea-line. When Cap'n Jonah descended the porch steps he waded waist deep in a blanket of mist which Night had spread upon the earth, and which Dawn, brisk housekeeper that she was, had not yet rolled up and laid away.

There was much astir, however, and the stratum of mist carried certain sounds for long distances. The captain heard Enos Cartright ordering his old mare, Mehitabel, to "stand over!" in her box stall, as he faithfully curried her down. Then a mellow "So, boss! So, boss!" revealed the Widow Shattuck at her pasture bars calling up Sukey to be milked.

A little later, in the midst of a chanticleer chorus and the hungry grunting of pigs, the captain, pacing back and forth in the lane, heard the tinkle of Sukey's milk in the pail as her mistress capably massaged the cow's udder.

The now wavering mist acted as a transmitter for sounds from greater distances. He heard voices and the creak of blocks of cordage from the Haven itself. A fishing boat was putting out. Then the two-leaved door of Cap'n Abe's store was set wide and he heard the storekeeper drive home the wedges which held it open.

A sudden flash of red heralded the sun's appearance. All this moving fog began to glow, rose-colored. It was dissipated rapidly. Out of it he saw several columns of smoke rising, straight into the air, marking matutinal fires of neighboring dwellings.

A mighty yawn sounded near at hand. Cap'n Jonah wheeled to see Tom Petty come stretching and gaping from the kitchen door.

"Well, young man!" said the old mariner briskly.

"Oh! Ah!" exploded Tom, finishing his yawn loudly, arms stretched above his head. "Morning, Uncle Jonah."

"Good morning to you," replied his elderly relative. "I guess you're feeling your yest'day's good time some?"

"'Good time'! Hoh!" snorted Tom. "I never want to see another cattle show."

"Leaves a brown taste in your mouth, does it?" chuckled the captain. "And drained your pocket as dry as the Desert of Sahara, I bet!"

"Hoh! Who was tellin' you?" demanded Tom, bitten with sudden suspicion.

"I don't have to be told ev'rything—not at my age," chuckled Cap'n Jonah. "I was young once myself."

He drew a bill-holder from an inner pocket. Tom, who had begun to scowl, washed that expression hurriedly off his face.

"I guess you know how 'tis, Uncle Jonah," confessed the young fellow, suppressing a certain eagerness he felt and trying to keep his eyes off the bill-holder which, if not plethoric, looked to be well filled. "You know, where ev'rybody else is spendin', you spend more'n you ought to yourself."

"Just so! Just so!" agreed the captain. He selected a yellow-backed bill, crisp and crackling, and thrust it suddenly into Tom's itching palm. "Here's a twenty for you. I never do know what sort o' presents to buy folks. Get somethin' for yourself or put it away in the bank as you like. And don't say nothin' to your Pop or Marm about it," concluded the shrewd old fellow, with a keen side glance at Tom.

The latter was all but overcome. Relief and gratification momentarily enlarged his heart to almost the size of a pea.

"By hokey! Uncle Jonah, you're all right!" he murmured, pocketing the twenty dollar bank note and his freckled face glowing all over. "I'll never forgit you for this."

He lumbered away toward the barn while the captain continued to "pace the quarterdeck" along the shaded lane. A little later he saw Tom talking with Pearl at the barnyard bars.

"I guess I put a spoke in your wheel, young man," thought the captain, but with a dark look at the loutish Tom.

Pearl came back to the lane to bid Cap'n Jonah good-morning, her sweet face aglow. Starry-eyed and dimpling, she showed plainly, the old man thought, her relief on finding that Tom had in some way got out of his financial difficulty.

When the young fellow paid his mother at the breakfast table, and before them all, the eighteen-seventy-five he owed her, he produced the exact change in small bills and silver. It did not cross Cap'n Jonah's mind to wonder where Tom had got the twenty dollar note changed, so early in the morning.

CHAPTER V

"BETTER A DINNER OF HERBS"

The day in the Petty household began with bickerings. Sarah Petty possessed all the nagging power of dropping water. Orrin fulfilled his own surname in small meannesses. Tom was disobedient and disrespectful to both parents. All three picked on Pearl.

Although they endeavored to show Cap'n Jonah the smooth side of their natures—and even Tom remained polite to him—the visitor could not fail to overhear many things that were not intended for his ears. Nor was he to be deceived regarding the character of his relatives.

One thing amazed him. The single item in his audit of Tom's character that placed that young man one degree above an idiot, was the revelation the evening before of what seemed to be Tom's admiration for Pearl. The lout had intimated that he desired Pearl for his own.

"And if he loves a gal like her, mebbe there's some good in the scamp, after all," ruminated Cap'n Jonah.

But this day had not passed before the captain saw so many exhibitions of meanness on Tom's part in relation to the pretty household drudge that he began to wonder if his hearing had not played him false on the previous evening when he had sat at his chamber window and overheard the conversation between the two young folks.

When Sarah Petty broke out in scolding because of some real or fancied mistake of Pearl's, Cap'n Jonah expected Tom in some way to express sympathy with the girl, if he did not defend her. But the lout only grinned, lit his pipe, and left the house.

Of course, her menfolk were well used to the vitriolic dripping from Sarah Petty's tongue, and bearing this in silence was perhaps the only logical way to get along with her. If Tom had a proper feeling for Pearl, however, the captain did not see how the fellow could listen to his mother's vituperations addressed to her innocent victim. The girl deserved no such tongue-lashings as she received, the captain was quite sure.

He saw Pearl stepping lightly about her tasks—at sink, at stove, at ironing-board, or what-not—always brisk and ready, and either silent or with a pleasant word. She made no reply when Mrs. Petty's ill-humor dripped over like an overfull cup. But Cap'n Jonah missed the smile from her sweet face.

The old mariner, as he expressed it, "kept out from under foot" as much as possible. He found that every time he went up to his room, Sarah Petty was right behind him with brush and pan, ostentatiously dusting imaginary dirt from the stair carpet. If he opened his window blind to see in his room, it was shut immediately, and with emphasis, when he departed. Before this first day was over his niece began sadly to get upon the captain's nerves.

"The Lord sartainly does temper the wind to the shorn lamb—and to the man that ain't married," concluded Cap'n Jonah. "If I was Orrin Petty, I calc'late, I'd purty nigh live in the barn and never come into the house at all. Or I'd ship for a long v'y'ge."

His sympathy for Orrin could not be deep, however; for Orrin Petty possessed ways fully as unpleasant as those of his wife. His penuriousness and his suspicion were raised to the nth power, and his curiosity made him a pest.

"I calc'late you seen many a chance't to turn a dollar over in them furrin' parts you was to, Cap'n Jonah," Orrin said. "Jest how did you do it?"

"Wal, for the most part, I passed one dollar from one pants pocket to the other. If I came out even I was lucky, most times. Speculatin' ain't what it's cracked up to be. Most money that I ever got my hands on to I airned by the sweat of my brow—yes, sir!"

"Tradin' in them furrin' countries I allus heard would fetch two or three hundred per cent.," Orrin went on obstinately.

"Ye-as. You'll hear a good many fool idees if you stretch your ears to ketch ev'ry sound. If it was so, there'd be more millionaires in Chinese waters than they tell me there is in Pittsburgh."

He refused to be drawn like a badger from his hole, and Orrin showed disappointment. He had the itch for making money, and any man who made it (as he believed Uncle Jonah had) by using his wits, was an object of keen envy to Orrin Petty.

Besides, in this case, Orrin had a personal reason for desiring to know the particulars of Cap'n Jonah's fortune.

"Le's see, Cap'n Jonah, you made your final investments nearer home than China, didn't you?" he asked as they smoked after dinner on the side porch. "You never come clear across't the world and left your investments in furrin parts, did you?"

"'Hem!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah. "No. As I might say, I didn't."

"Wal, now, what did you conclude was a good, safe investment? Sarah an' me might have a little spare money some day, and I reckon the lead of a successful man like you would be a good one to foller."

"No. I wouldn't want to advise no other man in a matter of speculation," said Cap'n Jonah bruskly.

But Orrin was not to be put off. The more the old mariner tried to evade, the more Orrin was convinced that Cap'n Jonah had "made his pile" and did not want anybody to know the means he had fortunately set upon to become wealthy.

In his own heart the penurious Orrin Petty knew that if he made a successful turn in business he would be loath to tell anybody else how he did it.

"Now, Cap'n Jonah," he urged with his wry grin and slyly twinkling eye, "jest put a name to it. Jest name one thing that you put money into."

Cap'n Jonah looked at him steadily for a moment. His mahogany face was very grim indeed.

"Ile," he croaked at last.

"'Ile'?" repeated Orrin, eagerly. "Not whalin'?"

"Ile stocks," explained Cap'n Jonah gruffly.

"Wha—what's them?" stammered Mr. Petty.

"Sheers in ile wells, or in the land where ile wells is supposed to be."

"Goshamighty! Do they git ile out'n the ground?" ejaculated Orrin. "I thought they got it from whales, an' codfish livers, and castor beans."

"I don't understand much about it," said Cap'n Jonah glumly.

"But is them ile shares good things to put money in?"

Cap'n Jonah stared at him again under penthouse brows. At last he said:

"Wal—no. I couldn't recommend 'em. I wouldn't advise any man about any speculation, as I said afore."

His pipe had gone out. Cap'n Jonah was not much of a smoker. He got up and walked away from the disappointed Orrin. Cap'n Jonah's face was very grim as he paced down the lane. Finally:

"Whatever! I was sore tempted—I sartainly was. If that scalawag has got any money laid up—he and Sarah—I b'lieve I could saw off them ile sheers on to him easy.

"And s'arve him right," pursued Cap'n Jonah. "The feller that sold 'em to me was mighty glad to git rid of 'em, I don't dispute. I bit, and bit good. And I'd rayther like to see Orrin Petty swaller hook, line, and sinker same's I did, I vow!"

However that might be, curiosity and cupidity urged Orrin Petty to ask a question of the Paulmouth Bank cashier that very afternoon when he went to make a deposit in his own and Sarah's name. In a small way Orrin was considered a good customer by the bank. He made frequent deposits, and he never took a penny out.

"What are oil stocks worth, Mr. Petty?" repeated the cashier in reply to a question on that point. "Why, some I might mention are to-day quoted—provided you could buy them—at six hundred and seventy. That is five hundred and seventy dollars above par."

"Goshamighty!" murmured the wonderstruck Orrin. "An' suppose that old codger was foxy enough to buy 'em at a hundred? I bet he did!"

He did not hear the cashier's additional information: "And some of them are not worth the paper they are printed on."

This day was not ended for Cap'n Jonah before he came to one conclusion that would color his opinion of his relatives and his future intercourse with them, whether he was rich or poor.

The laws of the Medes and the Persians were no more unbreakable than certain housekeeping rules in Sarah Petty's house. Ironing day followed wash day as surely as the day dawned. Since immediately after the early breakfast Pearl had been standing at the ironing board in the hot kitchen, save when the board must be put aside for the serving of the dinner.

Midafternoon came, and the girl was still at the board, wielding the heavy irons. Her pretty face was flushed, but there was a white line about her mouth that Cap'n Jonah could see from his chair in the shaded porch. Her hair clung in damp clusters of curls about her brow. There was a strained expression in her dark eyes, and they were deep, smoldering pools of flame. The girl was overtired and her nerves were almost at the breaking point.

No offer did Sarah Petty make to help her little drudge. She puttered about certain light household duties and superintended the boiling of the pork and cabbage for dinner. But she did not lift her hand to lighten Pearl's task.

Her tongue was seldom still in fault-finding. There are housekeepers and housekeepers. Sarah Petty was one of the other kind! Nobody could be clean enough, or exact enough, to suit her. Every piece she saw Pearl iron could be done better; nor was her uncomplaining serving maid that paragon which Sarah considered she should be.

As the mounds of smoothly ironed bed and table linen, with windrows of towels and piles of garments, rose, Sarah's voice rose likewise in snarling criticism.

There was no chair in the kitchen that was not occupied by the smoothed pieces. Tom Petty lumbered in to fill and light his pipe and grinned knowingly at Pearl.

"Ain't you got through yet, Pearly? By hokey! but you're takin' your time about a little old mess o' clothes."

Pearl would not reply to this attempted pleasantry.

"What's the matter—mad?" asked the jovial Tenn, pointing a tentative finger to lift Pearl's drooping chin. "You ain't mad with me, are you, Pearly?"

"You get away from me, Tom Petty!" gasped the girl, starting back, the heavy iron poised in her hand.

"By hokey! I believe you'd swipe me one with that iron!" crowed the lout, in much apparent fear.

In retreating he fell against a chair. The neatly piled pillow slips upon it toppled to the floor. His mother entered the kitchen just in season to spy this disaster.

"There! You plagued, good-for-nothin', useless gal!" she shrieked. "Them pillow slips all over the floor 'count o' your foolin' with Tom. He can't come into the house but you haf to leave your work to have some game with him. I could box your ears!"

Tom ran laughing out of the kitchen. He made no effort to defend Pearl from his mother's undeserved wrath.

"Now, Miss!" Sarah Petty continued, scrambling the overturned linen up anyway, some slightly soiled from contact with Tom's muddy boots, but all ruffled and wrinkled. "Now, Miss! You can just have the pleasure of washin' an' ironin' them over again. You wash 'em to-night after supper an' hang 'em out; and if they ain't ironed and in the linen closet by to-morrow noon, you'll hear from me, you lazybones!"

She went away, grumbling, with a pile of ironed clothes. Cap'n Jonah heard Pearl sigh, then sob, then sigh again. The girl's spirit was broken. The old mariner drew forth his never-failing comforter—the silver snuff-box. He rapped it with his knuckle, snapped open the cover, and took a huge pinch.

"Achoo!" he rasped, then muttered: "That Bible feller got it right: Better a dinner of herbs and a little peace. Whatever! a person might's well live with a live tagger as with Sarah Petty."

CHAPTER VI

ROMANCE AND PEARL HOLDEN

Cap'n Jonah Hand was gregarious by nature. He had spent many solitary hours at sea, but not from choice. The master of a good-sized craft can favor his mate and sub-officers with little of his company and his crew none at all.

Off duty he had spent many many hours playing that favorite solitaire of the lonely mariner "Push"—a game which "comes out" about once in five hundred times. Now that he was ashore with human beings within hail, the retired seaman wasted no time in such a poor substitute for sociability.

Finding the Petty family so uncongenial and Pearl usually too busy to pass more than the time of day with him, Cap'n Jonah lay in wait at the mouth of the lane like a huge brown and blue ant-lion waiting for passing Shell Road folk to fall into his conversational trap.

Washy Gallup, wheeling his barrow laden with the innumerable turns of a well corked seine, was easily persuaded to drop the barrow handles, seat himself on one of them and push back from his weather-beaten face the battered tarpaulin he affected on week days, preparatory to "a dish of gossip."

"Wal, Cap'n," began Washy, "what do you think of Cardhaven an' Cardhaven folks as fur as you've gone?"

The captain's eyes twinkled. "I'm a good deal like the feller that allus walked backwards. Then he didn't have to give an opinion in advance. I dunno as I could tell you yet, Mr. Gallup, how the place nor the people strike me, by and large."

"I figger you're a cautious man, Cap'n Hand," said Washy with a shrewd nod. "Orrin was sayin' down to Cap'n Abe's last night he reckoned you had made all the money a man ought to make, out there in the China Seas."

"Orrin Petty holds a good opinion of his own jedgment, I allow," replied the captain grimly.

It was almost uncanny how the talk of most people who paused to speak to him slipped around to money matters. Cap'n Beecher, leaning on his cane at the roadside, dropped his plummet into Cap'n Jonah's financial waters.

"You calc'late to settle down here, Cap'n Hand, don't ye?" he asked, mopping his brow with a brilliant bandana.

"I calc'late."

"Glad to hear it," said the one-time master of the clipper-built Ivanhoe. "We need jest sech solid men as you, Cap'n Hand, at this end of the town to balance t'other end with the board of selectmen. Why! we can't ever git street lights this side o' the Mariner's Chapel. Was you thinkin' of buyin' property here, Cap'n? For a home, or an investment? For if you be," Cap'n Joab hastened to add, "I got some likely lots adjoining my own place that I'd like to have you cast an eye on."

"Thank ye," said the new arrival in the Shell Road neighborhood, dryly. "If I decide to buy I'll let you know."

'Liathel Grummit, humped over on his seat, dragged past behind his patient steers a dripping load of seaweed mounded high upon the two-wheeled cart. 'Liathel owned a small and scrubby farm on which he raised vegetables, much poverty grass, and an astonishing crop of tow-headed children.

"Ye-a, Buck! Ye-a, Bright!" he intoned, cracking the long whip-lash before the spotted faces of the steers. They came to a lumbering halt. "You air Cap'n Hand, I don't dispute?"

"It's as good a name as any. But I've left the sea for all time, and I ain't no more a skipper," replied the captain, indicating that he was no stickler for quarterdeck formalities now that he was a landsman.

"So I was informed," said 'Liathel politely. "But I didn't jest know whether you was thinkin' of settin' up for yourself around here? If you be, and if you do, I'd like to sell you a pair of late shoats I got. You'll want a pig or two to help eat your table scraps. An' my wife, Miz Grummit, has some yearling fowls she'd be glad to dispose of if you was calc'latin' to keep hens."

"Whatever!" gasped Cap'n Jonah. "Do you folks think I'm an open market for all the surplus of this here town? I ain't no idee of keeping pigs, nor yet poultry. I'm obleeged to you, but you ain't got a thing I'm in need of, I do assure you."

"All right, Cap'n. No offense meant. No offense taken. Ye-ip, Buck! Ye-ip, Bright!"

The long whip snapped again. The placid steers, chewing their cuds and swaying their bodies rhythmically, plodded on up the white road. Cap'n Jonah watched the sunshine sparkle in the pool that had dripped from the load of seaweed. He shook his head.

"Whatever!" he said, repeating his favorite ejaculation. "This here determination to turn a penny is the curse o' the Cape, just as it always was. I bet even the preachers think in terms of dollars and cents.

"And they are going to pester me purty nigh to death about my fortune. I can see that, as the feller said when he saw stars. Now them ile sheers! I swan to man! I b'lieve I could make a bit on them, let alone turn 'em over. Get thee behind me, Satan! Whew!" and the captain removed his hat and passed the silk handkerchief over his brown face. "Whatever! I don't wonder there's so many sharks an' dogfish at loose ends—an' pea-an'-shell game men, too," and he chuckled. "The sucker-fish must bite more voracious than any other kind.

"'Hem! Here's a feller might tell me if that's so."

He saw the tall figure of Helmford approaching. The usual smile upon the young government employee's face had a rueful cast just now. He answered Cap'n Jonah's hail, however, with equal cordiality and, like every other passer-by, stopped to pass the time of day.

"This is one large day—and plenty of it, Captain," he said. "How do you feel?"

"I fare pretty well," responded Cap'n Jonah; "only there's somethin' in the j'ints of my knees that makes 'em creak like a wood snatch block when I try to swing 'em. How air you, Mr. Helmford?"

"Why, Captain Hand, I'm like to be cast out into the cold world. The Cardhaven Inn closes for the season, and I don't know where I'm to look for a boarding place."

"Sho!" exclaimed the old mariner. "Aren't boardin' places plenty 'round here?"

"In the summer—yes. Almost everybody takes boarders. But the women are not so ready to take in a stranger during the winter. It makes too many menfolk around the house. Then there is the heating to be considered, as well as extra food, when fresh vegetables and even a plentiful supply of fresh fish are not available."

"I see, I see," agreed the captain. "Codfish and potaters don't suit the city appetite, eh?"

"I should not be afraid of plain food," declared Helmford. "I was born on a farm. And I'd like to get board down this way. It's nearer my plant."

"The place where you teach fish to hatch their aigs?"

The young fellow laughed a little. "If you hear of a boarding place for me, Captain Hand——"

The captain's eyes were twinkling. He was scrutinizing young Helmford much more sharply than appeared to be the case.

"Ahem!" he said, clearing his throat reflectively. "Why don't you try Sarah?"

"'Sarah'?"

"Yep. My niece."

"Mrs. Petty?"

"That's who I mean. She ain't averse, I should say, to turning a penny. Try her."

"Why, I will!" he exclaimed. "And thank you, Captain. I can go right in and see her now, can't I?"

"I spect you can," said Cap'n Jonah. "There ain't no law again' it that I know on."

Helmford laughed and started immediately up the lane. Where it debouched into the yard he came upon Pearl hanging out certain couch covers and hangings to air, this being sweeping day. Her head was tightly banded with a towel for a dustcap. The face under such a turban must be pretty indeed to attract favorable attention.

"I beg pardon, Miss Holden," Helmford said, doffing his cap. "Can I see Mrs. Petty for a moment?"

"I guess you can," said the girl, dimpling and showing marked approval of the young man. She had seen him at a distance often before; but Joseph Helmford had never seen her, for Pearl's face was usually hidden in public by a sun-bonnet.

"Thank you," murmured he, and for once he did not appear to be blind. He bowed a second time. Pearl looked at him with shining eyes. Was he about to say something more? It would not be polite to run away before he had said all he wished to say.

A harsh voice suddenly broke the thread between them: "You, Pearl! If that's a book agent tell him we don't want no books. If it's a missionary collector tell him we've subscribed already. If it's one o' them nursery stock salesmen, jest unloose the dog onto him."

Helmford's eyes widened during this tirade. Then he began to smile. Pearl giggled faintly, and, turning, fled. "I'll splain to her," she whispered over her shoulder.

Mrs. Petty came rampantly to the door. Her head was tied up in a towel, too—the universal sign of sweeping day on the Cape.

"Can't you git rid——"

"Sh!" gasped Pearl.

"'Tain't a minister?" hissed Mrs. Petty.

"No. It's Mr. Helmford, the fish man."

"Fish man?" demanded the woman, still raucously. "What do we want o' fish, I'd like to know? Can't your Uncle Orrin an' Tom git us all the fish we need?"

"Oh, Miz Petty!" cried Pearl. "He is the government fish man, Mr. Helmford."

"Oh!"

Sarah Petty began to comprehend that possibly the well dressed man in the yard was not one to be chased back to the roadway as though he were pariah. She assumed a doubtful smirk and stepped out on the porch to blink near-sightedly at the caller.

"Captain Hand suggested, Mrs. Petty," Helmford began, drawing near, "that you might consider taking me to board. You know the Cardhaven Inn closes now, and I would prefer living down this way. It is nearer to the hatchery."

"Oh! Yes! I see! You're the young man they say hatches fish up Salt Creek way," said Mrs. Petty doubtfully. "I—hum! I dunno. These fishermen allus do bring such a smell of fish home on their clo'es. I make Orrin an' Tom change their duds in the shed when they have been handlin' their seine or the lobster pots. I dunno."

"I assure you, Mrs. Petty," Helmford said, hiding his amusement, "that my work at the fish hatchery leaves no odor upon my clothing. I am counted, I believe, rather neat and—er—'old-maidish,' they called me at college."

"Wal! I dunno! I couldn't cater to fussy folks," objected Mrs. Petty, who felt it became her position in the community to yield only after proper urging. "We're plain folks an' eat plain food——"

"I ask for nothing better," Helmford said.

His eyes were fixed on Pearl, who had returned to her task of pinning the cretonne covers to the clothesline. As she had passed him again the young man felt an indefinable attraction which caused his gaze to follow her. He noted her litheness, the turn of her limbs, the flowerlike sweetness of her expression of countenance—all for the first time. Joe Helmford was not given much to the observation of women. But this girl made an impression—indefinite, perhaps, at first—that he was destined to carry with him.

"I ask for nothing better," he repeated, dragging his attention back to the sharp-featured Mrs. Petty.

"Wal, I dunno!" the latter said again. "Course I could take ye in, Mr. Helmford. I have room. And with Uncle Jonah here I haf to figger on one extry plate at table—and two wouldn't be so much more bother. But I dunno as my 'commodations would please ye."

"Let me be the judge of that, Mrs. Petty," the young man urged.

"I can show ye the best chamber," Sarah said. "Come right upstairs with me." Here was a chance to get Uncle Jonah out of the big and comfortable room. And an additional six dollars a week to the family exchequer was not to be overlooked. Visions of financial benefit danced in the woman's mind. She even considered adding an extra half dollar to the price when Helmford praised the room, but then thought better of it as the winter was coming on, only saying:

"If you want a fire in here, Mr. Helmford, there's a pipehole in the chimney. But you'll haf to furnish your own stove and coal. We keep a settin'-room fire in the coldest weather; but you'll find it chilly up here."

"I see," agreed the young man. "I think I shall be satisfied, Mrs. Petty. I agree to the terms. When can I have my books and trunk sent over?"

"Any time you like. I'll just put fresh sheets on the bed. You can sleep here to-night," said the woman, grimly satisfied that Cap'n Jonah was to be so soon ousted to the room over the kitchen.

With no idea that he was making the genial captain any trouble, Helmford paid Sarah Petty for the week in advance (a custom that pleased her vastly) and, assured that he had secured better lodgings than he had expected to find, the young man departed.

From the sitting-room window, behind the lace curtains, Pearl watched him go. She hoped he would return. He was entirely different from the young men whom she saw daily at the store or at the Mariner's Chapel when she went to service. Helmford was out of quite another world from that with which Pearl Holden was familiar. Her gaze followed him down the lane and out to the Shell Road, the glare of which swallowed him up.

CHAPTER VII

GETTING ACQUAINTED

Joseph Helmford overtook Cap'n Jonah making his way by easy stages down the Shell Road toward that landmark, A. Silt's general store. It was for the most part a drab landscape in this direction, for the crops were out of the few cultivated fields and the sand lots lacked even the color vouchsafed them in summer.

The white shaft of the lighthouse on the Neck stood out against a tumbled mass of slate colored clouds on the horizon. That cloudbank foretold wind if not rain storms. The ocean was restive over Gull Rocks, that danger spot of all danger spots along the hook of the Cape. Seldom a winter passed that one unfortunate craft did not beat its life out upon the treacherous reef. The bones of many such, like the ribs of prehistoric monsters, were outthrust from the sands along the Neck.

To the left lay the crescent length of The Beaches. The Shell Road curved beyond Cap'n Abe's store and climbed to the bluffs that overhung The Beaches, bordered with the more or less ornate summer dwellings of city visitors.

"It's a purty sight," observed Cap'n Jonah, "even on a lowering day like this. So Sarah's took you on, has she?" he added more briskly. "She'll be signing on a full crew before long, I don't dispute."

"I shall be glad to be one of your family, Captain," Helmford made reply.

"I dunno how you'll like it, but we'll hope for the best," Cap'n Jonah observed, dryly. "But, le's see! Who's this in one o' them rattle-te-bang gas-buggies? She looks like a steam tug makin' heavy weather of it."

"Dr. Ambrose," said Helmford, quickly. "And his sister, Miss Sue. I have an idea the doctor has been over to the new Tapp house on the point. There's been an interesting event there recently, and instead of sending for a specialist from Boston or the like, the young couple were satisfied to have Doctor Ambrose officiate at the mundane appearance of what Cap'n Abe calls 'the last Tapp'—meaning the latest Tapp."

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah. "I hear you sayin' something, but I'll be keelhauled if I know what 'tis! 'Hem! So this is the doctor, is it?"

The old runabout, rattling in its throat like a dying man, came to a halt beside the two pedestrians. Doctor Ambrose, in a much stained linen duster, peered out at them over a bushy beard.

"'Lo, Mr. Helmford," he said. "How are the eels and pollywogs? Isn't that a stranger you have in tow? I'm always drumming up trade," and he shook in his seat with laughter till the springs of the car wheezed again.

Cap'n Jonah, looking him over, smiled grimly. "If you've done better than any other medical shark I ever heard of, I'll come to see you about my rheumatics," he said. "But if you air still stickin' to salicylate of sody, I reckon I'll dose myself from my own medicine chist."

"You old sea-dogs ought all to write M.D. and D.S. after your names," responded Doctor Ambrose. "I take it you are Cap'n Hand? Make the acquaintance of my sister, Cap'n."

The retired mariner's glance had quickly shifted to the woman beside the rough-and-ready country practitioner. She was petite and graceful, and was dressed much more becomingly and more richly than most Cape women are. Her silvering hair was arranged very prettily, each strand laid exactly, and her quiet, cheerful face blushed under the brim of her hat like an old-fashioned rose.

"Cap'n Hand, Sue," rumbled on the doctor. The captain bowed in his most courtly way and accepted her neatly gloved hand in his huge brown one, where it settled for a moment like a snowflake on a clod.

"I am glad to welcome you among us, Cap'n Hand," Miss Sue said demurely. "We are not alone glad to have a new neighbor, but we are glad to welcome another attendant at the chapel. I have already learned—in fact, Mr. 'Liphalet Truitt told me," and she flushed the deeper—"that you are a church-going man, Cap'n Hand."

"Yes, ma'am," said Cap'n Jonah. "I calc'late to turn out for service on Sunday whenever I can. I shall be glad to attend chapel, an' thank you kindly, ma'am."

"Hi gorry!" said the doctor suddenly. "Here comes 'Liphalet now—and with a face on him like a gargoyle. I don't know what's got into the fellow lately. Likely he needs a good course of jalap."

Mr. Truitt approached with his basket, headed storeward for provisions. 'Liphalet was a brisk, compact figure of a man—neat, light stepping, and with an appearance of deftness. His whole personality and manner bespoke the capable ship's steward.

"Mornin', Miss Sue! Mornin', gentlemen!" was his greeting, and he would have passed right along had Doctor Ambrose not halted him with:

"You going to do what I advised you, 'Liphalet? If any fellow's liver ever needed a course of sprouts, yours does. For weeks now you've been as sluggish as a frozen stream runnin' uphill. You'd better change your tactics or you won't blow that old fife of yours half the night, as I've been hearin' you, of late."

"'Liphalet doesn't play a fife, Sam," said Miss Sue softly. "It's a flute."

"Same thing," snorted the doctor, eyeing the scowling Mr. Truitt with composure. "If he doesn't tend to himself as I tell him he'll have the undertaker stopping at his door instead of my flivver."

"I ain't sure, Doc," said the ex-steward harshly, "but I'd near 'bout have the undertaker come. I'd expect him, anyway, after a few of your visits."

"Hi gorry!" chortled Doctor Ambrose, who could take a joke as well as make one, "you've got me there, 'Liphalet. And that's about the first sarcastic observation you ever made. I believe your liver's at the bottom of that."

"Now, Sam!" urged gentle Miss Sue, with a hand on her brother's arm. Then to Mr. Truitt: "I hope we'll see you at the Christmas committee meeting next time, 'Liphalet."

His reply was scarcely audible to the group as he started on again. To cover the grouchy ex-steward's retreat, Doctor Ambrose struggled out from behind the steering wheel to crank up. At once his sister hopped out on the other side.

"She's bound to do that every time I crank the old wheezer," chuckled the physician. "She expects it to back up, or start ahead, or cut some other dido if she's in the thing alone."

The engine started with a snort. In a moment the whole car was throbbing. Before climbing in again Miss Sue said to Cap'n Jonah:

"I suppose I shall find Pearl at home, Captain? We were about to stop at Mrs. Petty's so that I might speak to her. Pearl is one of the very nicest girls in my class."

"She 'pears to be a mighty nice gal," Cap'n Jonah agreed with enthusiasm.

Now that Miss Sue was out of the car the captain eyed her with even greater approval. Her silk gown of broad black and white stripes, the pretty hat, even her slate-colored silk stockings and suede shoes, struck Cap'n Jonah as being the prettiest and most suitable costume for a woman to wear.

"The Doc's sister is a spankin' looking craft," said Cap'n Jonah admiringly, as the car snorted away.

"She's a lovely lady," agreed Joseph Helmford. "And a good deal of a catch, they say, Captain. They tell me she's got forty thousand dollars in her own right."

"For—ty—thou—sand? Whatever!"

"Of course, that's a mere bagatelle to a man of your fortune," added Helmford with twinkling eyes. "But it's been enough during the past ten years to make almost every widower and old bachelor on this part of the Cape sit up and take notice, as Cap'n Abe would say."

"Hem! And they ain't none of 'em caught her yet?"

"Nor her forty thousand dollars," added Helmford dryly. "You see, she's more than a lovely lady. She's a wise one."

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah, agreeing.

The gold-banded china appeared on the Petty table at supper that evening in honor of Mr. Helmford's coming. Pearl put on a fresh gingham and even Mrs. Petty brought forth a ruffled apron and assumed her best company manners.

Tom had of course met Joe Helmford at the store and elsewhere; and embracing the frequent country doctrine that all city folk are bound to have "some of their buttons loose," he looked upon the man from the fish hatchery as two-parts fool and the other part "dumb lucky to be able to wear such good clothes!"

Helmford was a likable and sociable fellow. He had the knack of getting on with most people, and he had been in the community long enough to learn how best to appeal to the Cape natives. He knew they frequently had a philosophical turn of mind, looked out on life at a rather peculiar angle, but were not lacking in shrewdness and common sense.

Cap'n Jonah he liked from the first. Orrin and Sarah's peculiarities he was prepared to overlook. Tom he had not an iota of interest in. Pearl he watched with more concern than he had ever felt for a girl before.

Yet this concern was no deeper than the superficial pleasure he felt in seeing her move gracefully about, in watching the changing expressions play upon her pretty features, and in speculating as to just what there was beneath that crown of beautiful hair, which she seemed to have a natural taste in dressing.

It must be confessed that this attraction for Mr. Joe Helmford, such as it was, was entirely physical. He had not lived at Cardhaven for eight months or more without having been introduced to a good many girls. He was an outsider, and therefore a person keenly interesting to most young women of the community. For girls who do not meet many men are prone to think that men from afar are better than the local swains.

Helmford's lack of interest in women was not his only reason for passing these girls over lightly. There were some in Cardhaven, perhaps, as pretty as Pearl Holden; but they possessed nothing but prettiness to recommend them. And Helmford happened to be a young man who required something more than personal beauty to hold his interest.

Pearl's gifts of form and feature were her only attraction, he presumed, as had been the case with those other girls he had met. When she opened her pretty lips it was often to use expressions and terms of speech which amused him but which seemed to imply that Pearl was of another world than his.

So little Pearl's attraction for the new boarder remained of small consequence, after all. He was polite to her, as he was to Mrs. Petty. But he noted Tom's hobbledehoy attentions to the girl, and merely shrugged his shoulders.

Yet Helmford could not keep his gaze from following her. She had a purely physical attraction for him; Helmford was too much of a gentleman to build any closer fellowship with the girl upon such an unstable foundation.

Cap'n Jonah, shrewd as he was in his judgment of human beings, could not fully appreciate Helmford's feelings. He liked the young fellow from the first time he had met him at Cap'n Abe's store. He thought Pearl deserved a much better "fellow," as the term was, than Tom Petty. He saw no incongruity in the idea of this man from the outside world and little Pearl being mutually attracted to each other.

In truth, there was a matchmaking streak in Cap'n Jonah's character.

After supper Helmford started out on some adventure of his own and Cap'n Jonah excused himself from the family with the intention of going to his room. As he started for the front hall Sarah Petty cleared her throat.

"Ahem! You'll git to your room a sight easier if you take the back stairs, Uncle Jonah. I had to let Mr. Helmford have that best room, as I told you I should. I've put your chist and things in the room overhead."

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah under his breath. Then: "Wal, if that's the best you can do, Niece Sarah, I s'pose I'll haf to abide by it. But I was mighty comfort'ble in that other berth."

"We're poor folks, Uncle Jonah," said Sarah Petty with decision. "As you don't feel able to afford to pay full price, course I had to better myself if I could. You won't be in your room much anyway, so I guess you won't mind."

Cap'n Jonah took a reflective pinch of snuff, shut the silver snuff box with a snap, and went up to bed without further word. Orrin Petty leaned forward with an expression of doubt upon his avaricious face.

"I dunno but you air makin' a mistake, Sarah," he whispered. "If he should be rich——"

"Then let him pay me decent board," snapped Sarah. "I give him hints enough. This Mr. Helmford, comin' as he has, is providential—nothin' less. Uncle Jonah might's well know, first as last, that he can't get the best of ev'rything for no pauper's pence. No, sir!" and she straightened her shoulders and tossed her head with determination.

"But s'pose he has got that old note, Sarah?" suggested Orrin.

"It'll be time enough to worry, I've decided, when he produces it. If he's rollin' in wealth, why don't he show some of it? He may have a fortune, or he may not. He ain't free to speak of it, it seems. You can talk as you please, Orrin Petty; anybody who has money is bound to brag about it. And the more they have the more they brag—one way or another. Cap'n Jonah Hand ain't let out a yip about his fortune, so fur as I know."

CHAPTER VIII

THE BALD TRUTH

It was a narrow, dark stair up which Cap'n Jonah poked his way. He bumped his head at the landing and said "Whatever!" with more than his usual emphasis.

"It's like goin' below in a Chinese junk," he muttered.

He got into the room, lit a match and found and ignited the wick of the lamp upon the bureau. He had seen more cramped quarters; but it was a fact that the loft room over the Pettys' kitchen was not his ideal of what his quarters were to be when he retired from the sea.

The room had been occupied by a foremast hand of a sloop that Orrin had once chartered. Orrin had agreed with the man to berth him afloat and ashore, and when the Sarah May was not at the fishing, the foremast hand dug the garden and helped at the chores.

The man, it seemed, must have had an inordinate dislike for fresh air, for he had nailed the one window in the room shut, and neither Sarah nor Orrin had ever taken the trouble since to take the nails out.

The nights were becoming frosty; but Cap'n Jonah found the low-ceiled room very stuffy and unpleasant. It was a bare and unadorned place, with the cracked looking-glass in such a position that a man could not possibly see to shave himself, either by daylight or lamplight.

There was no closet for his chest as there had been in the larger chamber, and it was forced to stand just where the unwary might break their shins against it.

His niece had soon got over treating him nicely. Cap'n Jonah realized that he had all too quickly been made "one of the family." And he was being treated as Sarah Petty treated the poor relation branch.

"I'd ruther go to the Sailors' Snug Harbor and be done with it," the captain ruminated. "At least, if I was treated there like a step-child 'twouldn't be my own flesh and blood was doin' it. This Sarah Petty, now, she's a cleaner and no mistake. I dunno where she ever got her meanness. Never from her father. The Hands wasn't none of 'em so penny-squeezing. Poor John! If he'd lived to see me treated like this by his gal he'd have been broken-hearted, I do guess."

He could not sleep in the close and airless chamber and about midnight he got up and smashed a couple of panes of glass in the upper sash of the window with his cane.

It was not often that Cap'n Jonah gave way to his temper. He who would make others obey, must first control his own weaknesses. The master mariner had long since learned that lesson. The next day he took out the nails holding the window sashes and put in two new lights of glass; setting about, too, to make his new quarters as comfortable as possible.

Used as he was to the compactness of a ship's cabin, he still found the loft room cramped quarters. Nor was there a comfortable chair in it. When he was not in bed he must sit with the family or remain out of doors.

"I vow!" he thought, "if I was married to Sarah Petty, like Orrin, I would stay out in the barn."

He bethought him of the retired seamen he already knew in the neighborhood, and made up his mind that most of them had it better than he had. 'Liphalet Truitt, for instance, was a king on his throne beside Cap'n Jonah Hand.

He and the ex-steward had become rather good friends in the weeks of Cap'n Jonah's sojourn at Cardhaven. Indeed, almost everybody found it easy to be friends with Mr. Truitt.

The spry ex-steward, well-known to everybody about Cardhaven and along the Shell Road, had been welcomed heartily when he had come ten years or more before to settle here. Having bought the little house next to the Mariner's Chapel, he was from the first a particular object of interest to the scattered congregation of fishermen and their families who shouldered the burden of its upkeep.

He had been every man's friend for the years of his sojourn upon the Shell Road, and Cap'n Jonah heard him spoken of highly at the store, where all local opinion was strained and filtered. But the captain had to confess that 'Liphalet Truitt was a more than ordinarily glum looking man.

He had heard Doctor Ambrose make his diagnosis of the reason for Mr. Truitt's appearance and attitude toward life in general with no particular belief in the medical man's opinion. Cap'n Abe Silt stated as a fact that "Life Truitt had turned like old cider—and quite as sudden—here of late." But the newcomer to the neighborhood found the ex-steward a most satisfactory companion.

"Ye-es," said Cap'n Jonah reflectively, "you air a sight better off than I be, Truitt."

"And me without chick nor child belonging to me but a cat?" sniffed the ex-steward.

"You can have my sheer of Sarah Petty and her lout of a boy, and welcome," said Cap'n Jonah bitterly. "Orrin ain't nothin' to me by blood, and a nephew-in-law ain't a very close relation anyway, thanks be! He's such a snoopin', suspicious critter. I swan to man! I believe he wakes up mornings counting his fingers like a baby, for fear somebody's stole one of 'em during the night.

"And the hull batch of 'em—'cept Pearly—can't let my things alone. They've s'arched my chist to the bottom board. If I have anything I don't want them to nose into I've got to carry it on me, that's a fact. Why, Sarah Petty is as inquisitive as that Pandory woman you read about in the books. Mr. Truitt, you are better off than you know, living here by yourself."

The ex-steward scowled. "Don't you fool yourself," he grumbled. "The Pettys may be some wearin' on a man; but it ain't what it's cracked up to be, livin' alone with nobody but Bo'sun to speak to ha'f the time."

"I dunno——"

"You're a man o' means, Cap'n Jonah," urged 'Liphalet, in his brisk way. "You ain't married to Sarah Petty, if Orrin is. You ain't got to stay there. There are other places you could get board where the folks would treat you right."

Cap'n Jonah looked at his friend steadily and took a pinch of snuff. It was a way he had when he found it difficult to come to an immediate conclusion. He flourished his big handkerchief and sneezed reflectively. He desired to make a complete confession to 'Liphalet Truitt, and yet he hesitated.

He was in no haste to reveal his private affairs to any person. Yet he felt that he must advise with somebody. He said slowly:

"I might go elsewhere to board. It's true. But I'd made up my mind to settle down, when I did leave the sea, with the only rel'tives I have.

"I had no idea Sarah Petty was the sort she is—no, sir! The only time I ever seed her in her own home was when the boy was small an' she was a young woman an' hadn't got soured. As a girl at home she was a smart little thing and a good housekeeper. I always envied John, even after his wife died, his house was kep' so neat.

"'That's the woman I want to live with when I settle down,' said I, thinkin' o' Sarah Petty. And then——Why, I tell ye, Mr. Truitt," added Cap'n Jonah, earnestly, "there's a good reason why Sarah should be willin' to take me in and do for me. When she put it on me at the start, as she did for board and lodgin', you could have knocked me down with a feather duster!"

Mr. Truitt raised his eyebrows questioningly. But he did not ask Cap'n Jonah verbally to explain. However, the latter pursued his rather roundabout course:

"When Sarah was a young gal her father got into difficulties, an' it was my privilege to help him out. It was something that one brother sh'd always be glad to do for another, Mr. Truitt," the captain earnestly said, "and with no thought of repayment. Yet 'twas something that I know John bore in mind and didn't let his daughter forget as long as he lived. He never writ me, but he mentioned his obligation.

"On the stren'th of that," pursued Cap'n Jonah rather solemnly, "I had reason to expect better treatment than I get at Sarah Petty's hand. My bite and sup won't bankrupt them—that I know. She's got me tied up in a sack for twenty-two-fifty a month with washin'; and I tell you honest, Mr. Truitt, my little tad o' money ain't goin' to last long at that rate."

"Why, Cap'n Jonah!" ejaculated the ex-steward, shaken out of his usual poise. "You don't mean to say you air short of money?"

"Wal, I soon shall be," admitted the captain.

"You got investments you can't touch?" suggested 'Liphalet gently. "If you got to wait for dividends, or such like, and a hundred dollars would be of any use to you——"

Cap'n Jonah put up his hand admonishingly. His mahogany face showed no heightened color, but his eyes shone with gratitude.

"You air a good feller, Truitt," he said. "But I don't want to borrow. I might not be able to pay back. I ain't got no investments that are bringing me in dividends."

"Your fortune ain't in stocks and bonds, then?" commented 'Liphalet placidly.

"Fortune!" snorted Cap'n Jonah. Then he added: "My fortune, 'Liphalet Truitt, is in thin air—that's what it is invested in."

"By Hannah!" ejaculated the startled 'Liphalet.

"Ye-as," said Cap'n Jonah, rather relieved now that his confession was out. "The bald truth is, I ain't got no fortune. I did git some little money together at off times durin' my life; but allus something come up to scatter it.

"Once I went into tradin' to the South Sea Islands with a feller, and we made quite a pile—twenty to twenty-five thousand silver dollars. We agreed that if either of us died, t'other should have the whole lot.

"Wal, our schooner went ashore on an atoll and our crew was drowned, and we was both captured by a bunch of savages with their teeth filed to sharp p'ints. You know what that meant!

"My partner seen me carried off, along with a big pot such as old-fashioned whalers used to try out blubber in, by one gang of savages, and he reckoned I was due to make the foundation for a cannibal goulash. But a missionary happened to land on the island where my gang of savages lived, and he saved my life."

"Saved your life, Cap'n Jonah?" repeated the interested Eliphalet.

"Yep," said Cap'n Jonah grimly. "He was fatter than me. So I was saved, and before I got fatted up to suit 'em, I got a chance to escape and I didn't refuse it. I landed in Hongkong the next year, just the day after my partner, sure I was dead, had blowed our fortune in at a gambling joint trying to break the bank.

"Wal," sighed Cap'n Jonah, "that's where one fortune went. I'd get a little together and then lose it. Only last year I owned a tidy brig called the Two Eyes—named in compliment to the Chinese idea of havin' an eye painted on either side of the sprit. John Chinaman says: 'If junk no have eye, how can see?' She'd belonged to a Chinese company before I got her, and was named The Beautiful Lily With Black Spots.

"Wal, the Two Eyes' insurance ran out 'tween ports, she struck an uncharted reef, and in two hours I didn't own a thing but the duds I stood in and my instruments—ship and cargo both gone to the bottom."

"And you haven't a thing to show for all your years of hard work, Cap'n Jonah?" asked Eliphalet Truitt, almost horror stricken.

"I have a fine line of experience," said Cap'n Jonah with disgust. "I have the remains of my last year's airnings as skipper of the Rajah's Mate, in cash. And I have some sheers a feller sawed off onto me that I reckon ain't wuth much more'n that wall paper on your kitchen wall, Mr. Truitt. I invested two thousand dollars sev'ral years ago in them ile sheers, and then found the comp'ny had gone bust. All they ever got out'n the ile wells they bored, so they told me, was a bad smell!"

"I want to know!" commented the ex-steward, vastly perturbed by Cap'n Jonah's story.

"You can guess," went on the latter, "how much I got left out o' my money after payin' my fare home to the Cape. But I knowed another v'y'ge might put me on my beam ends. The rheumatics certainly have got their teeth set into me," and he rubbed his knees reflectively, swaying back and forth in Mr. Truitt's kitchen rocker.

"I calc'lated I'd be welcome—for a while at least—to Sarah and her folks. She writ me more'n a year ago she'd make a warm nest for me if I come here. An' whatever! she's makin' it warm enough, for a fac'."

"And you really have no fortune at all?" repeated 'Liphalet in wonder.

"Not a snitch," returned Cap'n Jonah. "That's the bald truth. Ev'rything I own of value I have right in my pocket here," he slapped the breast of his coat, "an' it ain't makin' me stoop-shouldered none carryin' of it around."

CHAPTER IX

A SHELL ROAD IDYL

"I wouldn't so much care about myself," Cap'n Jonah went on reflectively after a minute. "There's always the Sailors' Snug Harbor, and I've made inquiries about that. I've got money enough right now, if I don't let Sarah Petty take no more away from me, to buy my way into the Harbor, where I'll prob'ly get decent treatment for the rest of my life.

"Course, livin' in an institution," sighed the captain, "an' being called an inmate in the yearly reports, ain't prob'ly all it's cracked up to be. But I jest 'bout as soon live with a steam calliope as with Sarah Petty; and Orrin pesters me like an auger going through a pine knot.

"It ain't so much myself," repeated Cap'n Jonah, "as 'tis the way they treat that poor gal, Pearly. I can scurcely keep my feelin's to myself sometimes when they are a-houndin' of that poor gal."

"Yep. I've heard tell of it," Mr. Truitt said, nodding. "Miss Sue said to me once't she didn't see how the gal stood it."

"Sarah Petty claims her services, I believe, and the gal says herself she ain't eighteen. Sarah don't care a mite how bad she treats me; how much less does she care how she makes Pearly feel? Whatever!"

"It's a master hard situation," admitted Mr. Truitt frankly.

"'Hem! I know what would fix 'em," growled Cap'n Jonah. "If I did have the slew of money they at first thought I might have, I could bully 'em into treatin' the gal half decent, I vow! Now they've gone all through my duds and duffel an' ain't found so much as a pen scratch about a fortune, Sarah and Orrin air 'bout convinced I ain't got much laid by."

"By Hannah!" ejaculated 'Liphalet, his eyes widening. "If you could fool 'em—if you could make 'em think you did have a fortune, Cap'n Jonah——"

"Whatever!" responded the master mariner. "How could I do that? Nothin' but hard cash would convince Sarah and Orrin Petty, I allow. And hard cash I ain't got."

"There ought to be some way to fool 'em," insisted 'Liphalet. "We'd ought to be able to think up something."

"Think up what?" growled Cap'n Jonah, shaking his head. "I ain't got the conscience to try to sell them old ile sheers I hold. Though I calc'late Orrin would ha' bit on them when I first come."

"By Hannah!" said 'Liphalet again, which was his emasculated pronunciation of "Gehenna!" "It would sarve 'em right if they got fooled, good and plenty. You needn't be too tender with such folks. And there's a hull lot like 'em around here," he added, in an undertone. It was plain the ex-steward's opinion of his neighbors—some of them, at least—had become as the storekeeper suggested, somewhat soured.

"I tell ye what," he went on. "You'd ought to talk with Cap'n Abe about this."

"Talk with who?" ejaculated the other in surprise.

"With Abram Silt."

"Whatever! That old gasbag?" snorted Cap'n Jonah. "Ev'ry time I go into that store for my snuff he starts tellin' me some silly yarn! I been to sea too long myself to enjoy hearin' about other sea-farers an' their hard luck. Why! they tell me he didn't even come fair an' honest by his title of Cap'n. All he was ever skipper of was a wreckin' comp'ny."

"Wal, now, cap'n is one of the easiest titles to come by on the Cape," said Mr. Truitt excusingly. "And as for Cap'n Abe—wal, sir, I do allow he is one of the smartest men we have around here, if he didn't never go but one v'y'ge in a deep bottom craft."

"Didn't know as he ever done even that," scoffed Cap'n Jonah. "To hear him tell those yarns of his you'd think he'd sailed longer without seeing land than old Noah did."

"He loves seafarin' and always has," commented 'Liphalet. "And I reckon he's the only Silt that warn't as salt as a haddocker. Now, his brother, Cap'n Am'zon Silt, he was a corker. Spent the last summer of his life here on the Shell Road, did Cap'n Am'zon. We had a bad wreck off the Gull Rocks an' Cap'n Am'zon went out with the life-saving crew an' never come ashore again. Was washed off'n the wreck of the Curlew schooner.

"Cap'n Abe's been kind of diff'rent since his brother was drowned. Don't begin to tell so many stories as he did, and he's a sight more stern. B'sides, Cap'n Am'zon could fair burn him up when it come to relatin' of adventures. Consider'ble of a man, Cap'n Am'zon was.

"Jest the same," pursued 'Liphalet, "Cap'n Abe Silt has got a head on him. I'd like you to tell your story to him, Cap'n Jonah. I b'lieve he might be able to give you an idee wuth follerin'.

"Hullo! Who's boarded us now?"

A quick tap, tap of heels on the steps and porch. Then a gentle rap on the door. 'Liphalet's brick-burned face became more inflamed, if that were possible, as he arose to answer the unexpected summons.

"Oh! Good morning, 'Liphalet," came the sweet contralto of Miss Sue Ambrose. "I wanted to remind you that the Christmas committee meets this afternoon in the vestry. You'll see to the fire for us, won't you?"

"I calc'late to," the ex-steward replied in evident confusion of mind, for he was striving to cram his big-bowled pipe into a vest pocket far too small to receive it.

"And 'Liphalet!" pursued the doctor's sister, "you'll be at the meeting, too, won't you? We shall need some of you menfolk when it comes to the real work, and we shall be glad to have your advice now."

"Hum! I'll see," muttered 'Liphalet not at all inclined, it would seem, to make the promise.

"We shall be looking for you," said the gentle little woman, as she turned from the door. "Please remember."

Eliphalet Truitt stepped back into his kitchen and found it empty save for Bo'sun, the big white cat, who purred contentedly on the stove hearth. Cap'n Jonah, thinking his friend was about to receive other company, had slipped out of the rear door and departed, 'cross-lots, toward the Petty place.

'Liphalet glanced out of the partly closed door again, holding it ajar with his hand, and watched the trim figure of the doctor's sister hurrying along the Shell Road. How often he had thus peered after Sue Ambrose since his establishment ten years before in this little box of a house next to the Mariner's Chapel!

The ex-steward was old-fashioned in dress and speech; but he was as spry "alow and aloft" as when he had retired from the sea and had come to Cardhaven to live. Nor did he expect, when he so retired, that he would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. He had a competence ample for two plain people, much more than one would possibly need. For several years before leaving the sea he had looked forward to the time when he could settle down, ask a "certain party" (as he always expressed it even in his own mind) to share his little fortune, and to sag into comfortable old age on one side of a cheerful hearth while she sat on the other.

He visualized this idea often while at sea to keep his heart up in storm and stress during long and tedious voyages to the world's end; for Eliphalet Truitt had been a deep bottom sailor—none more so among the ancient skippers of the Cape than this taut little ship's steward.

He had made friends of every soul along the Shell Road, for they found Eliphalet Truitt a true man, and liberal in every sense—with money, with his time, and, as well, in his religious views. The chapel was a union church; all manner of doctrinal beliefs were represented in its congregation, even to the Roman Catholic in the person of 'Suz Montevedo, the Portuguese, who was indefatigable in his attendance at Sunday-school and took his weekly golden-text reward cards home and hoarded them.

'Liphalet, living so close to the chapel, acted as an unpaid sexton. He was at hand to light the lamps, to build and care for fires, and the key of the vestry door was always to be found hanging on a nail on the ex-steward's porch.

The theological student, whoever he chanced to be, sent down once a month from the seminary to try his apprentice hand upon the chapel congregation, was always advised to see 'Liphalet Truitt when he first arrived; and in the summer boarder season, when the women were all busy, he was more than likely to be fed and housed over Sunday by Mr. Truitt, who came near to being deacon of the congregation.

'Liphalet was the mainstay of the Ladies' Aid Society. He was the one called into the breach whenever failure, financial or otherwise, seemed to threaten any branch of the church work. He was the head and spirit of the annual Sunday-school picnic, and he was always present in the winter, and active, at the semimonthly bean or oyster-suppers rounding out the regular sessions of the Ladies' Aid Society meetings.

Thus, 'Liphalet was the ladies' stand-by. And it was at Christmas that the taut little ex-steward shone more brightly than at any other season. Being a lover of children, he helped make the greatest holiday of all the year a delight for those who attended the chapel Sunday-school.

He supplied most of the toys and candy hung for each child on the tree, buying the gifts himself and distributing them from his sack, with other presents for the older people, in the guise of good Saint Nicholas on Christmas night. He aided in dressing the chapel in Christmas garb, and sometimes secured the tree itself from some dealer in Paulmouth.

It might be that a selfish thought had entered into his mind at first regarding these holiday activities. But what good thing, after all, has not the germ of selfishness at the root of it?

"A certain party" had been on the Christmas celebration committee from time immemorial. Eliphalet Truitt had first given his money and personal endeavor to make the occasion a success because it offered the opportunity for an association that was very sweet indeed to him.

Between voyages, during his brief visits to Cardhaven, he had been wont to take his flute in the evening and call at the cottage where "a certain party" kept house for Doctor Ambrose. Demure, pink-cheeked Sue Ambrose, with the pretty waves of silvering hair drawn over her shell-like ears, the soft white bands at throat and wrists, her trim figure, her low throaty, contralto voice like a bird call when she laughed, seemed to 'Liphalet to possess the most delightful personality in all the world.

There was an ancient melodeon in the doctor's parlor; and from it Miss Sue coaxed sweet sounds that combined harmoniously with the steward's rather uncertain flutings. And she loved the old sea ditties as did 'Liphalet himself. He had been born with that dumb joy of sweet sounds that is actually an infliction to those unfortunates who never learn to express it through some musical instrument. Perhaps 'Liphalet had not chosen the most fortunate means of expressing his musical soul, for the flute in the hands of an amateur can be provocative of a good deal of pain as well as pleasure.

But standing in Doctor Ambrose's little parlor, with his head and shoulders thrown well back, and accompanied by the notes of the melodeon, the taut little steward had been in his glory. Those visits between voyages were glimpses of heaven to Eliphalet Truitt.

For forty years he had known no home but a ship's forecastle or cabin. Was it strange that within his breast grew that vision of a hearthside that now, unfulfilled, racked his very soul when it rose specter-like in his mind?

He came in again and closed the door of his kitchen. He dropped into the low rocking-chair Cap'n Jonah had occupied, and tapped the cold pipe upon the hearth to knock the dottle out of it.

"Hum!" he growled in his throat (but did he believe it?), "I spect all she thinks of, too, is what she can git out of me for Christmas. Christmas—bah!"

CHAPTER X

"PEARLY"

It was true that Cap'n Jonah was more disturbed by the Pettys' treatment of Pearl Holden than he was by his own uncertain financial situation. He had been taking chances all his life, and the fact that his ready cash would soon run low held nothing new or strange in his experience.

Like most seafaring men, the captain held all women in great respect. And a young girl in Pearl's situation was bound to appeal very strongly to his chivalrous spirit.

"Whatever!" he muttered often and again. "If I could jest fool Sarah and Orrin, like 'Liphalet says. If them two money-lovers only believed that I had a fortune, as they at first suspected, I could make 'em treat Pearly decent, an' that's a fac'."

As the days passed he could not help seeing that there was something troubling Pearl deeply. He supposed that it must be the harshness meted out to her by Sarah Petty.

Before Mr. Helmford, Sarah and Orrin were both on their best behavior. They really desired, it seemed, to retain the new boarder's respect, and at table spoke in fair kindness to the girl, as well as treated Cap'n Jonah with more consideration.

Tom, of course, was hopeless. His bad manners Mr. Helmford ignored. And really, the lout gave Cap'n Jonah nothing of which to complain. Tom, in fact, held a contrary opinion from his parents' regarding Cap'n Jonah's financial circumstances; and he had reason to.

The young fellow could not well forget that his Uncle Jonah had given him a twenty-dollar bill without his even asking for it; and Tom could not imagine anybody giving away money in such sums unless they really had more than they knew what to do with.

Tom had no mind to tell his father or mother his reasons for holding to the belief that Uncle Jonah Hand was a wealthy man. It would open too fruitful a field for inquiry.

Despite the fact that Sarah Petty had examined every scrap of Cap'n Jonah's possessions save what he carried about with him all the time, and had found no bankbook or any account of his investments, Tom backed his father strongly in the declaration that the old man might be hiding securities or other valuables.

"Jest because he's savin' and won't buy new clo'es and things he needs," said Orrin on one occasion, "ain't no sure proof that he's short of money. Mebbe that's how he got it—bein' careful."

Orrin could appreciate to the full such a miserly character as he gave Cap'n Jonah. He was worried, it must be confessed, by his wife's treatment of her uncle. He remembered that Cap'n Jonah admitted he had some money invested in oil shares; and what the bank cashier had said about such investments could not fail to impress his suspicious and avaricious mind.

"You may wake up, Sarah, and find you've made a bad mistake," he urged.

"I guess I can trim my sails to a change of wind if need be," she returned sharply. "But I've about made up my mind that old tramp is soon to be without a cent to bless himself with. And when that time comes, out he goes, bag and baggage! The poor farm's good enough for the like of him."

"But if he's got that old note of your father's——"

"Let's wait till that kettle boils," said Sarah Petty grimly. "I scare't myself enough about that at the start. I ain't found a single scrap of paper—not even any of my father's letters in which he mentioned the note. Jonah Hand says he lost his ship and all year afore last. I reckon all his private papers went down with it. I don't calc'late to be 'fraid again of no bugaboo."

Sarah's was a much bolder spirit than her husband's. She was the lion, he the jackal. He wrung his hands reflectively and made no reply. But privately he intimated to Cap'n Jonah that he did not approve of Sarah's putting the old seaman "into that poky garret room." It was well, Orrin thought, to have an anchor to windward.

Cap'n Jonah took both Orrin's and Tom's advances for what they were worth, and no more. And he continued to worry about his finances as little as possible. But Pearly——

There was something wrong between the girl and Tom. The captain began to realize that, and it, too, disturbed him. He saw them privately talking in corners—the girl angry and earnest, Tom slouching and with sneering face.

The lazy fellow did not go to work. He idled around the house, helped his father under protest, and occasionally went fishing or clamming and thus added to the family larder. His mother must have supplied him with money, the captain decided, for he was able to buy tobacco and such other small luxuries as he wanted. Sarah bought all his clothing, as she did Orrin's; and hard bargains she drove indeed for them with the peddlers and with Cap'n Abe.

Once Tom went to Paulmouth and came home with the unmistakable smell of liquor on his breath.

"You're a good-for-nothing, lazy fellow!" Cap'n Jonah once heard Pearl tell the youth, and with vigor. "And you won't ever do what you promised me you would—and 'twill soon be Christmas."

The captain wondered what it was Tom Petty had promised her. At least, the girl evidently had no love for the lout, and Cap'n Jonah was glad of that.

He watched her intercourse with Helmford, however, with high delight. When the "fish hatchery man" was near Pearl could not help preening her feathers for him. Her pretty face glowed with interest when he spoke. When he addressed her directly she was by no means tongue-tied; yet there was a sweet shyness in Pearl's manner at such times that was very attractive.

The young man could not fail to be charmed with the girl's unaffected sweetness when he was in her presence. But he held himself back, and treated Pearl only with that courtesy and kindness that he gave to every woman.

He presumed the girl was already chosen as the future mate for the son of the house. Helmford did not purpose to make Pearl's situation more difficult than it was by offering her any particular attention. Yet Tom Petty glowered at the two, and occasionally dropped a caustic remark for which his mother took him privately to task.

Helmford had brought a great store of books with him and bookshelves on which to arrange them. It was Pearl's duty to dust these from time to time, for, after having once gone through the new boarder's possessions quite as thoroughly as she had Cap'n Jonah's, Sarah Petty gave the care of the new boarder's room over to her willing little drudge.

Pearl had obtained a fair education in the simpler branches before she had been allotted by the selectmen to Orrin Petty, her mother's step-brother's cousin-by-marriage—a relationship which even the closest student of genealogy would have found difficulty in figuring out.

She loved to read and all the time she could steal from her multitudinous tasks was spent in that way. Not that her selection of fiction had been very wise, perhaps, before Helmford came to board at the Petty homestead. The romances in the Ladies' Home Provider were not strong intellectual food; but they were amusing, even enthralling, to the mind of Pearl Holden.

These stories kept alive in the hearts of the women and girls who read them the fires of real romance. Their belief in the existence of chivalrous youth and beauteous maidens was nursed by these tales, and they added nothing if not a saccharine quality to life as it is lived on the Cape.

But Pearl's dippings into Helmford's books began to open her mind to the appreciation of other worlds. The highest attribute of man had heretofore been in Pearl's thought his ability to make love in a gushing, moving-picture-hero way. Perhaps her belief in the existence of such lovers had helped her hold aloof Tom Petty and his maudlin attempts at love making.

In Helmford's books she found the clash of real life—in itself a more enthralling romance than any Pearl had ever before dreamed. The heroines were, too, of a different character from the girls she had actually known. Why, sometimes they were more heroic than the men themselves!

She quickly awoke to the fact that romance was not something of which she could only dream. As she had told Cap'n Jonah, she thought of marriage, even if she might never reach that much-to-be-desired state.

Pearl saw that Sarah Petty, for instance, was stronger than her husband, that she took the lead. She knew she, herself, was more assertive than Tom. These new book-heroines seemed to possess all the push and determination that Pearl felt simmering in her own blood.

"If it was not unwomanly for those girls in the books to assert themselves, to go out into the world and be self-supporting, and in the end to choose the man they wanted for a mate instead of sitting down to wait for the right man to look them up—if it was all right for girls in books to do this, why," Pearl asked herself, "wasn't it the correct thing for real girls to do?"

Pearl determined when her "time was out" at Orrin Petty's to do just as some of these new heroines did. There was even Gusty Durgin, for a local example. Modesty or a shrinking from the unknown had not kept Gusty from setting forth with the single talent of being able to cry real tears to be a moving picture actress. The rather clumsy, overfed Gusty had never before seemed a heroine to Pearl Holden; but now she saw the ex-waitress of the Cardhaven Inn in a new light.

As for Pearl's opinion of Helmford himself, she at first placed him on a pedestal so high that he was scarcely in range of her humble worship. But a girl cannot take intimate care of a man's belongings—dust and sweep for him, clean up his litter, put away his garments, wash and iron his clothes, darn his socks, and otherwise care for him and for his possessions, without gaining a familiarity which, if it does not breed the proverbial contempt, certainly does tarnish any heroic quality he may have at first assumed.

Not that Joe Helmford was a man who held himself aloof. Quite the contrary. He was as simple and unaffected as Pearl herself. Only he had seen more of the world than she, and he had no idea of becoming too familiar with Pearl, or with any other member of the Petty household.

In other words, he knew his place and kept to it. He was friendly enough at mealtime; but he seldom appeared in the kitchen at any other hour save to ask for shaving water or to pass through to his room.

He had immediately purchased an open grate stove in Paulmouth and had had Perry Baker, the expressman, bring it over, along with a ton of coal from the Cardhaven dock where the freight schooner tied up. So he had his own fire, before which he spent most of his free time in study.

There was not much to do at the fish hatchery at this season, and Helmford had assistants there to watch things day and night. So he was able to study and read. Finding Pearl interested in books he advised her a little in the selection of reading matter from his library, which she bore off to her room, unknown to Sarah Petty.

Tom Petty, however, soon became aware of the innocent intimacy between Pearl and the new boarder. He snarled and sneered and spoke so pointedly about it that his mother said, in wonder:

"What do you care whether that feller, Helmford, pays attention to Pearl Holden or not? I sh'd hope you'd respect yourself too much to take any notice of hired help. What would your uncles, 'Poley and Perseus Heath, say—let alone their wives—if you undertook to hitch up with a pauper?"

For once his mother's advice was not calculated to impress Tom Petty. He assumed, at least, the attitude of the dog in the manger. If he did not want Pearl himself, he did not purpose that Joe Helmford should have her.

"You don't want to mix up none with that city feller, Pearly," he told her. "He's no good. You know what them city fellers are that come down here to the Cape in summer. He's like all the rest of 'em."

"He isn't," declared Pearl, briefly and with firmness.

"You don't know nothin' at all about him—who he is or where he comes from."

"Did I say I wanted to know?" responded Pearl proudly.

"Wal," said Tom, "you know you can't keep your eyes off'n him at table, and when he talks your ears hang open like the mouth of a dyin' codfish."

"I don't, either, Tom Petty!" she cried furiously.

They were out in the yard after their supper, and Pearl had been taking down a batch of washed clothes frozen to the clothesline. It was a cloudy night with no moon and was almost pitch dark. The clothes basket was at the girl's feet and separated her from Tom.

"I don't, either, Tom Petty," she repeated. "Mr. Helmford is nothing to me. But he's a gentleman."

"Aw, cat's foot!" scoffed Tom. "What's a gentleman? A dude with his pants ironed to a crease."

"A gentleman is something you ain't, and never will be!" cried the girl. "You're not gentleman enough to keep your word to a girl. You've broke your word to me. You won't go to work and earn money to pay your debts. You're as mean, Tom Petty, as you can be—an' I've a good mind to tell your mother after all," she ended in anger.

"You said you wouldn't tell," sneered Tom. "If you tell, who's the biggest liar—you or me?"

"I guess," said Pearl practically, "that a bad promise is better broken than kep'."

"You tell Marm," threatened the youth, "and I'll fix you, Pearl Holden!"

He actually raised his hand to her. She stepped back, seeing his gesture in the darkness, and at that very moment a tall figure thrust itself between them.

"Shall I carry the basket indoors for you, Miss Pearl?" asked Helmford's calm voice. "I am just going in."

He had come up the grassy lane unheard by Pearl or Tom. He noticed Tom not at all as he picked up the basket.

Pearl choked, stifled a sob, and scurried ahead of him without a word. Tom's protest died in his throat as Helmford strode after the girl, carrying the clothes basket.

CHAPTER XI

AN EVENING WITH CAP'N ABE

As Tom Petty showed more plainly his jealousy, his mother's unkindness toward Pearl increased. That her son should display any interest in the girl ground Sarah Petty's pride between the upper and the nether millstone.

There was scarcely ever yet a woman's son who was not too good in the mother's opinion for almost any woman he chose for a wife. The mother may hide this feeling quite successfully; but secretly she feels that the woman who has taken him away from her will not be worthy of her trust.

In this case Sarah Petty was prepared to make life particularly miserable for any daughter-in-law that the son might introduce into the family. The thought that he might fall under the sway of the girl who had drudged for her for seven years, was particularly exasperating.

Sarah had always accused Pearl of neglecting her work when Tom was around. It was a sop to her pride to hold this belief. She considered Pearl far beneath Tom's notice, and often scolded Orrin for "having brought that pauper gal home" and thus thrown temptation in Tom's way.

Save for Cap'n Jonah, the Hands of Sarah's branch had died out, but there were relatives of the Petty family who she considered were well worth catering to. The twins, Apollo and Perseus Heath, and their families were very well to do. There was Solon Petty and Enoch Petty—the one in local, the other in State politics.

She had the family to think of, had Sarah Petty; and Tom "mixing up with a pauper girl" was not at all to her liking. As a triangle situation seemed to develop between Helmford, Pearl, and Tom, Sarah Petty became so acrimonious and bitter to the girl that Cap'n Jonah could scarcely hold his peace.

"Whatever!" he confided to 'Liphalet Truitt. "I'd give one of my laigs—neither of 'em's much good when the rheumatism is in 'em—or an arm if I could pay Sarah Petty back for some of her meanness to Pearly. It's gettin' 'nough to sp'il the temper of a saint—and I ain't none!"

'Liphalet's heart was heavy and his face as long as the moral law, but he still could feel sympathy for his friend, and for Pearly as well.

"I tell ye what, Cap'n Jonah," he said, "le's you an' me step down to Cap'n Abe's this very evenin' and put it up to him. I tell ye, he's a knowledgeable man."

"Wa-al," responded the captain, about at his wit's end and willing to take almost any chance for advice that might aid in the situation.

Limping up and down the frozen road after supper that evening, leaning rather heavily on his stick, and waiting for the ex-steward to put in an appearance, Cap'n Jonah was hailed by what he had been pleased to term "that spanking craft," Miss Sue Ambrose. She was returning from some errand of mercy with an empty basket. For if a neighbor was ill or poor, the doctor's sister was first with aid and comfort.

"Good evening, Cap'n Jonah," was her cheerful greeting. "Isn't it rather raw for you to be out with your rheumatism?"

"Whatever!" exploded Cap'n Jonah. "I got to be out some, and I can't leave the dratted rheumatics to home. Wish I could."

"Poor old Suz Montevedo is down, all alone in his cabin. He has the inflammatory kind and unless his granddaughter runs in to see him, he is all alone 'way over there beyond Tapp Point."

"Wal," said the captain, his eyes glowing with admiration, "I bet you don't neglect him, Miss Sue."

"Oh, I do what I can," said the little woman, visibly blushing in the starlight.

"And a feller laid on his beam ends ought not to want no better care than you'd give him, ma'am," said the old mariner gallantly. "If I'm laid by, myself, I hope I'll git ha'f as good."

"You'll have Pearly to nurse you, Captain," laughed Miss Sue. "And she is a dear girl."

"Like enough! Like enough!" murmured Cap'n Jonah, as the little woman went her way. "But the feller that got you—an' your forty thousand dollars—would be mighty well off, an' no mistake. Hullo! Here's 'Liphalet at last."

The ex-steward had been halted by the doctor's sister for a moment. When he reached Cap'n Jonah his countenance was stormy and his lips grimly set.

"That there Miss Sue, Truitt, is a mighty sweet sailin' craft," observed the captain. "For a man of your age, say, she'd make a proper mate."

'Liphalet growled something inaudible.

"And they tell me she's wuth forty thousand dollars in her own right," pursued the captain.

"By Hannah!" exploded the ex-steward.

"What's that?" responded Cap'n Jonah, startled.

"Hum! I forgot somethin'," was 'Liphalet's rather weak explanation. He seemed to have no interest at all in Sue Ambrose and her reported fortune.

"Wal," was the captain's final comment, "she does good with some of her money, I haven't a doubt. But—for—ty—thou—sand—dol—lars! Whatever! A sheer of that would purty near put a man on his feet, Truitt."

'Liphalet did not utter another word until they entered Cap'n Abe's store.

Supper time at this season of the year came early, that there might be a long evening before nine-thirty o'clock, which was most people's bedtime, and always Cap'n Abe's closing hour.

The lamplight bathed the crowded store and the ring of loungers about the glowing stove with a soft radiance. This light glistened, too, on tarpaulins and oil-skins, on varnished sea-boots and rubber "hips," all of which garments and other gear hanging in rows looked like whispering men jostling one another as they listened to the jest and comment that went around the circle of which Cap'n Abe's stove was the center.

Milt Baker lounged in his favorite place at the tobacco showcase, with simple Amiel Perdue beside him.

"I guess, Cap'n Abe, you'll haf to reach me another piece o' Brown Mule," Milt said. "I seem to be all out."

"In more ways than one, Milt, you air out," rejoined the bewhiskered storekeeper briskly. "You know what the motto of this store is. If you want to buy tobacco, Milt——"

"Sho, now! can't you be a good feller, Cap'n Abe? 'Mandy'll be in for her week's buyin' by an' by and she'll pay you," said the disappointed Milt.

"I dunno will she or not. You've got a bad mem'ry, Milt. And tobacco ain't good for small boys, anyway——Good evening, 'Liphalet! How be ye, Cap'n Hand?"

"Wal," said the philosophical Milt Baker, "mebbe I'll have to wait for another chaw of tobacco till the Christmas tree's hung. 'Liphalet won't never forgit me, I know."

Milt occupied the throne of local humorist. He thus quickly turned attention from his own chagrin to the beclouded countenance of the ex-steward.

"Ye-as," said Cap'n Abe. "'Liphalet ought to be right busy purty soon."

"Le's see," continued Milt, grinning knowingly, "have ye taken that annual trip of yours to town yet to buy the stuffin' for Santa Claus's bag on Christmas night, 'Liphalet? The kids ain't goin' to be disappointed, be they? Ye got more children to buy presents for than the old woman that lived in a shoe."

"Ha!" ejaculated the rather crabbed Cap'n Joab Beecher, "a man might's well be a Mormon as to be fixed like 'Liphalet."

"Tell ye what 'tis," rose Washy Gallup's shrill voice, "I sartain sure wouldn't let no passel of women and young'uns pull my laig for all my spare change like 'Liphalet's done."

"And that wouldn't take no 'long pull an' a strong pull an' a pull all together,' now, would it, Washy?" observed Milt, grinning broadly.

Mr. Truitt said not a word. Cap'n Abe, shrewd observer that he was, shifted the topic of conversation adroitly. He saw no reason for allowing a good customer to be bullyragged until he was run out of the store and might be led thereby to take his trade to the Cardhaven shops.

"It does seem," the storekeeper said reflectively, "as though the children ought to be giv all the good times we can make for 'em at Christmas. I will allow 'Liphalet's done more than his sheer in that way since he's lived here on the Shell Road. He's been Santa Claus ev'ry year, as well as 'dressin' the part,' as them movie actors used to say. Some of the rest of us might better put our hands in our pockets an' help.

"It's a pleasure to think," went on Cap'n Abe, "of how children all over the world 'bout this time o' year are getting ready to hang up their stockin's for Santa Claus to stuff with goodies an' toys. I've heard Cap'n Am'zon say——"

He halted in his speech and his jovial face fell. Cap'n Jonah Hand, who was preparing to endure the expected yarn with such fortitude as he could summon, was startled by the change of expression that came over the storekeeper's visage.

"Wal," sighed Cap'n Abe, at last, "we won't talk 'bout that. But it allus did puzzle me what them poor naked children of 'India's coral strand,' that they tell about, hang up to get presents in on Christmas Eve."

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Hand under his breath. Cap'n Abe's flights of imagination were mysterious to him.

The conversational tide in the store ebbed and flowed. Mr. Truitt seized an opportunity to tell the storekeeper quietly that he and Cap'n Jonah had occasion to confer with him privately. The Shell Road oracle nodded that he understood, and proceeded to get rid of customers and loiterers alike at an early hour.

He locked the store door behind Washy Gallup's hooped back, and snuffed out the window lights. He returned to the counter and held up the flap of it, motioning Mr. Truitt and Cap'n Jonah to pass through.

"Go right back to the livin' room, 'Liphalet, you an' Cap'n Hand. You know the way. I'll be right with ye soon's I bank the fire here for the night. I calc'late we'll have consider'ble of a frost before morning."

The big argand burner over the table filled the comfortable room with mellow light. The tortoise-shell cat sleeping on a turkey-red cushion in one of the wide rockers, opened his eyes lazily and yawned at the visitors.

"Find yourselves cheers, boys, and sit down," called Cap'n Abe's voice from the store. "Slap Diddimus off'n that cushion, 'Liphalet. He's got so he thinks he purty nigh owns this craft."

But the ex-steward had a liking for cats. As he had told Cap'n Jonah, a cat was often his only company. He scooped Diddimus into his arms and, sitting down in the rocker, held the big, purring, furry animal in his lap while he swung back and forth.

Cap'n Abe bustled through the living room to the kitchen in the rear, and they heard him shaking the grate of the range to liven the fire. A moment later the harsh jangle of the coffee grinder announced his hospitable intent.

"A mug o' hot coffee won't go bad to-night, boys, afore you go out into the cold again," said the storekeeper, returning after putting the coffee-pot on the stove. He settled into his own creaking chair and reached for the ever-ready knitting on the stand by the window, over which hung an empty bird cage. The sock he was fashioning could be for none but his own generous-sized foot. "Wal," he said, smiling broadly on the other two men, "I can see there's somethin' on both your minds. Le's have it."

'Liphalet's glum visage lightened with sympathy as he turned to Cap'n Jonah. "Do you want me, Cap'n Hand, to put this here difficulty o' yourn before Cap'n Abe?" he asked gently.

"Steam ahead, Truitt," said the captain gruffly. "You've the gift of gab, and you're a friend."

"The Cap'n," said 'Liphalet, to the storekeeper, "needs advice. I told him you was the man to come to for it, Cap'n Abe."

The storekeeper, knitting briskly, made a clucking sound with his tongue to notify his visitors that he modestly disclaimed any desire to pose as an oracle. Yet his attitude was one of willingness to help if he could.

"You've lived in this neighborhood longer than I have, Cap'n Abe," pursued Mr. Truitt, "although I was born in Cardhaven. You have been here on the Shell Road for more than twenty years. And endurin' that time I wouldn't wonder if you had got purty close to an opinion on Orrin Petty and his wife."

"Hi mighty!" ejaculated Cap'n Abe, "I sh'd say I had," and glanced with compassion at Cap'n Jonah.

"Cap'n Hand," went on Mr. Truitt, "had good and sufficient reason, so he says, to expect a welcome and kindness, from Sarah Petty when he came to live with her. Her father, and naturally Sarah herself, was under obligation to Cap'n Hand——"

"Belay all that!" interrupted Cap'n Hand. "'Twas a family matter. Nothin' but what I should have done for John Hand, my own brother, as I had neither chick nor child myself."

"In the same spirit," Mr. Truitt insisted, "Sarah Petty should have been willing to help you. Ain't that a fac'?"

"'Twould seem so," admitted Cap'n Jonah.

The storekeeper listened and clicked his needles. "What air you drivin' at, 'Liphalet? Is it that Orrin and Sarah's made it onpleasant for Cap'n Hand up there at their house?"

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah. "And the way they treat that gal, Pearly, is a sin and shame. I can't stand it!"

"Why don't you get a place of your own, Cap'n Hand, and take Pearly with you?" asked the storekeeper bluntly. "I guess we could fix it with the town selectmen. Ev'rybody knows what a tongue Sarah Petty's got and how parsimonious Orrin is. And Pearly is a good little thing and always was."

"Why, Mr. Silt," said Cap'n Jonah desperately, and cutting out 'Liphalet as intermediary, "I'll tell you the truth. When I first come here Sarah and Orrin treated me fair enough. They thought, you see, I had a fortune."

"Hi-mighty!" exclaimed the storekeeper, a great light dawning on his face. "Ye don't mean to say——Why! Orrin told us ye had money to burn."

"'Twouldn't make much of a smoke if I burned it all," said Cap'n Jonah dryly. "No, sir! What little tad I had when I landed here will soon be gone if I let Sarah Petty take it away from me at the rate she has been doin'. They're purty nigh convinced now, Sarah and Orrin, that I ain't a millionaire. Sarah ain't been able to find even a bankbook in my chist. And the way that woman treats Pearly——"

He went on to tell of how the young girl was made to suffer, as well as of the indignities heaped upon himself of late, and of the unpleasant quarters he was made to occupy in a house where there were plenty of well furnished bedrooms.

Cap'n Abe listened with full appreciation and sympathy. 'Liphalet broke in to say: "I tell him if he could make them Pettys jest think he was rich—as they first thought—he could carry things with a high hand. Make 'em treat Pearly better, too."

"Hi-mighty!" agreed Cap'n Abe. "It's a good p'int an' well taken. Might be done. Is that what ye want my advice on?"

"Wal," said Cap'n Jonah, "Truitt said you was a great feller for schemin' out things." But he did not say it very hopefully.

Cap'n Abe smiled broadly. "How fur would you be willin' to go, Cap'n Hand?" he asked. "I mean how close't could you trim your sails to the bare bones of truth. Ordinarily I don't believe in lyin'. But if folks want to fool themselves——"

"That's it!" ejaculated 'Liphalet, eagerly.

"I'd be willin' to go purty far," growled Cap'n Jonah. "Whatever!"

Cap'n Abe had put aside his knitting. He slapped his knee smartly. "'Nough said!" he ejaculated. "You lemme think it over—di-gest it, as ye might say. I sartain am sorry for your situation, Cap'n Hand, and I want you to believe that, if wust comes to wust, us fellers along the Shell Road that's been able to put by a little won't see you lack none for comforts. Eh, 'Liphalet? Not as long as there's a shot in the locker."

"That's mighty kind of you," said Cap'n Jonah. "But Sarah Petty an' her folks, I feel sure, wouldn't ha' been near so well off as they be if it wasn't for what I done once for her father. And for that reason she should be decent to me."

"Humph! I allow you air right," said the reflective storekeeper. "Ye mean to say ye ain't got nothin' but the money ye speak of?"

"Nothin' but some ile sheers—two thousand dollars they cost me—that a feller bunkoed me with some years ago," replied Cap'n Jonah. "An' I believe I could have sold them to Orrin Petty when I first come."

"Ye better had," said the ex-steward, darkly. "'Twould ha' sarved him right."

"No," said Cap'n Jonah. "I'll raise the wind in some other way."

"First of all we'll see if we can't make the Pettys believe you have got a fortune," Cap'n Abe said, more briskly. "Leave it to me, Cap'n Hand. I guess we can find some way of overreaching them that tries to overreach. You come in again soon. I'll have somethin' cooked up for ye, I don't doubt."

CHAPTER XII

THE APOSTATE SANTA CLAUS

Heart-warmed by Cap'n Abe's promise of assistance and by his coffee, the two cronies started homeward. A keen off-shore gale bit frostily. The stars were sprinkled thickly upon a purple sky.

Cap'n Jonah was much more cheerful; but 'Liphalet soon drifted into the doldrums again. Spurred by his interest in his friend's trouble, his thoughts had veered from his own case; now memory began to rasp his mind again in a very tender spot.

"Tell ye what!" observed Cap'n Jonah briskly. "If I was a marryin' man I sartain sure would set my stays and carry all sail till I run down along a woman like Miss Sue Ambrose. That would fix me fine! She's got a plenty and she seems like a smooth-tempered party. Nothin' like Sarah Hand, that was."

"By Hannah!" snorted 'Liphalet, "would you marry for money, Cap'n Hand?"

"No. I don't presume I would," replied Cap'n Jonah reflectively. "But if I was wantin' to marry I sartain sure wouldn't kick none if the woman I picked out chanced to have a tidy bit laid away. Whatever!"

"Good night!" said 'Liphalet bitterly, and left him abruptly at the mouth of the Petty lane.

Eliphalet Truitt was deeply disturbed in his mind. He regarded what he had been forced to listen to from the loungers in the store this evening as the capsheaf of all the rasping incidents that had of late disturbed his mental poise.

He was hurt. More than that, he began to feel that Washy Gallup was right. In the homely phraseology of the community, he had allowed his leg to be pulled for all these ten years. He was a "good thing." He had made the mistake of trying to buy (so he now thought) the love and friendship he craved as a lonely and disappointed man. These people he lived among looked upon him merely as a convenience and a silly fellow, to be bled from the pocket for the general advantage.

It was true that heretofore he had enjoyed doing his bit and giving his thought and time to the children's holiday. But now, as this Christmas loomed near, the thought of hanging a tree with presents and packing a bag with goodies for the little ones filled Eliphalet Truitt with loathing.

As he scuffled along the Shell Road in the dark, he heard a mother threatening her wayward offspring at the back door.

"You'd better be mighty good, Ezra Saltus, or Mr. 'Liphalet won't hang no Chris'mas gift on the tree for you."

"By Hannah!" ejaculated the disgruntled ex-steward in his throat. "They even make a bugaboo out o' me for naughty children! I'm good and sick o' this! Folks just like me for what they can get out o' me. I—I'll quit!"

It was then and there that the Santa Claus of the Shell Road apostatized.

The next day the members of the Ladies' Aid Society were apprised—and surprised—of the fact that the ex-steward refused to contribute in any way toward the approaching Christmas celebration. He had stated to the committee that approached him, with a finality that could not possibly be misunderstood, his determination not to act in the capacity of Santa Claus at the Mariner's Chapel, or help in any way whatsoever.

"That ought to stop 'em," snarled 'Liphalet to himself. "If they know I mean business—that I ain't to be the Mr. E. Z. Mark of this here community no longer—they'll mebbe pretty quick stop their smirkin', and hintin' and jollyin'."

But it seemed they did not cease to do these very things. At least, 'Liphalet did not see that his unwonted attitude toward the approaching holiday celebration made the least difference with his neighbors. They continued to smile knowingly at him when the topic of Christmas was mentioned. Even Cap'n Jonah when next he met the ex-steward seemed to be particularly jovial about the coming Christmastide. The captain seemed quite to forget his own troubles to say:

"I guess we can look forward to a white Christmas, Truitt. And that'll please the children, an' Miss Sue, an' ev'rybody. Don't you admire a white Christmas?"

"I don't admire no Christmas," snarled 'Liphalet. Then to himself and under his breath, he repeated: "Christmas—bah!"

He turned on his heel before Cap'n Jonah could say anything else, and left the latter standing in the road open-mouthed.

"By Hannah! Don't the tarnal fools believe I mean it?" was 'Liphalet's disgusted comment.

But he was secretly ashamed when he met Sue Ambrose near the post-office one day about this time. He had tried to tell himself that she was like the rest—that her interest in church work led her to encourage him to spend time and money for these people who did not really care anything about him save for what they could get out of him.

She hailed him just as he was about to speak to Perry Baker, the Paulmouth expressman, who had a crated talking machine in his wagon to deliver, and 'Liphalet could not escape.

"I'd admire to know who it is in Cardhaven is goin' to own a music box like that," he said, trying to cover his confusion. "By Hannah! I've been dreadful tempted to buy one o' them things. Wish't I hadn't been weaned on old saws like 'Wicked waste makes woful want' and 'A fool an' his money air soon parted.'"

"Why, 'Liphalet Truitt!" Miss Sue said, with her low sweet laugh. "As though you could not afford every comfort—even every luxury—you craved."

"There she goes," thought the disgruntled ex-steward. "Hintin' I'm made of money like these other folks." And he continued to stare after Perry Baker's wagon as though deeply interested in the crated talking machine.

"I do want your advice, about the tree, 'Liphalet," said Miss Sue desperately. It seemed as though she wished to recall his attention from that talking machine and where it was going. "You know, Amos Durgin usually has good trees; but he's shipped all his best ones to Boston——"

"Ho!" ejaculated the ex-steward. "I ain't takin' no int'rest in the Christmas tree this year, Susan. I'm a-takin' a back seat, like I tell 'em all. Let somebody else have a spell at sech didoes. It's my watch below."

"Oh! Yes! Certainly, 'Liphalet, if you feel that way about it," the gentle spinster said.

The memory of this meeting rasped 'Liphalet's mind more and more as the hours passed. She had spoken as though she were hurt by his gruff refusal, and he cringed in secret at thought of ruffling her gentle soul in any way.

But even Miss Sue, he determined, should cozen him into no further effort in behalf of the Christmas celebration. He knew very well what they all expected—what they were looking for. Why, the children on the road who now tipped their hats or courtesied to him so politely, were the same little imps who had robbed his berry patch in June and whom he had chased out of his "summer sweet'nin' tree" in August.

"Drat 'em!" grumbled 'Liphalet. "They're playin' a game, all on 'em. Just salvin' me over—tryin' to git all they can out o' me! And Sue Ambrose is purty near as bad as the rest," he added, with actual venom.

The taut little ex-steward had become a wofully changed man. It was nothing sudden that had seized upon his mind and made it sick. More than Doctor Ambrose had noticed his metamorphosis. The Black Dog rode 'Liphalet hard—had done so for many weeks.

At first when he had begun himself to notice the change that was coming over his mind, 'Liphalet had called it "the megrums." He did not feel as brisk bodily as usual. Jalap and salts—the sailor's never-failing remedy for all ills to which human flesh is heir—were unshaken doctrinal tenets in 'Liphalet Truitt's belief, and he declared that he did not propose to have "no doctor messin' with his innards."

So he scouted the attempt of Doctor Ambrose to advise as to his treatment. In his heart, too, he knew that the trouble was more mental than physical. The seed of his discontent had been sown long before. He had not realized it; but the years of denial since his retirement from the sea were harder to bear than he had thought. During the active span of his life ordinary troubles had little fretted Eliphalet Truitt, for he was always looking forward to the consummation of his hope regarding Sue Ambrose.

To be near her, to work with her in church affairs, occasionally to pick out on his flute "Black-Eyed Susan" or "Fisher's Hornpipe" to the accompaniment of her melodeon, was all very well. But these were poor substitutes for the dream of hearth and home which had so long stirred his imagination.

That last homeward voyage had been a memorable one for 'Liphalet. With the younger officers, he secretly agreed that "the girls are pulling the Sadie Vars home with their apron strings." The old windjammer seemed fairly to fly. Even during the usually tedious railroad trip along the backbone of the Cape the minutes seemed to flow swiftly.

'Liphalet had scarcely felt, on that past occasion, the creaking platform planks of the Paulmouth station under his feet when he landed; and when he climbed to the seat beside Noah Coffin, the stage driver, that portion of the Cape Cod landscape within range of his vision was painted in rainbow hues.

But in ten minutes (how sharply he remembered it now!) a mental typhoon had overcast the captain's horizon and drowned all the roseate colors with a pall of dreary drab.

"Gre't changes around Cardhaven since you was last there, 'Liphalet," the gossipy stage driver had almost immediately said. "They've painted the town pump."

"Same old crop of happenings, I reckon, Noah," the cheerful mariner rejoined. "Some's died, some's been born, an'—any marriages?"

"Not ter speak of," Noah said, turning the cud in his cheek like a ruminative cow. "Got a heiress among us now."

The explosion of this bombshell of news made but little impression upon 'Liphalet until Noah added:

"Doc Ambrose's sister—ye know, that little old maid, Susan—has fell heir, they do say, to forty thousand dollars."

"By Hannah!" 'Liphalet ejaculated. "What's that you say, Noah?"

"Yes-sir-ree-sir!" declared the stage driver, slowly and with unction. "Some female rel'tive, they say, livin' at a distance and who was eternally opposed to this here new move for women votin'—what d'ye call 'em, 'Liphalet? Sufferin'——"

"Suffragists?" barked the ex-steward.

"Yep. That's it. Wal, this old woman give all her fortune, they say, to Susan Ambrose pervidin' she never votes. For-ty-thous-and-dol-lars!" sighed Noah. "I've voted forty odd year, 'Liphalet, an' never picked the winnin' side in nary 'lection yet. I wish't somebody had offered me a fortune not to vote."

"Forty thousand dollars," murmured Eliphalet Truitt.

It was then the vision attending his homecoming had begun to fade. 'Liphalet thought of it now, after ten years of dragging time had passed, and the contemplation of his disappointment was bitter indeed. He had already at the time of his leaving the sea, bought the little house beside the Mariner's Chapel. He had intended redecorating and furnishing it anew throughout. Then he would speak his mind to Sue Ambrose; for although 'Liphalet Truitt was a modest man, he was a direct one, and he had reason to believe that Miss Sue would not say him nay.

But an heiress with forty thousand dollars!

The blow, as 'Liphalet admitted now, almost "hove him on his beam ends."

"How could a fellow with his little tad of money," he asked himself, "have the cheek to pop the question to Miss Sue? Why! every enduring person, up and down the Cape, would say he was after her fortune. Worst of all, the Doc's sister might herself think so!"

This withering shock to his hopes, however, did not altogether scuttle the ex-steward. Miss Sue was quite as demurely friendly at his approach as ever. Accession of great wealth had made little change it seemed in her mode of life. She remained her busy brother's housekeeper. Merely she wore silk instead of gingham and real lace instead of the product of her own skillful needles.

On every hand the ex-steward was told of Miss Sue's fortune, for it was delicious gossip. Miss Sue did not mention it herself. Forty thousand dollars, compared with what he had invested and had on deposit in the Paulmouth National Bank, was as a mountain to a molehill—or so it seemed to Eliphalet Truitt.

So he had never spoken to Sue Ambrose in all these ten years as he had desired to speak. She had gone her modest, kindly, charitable way, making little display of her wealth—one of those sincere, self-contained souls, the depths of whose hidden natures are not easily fathomed.

'Liphalet had gradually fallen into the doldrums—a place of calms and baffling airs. He had never refurnished the old house, or changed its inner or outer appearance in any particular. For an old bachelor, living alone, it was good enough!

His secret desire to be near Sue Ambrose led him to enter church work with more enthusiasm than he otherwise might have done. Nor had this fact grated on him until of late.

Aside from such interests, the ex-steward was a member of that "forum" that gathered summer and winter around the stove in the Shell Road store. He had been wont to join this group at Cap'n Abe's every week day evening save prayer-meeting night. But as his pique against Christmas and its activities grew, even the salt savor of the company at the store became tasteless. Of late conversation when he was present was apt to turn, he found, upon the coming holiday season. The winks and smiles, the innuendoes, 'Liphalet considered, were all aimed at him. There seemed to be an itch in the public mind to learn just what he, Life Truitt, was going to buy to hang on the Chapel Christmas tree!

He had never chanced to notice it before this season, perhaps because he had never been in so critical a mood; but all his neighbors seemed to be slyly watching him, and with smiles, as though endeavoring by insinuation and hypocrisy to recall themselves to his attention. Nothing but his deep interest in Cap'n Jonah Hand's trouble would have taken him to the store on this recent evening, the events of which were last related.

And he was almost sorry he had done so. Cap'n Jonah had managed to roil his feelings as deeply as anybody in speaking as he had of Miss Sue. She was a great catch; 'Liphalet had lived ten years shaking in his shoes, if the truth were known, for fear that some braver soul than he would ask her for her hand.

She was at the bottom of all 'Liphalet's trouble—she and her fortune. Every time he saw her, every time her name was mentioned, the barb was sharpened in his soul. Jonah Hand might be brave enough to attempt to marry Miss Sue and her money! But Life Truitt could not walk up to the doctor's sister and ask her if she would have him. Here was the swift stab of jealousy!

But he did pluck up courage the evening after meeting Sue at the post-office to stuff his flute into his pocket and tramp over to the Ambrose cottage. He had not sought music and Sue's companionship to soothe his soul for a long time. There she was—he saw her through the parted curtains of the parlor window—sitting at the melodeon, coaxing the harmonies from the yellowed keys.

He stood near, with the first flakes of a snow squall falling upon him, watching the graceful figure that was as harmonious in its surroundings as were the notes pumped from the instrument. But after all, 'Liphalet could not enter. A call in his present mood he felt would be a profanation. Besides, there came into his sick mind again the thought of how Sue, too, had sought to draw at his purse strings on this very day for the Christmas entertainment. The devil of distrust said in his ear:

"She's like the rest of 'em! She's like the rest of 'em!"

So he turned back. Sad indeed was the case of the once cheerful man turned misanthrope. As he stubbed homeward through the crackling snowflakes somebody he met on the road hailed him gayly:

"Been to town to do your Christmas shopping, Life?"

"No!" snarled the apostate Santa Claus. "And I ain't likely to make no sech v'y'ge this weather."

CHAPTER XIII

FAIR AND FOUL WEATHER

Among other new worlds, that of poetry was being revealed to Pearl Holden. Although by no means sentimental, Joe Helmford had his bookshelves well supplied with the standard poets, as well as with the works of many of the minor versifiers.

"I do dearly love rhymes," Pearl said, and so Helmford pointed out these volumes to her. She began to learn that romance lay in other directions besides on the road of fiction.

"My!" she confessed to Helmford one evening, when she stopped in at his room on the way to her own for a book to read by the light of the small hand lamp Sarah Petty allowed her. "My! some of these pieces of poetry I read sound like chiming bells, and some flow sweet as honey. Some of the lines that I don't half understand, Mr. Helmford, thrill me through and through."

He watched her with something other than amusement behind his big, round glasses. Here was the budding of a soul into new life. Helmford began dimly to realize that Pearl was no ordinary girl after all. Had she been born in a different environment she would have eagerly absorbed such learning and culture as might have been within her reach.

"Some of 'em," Pearl went on to confess, "I guess I don't understand at all. I used to think all poetry must rhyme. You know, two lines ending with the same sound was all that made poetry, I thought," and she laughed.

"There must be a thought even in two rhyming lines to make poetry," Helmford suggested, gently smiling.

"Ain't it so?" she rejoined. "And some of these poets don't use rhyme at all. Here's this one. He puzzled me at first."

She seized a volume and opened it with a familiarity which plainly showed she had been browsing in it before.

"First I didn't know what to make of him. I read about 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' and somehow I couldn't make it sound like poetry. Yet parts of it just made me shiver—just the reading of 'em." Helmford nodded appreciatively. "That was even before I knew the piece was about Abraham Lincoln and the passing of his funeral train through the country. That must have been wonderful!"

"It was wonderful," agreed the young man. "And it is wonderful how Whitman could touch the heartstrings without the tricks of rhyme or of alliteration."

"But it is—just—poetry?" slowly queried the girl.

"Are the Psalms poetry?" he began, quite as eagerly interested as she was now. "See! The man's style is based on them." He read, and with expression:

"'Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,

In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,

In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,

In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturb'd winds and the storms),

Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,

The many-moving seatides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,

And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,

And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,

And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,

Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,

Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,

And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.'"

"But, oh!" cried Pearl, "he can write rhyming verses, too. This 'O Captain! My Captain!' He must have loved Mr. Lincoln. It makes me cry to read that one. This about the lilacs—of course, it isn't about lilacs, only lilac time—thrills me, makes me feel."

"Ah, Pearly," murmured Helmford, "that is the acid test of all poetry."

Then he brought himself up "all a-standing," How was he talking to this girl? How was he thinking of her? This girl who seemed to him to possess only a certain beauty to recommend her? Was she, after all, like these other Cardhaven girls he had met?

Her sweet face was alive with interest. Her eyes glowed. Her figure palpitated before him, the full bosom rising and falling as the waves of feeling pressed on her while he read the lines.

"Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it beautiful?" sighed Pearl, when he had finished.

Her hand outstretched for the book met his lightly as he released the volume. The touch thrilled them both. Helmford sat forward in his chair. A flush mounted from the turned-back neck of her simple gown and flooded all her throat and face.

And at that instant, with their hands almost clasped, Tom Petty abruptly opened the door.

"What did I tell you, Marm?" snarled the lout, as the startled pair sprang apart. "Here she is."

Sarah Petty, her sharp face seemingly sharper than ever, thrust herself into the room before her son.

"Pearl Holden, you march yourself down to the kitchen! I want to see you, my gal. No! Leave that book here. I won't have you foolin' away your time on books when you leave ha'f your work undone. Go 'long, now, I tell you."

The girl went by her with flaming face and tear-bedewed eyes. To be thus spoken to before Mr. Helmford seemed hard indeed to bear.

Helmford arose promptly. There was something on the tip of his tongue that perhaps he would better have said. His mild look was gone and his shell-rimmed spectacles did not hide the sternness of his expression as he asked Tom:

"Did you wish to see me for anything?"

"Naw. I don't want to see you," sneered the scowling youth.

"When next you come to my room, knock," said Helmford. He turned his shoulder to them both and sat down again in his easy chair before the fire, picking up the book Pearl's slim fingers had so recently held.

"Hoh!" snorted the admonished Tom. But his mother pushed him out of the room and retired herself without making the boarder any reply.

In the cold hall she hissed into the enraged Tom's ear:

"Now see what you've done! You want me to lose his board money, do ye, you good-for-nothin'? 'Twixt you an' that gal——"

"Yah!" snarled Tom, for once openly antagonizing her, "there ain't nothin' out of the way between me an' Pearly. It's what is between her an' that city feller."

"What do you care, Tom Petty?"

"I do care. Pearly ain't for him——"

"Nor she ain't for you," snapped his mother.

"I'll have her if I want," blustered her son, his pale eyes gleaming.

"I'll put her out of the house as sure as mornin' comes!" panted Sarah Petty.

"An' I'll go with her," declared Tom.

"You do, and you'll go for good," she threatened.

"Aw, what d'you s'pose I'd care?" he sneered, knowing full well his strength with her. "You ain't got nothin' here I can't get along without. You say yourself Uncle Jonah can take most of it away from you if he has that note of grandpop's, and is so minded."

"Sh!" she commanded fiercely.

"I won't 'sh!' for you," he growled. "Who do you think you're talkin' to—a kid?"

He grumbled on, following her down the stairs and back to the kitchen to which Pearl had preceded them. Orrin Petty, iron-rimmed glasses perched on nose, was reading the Paulmouth Argus beside the kitchen lamp. Pearl stood defiantly, with clenched fists, in the middle of the room.

"You—you little rat!" gasped Sarah Petty, hoarsely, bursting into the kitchen and approaching the girl with an energy that seemed to precede a blow.

"Don't you strike me, Miz Petty!" cried Pearl, stepping back a pace. "Don't you ever strike me again! I'm too old for that and I won't stand it."

"Hoity-toity!" exclaimed Orrin, dropping his paper. "What a long tail our old cat's got! Can't you women folks give us no peace at all?"

Tom slouched into the kitchen without a word. Sarah Petty seemed poised like a rattlesnake, ready to strike. But there was something in the girl's attitude that held the woman back.

"You didn't have no call to speak to me the way you did before Mr. Helmford," said Pearl, her voice shrill. "I work for you, but I'm not your slave."

"You're a pauper!" hissed Sarah Petty. "You're beholden for your food and drink to me an' your uncle——"

"He isn't my uncle!" declared Pearl fiercely. "And you are not related to me, either. Nor Tom."

"Why, you impudent little baggage!" Sarah Petty gasped.

"And if you don't want me here, I can find some other place to work," went on Pearl desperately. "I'm not beholden to you from choice, and you know it."

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" inquired Orrin Petty again.

"This ungrateful baggage!" cried his wife. "I told you often enough, Orrin Petty, you'd never ought to brought her home. She's a temptation an' a stumbling-block to our Tom——"

"Tom!" Pearl's scorn pricked the shell of Tom's conceit. The look she gave the lout seared his very soul.

"Oh, yes!" he said harshly. "Think you're fit for something better than me, don't you? Ain't got no more use for me."

"Tom Petty!" shrilled his mother.

"No. I've no use for you," Pearl said, driven to desperation by her wrongs. "You can give me the money you borrowed of me to pay your gambling debts, and your mother can set me free. I'll go fast enough then, and thank you both."

"What's that? What do you mean?" shrieked Sarah Petty.

She sprang from the chair she had seated herself in but the moment before and darted at the girl, her fingers crooked and extended like talons. Sarah Petty's instincts were primeval.

But before she reached her victim the door at the foot of the rear staircase was burst open and Cap'n Jonah in his shirt and trousers, and with his stockinet nightcap on his head, thrust himself before the girl.

"Belay that!" he commanded in a deep-sea growl. "What's goin' on here? Ain't you satisfied, Sarah Petty, to work this gal double tides, without bringin' her to the mast ev'ry now an' then for a taste of the cat? I tell ye, I won't stand no more of it."

"Belay that!" he commanded in a deep sea growl.

"You—you——" Sarah Petty could not find an expression to fit the occasion. Or else caution held her tongue with a sudden grip. "Did you hear what the little minx just said?"

"Yes," replied Cap'n Jonah. "I heard her. I heard her say that she lent money to Tom Petty to pay back to the Ladies Aid money that he'd took an' gambled away at the cattle show. And it s'prised me jest as much as it does you, Sarah."

He spoke more mildly, but his eyes flamed as he held the shrinking Tom with their gaze.

"She'd oughter be thrashed, old as she is!" cried Sarah Petty.

"I dunno but she had," agreed Cap'n Jonah, "for ever lending him a penny, anyway. I thought I'd headed off the young sculpin from borryin' of Pearly at all."

"What's that you say?" demanded his niece. "The little liar——"

"You air speakin' of Tom, ain't you, Sarah?" interrupted the master mariner boldly. "It ain't Pearly that's lied. I heard it all from my chamber winder. It was the first night I come here. Tom got into a pea-and-shell game at that fair and lost ev'ry dollar he had—Ladies Aid money and all.

"He whined around Pearly like a whipped puppy until the gal promised to lend him enough to pay you back, out of the little tad of money she'd saved up. I couldn't hear to that, you know," continued Cap'n Jonah, with less acrimony. "So I caught Tom airly the next mornin' and made him a present so't he wouldn't be tempted, as I thought, to take money from the gal. But I didn't know the feller as well as I do now," and the mariner's scorn was biting. "Did he take your money that time, after all, Pearly?"

The girl, now unable to speak for the swelling of her throat, nodded.

"He's a purty poor fish, this boy, Tom, of yours, Sarah," said Cap'n Jonah. "He'll not only hide himself behind a gal, but he'll rob her."

"Aw," put in Tom in self-defense, "I'm goin' to pay her back all right. I was only teasin' her."

"Le's see you do it," said the captain tartly, striking for Pearly while the iron was hot.

Sarah Petty, silent for the moment with fury, suddenly dug under her skirt for the deep pocket she always wore. She drew forth her purse.

"I'll pay the minx back," she said. "Of course Tom was only foolin'. But if you ever do sech a thing again, Tom Petty, I'll disown you! You see, now, I hope, what it means to mix up with pauper baggage like this gal."

"Belay that, I tell you!" commanded Cap'n Jonah, betrayed into an excitement he had occasion to regret later.

"I'd like to know, Jonah Hand, what int'rest you have got in this gal?" snapped his niece, driven beyond the point of endurance.

"I'll tell ye right now," said the master mariner, sternly, "she ain't goin' to be treated like she was dirt under your feet no more. I've a mind to see the selectmen myself about it, and take her away."

"What do you mean?" gasped Orrin, putting in his oar at last. "After we carin' for her for seven year, an' jest as she's got of some use 'round the house, do you think we're goin' to let her go?"

"And who'd take the impudent thing in, I'd like to know?" demanded his wife. "After they heard that we've got through with her?"

"She's beholden to us for every bite an' sup an' for the clo'es on her back," added the excited Orrin.

"She'd ought to be beholden to nobody," declared Cap'n Jonah, as Pearl sobbed upon his shoulder and his shirt-sleeved arm stole around her. "You folks don't appreciate her; but I do. Whatever! If you don't take another tack with the gal, you an' Orrin, Sarah, I vow to man I'll will ev'ry cent I got and all my prop'ty—sech as it is—to Pearl Holden. She sha'n't be beholden to nobody after I die, anyway."

This bombshell, exploding in the Petty kitchen, left the trio dumb. Cap'n Jonah pushed the girl, her hand filled with the money Sarah Petty had paid to her, gently out of the room.

"You go up to bed, my gal, an' forgit it," he said. "I won't see you harrowed no more."

Then he passed the Petty group with scornful glance, opened the back stairway door again, and stormed heavily up to his room under the eaves.

"Whatever! Now I guess I have done it," was his murmured comment when he was again in bed.

CHAPTER XIV

VEERING WINDS

There never had been before as serious a conference between the three Pettys in that kitchen as this one. Tom might well thank his lucky stars that Uncle Jonah Hand had thrown his bombshell. The surprise of it sponged from his mother's mind all immediate thought of his crime, which had been revealed during the last few minutes.

"There!" was Orrin's whine, first to break the silence after Cap'n Jonah had departed. "What did I tell ye?"

Sarah glared at her husband furiously. Tom licked his lips and doubled his fists. He could have pommeled his father and pommeled him well!

"Aw—you——" he began, but helplessly.

"Orrin Petty," said Sarah at last, "if you knew so much—and if you know so much now—why didn't you bring out your stores of wisdom before things come to this pass? Do you realize what it means? There's no fool like an old fool. If Uncle Jonah has taken a fancy to Pearly an' wills her his fortune, where'll we be, I want to know?"

"Jest about here, or hereabout," responded Orrin, for once undaunted by his wife's sharp tongue. "But it looks like we won't have so much money as mebbe we would have had, if ye'd taken my advice and gone easy with your Uncle Jonah."

"We don't know that he's got much of a fortune even now," said the woman sourly. Her quick mind was beginning to function again with its usual shrewdness. She had only been stunned by Cap'n Jonah's declaration. She was rapidly recovering. "We don't know——"

"I knowed it all along," put in Tom, siding with his father for the nonce. "When Uncle Jonah give me that money——"

"How much did he give you?" interrupted his mother sharply.

"A twenty-dollar bill. Handed it out just as though it growed on bushes and he had a private patch of his own," chuckled Tom.

"See that boy laugh!" exclaimed Orrin. "He ain't got no idee of how serious this may be for us all. If Cap'n Jonah wills away his prop'ty, whatever it may be, and makes a demand on your father's estate, Sarah, for principal and int'rest on that two thousand dollar note——"

"You go fish!" exclaimed Sarah Petty, in exasperation. "If I ever did despise anybody it's them that always bring out their hindsight for their foresight. Looks like the aig's been broken; le's see if we can save the shell, anyway."

"Of course, mebbe he ain't got much," said the cautious Orrin.

"There you go again!" ejaculated his wife with disgust. "Leavin' a hole to creep out of backwards! I thank heaven I ain't the same kind of a fool you be, Orrin Petty, if I am one!

"It looks to me like we'd fooled ourselves," went on Sarah practically. "But that don't mean we air sure to lose anything that's worth keeping. Uncle Jonah must be a mighty secret man—nothing at all like what father was. Father'd turn himself inside out jest as easy as you'd skin an eel. But Jonah Hand is secret—if he's got a fortune. He don't let no papers relating to it lie around where a body might see 'em. And he must have something to will, or he wouldn't have spoke up so free when he was mad, as he did jest now."

"Hoh!" growled Tom. "If he does give it all to Pearly——"

"You shet your mouth!" commanded his mother tartly. "You've made enough mess for once, Tom Petty. Your foolin' with that gal is the root of all the trouble. Comin' down here jes' now and telling me she was in Helmford's room——"

"An' she was!"

Sarah Petty overrode his voice, pursuing her topic with shrewdness:

"Your Uncle Jonah is a masterful man after all. He ain't give way to his temper afore; but that ain't sayin' he ain't got none. He speaks like a man that means what he says an' says what he means. He may march off to Paulmouth to-morrow and make a will in Pearly's favor."

"That would be a nice to-do," groaned Orrin.

"I dunno," said Sarah, eyeing Tom wrathfully. "It's all along of this boy's actions. And it seems, Orrin Petty, that you brought Pearl home here jest to make trouble for us all. Course, the gal's long ago set her cap for Tom."

The youth began to preen. It bolstered his conceit to hear his mother say this.

"You know how girls are, Marm," he murmured.

"An' I know how you be, Tom Petty," she rejoined grimly. "I found out to-night if never before. You're tangled up with this gal your father brought home against my wishes," (Orrin stirred uneasily; this was a bare-faced falsehood) "and I don't see but we'll haf to make the best of it. Though I don't see what we're to say to your Uncles 'Poley and Perseus, and their wives. The gal's sech a numbskull——"

"She's a good looker," Orrin ventured. "Dress her up——"

"Who says she's a good looker?" flared Sarah, who would never be too old to cavil at another woman's beauty. "She's a pink-faced little rat! But she's good enough, I guess, for this Tom Petty. He don't deserve nothin' better. And if this old tramp does give the dratted girl his money it needn't go out of the fam'ly."

"Goshamighty! what's that you air sayin', Sarah?" demanded Orrin, while Tom stared at his mother in open-mouthed amazement.

"If he's got any money," Sarah steadily pursued, "and he gives it to Pearl, we'll know for sure soon enough. You're detarmined to marry her, Tom——"

"I dunno as I am," interrupted Tom, bound not to be driven.

"You'll jest haf to marry her, I s'pose, it's gone so far," said his mother, licking her thin lips and her green eyes snapping. "And when you do, Uncle Jonah's money will be as good as yours. And this place when we die, an' such prop'ty as your pop an' I may have. So if Uncle Jonah ever brings up that old note of your grandpa's it won't amount to nothin'."

"Goshamighty!" exclaimed the eager Orrin, again. "Jest like takin' money from one pants pocket and puttin' it in t'other."

"Course we'll find out for sure, first," added Sarah, "if Uncle Jonah really has got anything worth willin' to anybody."

"How you goin' to?" demanded Tom. "You ain't found out a thing so far, Marm. Only what he just said."

"I am a-goin' to ask him straight, has he," declared Sarah Petty. "It's for Pearl's own good I'll ask him. To protect her. He's promised her something and we're her guardeens. We must know if he means what he says and how much she is to be benefited by his will. And see to it he makes a will, into the bargain."

"You'd better go easy—you'd better go easy," Orrin warned, although quite used to his wife's assertive ways and her ability to see ahead and, as she expressed it, "trim her sails accordin'." "If he died intes—intes——Wal, without makin' a will—his money'd come straight to you, Sarah Petty."

"We don't know how long he's got to live," said his wife practically. "The Hands is tougher than pine knots. There ain't a thing the matter with him but rheumatics. He may live along for twenty year.

"After all's said and done, he might not do a single solitary thing for me," confessed Sarah Petty. "I can git board money out of him, but that's about all. If he's taken a fancy to Pearly, however, he may be encouraged to do a lot for her—and for Tom. That's what we must look out for. Tom, you keep on bein' nice to your Uncle Jonah. P'r'aps he'll hand out more money to ye—though 'twon't do ye no good if ye don't put it in the bank, I must say."

"And then it'll do the bankers good," said Tom with scorn. "What's money for?"

"You'll find out one o' these days, you young spendthrift," said his father tartly.

"I s'pose the gal would fall into your arms, Tom, if you asked her to marry you?" said Sarah Petty thoughtfully.

Tom grinned broadly. "She uster like me. You see how she lent me that money. But since this Helmford feller's come here she's got crazy 'bout him. You can see that."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed his mother. "You speak up nice to Pearly and she'll see you mean business. Of course she's always wanted ye," insisted the woman, determined to see the matter in no other light "But I don't want you to do anything, or say anything, to make Mr. Helmford mad. I'll speak to him about her bein' in his room. That ain't decent. But I ain't goin' to lose a good boarder like him along of your foolishness, Tom Petty."

Tom grunted a disavowal of any belief in his mother's way of putting it. He knew in his heart that Pearl had given him little reason of late to think she cared an iota for him. But he was too much his mother's son after all to admit this. He determined secretly to get Helmford out of the house. "Out of sight, out of mind" was Tom's doctrine. He believed, in his conceit, that he could make Pearl forget the man from the fish hatchery if the latter were gone.

"All you've got to do is to salve these girls over, and talk to 'em pretty," mused Tom. "That'll fetch 'em ev'ry time."

So the three Pettys sought their beds on this frosty night, all with thoughts to keep them awake. In other rooms in the house three other members of the household were likewise wakeful.

Pearl cried herself to sleep finally. She was ashamed after what had happened to face Mr. Helmford again. She thought not at all of Cap'n Jonah's threat which had created the fear of disaster in the Petty camp. She was only grateful to the old mariner for taking her part.

Joe Helmford had spent a very unsatisfactory evening after the abrupt visit of Tom Petty and his mother. He was half determined to leave the house at the end of the week. These Pettys were almost unendurable.

And then he began to wonder what effect his going so abruptly would have on Pearl Holden? He knew that she was treated unkindly by the Pettys. He had often seen tears in her eyes and Sarah's sharp, shrill voice could not fail to reach his ear on more than one occasion when she was berating her little drudge.

Helmford had suddenly got a new revelation of Pearl's character. He had begun to appreciate not alone her sweetness but the real depth of her nature. The girl easily assimilated new things. Her mind was thirsty for knowledge. She was beginning already to blossom into a fuller mental development.

This young man who heretofore had given such small thought to any woman found himself lying awake at night thinking of this girl.

Physically she was charming, as well as sweet of nature. He visualized her as his sisters and cousins were wont to dress. Why, in appearance she would vie with the best of them. Her speech—well, of course, it was tinged somewhat by the environment in which she was born. But that was not a fault that could not be rectified, Helmford decided.

When a young man allows his mind to run along in such vein, with any particular girl as the visioned object of his thoughts, he is bordering upon a state of feeling that leads directly to matrimony. But Joe Helmford drew back from this and resolutely refused to face it.

He punched his pillow again and determinedly went to sleep.

At the other end of the house, in the crooked little room over the kitchen, Cap'n Jonah was likewise wakeful. In the first place he was cold. Sarah had not given him bed-clothes enough. He had closed his window, which was against the tenets of a lifelong belief in fresh air, and still he shook in his bed.

Running down stairs in his stocking feet to defend Pearly had chilled Cap'n Jonah to the bone. His teeth chattered. He could feel the tip of his nose turning to a numb lump of flesh. Icicles formed against the edge of the thin blanket where his breath was expelled. He could hear the ice cracking in his water pitcher.

But even in such a plight Cap'n Jonah might have slept, at least fitfully, had it not been for his thoughts. His excitement and anger should have heated the old mariner so that physical cold could not touch him.

He had given way to his temper and vented his rage in a way quite foreign to his habit. Cap'n Jonah usually had complete mastery of himself.

But the treatment accorded Pearl had finally brought the deeper feelings of the master mariner to the surface. He was unable longer to endure in silence the pain of seeing the girl so abused.

Tom's desperate meanness, too, served to whip the old man's rage to a froth. And that froth was what had spilled upon the startled Petty family when Cap'n Jonah made his astonishing threat.

"Whatever! Now I have done it!" he kept repeating to himself as he lay in his uncomfortable bed. "I've got to do somethin'—I really have. Got to make good that bluff. I could see Sarah and Orrin was all struck of a heap. If they think I've got money an' that Pearly may get it if they don't treat her better, they'll near 'bout turn themselves inside out to salve her over—an' me, too.

"But, whatever!" he concluded. "Somehow, I must make good that bluff. If I ain't a rich man, I've got to make them think I am."

CHAPTER XV

MISUNDERSTANDINGS

When Cap'n Jonah Hand awoke from a final fitful sleep the following morning, he thought at first any scheme he might have for the befooling of the Pettys must be postponed. When he awoke to find the edge of a red sun peeping above the sea-line, he could scarcely turn over in bed.

"Whatever! It's got me!" groaned the master mariner, and something like fear clawed at his staunch old heart.

He had passed through storm and stress at sea for nearly half a century and had never shown the white feather. As he once related to 'Liphalet Truitt, he had faced death at the hands of savages, and death in a most horrid form, without a quiver. He had been rich without losing his poise; he had been utterly penniless, yet had retained his cheerfulness. The ups and downs of life had left Jonah Hand, despite his given name, a man who believed in his own good fortune and submitted to such buffets as he suffered with composure.

Here was something new. "To be cast upon his beam ends," as he termed it, by such an enemy as this, discouraged him. He had felt premonitions of the ailment for several years. He had seen many seamen go down before this enemy, who would have stood staunchly to face the elements, or against the troubles that are the common lot of man.

"Oh! Ah! Ouch! Whatever!" groaned the captain, turning over by fits and starts.

Every movement hurt him. His joints seemed to have stiffened during the night, and whenever he sought to bend them, sharp pains shot through them. Even his fingers had no flexibility.

"It's got me—the dratted rheumatics!" he muttered. "I might ha' knowed it, after trottin' over that cold floor an' up an' down the stairs without my shoes. Ouch! Whatever!"

He felt that he could not rise—he who was always the first of the household astir. He heard Orrin and Tom come yawning down into the kitchen. They started the fire in the range and shook down the sitting-room stove and opened the drafts. Then they went out to do the barn chores.

"Goshamighty!" rose Orrin's querulous voice on the frosty air, "barn pump's froze tighter'n a drumhead. Bring a kittle of boilin' water, Tom."

Sarah Petty's heels were now heard tapping over the kitchen floor. For once Pearl came last. Cap'n Jonah, overhead, did not hear a word spoken between the two women.

The silence he thought seemed ominous. What was about to occur? Would there be a flare-up between Sarah and her little drudge and would Cap'n Jonah immediately have to make good his threat of taking Pearl away?

"And me on a lee shore the way I be!" groaned Cap'n Jonah. "No two ways about it: I have got myself into a mess."

How would he be able to act independently, or to aid Pearl in any way, if he was flat on his back? Why, he could not even get down to Cap'n Abe's to see if the storekeeper had thought up any scheme to help him, as he had promised.

The preparations for breakfast went on. He could hear the rattling of dishes and pans; the sound of the pump at the spout of which the tea-kettle had to be filled for a second time; the sputtering of sausages in the pan. Then the odors rose to him in that mysterious way they have of penetrating old houses; the aroma of coffee; the spicy smell of home-made sausage meat; the odor of cornmeal johnny-cakes, white as snow in the middle, baked brown on both sides, ready to split and be deluged with "white gravy."

Cap'n Jonah heard Sarah go to the front stairs and call Helmford. Then she went to the door of the covered porch and shouted for Orrin and Tom. There followed a murmur of voices below; then came Pearl's light step upon the back stairs.

"Cap'n Jonah!" she called outside his door.

"Whatever!" groaned the old seaman. "Hullo! Ouch! Ain't so spry this mornin' as us'al, Pearly."

Pearl heard his bed creak and knew he was not up. She opened the door and peered in.

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah! is anything the matter?"

"Guess so. Rheumatics, Pearly. They've got me laid by the heels."

"Dear me! So bad you can't get up?" queried the girl.

"I'll get up by and by. Don't bother 'bout me. Ouch! Whatever!"

"My! you must be pretty bad, Cap'n Jonah. Do you want I should do anything for you?"

"Not a thing, my gal," declared the independent old skipper. "I ain't quite scuttled yet—no sir! I'll warp myself out o' here by noon. Don't you fuss none."

Pearly returned below stairs and before sitting down to eat her own breakfast she arranged a tray for Cap'n Jonah and carried it up to him. She propped him up in bed with a chair and pillows at his back, and helped him get the tray in position. She brought him a warmer quilt from her own room.

"It's cold enough in here to freeze the coffee 'fore you can drink it," Pearl declared. "Let me wrap this around you, Cap'n Jonah."

"Thank you, my gal," said the old man. "I won't forgit your kindness."

"Nor I won't forget yours," she whispered before she left him, and patted his mahogany cheek lightly.

It was like a stroke to Cap'n Jonah's heart—this last. He thought Pearl was referring to his promise of making her his heir. He was near to being as suspicious about the avariciousness of those around him as was Eliphalet Truitt.

And good reason he had for that. To live with people like the Pettys was enough to canker the most generous and unsuspicious nature.

"Whatever! I got to see Cap'n Abe. He's my only hope now," murmured the master mariner. "Won't never do for Pearly, poor gal, to be disappointed."

But the girl had no thoughts of a mercenary nature. That Cap'n Jonah should have faced the Pettys and browbeaten them in her behalf was sufficient to fill Pearl's heart with gratitude. She never thought a second time of the old man's threat. In her confusion of mind at the time, she had scarcely apprehended what his speech meant.

What Pearl shrank from most of all this morning was meeting Joe Helmford. When she returned from giving Cap'n Jonah his tray, the boarder was at the table. He greeted her, as he had all, with his customary "good morning." But no smile accompanied it, and he confined his speech during the meal to requests relating to the food.

In fact a pall seemed to hang over the Petty household; and yet the family were less acrimonious and fault-finding than usual. To Pearl they were scrupulously polite, and Sarah Petty more than once expressed her anxiety regarding the absent Cap'n Jonah.

"You'd better step up after breakfast, Orrin, and see if you can do anything for him," Mrs. Petty said. "Uncle Jonah is beginning to feel his years, I shouldn't wonder."

But Orrin slipped out of the house immediately after breakfast without venturing above to Cap'n Jonah's chamber. He felt some awkwardness about appearing before the old man after what had occurred the previous evening.

Of course, the lout could not be expected to confront his great-uncle at such a time; and even Sarah herself felt some unwonted embarrassment in greeting Cap'n Jonah. So it was Pearl who went up to get the tray and to inquire solicitously for a bulletin of health.

She found Cap'n Jonah out of bed and struggling with the crooked mirror and a dull razor. Every morning the old man scrupulously shaved his cheeks and lips. The fringe of gray beard and his hair were carefully brushed as well. The captain always looked as neat as a new pin.

He looked out at her from behind a mask of cold lather and tried to grin cheerfully. "Purty hard scrabblin', Pearly," he remarked. "My fingers are stiffer than a frozen bowline."

"You should have a fire, Cap'n Jonah," she said tenderly. "It's real mean! This is the coldest end of the house anyway. And you have had no warm water."

"Ne'er mind. Don't fuss. I'll be out o' here all right. There'll be a change o' wind before long, my gal."

Pearl did not fully understand him, but she thought the statement likely to be so. At the bottom of the stairs, listening, she found Sarah Petty.

"What's that he says?" demanded the woman in a sharp whisper. "He's goin' to get out o' here?"

"So he says," Pearl replied, scarcely understanding Mrs. Petty's anxiety.

Sarah Petty stepped back, staring at the girl with eyes that glittered like a snake's. She closed the door at the bottom of the stairs with a careful hand.

"Don't you let him do that, Pearl Holden!" she hissed. "You have a care. You'll find it a whole lot better to have me for a friend than an enemy. Now, mind that! You keep Uncle Jonah here."

"Me?" gasped the girl in surprise. "What have I to do with it?"

Mrs. Petty's speech amazed her. Indeed, the treatment accorded her on this morning by all the family greatly puzzled Pearl Holden.

In the first place, the clack of Sarah Petty's tongue seemed to be muffled. The woman scarcely spoke to her, and never to find fault. This was her single outbreak of ill-temper. Orrin, when he came for the can of grease for the harness, which was kept soft behind the kitchen stove, asked her for it with a "please" tacked to the request.

She was sweeping the big lower front hall when Tom came blundering through. She would not have spoken to him, but he would not be denied.

"Say! you ain't goin' to stay mad with me, are you, Pearly?" he asked with a grin.

She looked at him with an angry spark in either eye; but Tom would not be warned.

"Aw, come, now, Pearly!" he said. "You know you like me. I was just foolin'——"

As he approached she backed away into a corner and held the broom straight out before her.

"You keep your foolin' to yourself, Tom Petty!" she cried. "Get away from me!"

"Aw, now, Pearly!" he exclaimed, half laughing and half his ugly self. To be denied made him angry. He seized the handle of the broom.

"Keep away from me!" panted the girl.

Tom was by far the stronger. He quickly wrenched the broom from her hands. Pearl screamed. Tom had his arm around her waist and she was fighting him off with both hands.

"Come on, Pearly! Give us a kiss," he said, still only half in earnest. "Le's you an' me be good friends again."

A door slammed above as though in answer to the girl's half stifled shriek. The quick step of Joe Helmford saved her. Tom uttered an imprecation and flung away the broom. But the boarder, descending the stairs, saw them both—the girl with flaming face and drooping eyes, and the young fellow standing before her in a most suggestive attitude. Helmford went right on without speaking. He thought his appearance had been most inopportune, and that he had interfered in a tender scene between Pearl and Tom.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ALLEGORY

Cap'n Jonah hobbled downstairs in season for the noonday dinner. "Jest about as spry as a crippled fiddler crab," he expressed it. But after the meal he insisted upon going out of doors.

Helmford assisted him, although Sarah tried to get Tom to offer his arm first. The lout, however, was backward and Helmford went down the lane with the old mariner.

"Something of a squall last night," muttered Cap'n Jonah in Helmford's ear. "Did you hear it?"

"Why, no. I didn't know it stormed last night. But I know it was very cold," replied the young man.

"Whatever! I should say it was cold," the captain agreed. "But I meant the squall in the house."

"Oh!" Helmford's expression changed.

"Sarah and them pickin' on Pearly the way they've been doin' has got to be stopped."

"Oh!"

"I had to put my foot down," went on Cap'n Jonah, boldly. "She sha'n't be brow-beaten no more. What I've got shall be that gal's when I'm dead an' gone, and then she sha'n't be beholden to no Petty."

"Oh!"

"Whatever!" exclaimed Cap'n Jonah, exasperated. "Ain't you got nothin' but 'O's' left inside you?"

"Er—not much, I guess, Cap'n Jonah. You take my breath away. Do you mean you are going to make Miss Pearl your heir?"

"That's what I mean to do," the old man said firmly, "if them Pettys don't treat her better. Of course, the gal ain't nothin' by blood to me. Though the Hands, and the Holdens, and the Cards, and most of the other old families hereabout are a good deal mixed up.

"Just the same," continued Cap'n Jonah, almost convincing himself of the reality of his plans as he went along, "I might do better willin' my property to Pearly than leaving it to Sarah Petty and her lout of a son. What do you think, Mr. Helmford?"

"I—I do not feel myself qualified to advise, Cap'n Hand. It is a delicate matter," said Helmford slowly, and left him at the highway.

"Ye-as. It's purty delicate, I do allow," muttered Cap'n Jonah. "Whatever!"

He turned shoreward himself. The surf boomed with a threatening sound along The Beaches. Had he given thought to the matter he would have expressed it as his opinion that this was a weather-breeder. Clear as the sky was, there was a threatening haze along the horizon. He believed the barometer must be falling. The gulls stormed overhead and the white-maned sea-horses charged upon and over the Gull Rocks reef.

Cap'n Jonah found the gold-headed cane a great help on this sunny afternoon. His joints were limbering slowly, but the attack of the morning had warned him of what was likely to come on him at almost any time. Articular rheumatism comes and goes, striking unexpectedly the victim. Cap'n Jonah felt that he must do what he could for Pearl—and for himself—immediately. He might be laid up, a cripple, for a long time.

As he approached Cap'n Abe's store he saw a long, low-hung russet-painted roadster standing before the door. The engine was throbbing gently and the car seemed like a spirited horse, eager to be off along the road. Cap'n Jonah had seen the motor car before speeding up and down the Shell Road.

In it at present was a young man with a healthy wash of tan upon his face and the look of an athlete in every curve of his long body. Beside him sat a smiling young woman. It seemed to Cap'n Jonah she was the happiest looking woman he had ever seen. She held a bundle in her lap, and above it her face glowed with health and the joy of living.

Cap'n Abe was at the side of the car handing in certain packages that the driver of the automobile was stowing away.

"Ahoy, Cap'n Hand!" the storekeeper hailed when he saw the captain. "Come meet my niece Louise and Mr. Lawford Tapp, her husband. Not to forgit," Cap'n Abe added, chuckling, "the last Tapp of all," and he poked a horny finger at the bundle in the girl's lap.

Cap'n Jonah managed to call up a twisted smile in spite of the twinges of pain he suffered, and met a pair of warm and friendly handclasps from the young couple—for Lawford and Louise Tapp were very loyal Cape Codders at heart.

"That little feller," said the proud and delighted Cap'n Abe, as Louise turned back the veil to reveal the baby's face for a moment, "near's I kin make out, is my ha'f-grand-nephew. He's only a half portion now; but he's goin' to be a big feller like his pop, and he's a-goin' to be happy an' friendly an' hail-feller-well-met with all the world, like his marm."

"Now, Uncle Abram!" cried Louise Tapp, "you give me a rather questionable reputation."

"No, I don't, Louise! No, I don't!" Cap'n Abe urged. "You're one o' these friendly souls, I do allow, that sweeten this old world of ourn an' make it fit to live in. Hi-mighty! I do despise, an' always did, folks that go 'round hangin' their heads an' moanin' an' takin' on like all kildee, because the world don't go right for them.

"Why, the way to make the world go right," declared the emphatic storekeeper, "is to get out an' push it right. Put your shoulder to things! If you want a sartin thing, go out an' git it," and he winked slyly at Cap'n Jonah.

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah, approving Cap'n Abe's statement for once at least. "Ain't it so?"

"You're a philosopher, Cap'n Abe," declared Lawford Tapp, preparing to drive away. "Glad to have met you, Cap'n Hand. I'd heard we had a new neighbor. Come over to the Point and see us."

Louise seconded the invitation as the car rolled away. Lawford shifted to high speed and they shot off at a racing clip.

"Hi-mighty!" said Cap'n Abe. "If them speed demons, L. Tapp and his wife, don't wreck that racing car and my ha'f-grand-nephew, it'll be a mercy! Come in, Cap'n Jonah. It's colder'n a dog's nose out here in the road."

He led the way into the warm store, where there was a glowing fire in the big stove. The frost had been driven to the outer barrier, and the smell of heated boots and fishy garments was heavy upon the air. Washy Gallup, Cap'n Joab, Milt Baker, and Amiel Perdue, as well as others of the usual loungers, encircled the stove. They made room for Cap'n Jonah while the storekeeper himself halted to warm his hands at the fire.

"We're in for a spell of Jack Frost, Cap'n Jonah," remarked Washy.

"I shouldn't wonder! I shouldn't wonder!" agreed the mariner addressed. But he gave little attention to the several greetings of the loungers. His mind was fixed upon the errand on which he had come. He desired greatly to get Cap'n Abe off into a corner and sound him upon the subject of "foolin' them Pettys." Cap'n Abe was his only hope. He took snuff thoughtfully and rapped his knuckles on the cover of the silver snuffbox.

"It was jest such another spell of dry cold as this," began the storekeeper ruminatively, "when Uncle Joe Hanna over to Freedom was turned out o' house an' home years ago by the sheriff. 'Member that, Cap'n Joab?"

"Forever an' ever," replied the person addressed. "And ev'rybody else remembers it, too."

"Wal—mebbe," agreed Cap'n Abe quite composed. The shuffling of feet, clearing of throats, and other indications of distaste for the expected yarn did not halt him at all. "It was a hi-mighty cold day," as he had himself remarked, and he had his audience in chancery.

"Uncle Joe Hanna owned a leetle place where he'd lived all his life, and he mortgaged it to Jonathan Coffin. Coffin was as hard as nails, and his wife, Miz Coffin, was as hard as spikes. Hi-mighty! they was a pair.

"Wal, when Uncle Joe Hanna got too old to work much he couldn't keep up the int'rest on the mortgage. Ye know," said Cap'n Abe, genially, "a feller told me once what the word 'mortgage' meant. He said 'mort' was French for 'death' and 'gage' meant a challenge. So, when a feller mortgages his home he challenges death to a set-to—an' death usually wins. I guess that's purty nigh so.

"Anyhow, Uncle Joe might jest as well have been up against the 'grim reaper,' as Elder Golightly calls it when he gets right poetic in the pulpit—Uncle Joe might just as well have grappled with death as to have Jonathan Coffin for a creditor. He was turned out, hoss an' foot, an' didn't have a place to lay his head.

"Course," pursued Cap'n Abe, "the neighbors took him in, turn an' turn about, and he was made comfortable. But Uncle Joe was proud, and he wanted his rights. He had paid taxes—sech as they was—all his life, and he p'inted out to the selectmen that he was wishful of havin' a home and an abiding place for the rest of his days—sech as it might be—and didn't propose to be driven from piller to post.

"Ye see," said Cap'n Abe, "at that time Freedom didn't have no poorfarm. That is, there was a farm but no house onto it an' no provision made for inmates, as the feller said. So they begun boardin' Uncle Joe around at the town expense. Plenty of folks would take him. All but the Widder Blodgett. She was all alone in her house, and although Uncle Joe was nigh eighty, she didn't think she could take him in. The neighbors might talk," added Cap'n Abe, his eyes twinkling.

"Wal, Uncle Joe was partic'lar about his food. He'd always been used to hot biscuit three times a day—made 'em himself after his wife died—and he craved milk in his chowder, both fish an' clam; an' good, solid pound cake with plenty aigs in it.

"Nobody seemed to suit his appetite but Jonathan Coffin's wife herself. She was a master hand to cook; but as she said, what the selectmen allowed for Uncle Joe's up-keep didn't scurse pay for the grub he et. He wouldn't do a hand's turn of work, bein' a town boarder, and she complained to Jonathan that he'd been smarter if he'd let Uncle Joe live and die in his own house, and waited to git his claws on the old man's prop'ty through sheriff's sale till after Uncle Joe was under the sod.

"But by an' by ev'rybody noticed how much nicer the Coffinses began to treat Uncle Joe. They took him to church in their buggy, and bought him tobacker, and a new suit of clo'es. And you could see him sittin' out under the trees in the Coffinses' front yard takin' it easy, an' all. Folks began to say they'd never suspicioned what re'l kind-hearted people Jonathan Coffin and his wife was. They treated Uncle Joe lovely!"

Cap'n Abe chuckled reflectively.

"Don't you calc'late to go clammin' to-morrow, Milt?" asked Cap'n Joab Beecher weakly. But Mr. Baker had just taken a huge and comforting chew of Brown Mule and was speechless for the moment. So that attempt to head off the storekeeper's story was still-born.

"But the old man died finally. Hot biscuit, and milk chowder, and six-aig cake couldn't keep him alive," said Cap'n Abe. "He was long past the allotted time of man, an' the selectmen sartainly were glad to see that account wiped off their books. They give him a nice fun'ral. Jonathan Coffin, they say, helped pay for the extrys. Hadn't had a pauper funeral in Freedom for two generations, so they just spread themselves.

"Wal, you'd ha' thought Jonathan an' Miz Coffin had lost a close rel'tive. She went into mournin'—of course it was a veil she'd worn years before when her own pop died—and Jonathan went around with a broad band of crêpe on his arm. Then, the week after Uncle Joe was laid away, they hustled down to Arad Peck, who was a lawyer, and took with 'em an old black satchel Uncle Joe had set gre't store by. It seemed Uncle Joe had made a will in their favor, they'd treated him so nice, and in the satchel was all the old man's private papers.

"Wal, sir!" continued Cap'n Abe, smiling broadly, "on the face of 'em them papers made out Uncle Joe Hanna to have been a regular miser. He'd hid away securities and deeds wuth a scand'lous amount. Hi-mighty! It struck Arad Peck all aback.

"Then he begun to go through 'em, and sift 'em out, and make comparisons, and he found out them valu'bles of Uncle Joe's was wuth jest a cent an' a ha'f a pound. Waste paper brung a purty good price at that time."

"Whatever!" ejaculated the single listener unfamiliar with the denouement of the story. "Wuthless?"

"'Ceptin' to the junkman," chuckled Cap'n Abe. "Seems Uncle Joe had found them ancient and useless dockyments in an old safe he'd bought and cleaned out one time. They was a collection of certificates and deeds and sich that never had been wuth more than ten per cent. of their face value, in all probability, and had been deteriorating since the year one.

"But they sarved," concluded the narrator, "to gull the Coffinses nicely. Paid Jonathan up for overreachin' Uncle Joe. He played a trick on 'em that I dunno as the parsons would approve; but as I see it, they was sarved right."

Cap'n Abe went around behind the counter again and an audible sigh of relief was expelled by most of his audience. By all but Cap'n Jonah. He remained in a reflective mood. Suddenly, as the hum of general conversation rose again about the stove, Cap'n Jonah slapped his leg heartily.

"Whatever!" he ejaculated.

"See the p'int, Cap'n Hand?" asked the storekeeper slyly.

"Whatever!" repeated Cap'n Jonah. "I sh'd say I do!"

CHAPTER XVII

THE STRONG BOX

Perry Baker, the cadaverous expressman, whose ancient gray horse immediately went to sleep standing in the shafts when his master drew up before any destination, had occasion a day or two later to pass Eliphalet Truitt's door. The ex-steward was pottering about his tiny front yard in the frosty air.

"How be ye, 'Liphalet?" demanded Perry, with frank curiosity. "How ye feelin'? Huldy heard you wasn't right chipper and she wanted I sh'd ask."

"By Hannah!" snapped the taut little man, his face flaming redder than usual. "Who says I'm sick, I'd like to know?"

"Why, Doc Ambrose, I b'lieve, said you was out of kilter," said the astonished Perry, for 'Liphalet was usually the gentlest of men. "Ain't you?"

"No, I ain't!" replied 'Liphalet ungraciously. "Ain't nothin' the matter with me except the curiosity of my friends; an' that's struck in! What ye got for me?"

Perry began to grin more broadly. Cap'n Abe said, "Perry Baker couldn't drink tea out of a saucer without scalding his ears!" 'Liphalet watched the expressman now with apprehension, seemingly expecting to see the ears engulfed within the cavity of Perry's enormous mouth.

"I vow to man! did you expec' anything, 'Liphalet?" he finally gurgled. "Warn't lookin' for no Christmas gif', was ye?"

"Christmas—bah!" ejaculated the highly indignant 'Liphalet. "Who'd send me anything I didn't pay two prices for, I want to know? Ain't nothin' for me, then?"

"You can see all I've got. That barrel for Cap'n Abe. And this here iron box for the Petty place."

"By Hannah!" exclaimed the ex-steward with sudden interest, standing on tip-toe to peer into the wagon body. "That box? Who's it for?"

"Cap'n Jonah Hand. And b'lieve me," added the expressman, almost in a whisper, "I'm keepin' my eye on that, 'Liphalet. It was give me at the Paulmouth National Bank. There was some talk of sendin' the bank messenger along with me. You know: Phillibeg Aspen. He always carries a loaded pistol. There must be something mighty valu'ble in that box—an' 'tis heavy as lead."

"By Hannah!" repeated 'Liphalet, in wonder.

"If ye want to know what I think," continued Perry in the same cautious tone, "I b'lieve there's money in that strong box. They say Cap'n Jonah Hand is rich as cream! Like enough he is a-goin' to count his money over to see just how much he's got. What's the matter, 'Liphalet?"

"By Hannah!" choked the ex-steward, hiding his face. "I got a cough. I guess I must ha' caught cold after all."

"That so? I'll tell Huldy," said Perry briskly. "She makes a lickin' good cough syrup and she'll send ye some. I'd ruther have a cold than not, if I can git plenty of Huldy's cough syrup."

The expressman woke up the old gray horse and drove on, leaving 'Liphalet feeling more amused than he had been before in many a long day. Even the brooding banshee of the Christmas spirit lifted from his mind for the moment.

"By Hannah!" he murmured, "I reckon Cap'n Abe has cooked up somethin' for Jonah Hand, just as he said he would."

The expressman driving up the Petty lane brought all the family save Cap'n Jonah himself to doors and windows. Even Joe Helmford peered out with interest to see the heavy steel box, fastened by two big brass padlocks, lifted down from the wagon.

"For Uncle Jonah? I want to know!" murmured Sarah Petty.

"Hoh! What's in it? Rocks?" mumbled Tom, who helped Perry Baker handle the box.

"Goshamighty! From the bank?" repeated Orrin.

"Is he here?" asked Perry importantly. "I've got to deliver it to Cap'n Hand pusson'ly. An' this packet," he added, drawing from his breast pocket an envelope well spotted with black sealing-wax.

"He's up in his room," said Orrin eagerly.

"Better take it right up to Uncle Jonah, Perry," Sarah observed, her hands and eyebrows both twitching. Her gaze never left the strong box as the men carried it through the kitchen.

They stumbled up the crooked back stairs and found Cap'n Jonah ready for them with his door wide open.

"Howdy, Mr. Baker," he said, cordially, leaning on his gold-headed cane in the middle of his poor room. "Set that chist right here by the winder. I shan't want to lift it 'round much, feelin' as rickety as I do now. And I'll want light to see into it. That's it. Now the keys. Yep. I'll sign your receipt."

He signed his name to the paper and paid Perry his fee. Tom lingered at the door of the room, his eyes like knobs. The expressman fell over the lout as he retreated and pushed him down the stairs ahead of him.

"The old man don't seem very spry," Perry said, in a hoarse whisper, to the Petty trio. "I don't dispute he feels his years. P'r'aps he won't have many more chances to look over his—his things. He tells me to come back again for that box day after to-morrow."

"Yes," Sarah Petty said with set lips. "Good day, Perry."

"There ain't many folks in Cardhaven, I don't guess," pursued the unabashed expressman, "that's any better off for this world's goods than Cap'n Hand?"

"Quite prob'ble," snapped Sarah.

"You said yourself, Orrin," went on Perry Baker, "he was a very rich man, 'cordin' to all you could find out."

Sarah glared at her husband in hot wrath. Orrin shuffled his feet and said nothing. He was not going to admit or deny the truth of Perry's artless statement.

"Wal, he's an old man. Right crippled with rheumatics," went on the expressman. "He'll prob'bly be consider'ble of a care afore he passes away. But you folk'll have a chance to make his last days happy."

"I'd like to make your last days happy!" hissed Sarah Petty, as the talkative expressman finally slid out through the kitchen doorway, with Orrin and Tom barring any chance of his return.

Both men wheeled to face the open kitchen door again as Perry aroused his old horse and drove away.

"Goshamighty!" exploded Orrin. "What did I——"

"You jest hesh!" hissed Sarah. "You knowed more'n Solomon and all his seven hundred wives put together. An' you can bet that's why Solomon knew so much. His wives told him!

"Now, you two git along about your work. Don't you interfere. Act like you had some pride and manners. You look like hungry houn's snuffin' around a garbage bucket. Get out with ye!"

"But—but," gasped Orrin, "do you re'lly s'pose there's money in that box?"

"'Twas heavy enough to be filled chock-a-block with gold and silver," declared Tom, quite as eager as his father.

"Don't be sech fools," admonished Sarah Petty. "You can bet Uncle Jonah ain't so crazy as to have his property in cash. He's got what he's got invested, of course. In good dividend-paying stocks an' bonds an' sich. That box is heavy because it is made of iron."

"But there might be treasure in it, too—pearls, or di'monds, or other precious stones," said Orrin, letting his imagination ride free. "He's been all through the East where they git sech things. He's knowed Chinese mandarins, an' Indian rajahs, an' Persian shahs, an'——"

"I don't care," snapped Sarah, "if he knowed the Archon of Swat! I know that Uncle Jonah is too much a Hand to let money or precious stones lie around idle. 'All cats must ketch mice' is our fam'ly's motter. He'll be drawin' dividends an' int'rest on ev'ry dollar he can. You leave it to me, Orrin Petty. I'll find out what Uncle Jonah's fortune is invested in—an' how much it 'mounts to."

But after all it was Tom, the lout, to whom the mystery was the more intimately revealed. Orrin fairly sweated all through dinner time, unable to speak a word for fear he would blurt out some question about the strong box, but Sarah's eye quelled him.

Cap'n Jonah never mentioned the mystery. But he seemed more cheerful than of late. To Pearl he was always kind—even fatherly. He and Mr. Helmford chatted most companionably. The three Pettys felt themselves rather out of it. Even Sarah's thoughts were so much engrossed by the matter of the strong box from the bank, that she could not give her mind to any ordinary conversational topic.

The captain was already "paying 'em back," as he had expressed it to his crony, 'Liphalet Truitt, and to Cap'n Abe. The more Orrin fidgeted, and Sarah held herself in by main force, the more cheerful Cap'n Jonah grew.

There was a settled seriousness in Joe Helmford's manner that the captain did not notice. Only Pearl saw this, and feared the boarder had by no means recovered from his indignation of a few nights before.

He had been uniformly kind to her since the evening Sarah Petty had driven Pearl so ignominiously from his room. But they had never renewed the intimacy which preceded that unfortunate occasion. Pearl had continued to borrow books, however, in spite of Mrs. Petty's command to the contrary.

As for Sarah and Orrin, their treatment of the girl seemed to infer a change of heart. For the first time since Pearl could remember, peace—or, at least, an armistice—reigned in the Petty household.

Yet the girl was by no means happy. She felt a positive loss of something. Helmford's attitude seemed to hold her at a distance. She could not imagine what she had done to displease him, if displeasure was the cause of his changed mood.

The girl, simple-minded though she was, was not shallow. She began to examine her own heart. Why should she care so much about Helmford's attitude? Aside from her love for books and interest in his library and conversation, just what hold had Joe Helmford upon Pearl Holden's mind and heart?

Of course she had felt a certain delight in having a well-dressed, well-mannered young man, so different from the loutish Tom, about the house. She responded to a man's attentions just as any other girl might.

But she had held no foolish thoughts in her heart—or so she imagined—until now. She respected Mr. Helmford. Did she, indeed, have another and heretofore unsuspected feeling for him?

Love, to Pearl's mind, was something to hide away and cherish until the moment came when two hearts, bursting the fetters of form and custom, should each to the other reveal those depths of feeling from which the world at large is to be excluded.

Was she in love with Joe Helmford? Was that why the change in his manner so hurt and surprised her? Had she suddenly become so sensitive that his lightest word or act meant the disturbance of her peace of mind?

Pearl Holden could not put this suspicion away. It ate into her mind like acid. Despite the bitter thoughts and tears Sarah Petty's treatment for years had caused her, never had Pearl felt the heartache that now assailed her. She was oppressed with a weight of woe. The waters of bitterness overflowed her eyes when she was alone and she was exceedingly sorrowful.

As it chanced, this was the day for the regular meeting of the Ladies' Aid Society, the last before the holidays. Sarah must attend, but she left certain directions for Pearl which so amazed the young girl that she had something besides her own sorrows to think of.

At this time of the year the "front room" was closed tight for the winter. It was an airless catacomb in which every article was draped in muslin, including the pictures on the wall and an oval glass on the mantelpiece under which was what had once been a cluster of wax fruit and flowers, but which, during the heat of some twenty summers, had melted and partially run together, until its classification as a work of art was rather difficult.

There was, too, a large base-burner, all trimmed with shiny nickel, and in which a fire had been built since it was set up in the Petty parlor not more than three times. Sarah Petty believed in buying and making a display of the best furnishings obtainable; but such display had only been made on two occasions when the Heath twins and their families had come to Cardhaven, and once when by some freak of fortune the local Conference had sent a real bishop to stay overnight in Sarah Petty's house.

However, before starting on this day for the important meeting of the Ladies' Aid, her mistress had instructed Pearl to open the parlor, or "front room," as it was better known, to dust, and to shake every "tidy" and "throw" decorating the furniture, to remove the muslin coverings, and to lay a fire in the base-burner.

"Comp'ny!" thought Pearl, after asking Sarah twice to repeat her orders. "Land's sake! I wonder who it can be?"

If Tom knew he would give her no hint. Tom was so angry with Pearl now that he would not even smile at her when he brought in the kindling and the brass hod of coal to stand beside the shiny stove.

Retreating to the barn again by the exit of the kitchen door, Tom heard from above a peremptory tapping on the window of Cap'n Jonah's room. He looked up. The old man, in his nightcap, beckoned to him energetically.

"What does the old fool want now, I wonder," muttered Tom.

Then bethinking him that his great-uncle might be moved to make him another gift of money, the lout slouched into the house, and mounted to that loft room over the kitchen.

CHAPTER XVIII

SARAH PETTY TRIMS HER SAILS

"Come in here, young feller," said Cap'n Jonah, speaking more jovially than usual, when Tom stuck his head in at the crooked doorway of the loft room. "It's colder than a dog's nose and my fingers air so numb I can scurce put down these figgers. Besides, I ain't so spry at 'rithmetic as I used to be."

"Why don't you come downstairs where it's warmer, Uncle Jonah?" asked Tom, for once acting as though he was a mite thoughtful for somebody's comfort besides his own. "There ain't anybody in the kitchen."

"No," said Cap'n Jonah. "Guess I won't. I calc'late I can look over these documents best right where I be."

He sat by the window, the strong box at his feet. The box was closed, but Tom's inquisitive glance noted that the padlocks were both removed. Cap'n Jonah's hands were filled with legal-looking documents, and others lay on the deep window seat beside him.

"I want you should help me list these things, Tommy boy," said the old man. "There's the stub of a pencil and a piece of paper on the table. And one thing I want to impress on your mind, young man."

"What?" asked Tom.

"You're not to say a thing to nobody 'bout this."

"Hoh?" ejaculated Tom again, staring.

"Don't tell nobody nothing about my business. What folks don't know won't never hurt 'em. If I've managed to get a little tad of money together an' invested it in payin' bonds an' stocks, best not to talk about it. Remember, 'Jonah' is a peculiar name," went on the captain impressively. "Some says it's bad luck an' some says it's good luck. Whichever it may be, I've learned by experience that if folks don't know I've got money, I don't haf to spend it. And that'll leave the more for them that comes after me an' may enjoy my savin's."

Tom could not speak. His eyes betrayed his overpowering excitement, for they stared like those of a fresh-caught fish.

"Now you take down the figgers I give you, and then we'll tot up what it amounts to. But don't you say nothin' to nobody, Tom," warned the old man again, and began to rustle the papers in his hands.

"All ready, sir," said Tom, finding his voice, and speaking more respectfully than he ever had before in his life. The power of wealth shook the lout to the foundations of his being.

"Now this here bond of the Metuchen and Cairo Railroad. It's for five hundred, an' it's supposed to pay seven an' a ha'f per cent.," murmured Cap'n Jonah. "Put down five hundred, Tom."

"Five hundred," repeated Tom, licking his lips like a hungry wolf.

"Twenty-two hundred an fifty—that's Highland and Beezboro Canal stock. It's a mighty pretty document, too," said the captain, holding the gaudily printed paper off to eye it the better. "Promises eight per cent."

"Yes, sir!" gasped Tom.

"Two hundred Peterboro Tool Company sheers, wuth on the face of 'em one thousand; but that was a long time ago," murmured Cap'n Jonah unctuously and pursing his lips. "Date of issue, 1882. Fifty year bonds. But we'll jest set down the face value of all these securities. Mebbe some of 'em's deteriorated, I dunno; but the bank folks tell me sech another lot of investments they never did see. One thousand, Tom."

"Yes, sir," responded the scribe.

One after the other Cap'n Jonah called off the amounts printed on the certificates. As the sum grew Tom Petty came close to apoplexy. His mind had never functioned before, beyond the few thousand dollars his parents, or some of the neighbors, possessed.

One after another Cap'n Jonah called off the amount on the certificates.

When a man was known to possess a sum exceeding the value of his house and lot—like Cap'n Abe, the storekeeper, for instance—it was said he had "a plenty money." Miss Sue's reported fortune of forty thousand dollars was more than Tom Petty could visualize. He had always taken that story with a grain of salt.

The fortunes of the "summer folks" along The Beaches were beyond computation. It was said that I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King, was so rich that he could not really tell what his income was, and he never kicked a mite when the assessors raised his taxes!

But here, before him, squinting near-sightedly at the gaudily printed certificates, was Uncle Jonah, rolling the numbers off his tongue in a way to astonish his young relative. Tom thrilled to the very marrow of his bones as the amount on the paper grew. Cap'n Jonah did not lay down the last certificate until the grand total was more than a hundred thousand dollars!

"There, Tommy boy," said the old man in high good humor. "There, Tommy boy, that'll be 'bout all," taking the paper from Tom's shaking fingers. "You're a good mathematician I don't dispute. I wanted to be sure I had the sum right. I calc'late on makin' my will some day purty soon now.

"And that's another thing," said the captain reflectively. "Course, Tommy, a man's own flesh and blood comes first. And I ain't one to divide up a small prop'ty among a shoal of folks. No sir! But what I said t'other night to your father and mother I meant—ev'ry word. Pearly's a good gal and she desarves good treatment. I ain't goin' to stand by an' see her used mean no more. Remember that now!

"But," concluded the captain firmly, "as long as she has a square deal here, I'm only inclined to make her what the lawyers call a 'small be-quest.' Something substantial; but nothin' at all like what would fall to you, Tommy, providin' I died an' left sech a sum as this," and he tapped the paper on which Tom had added up the figures.

"Course, some of these secureties air likely to seine a purty small ketch." He picked up a certain paper. Tom crowded closer to read it hungrily. "Here's this Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company. I got two thousand sheers of that. They cost me a dollar a sheer an' the prospectus said they'd go to a hundred par in time. I must confess that time ain't come yet, so I've hung onto 'em."

"A hundred per cent. rise," Tom whispered, and felt actually faint.

"But you'll mebbe see the time when the Little Sandy Company will fulfill its prognostications—yes sir! Now, go 'long with you, Tom. I'm much obleeged. I got to look over some other stuff in this little chist. Perry Baker'll be back for it day after to-morrow. I don't feel jest right havin' it out o' the bank for long."

Tom wanted to see the inside of the strong box; but there was no opportunity. He stumbled down the dark stairway and out to the barn where his father, who was a good "cold iron blacksmith," was pottering about their farm wagon. Like most Cape Cod people who had land to till, the Pettys drew seaweed and shackfish for their fertilizer pile during the winter months.

"Where in tarnation hev you been?" demanded Orrin. "I want you should help me with this felloe."

Tom looked at his farther in a stunned sort of way.

"Ketch holt here!" Orrin commanded. "What you moonin' about? What hev you been doin'?"

"I've been helpin' Uncle Jonah figger up his fortune," said Tom in a faint and faraway voice.

"His fortune!"

"Yep. His fortune," repeated the younger Petty. He told his father the exact sum to which the securities added. Orrin's mouth fell loosely open and he actually paled under his sheath of salt wind tan.

"Goshamighty!" he gasped at last. "Air you tellin' the truth, Tom Petty?"

"I wouldn't make nothin' by lyin', would I?" demanded Tom. "I knew he had plenty o' money."

"Wait till your mother hears 'bout it," sighed Orrin in a sort of ecstasy.

"You an' marm want to be mighty careful how you treat Pearly," growled Tom, shaking a threatening head. "He as much as said that he'd will it all to her out o' spite if marm an' you jawed her the way you do."

"Huh!" snorted Orrin. "How 'bout you marryin' the gal?"

"She won't marry me now, Pearly won't, so long's that Helmford feller is in the way," grumbled Tom.

"Git out!"

"You see," said his son. "I ain't dyin' to marry no girl——"

"Get her to promise to marry ye," said the scheming Orrin quickly. "That'll be enough. If Pearly once promises a thing she'll do it if the heavens fall. You know that, Tom."

"But I ain't likely to get her to promise no such thing, as long as that city chap is foolin' her," declared Tom. "But marm won't hear to puttin' him out."

"Wal," said Orrin, shrewdly, "there's more ways of killin' a cat than chokin' it to death with butter."

"Then," said his son darkly, "you see that you stand up for me if something busts. I'd jest like to get a good smash or two at that four-eyed fool!" and he doubled his fist threateningly.

"I'd be sure I could do that afore I started anything," said his father. "Helmford looks kinder like a hick'ry knot to me."

"Aw, I c'd lick him with one hand," growled Tom, the confident.

When Sarah came home from the Ladies' Aid Society her son and husband were ready for her. They met her in the lane and in the deepening twilight and with the chill December wind whining around them, they told the woman the amazing tale of Cap'n Jonah's fortune.

"A hundred thousand dollars?" commented Sarah Petty coolly. "Why, that's more'n we had any reason to expect."

"Say!" exclaimed Tom. "Jest one of his investments might amount to more than that. He said so himself. The Little Sandy Oil and Coal Comp'ny. Cost him two thousand dollars for two thousand sheers, and mebbe they air wuth now a hundred dollars apiece!"

"Goshamighty!" ejaculated Orrin. "Them's the ile sheers he told me about, once't."

Sarah sighed ecstatically. Her face lighted with the glory of expectation.

"We'll be rich," she murmured.

"Hoh!" cried Tom.

"You're countin' your chickens in the aig, Sarah Petty," warned Orrin.

"You leave it to me," his wife said with immense confidence. "I told you I could trim my sails to a change of wind. All you need do, Orrin, you and Tom, is to foller my lead. He's a Hand, after all, Uncle Jonah is. He don't calc'late to divide up his property if he can help it. It'll all come to us in the end."

"But Pearly, Marm?" Tom said faintly.

"Do jest as I say. Treat her nice. Make up to her. Let your Uncle Jonah see you air nice to her. That'll fix him. If he thinks she'll in the end get some of his money I guarantee he won't will her none to speak of. He's a Hand, I tell you, and they was always cautious."

"Uh-huh!" grunted Orrin, but not altogether convinced.

Once confident that Uncle Jonah was possessed of a bona fide fortune, Sarah Petty's determination would admit no possibility of defeat.

Before supper time Sarah had Orrin and Tom carry some of the heavier pieces of furniture out of the parlor. A generous walnut bureau with a good mirror was brought down from one of the upper chambers. Orrin and Sarah's own brass bed—a magnificent piece of furniture according to local report and which Sarah had kept unscarred for three years by enveloping the posts in canton flannel—was taken down and set up again in the front room. It was fitted with the best mattress in the house and with monogrammed linen. For Sarah Petty took vast pride in her household possessions. When Orrin had first been allowed to sleep in that brass bed he confessed that he "didn't feel as though he belonged in the blasted contraption!"

As the family gathered around the supper table Sarah was all smiles. From somewhere a very comfortable armchair had appeared, standing at Cap'n Jonah's usual place. The old seaman hesitated when he saw the chair. What change did this portend?

"Sit right down, Uncle," said Sarah Petty in honeyed accents. "Seein' as you're so kinder crippled up, I didn't know but you'd find that cheer more comfort'ble."

"Whatever!" murmured Cap'n Jonah.

"I was speakin' to Miz Cap'n Joab Beecher at the Ladies' Aid," went on Mrs. Petty, as the family began to eat, "and she says Cap'n Joab gits gre't relief at times when the rheumatism ketches him jest as it does you, from usin' angleworm ile. It limbers the j'ints remarkable."

"Angleworm ile?" gasped Orrin. "How in nature do they git ile from fishworms? Cap'n Jonah says they bore wells for ile, an' that s'prised me. But ile from angleworms is the capsheaf."

"You fill a can with angleworms—wash 'em of course—an' set it out in the sun to stew. Gradually the worms shrink to 'most nothin', and you strain off the ile. Tommy can dig some worms——"

"This weather?" snorted her son. "If all the angleworms in our back garden ain't dug themselves down 'bout's far as China for the winter, then they're froze' stiff by now, if you ask me."

"Wal, I suppose it would be best to make the ile in summer," confessed Sarah.

"There's skunk ile," proposed Orrin, seeing his wife's lead and trying to follow it. "They say that's mighty good for rheumatiz, to rub it in."

"Have me smellin' like a polecat!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah, getting his breath at last.

"Ain't that just like you, Orrin?" snapped Sarah. Orrin subsided. But Mrs. Petty was determined to put forth something that would please Cap'n Jonah and draw attention to her interest and sympathy in the master mariner.

"I've been intendin' to get to it ever since the cold weather set in," she observed; "but I've been so busy that I couldn't till to-day. That upstairs room over this kitchen ain't re'lly fit for Uncle Jonah to sleep in, Orrin."

"Huh?" grunted her husband, wondering where she was heading in now.

"I told you I didn't think 'twould suit," went on Sarah calmly. "There ain't no heat gets up into it from here—only smells. The fire goes out in this range and the chimney gets cold 'fore mornin'. 'Tain't fit for Uncle Jonah to sleep up there."

The old captain laid down his knife and fork and stared at her. Orrin looked only at his plate. Tom choked over his food. Helmford tried to cover the general confusion by starting the ball of conversation rolling with Pearl about a piece of music which was just then coming into great popularity and of which he had a record that he played on his phonograph.

"So," Sarah continued, placid as a summer sea, "I've cleared out the front room for the winter an' set up a bed there for Uncle Jonah. After supper you an' Tom, Orrin, go up and get his chist and carry it down there. There's a fire in the base-burner, and if ye fix the dampers right ye can run a fire in it day and night, Uncle."

"Whatever!" ejaculated the master mariner.

"I'm sure you'll be much more comfort'ble in the front room, Uncle," added his niece sweetly. "We must not let the rheumatism get settled on you. You must take good care of yourself the few years you've got to remain with us."

Cap'n Jonah, Pearl, and even Helmford, were by this time speechless.

CHAPTER XIX

THE HIGH HAND

Sarah Petty possessed the usual district-school training of the Cape Cod native. It is not wholly ignorance of English that develops the Cape Cod tang in the speech of the people who dwell on that famous hook of land.

In part it arises from the association with others who maltreat the language; and partly it is from a degree of pride in the fact that the Cape has a distinctive speech of its own. Naturally, sea lore and seafaring expressions are incorporated in the dialect.

Sarah sat down that evening after the half-stunned Cap'n Jonah had retired to the "saloon cabin," as he called his new quarters, and proceeded to write to the Heaths and the Solon and Enoch Pettys the news that Cap'n Jonah Hand, retired from the Chinese trade, had come to make his home with his gratified relatives on the Shell Road. The writer, with due humbleness of phraseology but abundant pride to be read between the lines, wished the Heath families and the Pettys to come for a Sunday visit, for the express purpose of becoming acquainted with the returned wanderer and shining light of the Hand family.

"Goshamighty, it'll cost a slather of money to feed all them folks an' to run fires all over the house if we have a cold spell," complained Orrin. "That extry fire in the front room——"

"You hesh!" commanded Sarah. "Didn't you never hear of throwin' a sprat to ketch a herrin', an' throwin' a herrin' to ketch a whale?"

"Yes," grumbled Orrin. "But I don't never calc'late to use a whale to bait for a herrin'. What in tarnation good is it goin' to do us to have all them folks here to show off your Uncle Jonah to? We'd better keep him to ourselves."

"You dunderhead!" exclaimed his wife bitterly. "What a punishment for my sins you be, Orrin Petty! Unless a body gives you chart, compass, an' all the soundings, you can't weather a p'int. Don't you see 'tis for our benefit to be good friends with them of your fam'ly that has got money and position? We hope to have money and position. And I want they should see Cap'n Jonah Hand, through whom we air goin' to rise in the world."

"Goshamighty! Woman, you air takin' too much for granted," urged Orrin.

"You leave it to me," said Sarah confidently, licking the flap of the last envelope and pressing down upon it with determination expressed in her very attitude. "Uncle Jonah's fortune is just as good as ourn."

Pearl went into the front room when her evening's work was done to see if Cap'n Jonah wished anything for the night. The old mariner was sitting in a comfortable chair before the stove dressed in his blue pilot-cloth suit which he wore only on "state and date occasions," as he said himself, and with his feet thrust into a pair of gold embroidered Chinese heelless slippers.

"Ahoy, my hearty!" hailed Cap'n Jonah, smiling at the girl. "It does me good to see your pretty face. Come in an' set along o' me a spell."

"I've a book up in my room I want to read, Cap'n Jonah," said Pearl frankly. "If I don't read before Miz Petty comes up to bed she'll maybe take my lamp away. She says that if I read at night I'm not fit for anything the next day."

"Whatever!" snapped the old mariner. "You bring your book in here, if you want, Pearly. Don't matter what Sarah Petty says. If you want to read, you read."

"Oh!" gasped Pearl. "I wouldn't dare."

"Ha! There's a change of wind hereabout, my gal," said Cap'n Jonah, his eyes twinkling. "While it blows fav'rable you'd better take advantage of it as I have. You're welcome to come in here any time, Pearly. 'Hem! How air you and that young Helmford gettin' on?"

"Oh! Cap'n Jonah!" cried the girl, startled by the abrupt question.

"Good friends, ain't you two?" queried the old man, watching her face sharply. "He's a nice feller if he has got a fool job, trainin' fishes."

"He's—he's very nice," stammered Pearl.

"To be sure he is," agreed Cap'n Jonah heartily. "From what I hear he comes of nice folks, though they ain't rich. Abram Silt knows about him. He'll make a nice man for some smart gal to marry."

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah!" cried Pearl again, and ran out of the room with burning cheeks. She did not go near Helmford that evening.

Cap'n Jonah accepted with placid mien the good things the gods gave him in the matter of improved quarters and better treatment from the Pettys. He did not know how long he could keep up the masquerade as a wealthy and successful man; but while Sarah and the others continued to deceive themselves the old seaman proposed to do or say nothing to break the charm.

He slept that night as peacefully as he had in the best bedroom upstairs. With the room kept at a comfortable temperature by the fire in the base-burner, the captain's rheumatic twinges did not return. Still, when Sarah herself tapped at his door in the morning and asked him if he would have his breakfast on a tray, he accepted the offer.

"Might's well take all the benefits of being in sick bay," he said to Pearl, who brought the tray. "Now some shavin' water, my gal, and I'll be purty well fixed."

His toilet was completed, and Pearl was redding up the front room while Cap'n Jonah was sitting around in his best suit in honor of the new quarters, when he saw from the window a small figure approaching briskly up the lane.

"Here's Miss Sue," he observed. "She certainly is a spankin' craft. Ha! She's comin' to our side door."

He went out into the hall as the doctor's sister tapped. Her smiling face greeted him like a dewy rose.

"I am glad to see you stirring, Cap'n Hand," she said. "Can I see Pearl?"

"You can, ma'am," agreed Cap'n Jonah, making his bow with a flourish. "Come right into my cabin, ma'am."

"I want Pearl to help us decorate the chapel with the Christmas greens when they come next week," Miss Sue said, stepping into the hall.

From kitchenward appeared the apprehensive Sarah, a portentous frown upon her brow.

"Mornin', Miss Sue," she said harshly. "I don't see how I can spare Pearly. I expec' comp'ny, and we shall be up to our ears after they go, cleanin' after 'em."

"You come right in this way, Miss Sue," interrupted Cap'n Jonah. "Pearl's in my cabin an' she can speak for herself. I reckon, Sarah, you can spare her for one-two hours; and the child'll like it, I haven't a doubt."

Sarah, struck with amazement, for once failed to dominate the situation. She saw Miss Sue enter the front room and herself shut out by the captain before she could recover her aplomb. Cap'n Jonah certainly was carrying things with a high hand!

The person who had prophetically suggested that he would be able to do just this, if the Pettys once believed him wealthy, chanced to approach the house a few minutes later. It was just twenty-four hours since Perry Baker had stopped at 'Liphalet Truitt's house with the steel strong box from the Paulmouth National Bank in his wagon. 'Liphalet was unable to smother his curiosity longer, and was wishful of talking the matter over with Cap'n Jonah. Although he had not been present when the plot was actually laid by Cap'n Jonah and the storekeeper, 'Liphalet was fully aware of the particulars.

Cap'n Abe, whose influence with the bank officials was considerable, had arranged for the sending over of the steel chest in the expressman's care. The "securities" Cap'n Jonah had shown the easily gulled Tom Petty were for the most part supplied by the same bank officer who sent the box, and who had amused himself by making a large collection of such worthless and gaudy papers. Such evidences of the gullibility and cupidity of human nature often come into the hands of bankers in perfectly legitimate ways.

'Liphalet desired mightily to know how the conspiracy was coming on. The ex-steward might be "on the outs" with most of his neighbors; but his interest in Cap'n Jonah's affairs had not waned. He came smartly up the lane and started across the yard to ask for his crony at the back door, when he chanced to see that the shades of the parlor windows were raised half way.

That in itself was a surprising fact, for it was only mid-week, and he had not heard that Sarah Petty had company. He looked again more sharply. Behind the lace curtains he saw Cap'n Jonah in his Sunday best weaving to and fro comfortably in Sarah Petty's best rocking chair.

"By Hannah!" muttered the ex-steward. "Will wonders never cease—with doughnuts fried in candle grease? Cap'n Jonah in the parlor?"

Then he stopped, struck nerveless in his tracks, by the recognition of the figure sitting at the other window. Miss Sue!

The doctor's sister sat smiling, chatting most companionably with the captain. To the angry gaze of Eliphalet Truitt it seemed as though she was making a deliberate call upon the old sea-dog who had already, and more than once, expressed his admiration for Susan Ambrose.

Cap'n Jonah had said a share of Miss Sue's reputed fortune would give him a certain standing in the community that he craved. The captain was, after all, to use a Shell Road term, "muchly of a man." 'Liphalet's jealous fears made instant capital of the situation.

He had served for Miss Sue more than the allotted seven years Jacob served for Rachel. And was a comparative stranger, a man who had lived in the community but a few weeks, to step in and bear away the prize of the doctor's sister from under Life Truitt's very nose?

Yet with all his rage and sorrow, he could not bring himself to play the rôle of fortune hunter—even in appearance—by asking Miss Sue to marry him.

He turned abruptly away, hot rage seething in his heart, and went back along the way to his lonely cottage. If ever the Christmas spirit—and, indeed, every other spirit of generosity and joy—was quenched in a man's soul it was quenched now in that of the apostate Santa Claus of the Shell Road.

CHAPTER XX

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

It must be true that the love of money is the root of all evil; the mere possession of it, whether one loves it or not, seems to distract humanity. Sue Ambrose's acclaimed fortune of forty thousand dollars made 'Liphalet miserable; nor did it seem to do Miss Sue herself very much good.

Miss Sue's tastes were naturally simple. She had begun to dress much better than formerly, as soon as she had received the legacy from her anti-suffragist relative. But good clothes on a careful body like Sue Ambrose last a long time. She had seldom renewed her apparel during these past ten years.

There was one gown, a silver-gray poplin, laid away in lavender in her chest that Miss Sue never saw without a tear and a sigh. She had never worn it. It had been purchased immediately on the lawyers having paid over to her the legacy which had made such a difference in her quiet life. She had bought it for a certain occasion, and to her modest surprise that occasion had never arisen.

Miss Sue retained her peace of mind and her sweetness of temper by always being busy. If not about her brother's house and office, then in various good works in the community. As chairman of the Christmas entertainment committee of the Mariner's Chapel she had her hands more than full these days. Doubtless, if 'Liphalet Truitt had followed her lead at this season as he had on similar occasions for the past ten years, he would not have had time to become the misanthrope he now was.

With Cap'n Jonah's aid, having forced Sarah Petty to say that Pearl could help in trimming the chapel for Christmas, Miss Sue hurried away to round up other helpers. She did not see 'Liphalet stubbing up the Shell Road toward home and had no idea, of course, that he had seen her apparently making a personal call on Cap'n Jonah. But she did meet Joe Helmford coming toward the Petty place, and halted him.

"You have time to help our committee, I am sure, Mr. Helmford," she said to the man from the fish hatchery. She explained what was needed and told him the day on which the decorating was to be done.

"I'll be there, Miss Ambrose," the young man said heartily. "You say Pearl—Miss Holden—will help?"

She smiled up at him with such a sweet, shy knowledge of his unintentional revelation, that Joe Helmford's cheeks flooded with sudden red. "You can come over with her," Miss Sue said demurely. "Then you will be sure to be on time."

He murmured an assurance that he would be present, and left her in some confusion. If people were going to discover so easily what he had heretofore denied to himself, he must have a care!

"Am I in love with her—with Pearly?" he asked himself forty times a day. "What is the root of the influence she has with me? Am I so strongly attracted to her just because she is beyond my reach? If she is to be Cap'n Jonah Hand's heir, according to all I hear, she will some day possess a hundred thousand dollars or more."

The Helmfords were a large family, and after his education was given him there was no money in the family exchequer for Joe Helmford. He must earn all he ever expected to have; and for his work as Government expert in ichthyology he was not generously paid.

Had the girl been just what she seemed to be when Helmford first obtained a better understanding of her character and its possibilities for development, he might have safely considered attempting the winning of Pearl Holden. She was a poor girl then and would not expect too much of a young man just beginning to climb the scientific ladder.

But along had come Cap'n Jonah with his phenomenal fortune (phenomenal for this simple community) and if it was understood that Pearl was to benefit largely by the old sea captain's will any man who approached her in a sentimental way would be decried as a fortune hunter. The same situation that confronted 'Liphalet Truitt with Miss Sue faced Joe Helmford, as he supposed, regarding Pearl Holden.

Tom Petty had been unable, in spite of his mother's commands, to keep the story of the strong box from the bank and Cap'n Jonah's securities to himself. He had related with much detail the story of his helping "Uncle Jonah tot up his fortune"—as Cap'n Jonah was quite sure he would despite his warning to the contrary—at the store, and Helmford had been present to hear it all.

It would be too bald a thing, the latter told himself, now, to pay court to a girl who was the accredited heiress of such a fortune. But Joe Helmford fought these thoughts down—would not admit his growing interest in the girl, save at a time like this when Miss Sue's intuition had penetrated his guard.

The repeated story of Cap'n Jonah's fortune buzzed through the neighborhood. It was whispered that there was much treasure in precious stones and hard cash in the box besides the securities. Everybody watched the next day for the return of Perry Baker, the expressman, for the strong box. It was known far and wide that Cap'n Jonah's valuables were to go back to the safety deposit vaults under the Paulmouth National Bank.

When the important Perry drove up the Petty lane he had an ancient sawed-off shotgun on the seat beside him! He was taking no chances, as he frankly admitted to the assembled Petty family.

"A feller axed a lift of me, comin' over from the station this mornin'," he said in a hushed tone. "I didn't know him. Stranger to me. Several suspicious looking characters 'round these parts lately. Make b'lieve they work in the cranberry bogs; but ye can't most always sometimes tell.

"I borried this gun of Sile Peckham. It's loaded to the muzzle with slugs. I reckon on doin' some damage to airy highwayman that tries to hold me up, I vow to man!"

"If it ever goes off at your shoulder, it'll prob'bly kick you across the road," remarked Cap'n Jonah, paying the expressman's fee. "Looks to me as though that gun had busted once, already. That's where Peckham had it strapped—see? You better give it to the highwayman, if you meet any. 'Twill prob'bly do more harm at the tail end than it does at the muzzle."

No one could tell Perry Baker anything he did not want to know. He drove away with the strong box hidden under a blanket in the bottom of his wagon, and the old shotgun lying across his lap.

"Talk about the Wild West," chuckled Helmford to Pearl, "the Wild East—meaning Cape Cod—is wilder! Cardhaven puts it all over Crimson Gulch."

At the Petty house there really was another topic of conversation discussed besides Cap'n Jonah's fortune. The Heaths and the Pettys to whom Sarah had written were coming to stay over Sunday with the branch residing on the Shell Road. They would arrive in two days—Solon Petty and his wife; Enoch Petty and his wife, and the twins, Apollo and Perseus Heath, and their wives. Four couples—and Sarah was just as busy as a hen on a hot griddle (so Orrin said) preparing for the influx of guests.

Cap'n Jonah's being billeted in the front room made the entertainment of the guests possible. Tom and Orrin were relegated to the room the old sea captain had occupied for a few weeks over the kitchen, while Sarah was to sleep on the sitting-room sofa.

For the nonce she would have been glad had Helmford been out of the house. She desired to "eat her cake and have it, too." She wanted the man's board money just as much as ever; but she wished she might put Solon Petty, the member of the Massachusetts Legislature, and his wife in the best bedroom.

Pearl was not required to give up her room. In the first place it was a cramped little chamber behind the attic stairs. And, in addition, Sarah Petty had no intention of giving Cap'n Jonah any further excuse for making the girl his heiress.

Besides, if worse came to worst, and it was necessary for Tom to marry Pearl to keep Cap'n Jonah's fortune in the family, Sarah wished the guests to observe how nicely she treated her daughter-in-law to be.

There was looming an incident, however, that Sarah Petty did not foresee. It was something that was to relieve her of Joe Helmford's presence, whether she wanted him to go or not.

Helmford, no matter what he admitted in secret to himself regarding Pearl, was scrupulously careful to display no extraordinary interest in her before the family. He had ever in his mind the several occasions on which he had observed what he supposed to be the expression of Tom's half-formed attachment for the girl. He could not understand how Pearl could endure the lout; but he knew that here on the Cape the "chief end of woman" is marriage of some kind, no matter what may be the "chief end of man" in the Catechism.

He saw the hypocrisy of the Petty family in the sudden change in their treatment of Pearl. It was to be expected, if she was to be Cap'n Jonah's heir. They loved money more than they loved anything else in the world. It was not strange at all that Tom should try to win Pearl—and the money.

The boarder, however, found it impossible to ignore Pearl or to completely withstand her charm. When they were together he found himself drawn to speak to her and to discuss matters of mutual interest, as he had heretofore. He could not be rude to her.

Unless he actually ran away from her they were bound to be thrown often into each other's company. Pearl had no reason, Helmford supposed, to suspect his secret perturbation. She eagerly conversed with him whenever she could.

Was he in Cap'n Jonah's room playing a game of checkers with the old man and she came in on an errand, Pearl was sure to linger. Cap'n Jonah seemed to encourage her to talk, much as his mind might be given to the intricacies of the game on the board.

At meal time Helmford sat opposite to the girl at table. If he raised his eyes from his plate there were her dark eyes pouring all the sweet sincerity of their gaze into his. They could not stare dumbly at each other without attracting the family's attention.

Did he chance to be in his room when Pearl came to clean it, he could not assume so deep an absorption in his work or study that he did not see her. They had exchanged mutual confidences at such times, and Pearl expected him to respond to her innocent advances.

He could not say to her: "You are going to be rich some day. I am a poor man and may be comparatively poor all my life. I cannot propose marriage to you—even if I wanted to—for fear of what people will say!"

Indeed, not only was the love of money the root of all evil, but it seemed that the very existence of Cap'n Jonah's fortune was to breed trouble for all whom it touched. Was the name, Jonah, after all one to conjure ill luck with?

An incident, however, brought to a conclusion Joe Helmford's uncertainties and Pearl's unfulfilled expectations.

It was prayer and conference-meeting night. Pearl had been to chapel—the sole member of the family who attended the mid-week meeting. She was returning alone along the Shell Road, when Helmford overtook her. A strong, salt-savored gale blew from the sea, and this, getting under her cape, ballooned the garment under such pressure that she was all but carried off her feet.

"To the rescue!" cried Helmford cheerfully, and seized her. She clung to him until the gust was past, and he beat down the voluminous cape, passing one arm around her slight figure to do so.

They stood there for a moment, laughing, Pearl clinging to him and Helmford half embracing her, when a burly figure burst through the hedge right beside the Petty lane.

"Hey, you! I've caught you, ain't I? I've a mind to break every bone in your body, Joe Helmford!"

Helmford wheeled to face Tom Petty. His eyes behind his big glasses sparkled angrily. He had steadied Pearl upon her feet, and now he started for the newcomer.

"You get up to the house, Pearl Holden!" cried the angry Tom. "I'll show this feller what's what. Hangin' 'round you all the time like a pilot fish around a shark. You can see what he wants, all right. He thinks Uncle Jonah is going to will you all his money, and he'd marry you for it. You can bet your sweet life, Pearly, that he'd never look twice at a longshore girl if he didn't think you was goin' to be rich."

"Oh, Tom Petty!" gasped the girl, in horror.

"That's what I say—an' I stick to it," pursued the wildly excited Tom. "And I saw you lettin' him hug you right out here in the road. I'll tell marm. She'll fix you for such actions; and she'll tend to this here Helmford."

The latter flashed a sudden glance at the cowering girl.

"Yes, Miss Pearl," he said, "do go into the house. I am sorry this occurred. But I guarantee another such incident will never happen."

Tom made a dash at him. He had held a club behind his back, which neither Helmford nor the girl had perceived. Helmford ducked and the blow overreached. In coming to close quarters Helmford delivered a swift and able punch which landed solidly on Tom Petty's neck.

The youth went down upon the frozen ground like a felled ox. He was dazed by the collision of the back of his head with the hard earth. Helmford stepped over him and led Pearl away with a firm hand under her elbow. She was sobbing.

The young man felt that there was nothing he could say. After the vulgar accusation Tom Petty had made, he did not know how to address the girl.

So they reached the house without a word being spoken between them. Tom had picked himself up and was following at a distance. Pearl ran up to her room without appearing at all before the family.

Helmford waited in the kitchen with Sarah and Orrin until Tom came in. He had something to say, and he said it at last, and there was snap to it.

"This son of yours," he concluded, particularly addressing Sarah Petty, "is impossible. You abetted him on a previous occasion when you rudely entered my room and spoke as you did to a guest of mine. Now this fellow accuses me of a most vulgar interest in Miss Pearl. These outbreaks, I can plainly see, will occur with more frequency if I remain. You are paid to the end of the week, Mrs. Petty. I will go to-morrow morning."

He waited for no argument, but went up to his room. He spent half the night packing. Before breakfast he was gone, and that afternoon Perry Baker on his usual trip stopped for Mr. Helmford's trunks and boxes.

"He's got board with the Widder Weth'rel and her darters t'other side of Cardhaven," said the gossipy Perry. "Guess you be glad to see the last of him, Sarah, as you say. Them city folks is awful fussy. You've got to cater to 'em a lot, an' a body must be a purty good cook an' housekeeper to suit."

Sarah Petty was almost apoplectic, but she said not a word in reply.

CHAPTER XXI

THE WISE MEN OUT OF THE SOUTH

The two members of the Petty household who, after all, were to be the more affected by the abrupt departure of Joe Helmford, knew nothing about it until the expressman came for the young man's baggage and his books. His absence at breakfast and dinner chanced to draw no comment or question from Cap'n Jonah; and Pearl, after the incident on the road coming from chapel, dreaded meeting the man from the fish hatchery.

Tom's brutality and his insulting words had utterly overpowered her. Again, because of her excitement, she had scarcely noted the reference to Cap'n Jonah's threatened disposal of his fortune. Of all the inhabitants of this longshore community Pearl Holden probably was the least interested in money, either in large or small sums.

But she owned now to a deep and abiding interest in Joe Helmford. For the moment she was in his arms as he steadied her against the wind squall, she found herself giving in utterly to the thrill of his embrace. Had Tom not burst so unexpectedly upon them what might not have happened?

The contact of Pearl and Helmford at that exciting instant was as innocent as that of two children. Yet she had lain awake for hours after it, living over again the sweet significance of their coming together through grace of the wind.

She shrank from meeting Helmford because of what Tom Petty had blurted out. She would feel shamefaced she knew; and yet she could scarcely wait to see him.

When he did not appear at breakfast and dinner she wondered. Sarah Petty looked grim indeed. She had forced Tom to tell the truth about his trouble with Helmford—or as near the truth as the lout ever spoke—and she realized that there was nothing to be made by quarreling with Pearl.

Helmford had stated an incontrovertible fact: Her son was "impossible," and Sarah knew it.

They were giving the lower part of the house a thorough cleaning on this day in preparation for the coming of the expected guests. The chambers were left until after dinner. So Pearl did not discover the condition of Helmford's room. Sarah refrained from ordering no plate set for the young man at dinner. For once the woman shrank from telling her mind outright.

When Perry Baker came for Helmford's goods the truth came out. Amazement sat upon Cap'n Jonah's mahogany countenance. Pearl was bewildered.

Had Helmford gone without a word—without saying good-bye? Grim-lipped, Sarah Petty would not explain, and both Orrin and Tom had been ordered to keep their mouths closed. There had been a contest in the kitchen the night before, and for once Sarah Petty was worsted by her husband and son. Orrin, as he had previously promised Tom, had backed the lout in his determination to get rid of the boarder.

Pearl could not ask anybody to solve the mystery of Helmford's brusk departure, and all Sarah would vouchsafe her uncle was:

"It didn't suit for him to be here no longer."

"Something fishy 'bout that—something very fishy," whispered Cap'n Jonah to Pearl. "Wonder what 'tis?"

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah!"

"What do you know 'bout it, my gal? Joe Helmford was a good friend of yours."

"He—he's gone without a word!" sobbed Pearl.

"You dunno no reason?"

"He didn't say anything to me about leaving," she replied, shrinking from telling anybody of the incident on the road the previous evening.

"Nor to me. And he's usually a mighty open-spoken, friendly chap. I don't understand it," declared Cap'n Jonah. "I'm going to look him up and find out what it means."

But this was poor comfort for Pearl. To her mind a great gulf had opened between Joe Helmford and herself. He had gone away without one word—or look—or handclasp! Had Tom's rude speech the night before warned him from the dangerous salient into which he and Pearl had ventured? Unsophisticated as was Pearl Holden she had felt, her woman's intuition told her, that the young man, too, had experienced the same pulsation she herself had known as they stood together on the wintry road.

Had he run away from her? The thought one moment stung her pride; the next she was deep in despair because Helmford's abrupt departure did not seem to conform to his unfailing courtesy.

She knew, of course, that Tom's ugliness was the spring from which all this trouble flowed. The actual cause of Helmford's departure must be his brief struggle with the lout.

Pearl had felt some primal passion stir within her when Helmford had so easily overcome the lout. It seemed almost a miracle that one man with only his bare hands could beat another who held the advantage of a stout club. And a studious, seemingly gentle man, like Joe Helmford! Pearl knew nothing about the athletic training our American youth gain at college; nor did she dream that the lanky, apparently "loose hung" man from the fish hatchery was the acclaimed champion boxer of his class.

But she knew she had been glad, glad when Helmford struck the blow that knocked Tom Petty to the ground.

She saw the swollen and inflamed spot upon the side of the lout's neck which advertised the blow, and she was glad again.

Nevertheless she could not bring herself to explain to Cap'n Jonah what had happened, or discuss in any way the disappearance of Joe Helmford. She was relieved that there was so much to do in preparing for the coming of the guests from the "south." One cannot entirely give way to sorrow where one's time is so fully occupied with work. Pearl Holden sought her bed that night so tired that she would have slept soundly in any case.

The four families represented by the four wise men from out of the south and their wives, lived near Harwich. They came by train to Paulmouth, from whence Willy Peebles and another driver of an auto car brought them over to the Petty place on the Shell Road.

It was a crisp, delightfully cold day, and the extra fires indoors made most of the house comfortable. Still, the visiting women sat around the sitting-room stove with knit shawls over their shoulders and gossiped with Sarah Petty while the men made the usual pilgrimage to the barn to look over Orrin's stock and to swap stories and tobacco.

In spite of the fact that Solon Petty was one of the legislators of the Commonwealth, and Enoch, his cousin, carried a large section of the politics of Harwich in his vest pocket, as the saying went, they were longshore born and longshore bred, and would never be anything under their skins save a combination of farmer and fisherman.

'Poley and Perseus Heath were storekeepers. All their long lives (they were now upward of sixty) they had looked, talked, and dressed just alike. So much alike were they that if you addressed, as you supposed, Uncle 'Poley, more than likely you would be answered by Uncle Perse. It was gossip that the twins' wives had certain marks of identification by which they could tell with precision "which was which"; but nobody else had such omniscience regarding the Heath twins.

"Ye haven't even got as much chance," said Cap'n Abe, discussing the wonder at the Shell Road store, "as they had with them twins, Bill and Tom, they tell about down to Chatham. Bill fin'ly lost all his teeth; so if anybody wanted to distinguish 'twixt them two brothers he'd stick his finger into Bill's mouth, an' if he bit ye, 'twas Tom!"

To see the Heath twins sitting in the sun on Orrin Petty's barnyard fence, chewing tobacco in unison, reminded one of a couple of ancient billygoats—for their sparse chin whiskers moved up and down, and back and forth, just like a goat chewing a particularly succulent mouthful of food.

Naturally Solon and Enoch Petty were looked upon as wise men because of the political prominence they had gained; but the Heath twins had gained an equal reputation for wisdom by keeping still tongues in their heads. Nothing "got by" Apollo and Perseus Heath; but they seldom gave a verbal opinion on any point.

"A pair of quahogs with the lockjaw ain't got nothin' on 'Poley and Perse for dead silence," Orrin Petty observed to Sarah.

"You'd better take example by them," she snapped. "They've made money keepin' their mouths shet."

Cap'n Jonah was down at the store when the "Wise Men from the South" arrived. So there was plenty of opportunity to discuss him and his fortune, both in the sitting-room and on the sheltered panel of the barnyard fence, before the old seaman returned.

"Ye see, he's re'l old," Sarah Petty explained, "and he don't re'lly know how broken he is. The rheumatism has settled on him, an'—well, you know how these deep bottom sailors be when they finally come back to the Cape and settle down. They ain't long in anybody's way."

"But ye say he's well fixed, Sarah?" said Uncle 'Poley Heath's wife—a massive woman with well-developed chin whiskers.

"Why, he don't talk none of his money, Uncle Jonah don't," confessed Sarah Petty, as though she thought this was a fault and should be excused. "Putting the best foot forward" was almost a religion with her. "He's a Hand," she explained, "and they was always tight-mouthed. But when he had his strong box over from the Paulmouth Bank the other day he showed Tom some securities. You know how boys be," hesitated Tom's mother. "Tom was curious and he took note. Uncle Jonah had him tot up the amounts of some of his sheers an' such, and Tom says it comes to more than a hundred thousand dollars."

"A hundred thousand!" gasped Mrs. Enoch Petty.

"For the good land's sake!" wheezed Mrs. Perseus Heath, who was little, and fat, and asthmatic.

"I sh'd say he was well fixed!" said Solon Petty's wife, who was almost as sharp of tongue and feature as Sarah herself. "A hundred thousand dollars! My!"

Mrs. Enoch Petty was the only one that expressed suspicion: "I s'pose you are sure he's got all this money, Sarah? He might be foolin' you. And if he does it just to work on your sympathies, and you took care of him——"

"Oh! Indeed!" sniffed Sarah Petty. "Uncle Jonah Hand is one that pays his way wherever he goes. Of course, I give him our front room and we have to get along as best we can without a parlor. But he insists on paying his shot."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Enoch.

"That's what I call proper," said Mrs. 'Poley in her heavy voice.

"How nice!" panted Mrs. Perse.

"That's an uncle wuth havin'," admitted Mrs. Solon.

On the barnyard barrier it was the same:

"This here uncle of your wife's a pretty far-seeing man, Orrin?" asked Enoch Petty. "The boy that drove us over here said 'twas all around the neighborhood that Cap'n Jonah Hand had come back from China with his pockets full of cash."

"My driver," said Solon, who was a ponderous man, "said the cap'n brought home more than his pockets full. Said he had a safe here at the house stuffed full of gold and silver, and that Perry Baker, the expressman, who brought it over from the bank, was so scare't of being robbed on the way that he was threatened with nervous prostration—er, haw! haw! haw!"

"Hoh!" snorted Tom, in echo, and with disgust.

"No," said Orrin coolly. "That strong box has gone back to the bank. I guess Cap'n Jonah is a pretty careful man."

"But he has got money?" queried Enoch.

"Some," said the cautious Orrin.

"Think we could get him interested in that Short Line 'twixt Harwich and Beanport, Enoch?" suggested Solon slyly.

The twins' jaws wagged more swiftly. As one man they opened their lips and together cried:

"Ye might let us in on that!"

"No, boys," said Enoch, shaking his head. "This is not a family matter. We don't let the family in on nothin' but sure things. This here Harwich and Beanport Line is a sort of gamble."

"Huh!" ejaculated Orrin. "Ain't Uncle Jonah one of the fam'ly, I'd like to know?"

"Not exactly," drawled Enoch.

"Er-haw! haw! haw!" laughed Solon loudly. "Cap'n Hand's a sort of step-child in this case. We need money for that Short Line development——"

"You seine for some other man's money," Orrin said shortly. "Uncle Jonah's too old to go in with you boys in any onsartain scheme. He may not be a Petty; but we don't propose he shall lose any of his hard-airned money that may in time come to a Petty."

"Well said!" chorused the twins, with vigorous approval.

"Never take no risks," added Uncle 'Poley.

"Penny saved is a penny airned," said Uncle Perse.

They were full of old saws and sayings, were the Heath twins. Solon Petty burst out with his rumbling laugh.

"Those are the tight-lipped and tight-fisted boys. They ought to be bankers instead of storekeepers. It's taking chances that makes Big Business."

"Ye-as. Mebbe," said Orrin. "But Cap'n Jonah Hand has taken all the chances he's ever goin' to take if I have any influence with him. We know what he's got; we don't know how much less he might have if he fooled with these gambling games. Why, there ain't any of 'em square!"

"Ain't it so?" agreed Tom, with a vivid remembrance of his experience at the cattle show.

CHAPTER XXII

THE STING OF HYPOCRISY

Meanwhile Cap'n Jonah was at the Shell Road store wishing heartily that he did not have to go home.

Playing a part was already beginning to pall upon the worthy captain. It was no small satisfaction he had in "foolin' them Pettys"; but the effect of his hypocrisy, he found, was to be more far-reaching than he supposed.

He had not foreseen Sarah Petty's desire to show him off before the family. He had not forecast in any degree how the story of his wealth would spread, and grow, and become a Frankenstein to pursue him.

It was bad enough at the store to have the loungers remark slyly upon his fortune and hint their curiosity as to how he had obtained it. None doubted the veracity of Tom Petty's tale. Even Milt Baker, the Shell Road humorist, was too much awed by the existence of so great a property in the neighborhood to invent any quips upon the subject. There is a feeling of reverence born in most Cape Codders for money. For one reason, it is so hard to get!

Cap'n Jonah had Abraham Silt at his back while he was in the store, and if the storekeeper saw him getting cornered he promptly came to the rescue. But to face all these people from Harwich, and alone, was going to be something of a job, and Cap'n Jonah dreaded it.

He felt as though Joe Helmford's defection, too, was a personal loss. That bright young man had often acted in a way to switch the conversation from personal matters when Cap'n Jonah was harassed by the Petty family.

Had Helmford not left the Petty house Cap'n Jonah would have considered taking the young man into his confidence. Cap'n Abe had asked him how close to the bare bones of truth he could trim his ship; but Cap'n Jonah had found it an ungracious task to befool his friends as well as those for whom he felt no sympathy whatever.

Of course, Pearl had to be kept in ignorance of the truth. The transparency of the girl's character precluded his taking her into his confidence. And the old captain saw, as time passed, that the fewer people who knew his secret the better his chance of carrying on the play.

What the end would be, Cap'n Jonah dared not meditate upon. He had forced the Pettys to mend their treatment of Pearl. But he really had not foreseen all the change the story of his hypothetical fortune would make in his own affairs.

Sarah Petty's new tack amazed Cap'n Jonah. He had expected more consideration at her hands as the result of the conspiracy; but all this that was going on in the Petty household he certainly had not imagined.

"Whatever!" he said privately to the storekeeper. "I'm gettin' things so soft that I dunno what to do about it. They'll be smotherin' me to death with their soft-soapin' ways."

"Take it easy while you can," Cap'n Abe advised. "This is a gre't world if you don't git cold feet, as the feller said. You jest let 'em git it fixed in their minds that you are well wuth catering to. They'll never find out the truth if you don't tell 'em. Mr. Creavy, over to the bank, will never say a word. I know him. An' of course you can trust 'Liphalet an' me to keep our 'tater-traps shet."

"Whatever! Yes. That's all right," muttered Cap'n Jonah. "But what's goin' to happen, I want to know when my money does run out?"

This was a contingency that was ever in Cap'n Jonah's mind. Sarah Petty had not hinted as yet at any increase in his board despite his change of quarters; but the drain of twenty-two and a half dollars monthly was not to be overlooked, considering Cap'n Jonah's actual resources.

He could not on this day postpone his return home past the dinner hour. He must meet the visitors, whether or no; so he finally started up the road. Here came 'Liphalet Truitt, basket on arm, and his face as sour as a lime.

"Ahoy, Truitt!" hailed the captain. "What did you see of that crowd at the Pettys? That gang of Orrin's rel'tives from Harwich boarded 'em by this time, I guess?"

"I seen a couple autos go by," said 'Liphalet ungraciously. "They turned up at the Pettys."

"Do you know, Truitt," said Cap'n Jonah, ignoring the other's ill-humor and drawing near to speak confidentially. "Do you know, this here imaginary fortune is gettin 'on my nerves? That's what! A feller ought to be a mighty good actor to play up to it."

"Uh-huh!" grunted 'Liphalet.

"Makes a feller wish he re'lly did have a fortune, at that," added Cap'n Jonah, wistfully. "When a feller's supposed to have money things is purty soft for him. I sartain sure wish I could git a re'l fortune as easy as we made this one up."

"Why don't ye marry a fortune?" snarled 'Liphalet with sudden venom.

"Heh?" ejaculated the startled captain.

"There's them with plenty money that might have ye—if ye asked," pursued 'Liphalet. "Ye wouldn't put it past ye, ye say, to marry for what cash the woman had."

"Whatever!" murmured Cap'n Jonah, and he involuntarily stood aside as the strangely wrathful Mr. Truitt marched on. Cap'n Jonah stared after his friend in amazement. "Whatever in the world has laid hold upon Life Truitt?" he gasped.

"Jest as happy an' pleasant as a man-eating shark," went on the amazed captain. "And who does he want I should marry—Miss Sue? Why! I was calc'latin'——"

He did not finish the audible expression of his thoughts, but went on up the road shaking his head in a very thoughtful mood. For once Cap'n Jonah's mind was not fixed upon his own fortunes.

The extension table was stretched clear across the Petty kitchen. Orrin's back was so close to the door leading to the porch that the door could scarcely be opened, while Sarah was so far away from him at the other end of the table that her frowns and half-audible admonitions for once made no impression upon her husband.

Between the two, along both sides of the table, were ranged the visitors and Tom and Cap'n Jonah. Sarah was rather glad for the moment that Helmford had gone. The table was more than crowded, and the guests' elbows clashed as they plied knives and forks. Pearl waited on them, cheerfully refusing to sit down till all were plentifully served.

Sarah Petty was a careful housewife, and Orrin was as close as his own shirt. But when they set out to entertain the Family they did it right—no two ways about it! The long table was fairly burdened with things to eat.

Solon was a master hand at such times as this. He he-hawed his great, political laugh all through the meal, and declared more than once that he was "a good table finisher—that was his trade," accepting a third helping of baked fresh ham and "all the fixin's" to prove his statement.

Enoch tried to follow the set of his cousin's example, and was particularly cordial to Cap'n Jonah. "They tell me you calc'late to settle down here for good, Cap'n Hand?" he said insinuatingly.

"As long as Sarah will have me," replied Cap'n Jonah, briefly.

"Haw! haw!" exploded Solon. "I bet after this taste of Sarah's cookin' you couldn't chase him away with a club. Hey, Cap'n Hand?"

Sarah preened, accepting the flattery. Cap'n Jonah was uncomfortable. He was polite to the women, and he tried to speak when spoken to by the men; but he gained at that meal a reputation for silence only equaled by 'Poley and Perse Heath themselves.

Solon drew him like a badger from his hole, and Cap'n Jonah came to the surface just as much against his will as does that obstinate beast.

"Le's see," said Solon, "you found chances of turning a penny out there in the East such as we humdrum stay-at-homes never see, I suppose, Captain? I knew a man once in your line that made a mint of money shanghaiing coolies for the guano islands off Chile. You never dipped into that trade, did you?"

"No. Never did," said Cap'n Jonah emphatically.

"They do say, too, that opium smuggling pays big in Chinese waters."

"I've heard tell," bit off the old mariner.

"And there's what they call the Chinese passenger trade—runnin' them laundrymen into 'Frisco or Vancouver, when the immigrant inspectors ain't lookin'. Know anything about that, Captain?"

"Only what you tell me," barked Cap'n Jonah, his eyebrows bristling.

"I expect you got your money in quieter ways, Cap'n Hand," put in Enoch Petty, observing that his cousin's semi-humorous sallies were not taken in good part.

"I got my money," began Cap'n Jonah in some heat. "I got my money——" He hesitated, then simmered down to: "Wal, I got it as I got it. Whatever!"

He did not possess Cap'n Abe Silt's imagination. He could not entertain these curious people with an apocryphal history of the gathering of his supposed treasure. And perhaps his very inability to explain made his fortune seem the more real to them all.

Sarah, too, came to his rescue. She could not see Uncle Jonah disturbed. How careful she now was for the comfort of "the dear old soul!" It was really remarkable, as Aunt 'Poley said to the other visiting aunts, to see how devoted Sarah was to her last remaining blood-relative.

"Let us hope he'll pay her out right, for it," whispered Mrs. Enoch Petty, the single doubting member of the tribe.

Sarah's regard for Cap'n Jonah's comfort was fairly overpowering. She saw to it that tasty bits were heaped upon his plate and that his coffee cup was kept filled. At dessert time it was:

"Pearly! don't forget to pass the cake again to Uncle Jonah. And that mock cherry pie I made deep special for him, 'cause he likes it so. Taste that beach plum sass, Uncle Jonah. I know you'll like it. Why! you ain't et more'n enough to keep a sand-piper alive."

"Whatever!" remonstrated the master mariner. "You're killin' me with kindness, Sarah."

And he could have said nothing which would have more thoroughly gratified Sarah Petty. "The Family" had heard his commendation with their own ears.

Back in his own room he whispered to Pearl, who attended him at Sarah's behest with hot water, lemon, sugar, and a noggin of rum—a real holiday treat: "Whatever! I might's well be out o' Barnum's show, I've been exhibited so much. Nex' thing, Sarah Petty'll want me to roll over and bark at the word of command. I dunno but I could stand her meannesses better than I can her good will."

He managed to escape from time to time to the sanctum of the front room. They did not follow him. But they invited him to join the general company on all manner of pretexts.

The womenfolk, as he declared, tried to make a fool of him, while the men endeavored to pump him dry regarding his adventures in the far East, hoping thereby to get a line on his method of amassing a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars.

He could see, too, that he was going to be a mark for all local charities and objects of need. Mrs. Enoch Petty, who was a member of all the women's clubs and associations there were on the Cape, tried on several occasions to get a contribution from Cap'n Jonah for one or another of the causes she patronized.

But Sarah Petty, like Orrin with the men visitors, guarded Uncle Jonah's pocket with vigilance. There was no reason that she could see why the old mariner's fortune should be scattered abroad on charities, suffrage clubs, orphanages, or other so-called worthy causes.

"Charity begins at home," was Sarah Petty's fixed belief, and as far as she was concerned she proposed to see that it stayed there.

The relief to Cap'n Jonah, at least, was great when the visit of the Harwich folk came to an end on Monday. He accepted four separate and privately given invitations to visit the several families at his leisure, with the mental reservation that he would do so only when he was in that state which he denominated "soft-headed."

"I've weathered Sarah and Orrin, both when they was down on me and now that they seem to have had a change of heart. They air bad enough, I do allow," he said to Cap'n Abe. "But I want to tell you right now, the rest of the Petty family as fur as I've sampled it, runs wuss towards the bottom of the cask.

"Solon Petty never got to the State Legislature because of his brains, that's sure. Enoch Petty would rob a blind man, I do believe. And as for them two old billygoats, Apollo and Perseus Heath, they'd drive a man to strong drink an' no mistake."

He was too polite to state his opinion of the women of the Harwich party. He hinted strongly, however, that he more firmly believed than heretofore that wives were given to men as punishment for their sins. "All but my own woman," he added with reverence. "She was a good one—an' she didn't live long after we was married. I dunno but short sweet'nin' is the best. We wasn't long enough together to git on one another's nerves."

"Why," said Cap'n Abe, comfortably, "I dunno but you air too harsh on 'em, Cap'n Hand. You might easy find a woman at your age that would make you a comfort'ble home. And if she had a bit of prop'ty, like the Doc's sister——"

"Why ain't you tried it?" demanded the suspicious Cap'n Jonah.

"Oh! Wal! Me?" said Cap'n Abe, lowering his voice and casting a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure that Betty Gallup, his housekeeper, was not in the offing. "Ye see, I'm fretted enough by the female sect as 'tis. I wouldn't want one under foot day an' night."

"I guess," returned Cap'n Jonah, "your opinion an' mine, on the women, is purty much of a muchness. Whatever!"

CHAPTER XXIII

THE CHRISTMAS GALE

This was Christmas week. There was the threat of a serious gale in the air and sky and on the sea. There had already been a scale of snow upon the ground, but rain had ensued and that promise of a white Christmas had proved abortive.

The Christmas entertainment committee, of which Miss Sue Ambrose was the very active chairman, had made most of its preparations for the celebration in spite of the unexplained defection of Eliphalet Truitt. Indeed, the ex-steward had been "acting offish" for so long that he ceased to be a general topic of conversation save on one particular point which, when mentioned, always brought smiles to the faces of his neighbors—for they loved Life Truitt, no matter what his mood.

'Liphalet had almost shut himself up in his little box of a house during the last few days. He shunned his fellow men—even Cap'n Jonah with whom he had been friendly until recently—like any hermit. And here it was the morning of the day before Christmas.

He scuffled out into his close kitchen, redolent of countless messes of fried fish and potatoes, and set the lamp with its smoky chimney on the deal board table before shaking the stove grate and opening all the drafts for "full steam ahead."

It was a cold morning. The long promised gale out of the northeast was driving the snow and sleet against the window with a "whish! whish!" like the sound of fretful waves along the sands. Even through his thick blue yarn socks which he had knitted himself the ex-steward felt the cold seep in under the door, the latch of which rattled to the ghostly hand of the gale.

He turned up the wick of the lamp and sat down with a sigh to slice potatoes for frying. It was plain by the woebegone expression on 'Liphalet's face that his heart was not in this usually grateful matutinal occupation.

Suddenly returning the knife and half a soggy boiled potato to the table, he shrugged his feet into a pair of canvas shoes and, rising, went to the rear door. He held it half open against the insistence of the wind, staring off across the flatlands toward the sea from under the sharp of one hand.

The snow squalls, driven in from the far-flung sea-line, burst like bomb-shells along the shore, then swept inland in clouds of fine snow-spray which stung like nettles even 'Liphalet's weather-burned cheek.

Between these drifting sheets of sleet he dimly saw outlined the houses of the neighbors on either side of the Shell Road and dotting the open fields. Each was pricked out at this hour by the smoke of early kindled kitchen fires, sucked out of the chimneys in fantastic forms by the boisterous wind.

"It's goin' to be a humdinger," muttered 'Liphalet. "Last over to-morrow, like enough, an' sp'ile everything. Ha! Sue an' them other foolish folks that's been wishing for a white Christmas will get their wish, I don't dispute. Ha!"

With this second snort of disgust he shut the gale out again. The draft caused by the closing door sucked the flame of the lamp up through the chimney and it went out with a "plop." The steel gray light of the winter's dawn filtered in at the window, and, with the firelight, furnished the kitchen a partial illumination.

'Liphalet settled himself again in the low rocking chair and picked up the knife and the potato. "Ha! Sue an' the rest on 'em will get all the white Christmas they want," he repeated. "Christmas—bah!"

The emphasis with which he thus expressed his spleen startled Bo'sun from his nest in the wood-box behind the stove, and he came forth yawning and stretching to rub a morning's greeting against his master's shin. But even the friendliness of the cat did not temper the man's unaccustomed mood.

The water began to hiss and bubble in the kettle. 'Liphalet reached for the coffee-pot in which the ground coffee had been soaking in a cup of cold water over night, and filled it from the boiling kettle. The aroma permeated all the kitchen atmosphere immediately—an odor to tempt the appetite of any hungry man.

But there was something not normal about 'Liphalet Truitt on this morning. That keen edge to his appetite—a never-failing zest at mealtime which had been his for nearly half a century—failed him now. He dumped the handful of sliced potatoes into the pan where the pork was sizzling, set it forward, and returned to his chair.

The kitchen was as compact and handy as his stateroom had always been at sea, and from the rack overhead he reached down his battered flute. Bo'sun fled—back arched and tail swollen to twice its natural size—when 'Liphalet extracted from the instrument those introductory mournful sounds which were always the prelude to his rendition of any of his loved sea-ditties—even to "Fisher's Hornpipe." Music was the single topic on which Bo'sun and 'Liphalet Truitt did not agree.

The flute on this morning, however,—never failing comforter as it had been during his many voyages—did not soothe the ex-steward's troubled breast. Its wail, mingling with the whine of the wind, might have been the cry of the banshee of the gale rattling at the door latch for sacrament.

"Drat the thing!" snarled 'Liphalet, flinging down the flute with exasperation. "Nothin' does go right, and ain't likely to go right again ever, I reckon." Then he added the phrase that seemed to be both the text and context of his jeremiad: "Christmas—bah!"

Suddenly he began wrinkling his nose like a hound on a cold scent.

"Somethin' burnin'?" he questioned audibly. "By Hannah, it's them 'taters!"

He rescued but a scorched remnant of the potatoes and dumped it with a grunt of disgust into Bo'sun's pan on the hearth; making a cold snack with coffee do for his own breakfast. It was easy, indeed, to see that 'Liphalet Truitt was by no means his normal self.

He had washed his plate, cup and saucer and rinsed out the coffee pot before he ventured into the partially sheltered porch again to view the snowy world. In stinging phalanx the sleet continued to march across the open fields. The hard ground was laced over with a thin scale of ice. The road was deserted; but he presumed the committee would by and by gather at the chapel to hang the Christmas greens and trim the tree with refurbished tinsel ornaments and newly strung ropes of pink and white popcorn.

He pulled the battered southwester over his ears and reached for the key to the chapel door. The women would come to a cold and cheerless audience room if did he not step across and light the fire.

Then, with the key in his hand, he stopped, suddenly venting another snort of disgust and derision. "Christmas—bah!" Then he hung up the key.

"If they want a fire for their foolishness, let 'em light it. If they want a feller to fetch and carry, let 'em find somebody else. If they want somebody to buy presents for and play jackanapes to a passel o' young 'uns let 'em find a new Santa Claus. I've quit! I'll show 'em!"

A stuttering blast like nothing so much as a foghorn with the croup next brought the ex-steward to his door and that before mid-forenoon. He knew the voice of Doctor Ambrose's automobile; and there the good physician was at the gate. The cranky mechanism of his car had developed symptoms which baffled any snap diagnosis.

"Can't stop to fool with her at present," the doctor said jerkily, as 'Liphalet reached the scene. "I'm due at Carey Payne's right now. His oldest has got pneumonia sure's you're a foot high, 'Liphalet. I've been over to Suz Montevedo's, beyond The Beaches. He's got a relapse of his inflammatory rheumatism. Can't lift hand nor foot, and nobody to do for him."

"Some o' these fool women that'll be playin' there in the church by an' by 'ud much better be doin' a neighborly turn for the Portugee," grumbled 'Liphalet.

"Sue's gone over," Doctor Ambrose said, jerking his black bag out from under the seat of the stalled car. "She's left Pearl Holden to boss the trimmin' of the chapel. Well——"

"She ain't gone to old Montevedo's shack alone?" demanded 'Liphalet. "In this mess o' weather? What in tarnation was you thinking of, Doc?"

The physician flashed him a grim look. "I'm thinking you are about as much out o' kilter as this car of mine. Didn't you just say the women ought to tend to 'Suz? Well, that's what one of them's doing. Your liver's out of order, I tell you, 'Liphalet——"

"You dumbhead!" roared 'Liphalet. "The gale 'ud blow a strong man off the surfman's path along the sand cliffs, let alone a frail woman. All you got in your mind is liver pills! Ha! I should think you'd have some sense."

"It seems I haven't," responded the doctor coolly. "I reckon Sue can take care of herself. She's been out o' leadin' strings some years now," and he started off through the driving sleet without waiting for 'Liphalet's rejoinder.

"Ha!" snorted the latter, trying to peer shoreward. "I dunno what's comin' over folks. All on 'em goin' plum crazy, I vum! Liver—ha!

"What's a woman want to start off along The Beaches on a day like this for? And ye'd think even Doc Ambrose 'ud have more sense than to let her."

Then, fussing and fuming, he buttoned tight the curtains and storm shield of the deserted car, and finally dragged a tarpaulin from his shed, and with difficulty pinned it securely over the entire car, blanketing the radiator so that it might not freeze. When the gale abated John-Ed Card or some other neighbor who owned a team of horses would come and drag the doctor's car home—a grateful service which none ever refused to perform for the busy physician.

'Liphalet retired to the kitchen and stoked the fire.

"Thank the good Lord," he said, "I can stay b'low 'stead of goin' aloft in this weather. Bein' neighborly and charitable is all right, I don't dispute. But charity begins to home. And by Hannah! that's where Sue Ambrose ought to be this minute."

He jumped up so suddenly at this thought that Bo'sun fled again, fearing some domestic catastrophe. His master paid him no heed. He could not sit content with the thought of Miss Sue facing this gale along the sand cliff beyond Tapp Point.

There the surfmen's beaten path on the edge of the high bank was often eaten into—bitten out in savage mouthfuls by the wolfish breakers. They would be running high, 'Liphalet knew, with this gale. Whenever he opened the door the drumming of the surf along The Beaches was audible—like an organ accompaniment to the storm.

He could see in his mind's eye the small figure in its gray cloak "beating up" against this sizzling tempest. It was getting worse hourly. At sea, with plenty of leeway, 'Liphalet would have considered this storm "just a snifter." With the sound planks of a seaworthy craft under one's feet a man need seldom fear the elements. But so many accidents are likely to happen ashore!

It was a long walk to the old shack of Suz Montevedo in any weather—half a mile beyond Tapp's Folly, as the ornate villa of the Salt Water Taffy King was disrespectfully called. The surfmen from the life saving station had no love for that path in an ugly blow like this, or on a dark night in any case. The snow, too, was blinding.

"By Hannah!" ejaculated the ex-steward finally, "I wouldn't call Doc Ambrose to cure my dog of fleas. He don't show right good sense—lettin' his sister traipse 'way over there alone. Ugh!" He was at the door again now. "'Tain't fittin' for a cat to be out."

Then he proceeded to button himself into a thick pilot coat, tucked his trousers into sea boots, buckled the strap of his southwester under his jaw, and plunged into the seething gale.

There was not a soul on the road to The Beaches. The storm was so blinding that he did not seek to cut across lots and so save steps; but kept on along the Shell Road, passing Cap'n Abe's store, which from without and on this particular occasion looked to be anything but the lively spot it usually was.

The summer residents had closed their homes and long since gone to other places. All, that is, save the younger Tapps, who occupied their new house on the Point summer and winter. 'Liphalet pressed on along the firm road of well tamped shell, past these dwellings of the wealthy, without hailing or being hailed by anybody.

Beyond the high wall and ornate gates of the Tapp estate, on the bare cliff, the full force of the wind-driven sleet struck him "square betwixt the eyes," as 'Liphalet expressed it.

He fairly had to crouch against this, turning a shoulder to the force of the wind. Here the outthrust of the land gave the storm a sweep across the brow of the cliff while the breakers, charging in from the open sea, flung themselves ravenously against the crumbling wall of sand and clay—an unstable barrier at best.

With such a sea as this on, the surfmen from the life-saving station could not patrol the beach itself, and their worn path along the verge of the fifty foot bank was the only footway to the Portuguese's shack.

'Liphalet hesitated. It did not seem as though any woman could successfully face such a gale. The prospect was one to make the strongest man turn back. He shielded his eyes with both hands cupped, and tried to pierce the snow and sleet with a vision long inured to penetrating thick weather.

There came a momentary lull in the gale. The sweeping snow parted like a curtain. It fled away over the cliff, and for a space he could see for some distance along the path.

Was that a snow wraith hovering there on the brow of the high bank? Or was it a human figure which, the next moment, was swallowed in the snow curtain?

'Liphalet, vastly disturbed by this uncertain specter in the storm, plunged into it himself again and pressed ahead.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MISTLETOE BOUGH

Until the day before Christmas, ushered in by the long-threatened gale, nobody had seen Joe Helmford along the Shell Road since he had left the Petty place. Cap'n Jonah had been unable to hunt up the young man and learn, if he could, just why he had so abruptly departed from the neighborhood.

In spite of the bustle attending the presence of the guests over Sunday and the thorough cleaning up after them which followed, Pearl Holden could not for a moment forget the young man. And her worry of mind was advertised upon her pretty face. There were shadows under her eyes and an unnatural pallor spread over her cheeks.

Cap'n Jonah had strong suspicions as to the reason for Pearl's changed appearance, although she would admit nothing. He had watched the intimacy growing day by day between the girl and Helmford, and, arrant matchmaker that he was, he hoped to see its fruition in an acknowledged engagement of the two young people.

Should Pearl marry a man like Helmford, one great burden would be lifted from Cap'n Jonah's mind. He often felt that he had done a wrong, a grievous wrong, to the girl in intimating that he had a fortune and would will all or part of it to her. He presumed that Pearl bore this half-promise he had made in mind, just as the Pettys bore it in mind; and having nothing to give Pearl after all, the master mariner's troubles were thereby added to. If the girl was only sure to marry a smart young fellow like Joe Helmford——

Therefore he kept a sharp outlook for the man from the fish hatchery, and even inquired for him at Cap'n Abe's store. But Helmford had not been seen in the vicinity since the day of his departure from the Petty house.

On this storm-pelted morning, however, when most wise folk kept indoors—and glad to have such shelter—Joe Helmford could not be content in his warm and cozy quarters at Mrs. Wetherel's. His present boarding place was much more to his taste—barring Pearl's absence—than the Pettys', save that it was farther from his work.

The Wetherels were urban folk, with the conveniences and the personal requirements that go with such environment. The daughters were strictly, however, what Pearl had once called "sour-cranberry old maids"—otherwise spinsters as fixed in their orbits as the planets. Even the presence of a young and marriageable man in the house caused no flutter of their hearts. Their maiden affections had never been in the least awakened.

Mrs. Wetherel made Joe very comfortable without any fuss about it, and the "Wetherel girls," so-called, were not unpleasant associates at meal time. Nevertheless, Helmford went around with a countenance almost the equal of 'Liphalet Truitt's.

He could not remain indoors on this wretchedly stormy day. In the first place, he was expecting something at the post-office which Noah Coffin should have brought the night before on his stage, locally known, out of compliment to Noah's name, as "the Ark."

Helmford had sent for the article in question as soon as Miss Sue had asked him to help decorate the Mariner's Chapel for the Christmas entertainment. Now he plodded through the beating storm in a very different mood from that which he had expected to enjoy when his purchase arrived.

"Yes!" and the post-master passed it out to Helmford with:

"Christmas gif, Mr. Helmford? They are just pouring in on us. But I doubt if Noah'll make more'n one trip to-day, 'nless this storm breaks. She's purty rough outside, ain't she?"

Helmford admitted that "she" was. Nevertheless he did not turn back toward his boarding place; but instead, with the light but bulky box under his arm, he faced the gale and forced his way through it, past the Cardhaven Inn and around the corner into the highway that led to the Shell Road neighborhood.

There was nobody on the road, nor did he see anybody at the frost-covered windows as he plodded on. There was no sign of life about the Ambrose cottage; but when he got to Eliphalet Truitt's he saw the doctor's automobile stalled outside the fence.

"Can it be that 'Liphalet is ill?" thought Helmford.

He turned in at the gate and stamped his feet free of snow on the ex-steward's steps. The kitchen door was unfastened as usual. He peered in and saw the glowing stove and Bo'sun comfortably purring before it. He shouted for 'Liphalet, receiving no answer.

Then, knowing as did everybody else in the community, where the chapel key was kept, he ran his hand along the clapboards and found the nail. The key was there. Then, thought Helmford, he was the first of the decorating committee to arrive.

He took down the key and kept on to the vestry door. The dead chill of the place struck him as he entered.

"Wonder what's happened to Mr. Truitt," Helmford thought; for he, like everybody else, expected the taut little ex-steward to do all the chores of the chapel as a matter of course.

The fire was laid in the Baltimore heater, and soon the young man had it roaring and the heat radiating from the surface of the stove below as well as rising through the register above, in the audience room.

The piles of greens were ready for the workers; but nobody arrived. Helmford opened the box he had brought from the post-office. In it was as fine a bough of mistletoe as he had ever seen. It had been sent to him from Boston by parcel post.

When he had sent for this bit of Christmas decoration he had secretly borne Pearl in mind. There was something more in the significance of the mistletoe than a mere pleasantry. He thrilled even now at the thought of pressing the girl's dewy lips with his own, under the benison of the Christmas bough. How lovely Pearl was in her sweet simplicity.

Joe Helmford, when he bought the mistletoe, had been playing with fire. He knew it now. He had come to a full realization of it when Tom Petty had attacked him on the Shell Road and he had struck that single blow in Pearl Holden's and his own defense.

Bitter indeed had been his thoughts as he packed his things that night after speaking his mind to the Pettys. He had allowed himself to go so far with Pearl Holden that he felt he should never be at peace again. She was the object of a growing and consuming passion, and he could not put thought of her away.

Yet, there stood the specter of Cap'n Jonah's fortune between them! He could not deliberately besiege the heart of this girl who had been chosen to be the recipient of the old seaman's wealth. But how he now desired to see Pearl again and to be with her!

He hid the mistletoe bough away in the sexton's closet under the stairs. Then he went to the door to gaze out upon the storm. Nobody was coming toward the chapel that he could see. It was past the hour Miss Sue had set for the decorators to gather, and she was not here herself. Nor was Pearl coming, it seemed.

The storm was increasing; but so disturbing were the young man's thoughts that he scarcely noticed that fact as he stepped out into it again and closed the vestry door behind him.

His mind and heart on fire with the passionate thoughts that had assailed him for days past, Joe Helmford began, like 'Liphalet Truitt, to challenge the storm; through the buffeting of the elements he sought mental peace again.

Miss Sue, called to Suz Montevedo's on her charitable mission, had depended upon Pearl to take the lead in the decoration of the chapel for the next day's celebration. Unexpected events, however, barred Pearl from going to the rendezvous at the hour appointed. Indeed, a greater storm was destined to rage inside the Petty house on this day than swept the Cape Cod coast.

There seemed to be a lull in the gale about mid-forenoon, and Cap'n Jonah, who did not read much and had small means of self entertainment, bundled up in oils and southwester and ventured forth, bound shoreward. When he faced the full force of the gale on the open highway he was really tempted to return.

"Whatever!" he muttered. "This ain't fittin' for a dog to be out in. If it keeps up this way, it's goin' to spile all the fun to-morrow."

Although he observed nobody on the road, he found when he stumbled up the steps of the store and lifted the doorlatch that Cap'n Abe was not left even on this blusterous day without his company of habitual loungers.

"Hi-mighty!" cried the storekeeper, as Cap'n Jonah staggered in and put his back against the door which had been all but torn from his grasp by the wind. "Hi-mighty, Cap'n Hand! can't you find no better weather to bring 'long with you when you come visiting?

"Hear that sleet slammin' on the clapboards, will you?" he proceeded, as Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup made room for the newcomer at the stove. "Must sound like the gale Peleg Fosdick, of the Sarah Truesdale, weathered the time he run under the lee of the sand cliffs at Barrows Neck.

"Peleg, they say, although he was the skipper of a haddocker for years an' years, was always afraid of a capful of wind. A summer squall looked as big to him as a hurricane; and if he had ever got into a reg'lar no'theast snorter like this one, I reckon he'd died o' heart failure.

"If it come on to blow and he could, he'd up hooks an' run for shelter, no matter where, till he could see the end o' bad weather. And they do tell about his holdin' an umbrella over himself in a thunder shower when he was at the Sarah Truesdale's wheel," and the storekeeper broke into a mellow chuckle and tucked his silver-bowed spectacles higher on his bald brow.

"Ord'narily he went below when it rained or blew. He was jest as techy about gettin' wet as a cat. Come one time they tell of, and a brisk gale come up while the Sarah Truesdale was on the Dogfish Bank. Sun goin' down as pretty as you could wish; but jest the same, Cap'n Peleg Fosdick seen bad weather comin' in his mind's eye.

"So they run for it, he an' his mate an' the boy. Barrows Neck, where is piled all the loose sand that was left over after they made the Desert of Sairah, offered the nearest shelter. Peleg run in there and droppd his mudhook just as a hand's breath of cloud spilt a shower on him. It was near night and he dove below and didn't calc'late to go aloft again while it rained.

"His mate asked him was he goin' to stop there, with the hold half full o' fish, and Peleg made reply he was calc'latin' to. So the mate an' the boy took the dory and rowed ashore to Barrowsport and Peleg stayed under hatches listenin' to the rain slammin' on the deck and thinkin' how smart he was to seek shelter as he'd done.

"Wal," pursued Cap'n Abe, "the rain didn't 'pear to stop, and Peleg went to bed. He didn't know if the mate an' the boy come back or not. But when he woke up in the morning the first thing he heard was the rain still a-swishin' on the schooner's deck. He had his deadlights curtained and 'twas dark below. The wind was still blowin' from the same quarter.

"'Almighty stormy mornin','" says Peleg, and turns over in bed. Nobody disturbed him, for his mate had got into a fight ashore and was in the calaboose, and the boy'd got a chance to ship on a trawler at better wages and had took French leave.

"So the Sarah Truesdale lay there purty near all day, an' might ha' laid there till the fish in her hold stank, if a feller hadn't come along wantin' to borrer some bait.

"He opened the cabin door and Peleg sat up in bed to see the afternoon sunshine streamin' over all. The Sarah Truesdale had been there twenty-four hours.

"'What's the matter here?' asked the feller after bait. 'You sick, or somethin'?'

"Peleg's ears wagged like a houn' dog's. He could still hear the rain (or so he supposed) patterin' on the deck.

"'If you don't git up your hook and warp out of here,' says the other feller, 'your smack'll be sunk along o' the deckload o' sand that's been blowin' on to ye from them sandcliffs all night It's ankle deep out here right now.'"

For once Cap'n Abe got a laugh from most of the idlers. But Cap'n Jonah was in a serious mood. He followed the storekeeper to the end of the counter where he was tying up packages of sugar ready for prompt delivery. It was dark at this end of the store, for the windows were completely clouded by the frozen sleet.

"Wal, Cap'n Hand, how goes the battle?" asked the storekeeper, with amusement written large on his genial face. "How does it seem to be a millionaire, or thereabout?"

Cap'n Jonah took a huge pinch of snuff from his silver box, rapped the cover with his knuckle, and sneezed softly. "Whatever!" he almost groaned. "It ain't no laughin' matter, Mr. Silt, this here tryin' to make folks think you air something you ain't."

"Sure-ly," interposed Cap'n Abe, "tain't no trick to fool Sarah and Orrin Petty. They air only too willin' to fool themselves. If you had a hundred thousan' dollars——"

"I'd give half of it to git out o' the mess I'm in," snapped Cap'n Jonah. "You don't know what it means, Mr. Silt, to be foolin' your friends, as well as those you don't keer a jasper for."

"Oh! don't I?" ejaculated Cap'n Abe significantly, his memory stung by thought of Cap'n Amazon.

"This foolin' Pearly an' young Helmford, an' even Cap'n Beecher and Miss Sue and the Doc an' all, does go against the grain. If them bonds and sheer certificates I showed that half-baked boy of Sarah Petty's was real, instead of phony, and I was rich 'stead of scurcely havin' a cent to bless myself with, I'd be the happiest man alive, I do guess. But as 'tis——"

He spoke earnestly, and he meant it, did Cap'n Jonah. He was never cut out for a deceitful man, and the strain of the hateful situation was telling on him.

Cap'n Abe was called to the rear premises by Betty Gallup, the "Able Seaman," before he could make reply to the troubled captain. The latter drifted back into the radiance of the stove's warmth.

Then out of the dark pocket between soap boxes and sugar barrels at the end of the counter rose up a figure, the presence of which neither of the old men had suspected. There was a door into the side hall of Cap'n Abe's house right here. The eavesdropper opened this softly and passed through unobserved.

Once in the entry, he opened the outside door and slipped out into the storm. So excited and enraged was he that he scarcely noticed the buffeting of the snow and sleet. He plunged through it, his face twitching violently, his hands clenched, rage and chagrin seething in his breast.

For once Tom Petty, thick-headed though he was, was thoroughly aroused.

CHAPTER XXV

THE PRICE OF HEROISM

'Liphalet Truitt lifted the latch of Suz Montevedo's door, and a groan was the response to his first hail.

"By Hannah! you're darker'n the inside of a nigger's pocket here," he said. "How ye doin', Suz?"

"Bad, Mist' Life! Oh, so ver' bad!" moaned the Portuguese, who was a good deal of a child in time of sickness.

"And all alone?" 'Liphalet's tone was rather shocked.

"Ah, I haf not been alone, Mist' Life. The saints be praised! I haf had an angel veesitor."

'Liphalet was relieved to some degree. He knew he was on the right trail. "Where's this here angel gone?" he asked dryly.

"I know not. Where do angels go when they have made a veesit of mercy, Mist' Life? Do they not return to heaven?" queried the poetical Suz.

The ex-steward was willing to agree that Doctor Ambrose's old-fashioned parlor had often seemed near heaven to him. But he eventually got down to practicalities with Montevedo. Miss Sue had been there for more than an hour. She had tidied up the shack, cooked some food for the man, and left more, with a cooling drink and the doctor's medicine within his reach. She had promised to come again on the morrow, while she hoped to send Washy Gallup to spend the night with him.

"But eef my leetle Loretta was here, she would do for me," moaned Suz.

"That fly-away young'un!" ejaculated 'Liphalet. "She can't do nothin' but dance. Crazy as a sand-piper. She's better off with her father's people and you're better off here without her, Suz."

Montevedo's hands and knees were swollen to twice their natural size, and, like all other persons so afflicted, he could not keep the affected parts quiet. It always seems to the sufferer from inflammatory rheumatism that some other position than that in which the aching member is, would be more comfortable. The swollen and padded hands and arms of the fisherman aroused 'Liphalet's sympathy; but he had still another question to ask.

"How long since Miss Sue left here, Suz? Seems like I ought to've met her comin' along from Tapp Point, if not t'other side of it."

"She be gone twenty minutes—not more," groaned the sufferer.

"Twenty minutes? Nonsense!" ejaculated 'Liphalet. "I was all that comin' along the cliff. I didn't see nary sign of her."

"Did I not say she was an angel?" cried Montevedo. "Ah, Dios! She has been carried home t'rough the storm in a chariot of the saints."

"By Hannah!" ejaculated his visitor, rebuttoning his coat, "she's more likely to have been carried over that bank by the wind, and without no chariot. Twenty minutes ago? Are you sure, Suz?"

"Oh, yes, Mist' Life. Sure as sure," sighed the fisherman. "It seemed she had scarcely closed the door when you opened it."

The other said no further word, and he stood not on the order of his going. He plunged out of the shack into the gale with a stricture about his heart that was positively painful. Twenty minutes before he had been at the beginning of the patrol path, there by the corner of the Tapp estate. Through a rift in the curtain of sleet he had seen faintly that wraith, or figure, staggering for an instant on the verge of the cliff.

Had that ghostly specter of the storm been Sue Ambrose?

Where could she have gone from Suz Montevedo's shack save toward home? Yet he had not met her as he plowed along the patrol path. In the other direction there was no dwelling until one reached the life saving station. And he was sure Miss Sue would not go there. Why should she? Was it a haven she craved, the fisherman's shack under this sheltering bank was sufficient.

Had she started for home, what other way could the doctor's sister have gone save by the path by which 'Liphalet came to Suz Montevedo's hovel? The ex-steward, backed up against the driving sleet, trying to pierce the smother ahead of him with fear-sharpened vision, chewed for that moment a bitter cud of uncertainty.

To the right, across the vacant lots and by an uncertain path, lay Betty Gallup's little cottage. But the "Able Seaman" was at this time of day redding up the rooms behind and above the store on the Shell Road, and her door would be locked. No storm would keep Mrs. Gallup at home, and the doctor's sister must know there would be no refuge for her there.

The path by which she must have come to the shack, was the path by which she must have essayed her return—this along the treacherous verge of the sand cliff. Yet taking the Portuguese fisherman's statement of time with more than the proverbial grain of salt, Miss Sue could not have so quickly reached the one open house along The Beaches—that of the younger Tapps—wherein to find shelter.

The ground, of course, offered no spoor of any character. The force of the wind was driving the snow and sleet so rapidly that nothing stuck to the frozen earth. No footprint of any kind, therefore, was visible.

The fierceness of the wind, so apparent now to 'Liphalet as he leaned back against it, roweled the fear already roused in his heart. With this blast behind her how could Sue Ambrose's frail body have offered resistance?

In coming over from Tapp Point he had noted no fresh break in the bank where any part of the patrol path had been recently carried away. However, as he had declared to Doctor Ambrose, the wind was strong enough to have picked up his sister and swept her bodily over the cliff's verge. This thought, born of the travail of the ex-steward's mind, took hold upon him now with a grip that was not to be shaken off—with a certainty that no optimism could deny. And just now Eliphalet Truitt was in no optimistic mood.

He felt that his suspicion of Sue Ambrose's fate was a certainty. Possibly the moment following that lull in the gale when he was able to see some distance along the patrol path, was the instant she had come to grief. He remembered vividly the spot at which he had seen that wraith of the storm.

Her cry as she was carried over the brink would be smothered in the hullabaloo of the gale. He had passed the place of her catastrophe and had heard nothing to warn him that she had there come to disaster. The breakers were covering the narrow beach with wreckage and all manner of culch. At some points they dashed against the bluff itself and reached ravening hands half way up its face.

'Liphalet knew well the lay of the land here, and every contour and wavering line of the cliff. In his mind's eye he saw a picture of that bit of the bluff where he believed the tragedy had taken place.

He whirled suddenly, with a prayer upon his lips, and dashed into the shed adjoining Suz Montevedo's cottage. There upon a wooden peg hung the coil of line he had seen the fisherman purchase at Cap'n Abe's store a week ago, to reeve new halyards on the catboat, Loretta.

In the corner stood a heavy crowbar. He flung the coil of rope over his head and one shoulder, hoisted the iron bar to his other shoulder, and thus burdened, staggered out into the storm again. The wind was really an aid to him, for it was at first almost directly at his back. It thrust him on, burden and all, at a furious pace.

But its cant was toward the edge of the cliff, and he fought away from that. How could Sue have kept her feet against such a tempest? It was a mystery. 'Liphalet Truitt groaned again. Her frail body might even now be tossing in the breakers against the shelving face of the high bank, from the brow of which he tried at every few rods to peer down into the tumbling, boiling sea.

He arrived at the spot where he believed the doctor's sister had come to grief. The snow and wind were both increasing in intensity. He could see nothing at a distance of two yards. Nevertheless, he was assured of his position. Here was where he had seen that mysterious spectral figure in the storm.

He stepped back at least two fathoms from the patrol path and drove the point of the bar into the frozen earth. Again and again he thrust it downward, with his weight behind each blow, until finally he could work it around and around, sinking it into the sandy soil for as much as two feet.

The bar could not easily be drawn out, and he looped the end of the line over it. This once secure, he allowed the slack of the line to run free over the verge of the bluff.

He would have shouted in vain. The thunder of the breakers and the howling of the wind made a pandemonium above which no human voice could rise. Had Sue Ambrose been within twenty feet of him, the man could not have made her hear.

Obsessed with the idea that she had been carried over the cliff, he seized the line and lowered himself, hand under hand, down the break of it. His head once below the brink, he was immediately out of the gale's tumult. It roared above him as the sea roared below; but he was in a calm, and having cleared his eyes with the back of one hand, could look about.

His feet had an unstable placement on the face of the pitched bank; but the line gave him confidence. Here, ten feet below the brow of the cliff, the flying spume from the bursting waves stung his cheek. Here and there as his vision cleared he beheld patches of snow clinging to the steep bank. Yonder was something on a narrow shelf that was not snow. A dark figure—a human figure! Its garments fluttered in the suction of the rifted air.

"Sue! My God! Sue!"

His cry was simultaneous with the mighty swing he gave his body, his boots thrust against the crumbling bank. She lay a third of the way down the bluff. The foam from the crests of the breakers saturated her as they tore up the steep ascent. He swung to her side, landing with both boots digging into the frozen sand for a foothold. She was kneeling, her gloved hands clasped in prayer. His coming seemed to her a direct answer to her petition.

He swung to her side, landed with both boots digging into the frozen sand for a foothold.

"'Liphalet! The good Lord has sent you to me!" she gasped, and he read the words on her lips rather than heard them.

"By Hannah! mebbe He did," responded 'Liphalet. "But I hadn't thought on it that way till you said it, Susan. How did you get down here?"

"I—I fell."

"I thought likely," was his grim response. "And now we're goin' to have somethin' of a time to scramble up again."

"Is there nobody to help us, 'Liphalet?"

"Ain't a soul stirring this weather. All sensible folks is to home," was his mild criticism of her conduct in venturing forth. "Even the station crew won't go on patrol before four o'clock. Ev'rybody but us is as snug as hermit crabs.

"But don't ye lose heart, Sue," he added cheerfully. "I'll git ye out o' this all right."

"I don't doubt it, 'Liphalet," she returned, clinging to his arm with both hands and gazing expectantly into his face.

The ex-steward was seriously tempted. The peril of their position sloughed away from his mind for the moment. He gazed down into her uplifted face and believed he saw there a response to his unspoken desire.

And then there swept over him, like the curtain of snow and sleet that had buffeted him on the brow of the cliff, the chilling thought of that forty thousand dollars! That fortune which she had hoarded—of which she had evidently spent so little during these ten bitter years—parted them. He could not bring himself into the appearance of being a fortune hunter.

He wished with all his heart and soul Sue Ambrose's money had fallen with her down the face of the cliff. He would cut it loose and save her for himself—letting the raging sea take toll of her hateful wealth!

Already he was knotting the line under her arms in true reefer fashion. He showed her by gesture as well as word of mouth, how to cling to him as he climbed—actually setting her pickaback across his loins—so that he might have both hands free.

Miss Sue, though of almost childish figure, was no weakling. As for 'Liphalet, he silently thanked the Almighty his years of active life at sea had toughened his muscles and sinews and steadied his mind against times of stress. With his boots thrust against the broken, frosted bank, he pulled himself and his burden upward by the sheer strength of his arms, working his way hand above hand along the rope.

Nor was the attempt without a certain heart-sickening peril. The shale rattled from under his boots wherever he set them. The whole face of the sand cliff was, at this point it seemed, as loose as ashes. Suppose that bar, thrust into the earth above, should loosen! It might pull out at any moment and cast them both into the ravening flood.

Even as Eliphalet Truitt thought of this horrid possibility, a great sea rose below them, burst, and the wash of it almost sucked them down. Tons upon tons of earth were bitten out of the bank, and he was in actual panic for the moment. Had he not come at the moment he had to Sue's rescue, it would have been too late. The ledge on which she had lain was engulfed.

He climbed on. He could not see Miss Sue's features, but he knew her lips whispered a prayer at his ear.

"And who can gauge the height to which a good woman's prayer ascends?" thought 'Liphalet, and was inspirited by the thought—and pressed on mightily.

His anxious gaze was fixed on the brow of the bank, into which the line had so deeply cut. This upper section of the face of the cliff must have been woefully weakened by the undermining of the sea that had just broken around them. He expected momentarily to see the cliff for yards on either hand topple outward and fall, overwhelming them in an avalanche.

It might be that the driving of the crowbar into the hard soil beyond the patrol path was all that was needed to crack off a huge slice of the cliff's edge. Its barren top had offered nothing upon which the loop of the line could have been fixed. But he felt that he had done his best, whatever came.

Shrieking above them, the wind flung the sleet and snow yards beyond the cliff's edge; therefore they were sheltered until he had climbed to the very brow of the bank. He was almost breathless; he waited a few seconds before essaying the final effort with which to drag himself and his burden out upon the level ground.

It was then that he felt the earth's first tremor. The face of the cliff was actually heaving outward!

The line slipped. He dropped with his burden for a foot or more.

"She's goin'!" was 'Liphalet's gasped ejaculation, and he scrambled desperately upward, determined to make the brink and safety with the woman he loved.

CHAPTER XXVI

CAP'N JONAH'S CHALLENGE

There was a satisfaction for Joe Helmford in his present mood, in putting his head down, clenching his fists, and struggling with the blowing sleet and snow as though the storm were an actual enemy. The rather impassive, gentle-mannered young man craved action to appease the turmoil aroused in his heart.

Unlike 'Liphalet Truitt, who had allowed ten unfruitful years to drag by while his heart and soul starved for the woman whose fortune kept him at a distance, Helmford's young blood surged against the barrier he was setting between himself and Pearl Holden.

He wanted Pearl. He believed the girl had shown him as plainly as a modest girl could, that she was interested in him. Hang Cap'n Jonah's fortune! Was it to spoil his life and that of Pearl as well?

Helmford desired to take Pearl away from her present environment and to make her the object of his own care. He wanted her to come to him with empty hands but a full heart. He was quite romantic enough to feel that a single thought of the fortune which Cap'n Jonah had promised her, would utterly spoil their happiness.

As he pressed on down the Shell Road in the face of the gale, he glanced in passing up the Petty lane. He saw no sign of life about the house; but had he been a few minutes earlier he would have seen Tom Petty, fresh from Cap'n Abe's store, black-browed and passion-inflamed, stamp up the porch steps and burst into the kitchen where his mother was cooking dinner and his father sat reading the Paulmouth Argus.

But Helmford did meet Cap'n Jonah as he issued from the store and was about to head homeward.

"Well, well!" was the master mariner's greeting, "you're a fine feller. Where have you been keepin' yourself? And why in tarnation did you cut your cable and put to sea as you did? Do you s'pose you ain't got any friends—or don't you want any?"

"Why, Cap'n Jonah," said Helmford, leading the old man into the shelter of one of Cap'n Abe's sheds, "I had no intention of ignoring you. I fancied you would hear all about it from the Pettys and—and Miss Pearl."

"Pearly? What does she know about it? She says you never told her you were goin' to leave. And Sarah Petty's ne'er mentioned your name from that day to this."

"Didn't Miss Pearl tell you of what happened yonder on the road, when she was coming home from church?"

"The night before you slipped your moorings? Nary a word," declared Cap'n Jonah, emphatically.

Helmford was rather taken aback. If Pearl had not told the old seaman of the incident perhaps she did not want it mentioned to him. Just how much the girl might be attached to Tom Petty, rough and uncouth as he was, Helmford did not know.

"Come now!" exclaimed Cap'n Jonah. "Let's hear the whole on't. I thought that gal was keepin' something back, but I didn't know what 'twas. You an' she didn't have no quarrel?"

"Pearl and I? Certainly not!" replied Helmford indignantly. Then he smiled grimly. "But I did have a brief set-to with Tom Petty."

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah. "And you let that lout put you out?"

"I put myself out. I did not care to remain and quarrel with him continually—as I should."

"'Hem! Ye-as. I expect there might ha' been bad blood 'twixt you. Over Pearly, of course."

"Now, Cap'n Hand," interrupted Helmford emphatically. "I will not discuss Miss Pearl's private affairs at all. It is not my business to do so. You have told me that you intend making her the beneficiary of your will. Whatever my personal regard may be for Miss Pearl that fact, in itself, would preclude my being a rival of Tom Petty's for her favor——"

"Hoity-toity!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah. "The kettle has b'iled over for a fac'! Air you another loony feller like Life Truitt? Afraid of a woman if she has a little tad of money?"

"At least, I respect myself—and Miss Pearl—too much to have it said that I address her because she expects to possess your fortune, Cap'n Jonah, when you are gone. Tom Petty has already accused me of that."

"And what did you say to him?" demanded the old man.

"I didn't say much. I knocked him down," confessed Helmford.

"Whew!" whistled the captain, his eyes snapping with excitement "I'd like to have seen you do that. And I bet Pearly would too!"

"She did."

"She was there an' saw the fracas?"

"It wasn't a fracas," explained Helmford, rather shamefaced. "He tried to hit me with a club, and I got at him first. That's all."

"And Pearly saw it? With her own eyes? How'd she act?" demanded the eager captain.

"She—she cried. Of course she was frightened," the young man said, somewhat puzzled by the other's questions.

"'Hem! She didn't throw herself on Tom an' cry 'cause you'd fetched him a wallop?"

"Certainly not!" exclaimed Helmford somewhat angrily.

"Looks, then," observed Cap'n Jonah shrewdly, "as though she wasn't much int'rested in Tom. Dunno how she could be. I reckon you air no rival of his'n——"

"If you please, Cap'n Hand," interrupted Helmford gruffly, "we will not discuss the matter at all. Miss Pearl is not for me. She should marry a man of equal fortune."

He turned abruptly, and instead of entering the store as had been his intention, he stormed along the road and up the easy ascent toward Tapp Point and the exposed sand cliff beyond which, at that moment, 'Liphalet Truitt was searching for Sue Ambrose.

Cap'n Jonah allowed the young man to go without further speech; but he watched him out of sight in the driving snow, shaking his head thoughtfully.

"Whatever!" he muttered. "Dern the fortune, anyway! Looks as though 'twas a boomerang. If them phony sheers sarves to keep them two young folks apart, then I have made a mess, and no mistake!"

He was only half an hour or so behind Tom in reaching the house. But that half hour had served to change the atmosphere of the Petty household from that of cheerful complacency to one of fierce and eager antagonism to Cap'n Jonah.

Tom had brought into the kitchen something worse than the snow that stuck to his boots, although his mother had first of all begun to scold about that.

"What's got into you, Tom Petty? Don't you know enough to stomp your boots in the porch? One would think you was born and brought up in a barn," fretted Sarah. "If you air goin' to be a rich man some day, you better l'arn how to behave nice."

"Rich!" exploded her son, finally getting his breath. "Who's goin' to make me rich, I want to know?"

"Your Uncle Jonah," said Sarah placidly. "If you manage to behave yourself."

"Uncle Jonah! That consarned old cheat?" bawled Tom, so angry that he all but choked.

"What is the matter with you, Tom?" demanded his father, laying down his paper. "What's bitin' of you now, I want to know?"

"That dod-rotted old cheat!" began Tom again, when his mother interrupted him with:

"Now, Tom Petty! I won't hear you use sech language about your uncle. What mess have you managed to stir up?"

"I tell you what I have been doin'," vouchsafed the lout, his voice trembling, his face inflamed. "I've been listenin' to Cap'n Cheatin' Jonah and Abram Silt chucklin' over the way they've fooled us all—an' ev'rybody else 'round here. You might have known when this old sea-devil was so almighty thick with Abe Silt that they'd cook up something——"

"What do you mean, Tom Petty?"

Sarah's voice rose almost to a shriek. She started for Tom, her green eyes snapping, her fingers crooked like talons. Her rage was that of the feline. Tom actually retreated from her threatening front.

"I mean that old scoundrel ain't got scurce a cent to bless himself with. I heard him say it!" Tom panted.

"Goshamighty!" gasped Orrin.

"What d'ye mean? Them securities you told us about?" demanded Sarah.

"Was phony—make-believe. He just said so. He an' Cap'n Abe hatched it all up to fool you—so you'd treat him nice, an' treat Pearly nice."

"I can't believe it!" wailed Orrin weakly.

"If you air tryin' to fool us, Tom Petty, with one o' your silly jokes," declared his mother, "I'll near 'bout kill you!"

"I tell you we've been done—an' done good. That box was sent over from the bank for a joke. Cap'n Abe engineered it all, you bet! And you give this old sea-robin your parlor, and fed him up, and made much of him, and showed him off to Uncle 'Poley and Uncle Perse, an' the rest——"

"You shet your mouth!" commanded Sarah. Her face was as inflamed as his own. Her sharp features threatened dire work. Her lips, drawn back from her ragged teeth, were sprayed with foam like those of a maddened wolf.

Pearl, who had been doing the upstairs work, entered the kitchen on this tableau. With one accord the three Pettys turned upon her. Tom, in a single stride, reached the girl's side and seized her by the wrist with a grip that brought a cry of pain from her lips.

"Here's one that knew it all the time, I bet my hat!" growled the son.

"The ungrateful little baggage!" snarled Sarah, coming at Pearl from the other side.

Orrin had risen, and now leaned over the table, his hairy fists clenched and resting on it, his eyes glaring under penthouse brows.

Their attack was so sudden—so unexpected after the recent treatment they had accorded her—that Pearl was made speechless.

She had been about to slip into her coat, throw a hood over her hair, and venture up to the chapel to see if the committee on decorations had gathered there. She had not forgotten that Helmford had promised to help, and the girl hoped to meet him.

"Let me go, Tom Petty!" she demanded, dropping her outdoor garments and trying to break away from his rough grasp.

Sarah seized the girl's other arm and twisted it spitefully.

"Tell me!" hissed the woman. "Have you knowed this all along, you little viper, you? Tell me!"

She shook Pearl one way. Tom shook her another. Orrin demanded from across the table:

"Answer us! Is this here true? Has that old whelp been foolin' us? Ain't Cap'n Jonah got no fortune?"

"Cap'n Jonah?"

Pearl gasped the name as the door was flung open allowing the old seaman and, seemingly, a good part of the storm, to enter. It was such a furious blast that accompanied Cap'n Jonah into the kitchen that he had to put his back against the door and so force it shut against wind and snow.

He cleared his eyes with the back of his hand. He beheld the three Pettys surrounding the girl with an astonishment that turned instantly to indignation.

"Belay there!" he commanded. "What do you folks mean to do to that gal? Ain't I told you what I'd do if you didn't stop pickin' on her? Belay all! What d'you mean?"

Sarah flung around on him, her eyes fairly sparking. "Ah! Here ye be!" she cried. "You're the rich Jonah Hand, I hear tell? You got a box full of securities and money, I wouldn't wonder? And who loaned 'em to you?"

Cap'n Jonah was, for the moment, staggered. But he was already leaning against the door for support and his grim old mahogany face showed no flicker of emotion as he listened to his niece's tirade.

"We know all about it now, you pauper!" the woman cried. "Comin' here an' deceivin' your own blood rel'tives. Livin' on our bounty an' makin' a show out'n us that has give ye bit an' sup."

"Easy! Easy!" murmured Cap'n Jonah, grim-lipped. "Ye ain't lost nothin' by me, Sarah Petty."

"Shet up!" she shrieked at him. "I've been slavin' for you—ev'rybody knows it. Aunt 'Poley, an' Aunt Perse seen it. Miz Enoch Petty said I was a fool to do so much for any old tramp of a sailor——"

"Sarah Petty!" Cap'n Jonah's voice thundered through the room and silenced the woman. He was no longer aghast at the discovery the Pettys had made. His commanding voice and manner held his three relatives in abeyance as though he were speaking from his quarterdeck.

"Sarah Petty, I am your father's brother. There was a time, as you well know, when poor John—and you and your mother—might have been cast on a lee shore if it hadn't been for me standin' by an' seein' that you weathered the storm.

"If I had come to you when I landed here from China and demanded that you take me in and do for me, 'twould ha' been no more than right, as you know, Sarah Petty. As 'tis, I don't owe you nothin'.

"If you let yourself be fooled into believin' I was a wealthy man, you done it easy. I never said I was!

"I've paid you every cent I agreed to for board and lodgin'—an' wash. My money is jest as good somewhere else, I reckon, as 'tis here, as long as it lasts. I'd ruther go to strangers and hire my keep from 'em, than stay under your roof, Sarah Petty, on any terms. I'll go now. I'll find a shelter somewhere and send for my duffel."

He thumped his cane resoundingly on the floor and wheeled toward the door again. Pearl started toward him, both hands held out appealingly:

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah!"

"Pick up your coat, gal," Cap'n Jonah said firmly. "You come along o' me, if you will. I'll not leave you here to be hounded by these Pettys. Whether I've got money or not, I guarantee we can make a home together, an' 'twill be a peaceful one—that's whatever!

"I ain't on my last legs yet. I'm as good a man as Washy Gallup is, barrin' when the rheumatiz gets me. I can airn a dollar yet—an' so can you. Will you come along o' me, Pearly—an' take potluck?"

She was already struggling into her coat. She was laughing and crying together.

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah! Oh, Cap'n Jonah. You make me happier than I've been for a long while back. I wouldn't be afraid to start out with you right now for a voyage around the world!"

"That's the talk!" cried the stout-hearted old mariner. "We'll show 'em, Pearly—you an' me."

He tore the door open. He pulled his southwester more firmly over his ears. He took Pearl's arm within the crook of his own. The two marched out of the Petty kitchen and were almost instantly swallowed in the smother of the storm.

CHAPTER XXVII

A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS

This was no day to wander about out of doors, either for pleasure or exercise. Nor was Joe Helmford bent on either. Nevertheless he kept on along the deserted road on which the summer colony houses fronted, until he had passed the wall and gates of the Tapp estate.

There, as he confronted the waste of the wind-swept bluff, he halted as 'Liphalet Truitt had halted, to peer ahead. Now and then a rift in the storm revealed to him the ugly, narrow pathway beaten hard by the feet of the life saving patrol.

As 'Liphalet had caught a glimpse of a snow wraith in the storm, so Joe Helmford chanced to see a figure stand out clearly upon the brink of the cliff, and for a single moment.

"What's that fellow doing there?" exclaimed the young man. And then: "Great heavens! he's gone over."

For in that flash, before the snow curtain shut down again, he had seen 'Liphalet Truitt slide over the brink of the cliff and, clinging to Suz Montevedo's new line, drop out of sight.

There was no hesitation in Joe Helmford's actions at this juncture. Putting away those troubles which had obsessed his mind, in an instant he was alive to the peril of the man—if it were a man—he had seen go over the edge of the cliff. He started for the spot, charging recklessly through the storm.

He was familiar with this surfman's path. In this direction lay Salt Creek and the fish hatchery.

In a few breathless minutes he came stumbling to the spot. He could not miss it, for he tripped and fell, sprawling across the taut halyard which was looped over the crowbar. The crowbar was canted forward toward the cliff's brink and the frozen ground all about it was broken and loose.

Helmford heard no cry from below; but he saw the rope slipping and realized that there was a burden on it that was doomed, unless he interfered, to be dashed into the breakers clawing so madly at the face of the bluff.

With a shout he leaped upon the slipping hemp with both feet, just as the crowbar tore loose. That was the moment when 'Liphalet Truitt felt himself and Miss Sue drop a sudden, nerve-racking foot down the wall of the precipice.

"She's goin'!" the ex-steward repeated as the broken earth rattled about them. That an avalanche had started—that the entire face of the cliff was about to fall into the sea—he had little doubt. He tore his hands painfully in lifting himself and Miss Sue up again to the edge of the caving bank.

They would never have made it had not two muscular hands seized 'Liphalet's coat collar and dragged him up to the path. He lost the rope, scrambling blindly on hands and knees, the woman still clinging to him. The crowbar broke loose entirely and, with the rope, hurtled over the brink of the cliff.

With a burst of sound that rose above the clamor of both gale and sea, the landslip broke away from the brow of the precipice. The men and the woman almost hung over the ragged break for an instant. Then Helmford pulled the others farther in and raised Miss Sue gently to her feet.

"Miss Sue? Great heavens!" cried the young fellow. "What does this mean?"

"By Hannah!" ejaculated the ex-steward, scrambling up, "there goes old Suz Montevedo's new line and crowbar."

"Oh, 'Liphalet!" cried Miss Sue. "Are we safe?"

"You ain't—not yet," he declared. "Nor you won't be till we get you home an' 'tween blankets. Who's this? By Hannah, 'tis Mr. Helmford! You sartainly was a friend in need, Mr. Helmford. If it hadn't been for your help we'd have gone down along o' the line an' the crowbar."

"How can we thank him?" murmured Miss Sue, still clinging to 'Liphalet's coat sleeve.

"You can postpone that," laughed Helmford, experiencing a great revulsion of feeling. "We must take her right along to Cap'n Abe's store, 'Liphalet. That is about the nearest shelter, isn't it?"

"It's the best place, anyhow," said the ex-steward. "We can get a buggy to get her home in, from there."

"Oh, I can walk, 'Liphalet," said the little woman softly.

But she was thankful for the support of a strong arm on either side as they started along the path with the gale behind them.

"This experience, Susan, is enough to give you your never git over," said the anxious 'Liphalet.

"Why, I'm neither sugar nor salt, 'Liphalet. I have the use of my limbs yet. And there's a lot to do to-day. There's the chapel to trim yet, and the Christmas tree."

"Christmas——" He could not say it. The disgusted snort which had become almost an involuntary ejaculation when he was reminded of the Yuletide season, was cut off on his lips as Miss Sue continued:

"Were you not going to the chapel to help, Mr. Helmford? I asked Pearly to go and take charge."

"She was not there an hour ago," the young man replied, his countenance falling into somber lines again. "In fact, nobody was there. I got the key from 'Liphalet's porch and unlocked the vestry door and lit the fire. But nobody came."

"Dear me! I must see about that," Miss Sue said more briskly. "I wonder where Pearly can be?"

They were glad to get into the partial shelter of I. Tapp's wall and there take breath. Helmford suggested that Miss Sue stop at Mrs. Lawford Tapp's to rest, but she would not hear to this.

"I was Cape born and raised, and there's no difference between me and my forebears save that I have lived a little softer," she declared. "If it was Betty Gallup you boys had saved from death, would you expect her to faint on your hands?"

"'The Able Seaman'?" chuckled Helmford. "No, Miss Ambrose. I should not expect Mrs. Gallup to display many of the ordinary feminine weaknesses."

Nevertheless he and 'Liphalet all but carried Miss Sue between them as far as Cap'n Abe's store. Here, as the trio approached through the steadily falling snow, came Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue, bound homeward for dinner.

"What in tarnation!" ejaculated Milt, almost swallowing his usual cud of Brown Mule in his amazement. "Life Truitt? And the Doc's sister? Sufferin' swordfish! There ain't been no elopement, has there?"

Fortunately the noise of the wind and sifting snow drowned most of this unguarded speech, from Miss Sue's ears at least. But 'Liphalet heard enough, and if a glance would have drowned the Shell Road humorist that look with which the ex-steward favored Milt would certainly have sent him to a watery grave.

The exhausted trio stumbled into Cap'n Abe's store. The usual company about the stove had scattered. They heard the storekeeper's voice from the living room in the rear. 'Liphalet led the way to the flap in the counter, which he lifted to let Miss Sue and Helmford pass through.

As they crossed the entry between the store and the living room they heard another voice in reply to Cap'n Abe's. The storm-beaten callers came to the open door to see Cap'n Jonah and Pearl Holden with the old store-keeper. Pearl had dropped into the rocking-chair usually favored by Diddimus, the cat, and had a handkerchief to her eyes. But Cap'n Jonah was on his feet, his southwester pushed back on his head, his mahogany face alive with emotion, his snuff-box in his hand.

"No, Mr. Silt, I warn't never cut out for actin' a part, I don't guess, and it sarves me right. I'd never ought to have tried to fool them Pettys into believin' I had a fortune when I ain't got none."

"Sh!" warned Cap'n Abe, seeing the newly arrived visitors.

Cap'n Jonah wheeled and saw them too. But his countenance did not change from its stern and determined expression.

"They might's well know it here an' now," he declared. "'Liphalet does know, anyway. And I reckon young Helmford there thinks he has reason to be glad I ain't got a fortune. Yes, friends, I been gullin' all on you. I ain't got a penny but what I'm carryin' right now in my pocket—there! I don't reckon there's a much poorer man on this here Cape than Cap'n Jonah Hand."

"Oh, Cap'n Hand!" cried Miss Sue in sympathy. She crossed to his side and rested a gentle hand upon his coat sleeve.

'Liphalet, from the doorway, saw and appreciated the picture they made—the sturdy, stern-faced old seaman looking down upon the petite Miss Sue with beaming eyes, while she gazed up into his face in full sympathy for his misfortune. 'Liphalet Truitt had been stirred to the very depths of his being during the past two hours; but the heart-pang that smote him now was more severe than anything he had heretofore suffered.

Nobody noticed him as he retired from the living room and closed the door. He passed out of Cap'n Abe's side door and went home. Once there he stoked his dying fire, changed into dry garments, and made himself a huge bowl of "composition tea"—a never-failing Cardhaven remedy in case of chill.

But the chill at 'Liphalet Truitt's heart was not so easily cured.

Cap'n Abe's and Miss Sue's attention for the moment was fully given to Cap'n Jonah. But Helmford approached Pearl Holden's side. He stooped and drew her hands from before her face and lifted her up by the wrists to stand before him.

"Is—is this true, Pearly?" he asked. "Is it really so? Hasn't Cap'n Jonah a fortune?"

"He—he says he hasn't!" she sobbed.

"And are you disappointed? I am sorry, Pearl."

"What you sorry for?" she demanded, raising dewy eyes to his. "Cap'n Jonah is going to be all right. I can work for him if he gets laid up by the rheumatism—and I'd be glad to. He's been awfully kind to me."

"But you will be no heiress," Helmford said, smiling.

"'Heiress'?" repeated Pearl. "What do you mean, Mr. Helmford? My! do you s'pose I thought two minutes about Cap'n Jonah's fortune?"

"But I have been thinking about it," the young man said. "And—forgive me for saying it—I am glad you are not going to be rich, Pearly."

She was still looking at him. They had forgotten the others in the room. Now that the great moment had arrived Pearl Holden showed no false modesty.

"Why don't you want me to be rich?" she asked him. "Though goodness knows, I never expect to be!"

"Because I am poor. And I never expect to be rich," he said, his voice shaking with suppressed feeling. "As you are not an heiress, Pearly, I can tell you something that I have wanted to tell you for a long while and have not dared. It is——"

"Say!" exclaimed the harsh voice of Betty Gallup from the kitchen door. "Shall I dish up the chowder for all hands, Cap'n Abe? It's sp'ilin' to be et."

"Sure-ly!" replied the hospitable storekeeper. "This ain't no time to be starvin' ourselves. Bring it in, Betty. An' afterwards you git two cabins ready upstairs for guests. Cap'n Jonah and Pearly can stay here just as well's not till they git located to suit 'em.

"Hi-mighty!" he added, rubbing his hands together, his benignant old face glowing with kindliness. "I guess you'll find, Cap'n Jonah, that you've got plenty friends along the Shell Road, if the Pettys have turned sour. But Orrin an' Sarah allus was near 'bout like vinegar, when all's said an' done."

CHAPTER XXVIII

ALL ABOUT A BAD SMELL

The three Pettys were not happy. Somehow Cap'n Jonah's defiance and Pearl's joyful determination to put herself under the old mariner's protection, quite took the taste out of any pleasure Sarah Petty might have felt in seeing the two "paupers" start out into the storm.

Orrin sank gloomily into his chair and openly groaned. The sand was cut out from under him, and no mistake! The melting of Cap'n Jonah's fortune was a catastrophe of overwhelming proportions. Orrin felt that he would never get over it.

It was the son who first found voice and energy to put his thoughts into words.

"There!" he croaked. "Now you've done it, an' I hope you're satisfied."

"What's the matter with you, Tom Petty?" demanded his mother, apprehending the young fellow's complaint before it was uttered.

"You've driv' Pearly away. She ain't got no business going off with that old sea-devil!" cried Tom.

"Wal, what d'ye want her here for?" queried Sarah. "She ain't wuth her salt no more. 'Twixt Uncle Jonah and that Helmford feller, they've nigh 'bout ruined her for work."

"Work?" repeated Tom, with scorn. "That's all you ever think of—you slave driver! I didn't want Pearl driv' out."

"Why not? What's she to you—when she ain't goin' to have no money?"

"She's my girl!" cried Tom hotly. "Or she would ha' been if it wasn't for that consarned Helmford. And it's your fault he ever come here and made trouble 'tween us."

"Why, you talk foolish!" declared Sarah.

"Is that so?" snarled the lout. "Well, I can tell you right now: If Pearly's goin' to be turned out o' house an' home, so'm I. I'll go with her."

This ridiculous statement, however, did not make Sarah Petty smile. After all, the woman's very soul was bound up in Tom. He could get his way with her by such threats at any time. And she was broken in spirit now.

"You—you can't get her to come back," she stammered.

"I can try," declared Tom. "And I'm goin' to. But you've got to promise to be good to her. If I marry Pearl I ain't goin' to let her be your slave no more."

"You ain't married her yet," said Sarah pursing her lips tightly.

"An' there's another thing," went on Tom, using the gaff without mercy. "How about if Uncle Jonah turns on you with that old note of gran'-pop's? He ain't forgot it. You can see that by what he just said to you. He was throwin' it up to you. An' now it's proved he ain't got a fortune, he'll try seeing what he can get out o' you."

"You hesh up," commanded Sarah Petty, suddenly recovering her poise. Orrin might be utterly helpless; but she had begun to think again. Tom's point was well taken. She could only judge other people by her own mind. That was the great lack in her character, after all. She measured every other person by her own warped standard.

It was possibly within Uncle Jonah's power to make the Pettys a great deal of trouble. Even if the old note for two thousand dollars was outlawed, if the old captain pressed the matter the fact would be made public that Sarah Petty had not settled her father's just debts when she had administered his estate.

The Petty family—Uncles 'Poley, Perse, Solon and Enoch, and their wives and connections—would hear all about it. Sarah was a social climber. She had desired to use the prestige of Cap'n Jonah's supposed fortune as a ladder on which to mount to the higher branches of the family tree.

There was nothing criminal in Sarah being deceived by the old sea captain regarding his financial affairs. That was not her fault. But if the story got abroad that she, after all, owed Cap'n Jonah all the attention she had given him—and much more—the Harwich Pettys would have something to say about it!

Sarah Petty could better bear being laughed at for being fooled by Cap'n Jonah, than be exposed as having cheated the old man out of two thousand dollars. Her calmer thought compassed this fact almost immediately. Shrewdly she readjusted her plans for the future.

"Tom Petty," she said briskly, "you go after that gal. You bring Pearl back here. She ain't got no right to leave us this-a-way in any case, for we're her guardeens, made so by the 'thority of the town selectmen till she's eighteen."

"You want I should spoil ev'rything," her son complained. "If I try to order her back——"

"I didn't say so, did I?" snapped his mother. "We've got a hold on her just the same. But that's our last resort. You find Pearl an' tell her to come back. You be nice to her. If you want to marry the girl your father and I ain't got no objections. She's a fav'rite of Uncle Jonah Hand. A blind man can see that. And he won't do nothin' that'll hurt her or her'n. D'ye see? If Pearl an' you marry, he won't press no old note against this estate that's a-comin' to you some day. That is sure."

"I dunno can I git her back," grumbled Tom, buttoning his coat again. "But I'll find out where she's goin' and what she's goin' to do."

"You can look in at Abe Silt's store," said his mother, sharply. "If that old tramp's such good friends with Silt, that's where he an' Pearl's gone."

Tom thought this very likely, and he made the store his destination. It seemed as though the storm was abating; but Tom Petty was so deeply engaged in thought that he paid slight attention to the weather.

The lout had come to a juncture where he could no longer shift the burden of decision to other shoulders, or postpone settlement of this question until a future time. The shock of Pearl deliberately leaving the house with Cap'n Jonah had roused him to at least one fact.

He cared a great deal for the girl. His was an utterly selfish love; but such as it was, it was the very best imitation of affection that Tom Petty would probably ever experience.

To his mind Joe Helmford was but a passing fancy of Pearl's. Of course, in the end, he, Tom, would get her. It was foreordained. They had lived in such close companionship for so many years that he could imagine no change. That was why her actual departure had so shocked him.

Now he was going after her. He never considered that she might not return home with him. Why, any other outcome of his attempt he did not contemplate for a moment! He had bullied Pearl for so long that he expected to keep on doing so indefinitely. Pearl was "easy." That was the way Tom Petty expressed it to himself.

He did not enter Cap'n Abe's store, but went around the house to the kitchen door, expecting to find Betty Gallup there and learn from her how the land lay. It was not Mrs. Gallup, however, who came to the door in answer to his knuckles on the panel.

"Tom Petty!"

"Hi, Pearly!" the youth greeted her, calling up a grin. "Marm wants you should come home."

"I'm never going back to your house again, Tom Petty, only to get my things."

"Now, don't say that, Pearly," the young fellow went on, very mildly for him. "You don't want to be mean. Marm never said for you to go——"

"I came away with Cap'n Jonah on my own hook," she agreed. "And I'm not going back."

"Aw, yes you will," Tom repeated. "You know how much I like you, Pearly. I couldn't get along without you—no two ways about it! You got to stop this foolishness and come home. That old feller ain't got nothin'. He can't look out for himself, let alone do anything for you. And Helmford wouldn't look at you, you know well enough, if he didn't think you was goin' to be rich. Come on home, now."

"I won't!"

He thought she was about to close the door. Tom Petty had never learned patience, and his appearance of gentleness was only a veneer. His right hand shot out and he caught the girl's slim wrist. He jerked her out upon the step.

"You come home along o' me and stop your foolishness," he growled. "Do you hear me, Pearly?"

She struggled to escape. With her free hand she struck him across his inflamed and ugly face. She cried out as he forced her down the steps into the beating storm.

"Stop! Stop, Tom Petty! I won't go home with you!" she cried.

Around the corner of the kitchen ell charged Joe Helmford—the very person Pearl most desired to see.

"Let her alone!" commanded the man fiercely.

Tom turned on him, snarling. He was so enraged that he forgot for the moment to be afraid. Helmford stripped off his beclouded spectacles and handed them to Pearl. He unbelted and dropped his Mackinaw at his feet.

"Look out for yourself, Tom Petty!" he said threateningly. "I am going to give you what you have been suffering for ever since you got too big for your mother to spank."

They were not unevenly matched as to height and weight. Tom's muscles were fully as well developed, and he was as supple as his antagonist. In a rough and tumble fight he might even have been Helmford's superior.

But the latter would not allow the lout to get a wrestler's hold upon him. As Tom charged, Helmford stepped nimbly aside and drove his fist into Tom's face. Had the latter been wise he would have let that blow begin and finish the battle. But such courage as the lout owned was roused by the smart of the blow.

His face was a mask of blood as he rushed for Helmford a second time. His antagonist met this onslaught fairly. His hard and capable fists drove in with all the weight of his shoulders behind them, while Tom pawed the air blindly with clutching hands.

Tom could not reach his opponent at all; but it was several moments and he was a desperately bruised young man, before this truth came fully home to him. His own arms flung like flails, but to no purpose. Helmford reached his bruised face and battered it with such lusty blows that Tom thought his antagonist must have more than the usual number of fists.

Petty staggered; he slipped; he fell to his knees; he got up again. While all the time the blows rained upon him and he was blinded. He began to bleat like a calf in the grip of the butcher. He could not escape.

Finally arrived the last and merciful blow—Helmford's right to the point of the jaw. Tom was felled and lay there in the snow, for the moment quite unable to realize where he was or what had happened to him.

When he actually came to his senses Joe Helmford had taken Pearl away. They had been ready, as it was, to accompany Miss Sue to the chapel to trim the Christmas tree. But the storekeeper, Cap'n Jonah, and Betty Gallup, were grouped about the fallen lout, and were staring at him.

"I tell ye what 'tis," the able seaman said, in her jerky and emphatic way, "once in a while one o' these city fellers does somethin' that ye hafter admire 'em for. Who'd ha' thought Mr. Helmford, whose business 'tis, he says, to teach fishes to hatch their aigs, had so much in him? Why, this Tom Petty's been sufferin' for this beatin' for years, an' there ain't been a loafer around this store with public sperit enough to do it."

Nevertheless it was Betty Gallup who helped the dazed youth to his feet and assisted him into the house and made him lie down upon Cap'n Abe's lounge in the living room. She brought warm water and laved his bruised face. And she brought vinegar and brown paper and put a patch on his inflamed eye.

"Now you lay up here as long as you feel like, Tom Petty," Mrs. Gallup said, as she cleared the table of the dinner dishes. "Mischief's done now, and you can't better it. Folks is bound to know you got licked, for your hull face advertises the fac'."

The storm kept many customers from interrupting Cap'n Abe, although the wind was moderating. He sat with Cap'n Jonah in the living room and discussed the latter's financial affairs more earnestly than heretofore.

"You say this here money you got in your wallet is all you got in the world, Cap'n Hand?"

"Whatever! Nor no more to be had," said Cap'n Jonah. "I got some ile sheers—but, pshaw! They ain't nothin'."

"What air them sheers?" demanded Cap'n Abe, suddenly. "Better take stock of ev'rythin', as the feller said when he listed the litter of kittens in the sheriff's sale. I was readin' in the Globe paper only this mornin'——"

He got up and brought the Boston paper from the rack on the wall. Unfolding it he found the financial page and pointed a horny forefinger to the heading of an article there printed.

"What's this here?" Cap'n Abe asked. "Where's my readin' specs? Never can find 'em when they air wanted."

"On your forehead like they always be," said Cap'n Jonah, taking the paper after having adjusted his own eyeglasses. "'Hem! Whatever! What d'you make of this, Mr. Silt? Why, them's the very sheers! The Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company."

"Lemme see!" said Cap'n Abe eagerly, having twitched his silver-bowed spectacles astride his nose. "D'you mean to say, Cap'n Hand, that you got some o' them Little Sandy sheers?"

"Abe Silt!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah, almost breathless. "I got two thousand of 'em! Right here in my pocket! D'you s'pose they can be the same?"

"'Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company,'" read Cap'n Abe, slowly. "'Lay dormant many years.' 'Outskirts of the thriving city of Decatur.' My soul, Cap'n Hand!"

"Why," said the other, "they told me two year ago that all they ever got out o' them wells they drove, was a bad smell."

"Hi-mighty!" shouted Cap'n Abe, slapping his knee in high delight. "That's exactly what they did git! Nateral gas! D'you know what that is, Cap'n Hand? Why, it means they air piping that 'nasty smell' you speak of into the city of Decatur, an' sellin' it to light an' heat houses. What d'ye know 'bout that?"

"Whatever!" gasped Cap'n Jonah.

"How many of them sheers you got?" demanded the excited storekeeper.

Cap'n Jonah dragged from the breast pocket of his pilot coat a long envelope, much stained and worn. From this he produced the ornate certificate of the Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company, which stated upon its face that he was the owner of two thousand shares in the capital stock of the concern. A third pair of eyes, one very much "bunged up" at present, stared at the certificate. Tom Petty had seen that document before!

"Two thousand!" murmured Cap't Abe. "Hi-mighty! Look here! This paper says the sheers have gone to fifteen dollars already. By the great jib boom, Cap'n Hand! That there document in your hand is worth thirty thousand dollars!"

Cap'n Jonah stared at the storekeeper in utter bewilderment at first. He repeated slowly: "Thirty thousand dollars? Whatever!"

"There's your fortune, Cap'n Hand!" cried the storekeeper in vast delight. "An' a fortune that's wuth while. You needn't worry about the Pettys no more. Nor about Pearly——"

"Belay all!" gasped Cap'n Jonah, hoarsely, and laying a restraining hand on the storekeeper's knee. "Don't say a word to nobody."

"Huh?"

"Not a word," repeated Cap'n Jonah, sternly. "I don't want folks to know about this fortune. Above all, don't let that fish trainer, Helmford, hear a word about it. For if he does, like as not he'll slip his moorings again and run out to sea. He's got a fool conviction, like 'Liphalet Truitt, that if a woman's got a little tad of money, he mustn't marry her."

He turned quickly to cast a suspicious glance at Tom Petty. The battered youth had fallen back on the pillow and his eyes were closed. To tell the truth, Tom was pretty near all in!

CHAPTER XXIX

CHRISTMAS EVE AT CAP'N ABE'S

The gale abated toward evening. The sky was clearing when 'Liphalet Truitt came out of his door and started down the Shell Road toward the store.

It was more habit than anything else that took him to Cap'n Abe's. The cloud that had for these past few weeks overshadowed the lonely bachelor who dwelt beside the Mariner's Chapel, rested more heavily than ever upon his mind and heart this Christmas Eve.

His perilous adventure with Miss Sue that afternoon had racked his soul more than it had his body. As they had clung together there in the storm on the face of the precipice, he felt that so they should cling together against all the buffetings of life.

But fate cruelly separated them. Sue's fortune kept them apart. He shrank from having the neighbors point him out as a money-seeker—a man who had married a woman for her fortune. And in addition, there was Cap'n Jonah Hand—a much more masterful man than the ex-steward—who had seemed to take Miss Sue by storm. The picture he had last seen in Cap'n Abe's living room, when the doctor's sister had run to sympathize with the unmasked captain, was etched upon 'Liphalet's memory so deeply that he believed he could never forget it.

Yet he felt no hatred in his heart for Miss Sue. He absolved her now of any blame for his unhappiness. Life Truitt was coming to his senses!

Sue Ambrose was worthy of the love of the best man who ever lived! Forty thousand dollars was as nothing beside her intrinsic value as a woman and a companion for a lonely man. 'Liphalet wished with all his heart—as he had wished a thousand times before—that Sue's anti-suffragist relative had left her money elsewhere. Then no man—Cap'n Jonah, or anybody else—would have beaten him to the goal that had been so long set before him.

He had enough money for them both—enough and to spare. It troubled him now, as it had before, that Sue should have accepted the forty thousand dollars as a bribe not to exercise her right of franchise.

To tell the truth 'Liphalet did not think well of woman suffrage. He was satisfied that Miss Sue did not appear to hold "votes for women" in high regard. But it would have delighted him had Miss Sue walked into the polling place on election day and voted, thus throwing her legacy away.

So he tramped down the Shell Road in a gloomy frame of mind indeed on this Christmas Eve; and upon entering into the warmth and light and bustle of Cap'n Abe's store was as much in the doldrums as ever.

The greetings showered upon him from those present, men and women alike, were heartier than usual. Why! it seemed just as though they were waiting for 'Liphalet's appearance. "Just for what they hope to get out of you," the devil of distrust again whispered in his ear.

But for some reason this wicked voice was not so strong as before. 'Liphalet had begun to doubt. Since his adventure with Miss Sue on the cliff he had lost much of that pessimism that had for so long held sway in his mind.

The cheerful smiles, the hearty greetings one to another as the neighbors entered, began to impress more deeply the apostate Santa Claus. Retiring to an upturned nail keg behind the stove, 'Liphalet tried again to wrap himself in gloom. He felt meaner than he had ever felt before in all his life.

Here was more than half the congregation of the Mariner's Chapel gathered in the Shell Road store. Every one had a pleasant word or smile for him. They sought the ex-steward out to show their friendliness. They had been looking to him for generous assistance in the yearly entertainment now but twenty-four hours off, and he had determined to disappoint and to flout them.

The apostate Santa Claus began to feel remorse and misgiving, such as had never been his portion before. He felt he had never done as mean a thing in all his career as he was doing now. Aside from the disappointment of the grown members of the congregation, how would the children feel? 'Liphalet Truitt, in padded and cottonwool trimmed garments, was always a delight to the children at the Christmas tree celebration. His unfailing pack and his appropriate words for each child were looked forward to for months.

And he purposed to disappoint them all—his adult friends and neighbors, as well as the children; Cap'n Abe himself; Cap'n Joab; Washy Gallup; Milt and Amiel, the local buffoons; even Cap'n Jonah Hand and Mr. Helmford. They were all here and smiling at a man who began to feel himself to be the very meanest person upon the entire reach of Cape Cod.

Suddenly from Cap'n Abe's living room behind the store sounded the opening bars of the "Fisher's Hornpipe" played on a fiddle and played better than 'Liphalet had ever heard it rendered before. He sat up straighter, his ears pricked, and his eyes began to glisten.

A silence had fallen upon the thronged store. 'Liphalet did not notice now the smiling and significant glances cast in his direction. He was attending with all his music-loving soul to the medley of old-time sea-ditties that the master violinist was playing.

"By Hannah! who's that fiddling?" gasped 'Liphalet, as the music ceased.

A moment's pause. Then rose the air of "Black-Eyed Susan" played by what the deeply moved ex-steward would have called a "brass band."

The orchestral accompaniment died to a murmur and a voice took up the old song—a woman's voice so sweet, so compelling, that it tugged at 'Liphalet Truitt's heartstrings. When the song ceased the apostate Santa Claus found himself on his feet with his hat in his hand and unwonted moisture in his eyes.

The grizzled old storekeeper appeared at the door. "Come in here, 'Liphalet," he said, lifting the flap of the counter and beckoning to the entranced man. "Got somethin' to show ye."

'Liphalet followed him unsteadily. The thrilling notes of the singer's voice still rang in his ears. He did not see that the whole storeful of his neighbors and friends were crowding, giggling and whispering, behind him into Cap'n Abe's sitting room.

The homely furnishings of the place, where the table was always set for the expected guest, was sufficiently illuminated by a big hanging lamp. What held 'Liphalet's attention was a handsome cabinet-sized talking machine, with its cover raised, which stood directly under the empty birdcage hanging in the farther window.

"By Hannah!" murmured the bemused 'Liphalet, "I wondered who Perry Baker was a-takin' that machine to."

"You don't know now," said Cap'n Abe dryly.

He waited for his audience to crowd into the room behind the puzzled 'Liphalet. The storekeeper never allowed an opportunity to slip for an impressive oratorical flight.

"Hum!" said Cap'n Abe. "We're gathered here to-night, as ye might say, for one o' the pleasantest occasions that it's ever been my privilege to take part in. It ain't often in this rough an' ready life of our'n, friends, that we are able to show fittingly our appreciation of a neighbor's character. And it ain't often, either, that we find a neighbor whose character is worthy of such appreciation as that which we honor ourselves by honoring to-night."

The storekeeper was getting in pretty deep, as he would have himself admitted; but he struggled on bravely, and everybody save the bewildered 'Liphalet understood.

"We've got a man in our midst," went on Cap'n Abe, "who's proved himself for some years a brother and a friend to every man, woman and child up and down this Shell Road. There ain't a person in this here room to whom he ain't done some lastin' favor, and in some cases, many on 'em.

"As this season of the year comes around—the most fittin' for us to show love and gratitude because of Him who gave so much for us," added Cap'n Abe reverently,—"it was suggested—I reckon it was a spontaneous feelin' in all our hearts—that we give this man who had given of his time and money and love to us, somethin' that should speak to him of our appreciation—somethin' that should tell him, whenever he would, in sorrow or in joy, how much we love him for what he is and for what he has been to us."

The old storekeeper's voice was husky. He cleared it with a vociferous "Hum!" but could not go on. Therefore he stepped closer to the talking machine. There was already a disc in place, and touching the release-spring, this began to revolve.

To the mellow accompaniment of an organ a male chorus began to croon, "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?" The women were wiping their eyes openly; the men looked straight ahead with set visages, as they did in church when the minister told a moving incident.

"'Liphalet Truitt," rose the trumpet call of the storekeeper's voice above the melody of the old song, "your neighbors and well-wishers ask me to present this here machine to you as a mark of their esteem and love, as the feller said. And believe me," concluded Cap'n Abe, whacking the amazed recipient heartily on his shoulder, "I ain't been so willin' to do a job since Hector was a pup—an' Hector's a big dog now!"

There rose a general—and welcome—laugh at Cap'n Abe's little joke. But there was no responsive smile upon 'Liphalet's visage. He stood there as amazed and stunned an individual as there was on all of storm-swept Cape Cod that night.

"Hi-mighty!" exclaimed Cap'n Abe at last, "don't you like it?"

"Like it!"

The quotation was a vocal explosion. With it there overflowed from 'Liphalet's eyes the unbidden tears. The ice was broken in his soul, and the apostate Santa Claus stood confessed before his neighbors.

"I ain't able to tell ye," he said humbly, "how what you all have done cuts me right down to the Plimsoll mark. I don't know but a little dip to starbo'd or to larbo'd will founder me for fair. I got it into my head that I—I was purty much alone in the world. I got a bitter taste against humanity in my mouth——"

"That's your liver, 'Liphalet, like I told you," put in Doctor Ambrose, who had come in.

"I made up my mind Christmas, and Christmas doin's, was all foolishness," pursued 'Liphalet. "I just got a grouch on the whole business. I said I wouldn't play Santa Claus for the young'uns no more, or have anything to do with such didoes.

"But I got to confess, brothers and sisters, that I just had to go to town same's usual and buy a bag full of toys an' sech and a new Santa Claus suit. They're hid away in my garret!

"An'—an' here you folks have gone to work and bought me this beautiful music box——By Hannah! I don't desarve it!" cried the ex-steward vigorously. "An' I don't desarve to be Santa Claus this year nor to give out the presents as I used to. I—I ain't been in the Christmas sperit——"

"Christmas spirit your granny!" burst out Doctor Ambrose again, amidst a general use of pocket handkerchiefs by the feminine part of the audience. "You let me put you through a course of sprouts, and I'll make you the most spirited Santa Claus that ever came down a cardboard chimney!"

CHAPTER XXX

"CHRISTMAS GIFT"

Eliphalet Truitt stumbled out of the Shell Road store a little later with fingers tingling from the pressure of many friendly hands and with tear-blinded eyes. Perhaps this latter fact was what caused him to all but run into a much smaller craft on the wind-swept road. The clouds were broken overhead and the moon, peering through, shed sufficient light for the startled ex-steward to identify his vis-à-vis.

"Sue? By Hannah! I reckoned you'd be 'twixt your blankets," he declared.

"Oh, 'Liphalet!" she cried. "Pearly and I have been giving the last touches to the Christmas tree. And Pearly——Why! where is she?"

Miss Sue had not seen her companion dart ahead to join Helmford, who had likewise come down the store steps.

"Pearly's going to live with me, 'Liphalet—for a while at least. Cap'n Jonah will stay with Cap'n Abe here at the store. But Pearly will need somebody to help with her sewing—you know——"

She halted with a blush that 'Liphalet did not see. Then, eagerly: "I suppose Cap'n Abe presented the music box to you, 'Liphalet? I did not mean to miss that. But I had to rouse out Washy Gallup and start him over to old Suz Montevedo's for the night. The Ladies' Aid will find watchers for poor Suz, turn about, until he is better."

"By Hannah!" breathed the ex-steward looking hungrily into her face. "You knowed about that music box the folks was getting me all the time, didn't you, Susan?"

"Oh, yes. And I thought you would surely suspect something that day in front of the post-office when you saw it in Perry Baker's wagon."

Her laugh, so low and mellow, thrilled him. Somehow he caught both of her fluttering hands and she let them lie in his grasp.

"Susan!" he said.

"Yes, 'Liphalet," and her sweet eyes were suddenly raised boldly to his own.

"If you didn't have all that money——"

"What money do you mean, 'Liphalet?" she asked, puzzled.

"That fortune your A'nt Amy left you."

"I—I haven't much of it left, you know, 'Liphalet. Only 'bout ninety dollars."

"What?" almost shouted the man. "Ninety dollars?"

"Yes. You know, Aunt Amy left me a little over four hundred dollars. I—I bought a dress, that I—I laid away, with part of it." The blush was again hidden in the uncertain light of an uncertain moon. That silver gray poplin, laid away in lavender, was the tenderest secret in all Sue Ambrose's life.

"Folks reported around," she hastened to add, "that the legacy was a lot more. You know how stories grow in Cardhaven."

"Grow! From four hundred to forty thousand? I should say! Why, Susan, thinking you had all that money——"

"Only four hundred dollars, 'Liphalet."

"Forty thousand! By Hannah! Has gossip cheated me out of this here blessin' for goin' on ten year?"

He held her in his arms right in the public road. He knew by the very yielding of her body to his own what her answer was. With the clearing of the tempest on this Christmas Eve had come the clearing up of all mistakes and misapprehensions in their lives.

A raucous "Ahem!" apprised them of the presence of somebody besides Pearl and Helmford behind them. "Well, I vum!" ejaculated the voice of Doctor Ambrose. "'Twan't your liver after all, 'Liphalet Truitt, that was out of kilter. I see now 'twas your heart!"

The dying gale chased tatters of cloud across the face of the moon. Only now and then was the road lighted sufficiently for Helmford and Pearl to see clearly the trio walking on ahead of them toward the Ambrose cottage. Helmford and Pearl walked close together and slowly. They were in that ecstatic state where the touch of a hand—even the caress of their garments against each other—thrilled them. Pearl had never dreamed, even under the inspiration of the tales in the Ladies' Home Provider, that love was as sweet as this!

"This has been one blessed—exciting—astounding day, Pearly," Helmford said. "How much has happened in a few hours! This morning I thought——"

"Yes?" she asked, as he hesitated, and giving a happy little skip as she clung to his arm. "What did you think?"

"I thought you were as far away from me as that moon up there."

"My, how foolish of you!" breathed Pearl, yet delighted. "And just because poor Uncle Jonah would give me some of his fortune."

"All of it, he said," Helmford told her grimly. "A hundred thousand dollars. That is a great sum, Pearl."

"Is it?" she asked innocently. "It's not so much when it's only in your mind."

"And I'm glad you haven't got it—even in your mind, Pearly."

"Why, say!" cried the girl, "I never thought about having money. Only a little. If Cap'n Jonah really had a fortune to give me I wouldn't know what to do with it. Look at Miss Sue. What does she do with all the money folks say she's got? She can only eat so much, and drink so much, and sleep in one bed at a time. Of course, she can wear better clothes than I can. But, Joe," she added roguishly and peered up into his face with sparkling eyes, "if you teach lots of fishes to hatch eggs, the Government will raise your pay, and then you can buy all the dresses I need or want, I am sure!"

The moon drew a heavier, fleecier cloud across her face just then and hid a second couple who were locked in each other's arms on the old Shell Road.

In the brilliant sunshine of that Christmas morning Cap'n Jonah marched up the Petty lane again. And he thought as he advanced toward the house of his initial approach to the Petty domicile on the October afternoon which now seemed so long past—when he had found Pearl Holden taking down the clothes with the Petty family absent at the Harwich cattle show.

"Whatever!" muttered the master mariner. "Things have changed since then, for a fac'! Why! they've changed ha'f a dozen times around—near 'bout. I ain't ne'er taken a v'y'ge yet—not even that one when I was purty nigh made into a goulash by cannibals—that's been any more excitin' than this here.

"But," concluded the captain with vast satisfaction, "I have made harbor at last and dropped anchor in a safe roadstead, I do allow."

Although he expected no pleasant interview with his relatives, he tramped cheerfully to the door. Nothing could greatly disturb a man who was worth thirty thousand dollars, and could get the cash any day he wanted to go to the bank and deliver up the certificate of stock of the Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company which he had carried around so long, as a keepsake more than anything else.

For on the previous afternoon Cap'n Abe had insisted on calling up his friend at the Paulmouth National Bank by telephone, and this individual had confirmed the story of the sudden and phenomenal rise in value of the Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company shares. So after all, Cap'n Jonah was comfortably wealthy and need never worry about the "bite and sup" that Sarah Petty had so begrudged him.

Sarah was in no aggressive mood when Cap'n Jonah came to the door on this Christmas morning. The sorely battered Tom had returned on the previous afternoon to relate the wonderful story of Cap'n Jonah's real fortune. It was more astonishing—indeed, it was a greater shock—to the Pettys than all that had gone before.

Without a doubt now—it was a tangible fact—Cap'n Jonah possessed the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars. It was no mythical fortune such as Miss Sue's had been. Gossip could not increase or diminish it in the Pettys' ears. It was an incontrovertible fact—and they had cut themselves off from any share of it, whether Cap'n Jonah lived or died!

"I ain't going to bother you for long, Niece Sarah," said the old man sternly as he entered. "I propose to pack my chist, and Enos Cartright will come along by an' by with his old Mehitabel, and cart it down to Mr. Silt's. Pearly is coming to pack her things, too, and Enos will take them along to Doc Ambrose's, where Pearly will stay till she an' Mr. Helmford git married."

"Oh, Uncle Jonah!" murmured Sarah. "I'm sorry you got mad and air detarmined to leave us——"

"That'll do for you, my gal!" exclaimed the old captain, speaking with his sternest quarterdeck manner. "You had your chance and you flung it away. Don't you, nor your'n, never expect favor of me again, for you won't get it."

The blow silenced Orrin and the lout. But Sarah could not give up all. There was too much at stake. If all chance of getting a share of Cap'n Jonah's fortune was gone, there was still an attempt to be made to save something from the wreck of their hopes.

"Dear Uncle Jonah," Sarah cried, wiping crocodile tears from her narrow eyes, "do not leave us in an angry sperit. I can never forgit your kindness to father and mother when I was a gal. We should have been homeless had it not been for you. And even now you can make us all—Orrin, an' Tom, an' me—all but penniless if you air so minded."

"What do you mean, gal?" demanded Cap'n Jonah, eyeing her in amazement.

"Why—er—you know that note poor father gave you years ago—that note for two thousand dollars. Of course, it's a long time ago it happened——"

"Gal," Cap'n Jonah said quietly, drawing out his snuff box and making use of it in his usual way, "do you think I'd hold my kith an' kin—specially my own brother—to sech a hard-and-fast arrangement? Your father needed that money bad; and at that time I didn't need it. I sent it to him freely—glad I was to do it. When he sent me his note for two thousand dollars I tore it up and throwed it into the galley fire. I tell you what, I hope there isn't nothin' petty about Jonah Hand!"

The Mariner's Chapel was alight that evening and filled with the Shell Road folk and their friends from near and far. Only one family in the neighborhood was not represented. The Petty house was dark, and 'Liphalet, as the jolly representative of Santa Claus, had no gift in his sack marked for any of the sadly disappointed trio who had treated Cap'n Jonah so despitefully.

But for everybody else the Shell Road Santa Claus found something in that wonderful sack of his, or on the tree which occupied the site of the pulpit. Even "the last Tapp" was not forgotten, and that round-eyed and chubby baby gripped in his tiny fist a wonderful rattle which his smiling mother had much to do to keep out of his mouth.

Never had 'Liphalet been jollier, been so ready with quip and jest as he passed through the company, as on this particular occasion. For wherever he went with his pack of gifts he could turn his gaze upon the quiet, yet gay and smiling, countenance of Miss Sue. She paid him back in his own coin when he looked at her—in the coinage of happy smiles—so that 'Liphalet thrilled to the very marrow of his being.

Nor were 'Liphalet and Miss Sue the only happy couple in the Mariner's Chapel on this blessed Christmas night. The vestry as well as the audience room had been trimmed with greens and holly; and in the vestry the young folks gathered in groups when the refreshments had been served.

Cap'n Jonah and Cap'n Abe, each with a plate of ice-cream and a generous slice of cake on his broad knee, sat together on the stairs like two school boys and watched the young folk below with appreciative glances. One particular couple they eyed with deep interest. Helmford was leading the curious Pearl to a spot directly under the main chandelier of the vestry, from which dangled some mystery wrapped in muslin.

"You trimmed this part of the vestry, Joe," they heard Pearl say. "What is it?"

Helmford reached up and whipped the covering from his bough of mistletoe. He held her close under it and boldly took toll from her ready lips. The others shouted their approval and ran toward them. The old custom of the mistletoe was due to be honored by more than one couple that evening. Nor did 'Liphalet fail to lead Miss Sue to the spot and there kiss the doctor's blushing sister before them all.

"Tell ye what 'tis," shrilled Washy Gallup. "Looks as though the Mariner's Chapel could purt' nigh afford to support a reg'lar minister. There's at least two marriages in the offing."

Cap'n Abe nudged Cap'n Jonah heartily in the ribs.

"I guess ye needn't be so scare't," he whispered hoarsely, "of telling Pearly an' that Helmford 'bout your fortune, Cap'n Hand. Looks to me as though you couldn't pry that fish trainer away from her now with a crowbar!"

"That's whatever!" returned Cap'n Jonah. "Jest the same I'll feel more satisfied like when I see 'em spliced an' we've all set up housekeepin' together. For I tell you, Mr. Silt, them two young folks have told me that they won't be happy unless I share their quarters with 'em.

"I'm goin' to cast anchor—that's whatever!" said Cap'n Jonah, rapping his knuckle thoughtfully on the cover of his old silver snuffbox. "I've come to a pleasant harbor, Mr. Silt. I calc'late I'm goin' to be happy—and would be happy, fortune or no fortune—for the rest of my natural life, with little Pearly and her man."

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]

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Table of Contents

- Cap'n Jonah's Fortune
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- CAP'N JONAH'S FORTUNE

- CHAPTER I

- PEARL OF THE CLOTHESLINE

- CHAPTER II

- A BLIND YOUNG MAN

- CHAPTER III

- CAP'N JONAH SETTLES DOWN

- CHAPTER IV

- TOM PETTY REVEALS HIMSELF

- CHAPTER V

- "BETTER A DINNER OF HERBS"

- CHAPTER VI

- ROMANCE AND PEARL HOLDEN

- CHAPTER VII

- GETTING ACQUAINTED

- CHAPTER VIII

- THE BALD TRUTH

- CHAPTER IX

- A SHELL ROAD IDYL

- CHAPTER X

- "PEARLY"

- CHAPTER XI

- AN EVENING WITH CAP'N ABE

- CHAPTER XII

- THE APOSTATE SANTA CLAUS

- CHAPTER XIII

- FAIR AND FOUL WEATHER

- CHAPTER XIV

- VEERING WINDS

- CHAPTER XV

- MISUNDERSTANDINGS

- CHAPTER XVI

- THE ALLEGORY

- CHAPTER XVII

- THE STRONG BOX

- CHAPTER XVIII

- SARAH PETTY TRIMS HER SAILS

- CHAPTER XIX

- THE HIGH HAND

- CHAPTER XX

- THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

- CHAPTER XXI

- THE WISE MEN OUT OF THE SOUTH

- CHAPTER XXII

- THE STING OF HYPOCRISY

- CHAPTER XXIII

- THE CHRISTMAS GALE

- CHAPTER XXIV

- THE MISTLETOE BOUGH

- CHAPTER XXV

- THE PRICE OF HEROISM

- CHAPTER XXVI

- CAP'N JONAH'S CHALLENGE

- CHAPTER XXVII

- A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS

- CHAPTER XXVIII

- ALL ABOUT A BAD SMELL

- CHAPTER XXIX

- CHRISTMAS EVE AT CAP'N ABE'S

- CHAPTER XXX

- "CHRISTMAS GIFT"

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE