There were many pleasant thoughts in Sheila's heart just now; nor did she allow the secret of her past to leave its acid scars upon her soul. She was the life and joy of the old house on the Head; she was the center of amusement when she went into company at the church or elsewhere. She managed, too, to be that marvelous specimen of beautiful womankind who can attract other girls as well as men.

For one thing, the girl played no favorites. She treated them all alike. None of the young men of Big Wreck Cove could honestly crow because Ida May Bostwick had showed him any special favor.

And none of them suspected that Tunis Latham had the inside track with the girl from the city. At least, this was unsuspected by all before the occasion of the "harvest-home festival"—that important affair held yearly by the ladies' aid of the Big Wreck Cove church.

For the first time in more than a year, Cap'n Ira and Prudence ventured to town in the evening. Church socials, in the past, and while Cap'n Ira was so much at sea, had been Prudence Ball's chief relaxation. She was naturally of a social disposition, and the simple pleasure of being with and of a party of other matrons of the church was almost the height of Prudence's mundane desire.

When Cap'n Ira heard her express the wish to go to the harvest-home festival he took an extra pinch of snuff.

"I swan!" he said. "If we take that Queen of Sheby out at night, she'll near have a conniption. She'll think the world's come to an end. She ain't been out o' her stable at night since Hector was a pup—and Hector is a big dog now! How can you think of such a thing, Prudence?"

"Queenie won't mind, I guess," said his wife calmly. "I shouldn't be surprised if you was saying one word for her and a good many more'n one for yourself, Ira."

However, they went to the harvest-home festival. It was bound to be a very gay and enjoyable occasion, and Queenie did not stumble more than three times going down the hill into the port.

"That old critter would be the death of us, if she could do it without being the death of herself, too," fumed Cap'n Ira.

There were half a dozen young men almost fighting for the privilege of taking Queenie around to the sheds and blanketing her, the winner hopeful of a special smile and word from Sheila.

The decorated church was well filled when the trio from Wreckers' Head entered, and most delicious odors rose from the basement, where the tables were laid.

Sheila was immediately surrounded by her own little coterie of young people and was enjoying herself quietly when a newcomer, whose appearance created some little surprise at the door, approached the group of which the girl was the center.

"Why, here's Orion Latham!" exclaimed one girl. "I didn't know the Seamew was in."

"We just made it by the skin of our teeth," Orion said, making it a point to shake hands with Sheila. "How are you, Miss Bostwick? I never did see such a Jonah of an old tub as that dratted schooner! I thought she never would get back this trip."

"I cal'late you wouldn't think she was Jonahed if the Seamew was yours, 'Rion," snickered Andrew Roby.

"I wouldn't even take her as a gift," snarled Orion.

"Guess you won't get her that way—if any," chuckled Joshua Jones. "Tunis, he knows which side o' the bread his butter's on. He's doin' well. We cal'late—pa and me—to have all our freight come down from Boston on the Seamew."

Orion glowered at him.

"You'd better have a care, Josh," he growled. "That schooner is hoodooed, as sure as sure! She'll stub her nose some night on Lighthouse Point Reef, if she don't do worse. You can't scurcely steer her proper."

"Nonsense, 'Rion!" spoke up Zebedee Pauling. "I'd like to sail on her myself."

"Perhaps," Sheila interposed, rather flushed, and looking at Orion with unmistakable displeasure, "Orion will give up his berth to you, Zebedee. He seems so very sure that the schooner is unlucky. I came down from Boston in her, and I saw nothing about her save to admire."

"And if you found her all right, Miss Bostwick," struck in the gallant Joshua, "she's good enough for me. Of course, I heard tell some thought the Seamew had a bad reputation—that she run under a fishing boat once and was haunted. But I cal'late that's all bosh."

"Yah!" growled Orion. "Have it your own way. But after the dratted schooner is sunk and you lose a mess of freight, Josh Jones, I guess you'll sing small."

"I've heard," said Andrew Roby gravely, "that it's mighty bad manners to bite the hand that feeds you. You never was overpolite, 'Rion Latham."

"Not only that, but he's clean reckless with his own livelihood," added Zebedee Pauling.



CHAPTER XV

AN INVITATION ACCEPTED

It was a small incident, of course; scarcely to be noted at all when it was over. Yet the impression left upon Sheila's mind was that Orion Latham was deliberately endeavoring to injure his cousin's business with the Seamew. If he talked like this before the more or less superstitious Portygees, how long would Tunis manage to keep a crew to work the schooner?

Had she dared she would have taken Orion to task there and then for his unfaithfulness. The fellow was, as Cap'n Ira had once observed, one of those yapping curs always envious of the braver dog's bone.

To the girl's disgust, too, Orion Latham showed plainly that he considered that he, as an older acquaintance of the girl, could presume upon that fact. He clung to her throughout the evening like a mussel to duck grass. Of all the Big Wreck Cove youth, he was the only one that she could not put in his place.

She did not think it wise to snub him so openly that Orion would take offense. This course might do the captain of the Seamew harm. She foresaw trouble in the offing for Tunis, in any case, and she did not wish to do anything that would spur Orion to further and more successful attempts to harm his cousin's business.

There was another matter troubling Sheila's mind after Orion had come to the harvest-home festival. Mason Chapin likewise appeared at the church. But Tunis did not come. He knew, of course, of the festival, and he had known when he sailed last for Boston that the Balls and Ida May intended to go. It did seem as if Tunis might have come, if for only a little while, before going home.

These thoughts made Sheila rather inattentive to other proposals, and she found herself obliged to go down to supper with Orion, since he had outsat and outtalked all the other young men who had hovered about her. She was nice to Orion; the girl could scarcely be otherwise, even to those she disliked, unless some very important matter arose to disturb her, but she did not enjoy the remainder of the evening, and she was glad when Cap'n Ira and Prudence were ready to go home. It was full time, the girl thought.

Even then Orion Latham assumed altogether too much authority. Sheila had been about to send little John-Ed around for Queenie and the carryall, but Orion put the boy aside with a self-assured grin.

"Nobody ain't going to put you in the carriage, Ida May, but me," he declared. "I'll get the old mare."

He seized his cap and went out. In a few minutes they had said good-bye, and the old couple and the girl went out on the church steps. Sheila saw the carryall standing before the door. A figure stood at the old mare's head which she presumed to be Orion's.

"The chariot is ready, I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira. "Come on, Prudence."

Sheila helped the old woman into the rear seat and then aided Cap'n Ira as well. She got in quickly in front, but as she was about to gather up the reins the man holding Queenie's head came around swiftly and stepped in beside her to the driver's place.

"I swan! That you, Tunis?" exclaimed Cap'n Ira.

"Looks like it," the captain of the Seamew said gravely. "All clear aft?"

"You can pay off, Tunis," returned the old man. "Tuck that robe around your knees, Prudence. This night air is as chill as a breath off the ice barrens."

Orion loafed into the lamplight by the steps before Queenie got into action. His scowl was unseen, but his voice was audible—as it was meant to be—to Sheila's ears.

"There he is—hoggin' everything, same as usual. How did I know he was hanging around outside here, waiting to drive her home? Just as though he owned her! Huh! He may be skipper aboard that dratted schooner, but that gives him no right to boss me ashore. I won't stand it."

"Sit down to it, then, 'Rion," snickered one of the other young fellows. "I cal'late Tunis has got the inside course on all of us."

The girl said nothing to the captain of the Seamew at first. It was Prudence who asked him why he had not been in the church.

"I could not get over here until just now," Tunis replied quietly.

Sheila wondered if he really had been detained on the schooner. Perhaps he had refrained from coming to the festival for fear the good people of Big Wreck Cove would notice his attentions to her. He had never been publicly in her company since he had brought her down from Boston. Orion Latham's outburst there at the church door was the first cue people might have gained of anything more than a passing acquaintanceship between the captain of the Seamew and the girl who had come to live with the Balls.

These thoughts bore down the girl's spirits tremendously. The simple pleasure of the evening was quite erased from her memory. She remained speechless while old Queenie climbed the hill to the Head.

The desultory conversation between Cap'n Ira, Prudence, and the young shipmaster scarcely attracted the girl's attention. If Tunis looked at her curiously now and then, she did not see his glances. And she merely nodded her understanding of his statement when Tunis said, speaking directly to her:

"The Seamew's going to lie here over Sunday this time, Ida May."

"That'll be nice for you, Tunis," Aunt Prue put in. "You can go to church. You don't often have that privilege. Seafarin' is an awful godless life."

Queenie sprang ahead gallantly at the sound of a hearty sneeze from Cap'n Ira, just then, and they were soon at home. Tunis jumped out and aided the old woman and then the captain to alight. Sheila got out on the other side of the carriage. She would have preferred to run on into the house, but she could not really do that. Queenie must be unharnessed and put in her stable and given a measure of oats to munch. Of course, Tunis would offer to do this, but she could not leave him to attend to it without a word.

"I'll help you with Queenie, Ida May," said the captain of the Seamew.

That settled it. She had to remain outside while Cap'n Ira and Prudence went into the house. Tunis led the old mare toward the barn. A lantern, burning very dimly, was in a box just outside the big door, and Sheila got this and held it while Tunis busied himself with the buckles.

"I didn't mean to interfere," the man said, suddenly breaking the silence between them. "But as I was coming this way, of course, I expected to ride along with you. So—"

"What do you mean, Captain Latham?" the girl asked wonderingly.

"Orion said you sent him out to get Queenie."

"Why, I—"

"Of course, you didn't know I was there. I had just reached the church. But 'Rion is so fresh—"

"He took it upon himself to go," said the girl calmly. "I did not send him. I guess you know how your cousin is."

"He is too fresh. I'd like to punch him," growled Tunis, to the girl's secret delight. It sounded boyish, but real. "I don't know that I can stand him aboard the Seamew much longer. He attends to everybody's business but his own."

"He means you no good, Captain Latham," she said frankly. "To-night he was repeating that silly story about the Seamew being haunted."

"Cat's-foot!" ejaculated Tunis. "I wish I'd fired old Horry Newbegin for starting that."

"But 'Rion keeps it up."

"If he believed she was hoodoed, you wouldn't get him aboard with a wire cable," growled Tunis.

"It would be better for you and for the success of your business, Captain Latham, if 'Rion was really afraid of going aboard the Seamew," she said with confidence.

"Well, I don't see how I can fire him. He's my cousin—in a way. And there is enough ill feeling in the family now. Gran'ther Peleg left all his money to me, and it made Orion and his folks as sore as can be."

"You are inclined to be too kind. I am not sure it is always wise to be too easy."

"Like chopping off the dog's tail an inch at a time, so's not to hurt him so much, eh?" he chuckled.

"Something like that."

"Well, I'm almost tempted to give 'Rion his walking ticket. I've reason enough. He can't even keep a manifest straight."

"Does he even try?"

"And that also is in my mind," acknowledged Tunis. "I'm pretty well fed up on 'Rion, I do allow. But I don't know what Aunt 'Cretia would say." Then he laughed again. "Just about what she usually says, I guess; nothing at all. But she abhors family squabbles.

"That reminds me, Ida May. This being the first Sunday I've been home since you came here, I want you should go over with me after church to-morrow and have dinner at our house."

"Oh, Captain Latham! I—"

"And don't you guess you could employ some other term when speaking to me, Ida May?" he interrupted. "I get 'captained' almost enough aboard the schooner and up to Boston. Just plain 'Tunis' for those that are my friends suits me a sight better."

"I shall call you 'Tunis,' if you like," she said composedly. "But about taking dinner with you—I am not so sure."

"Why not?" he demanded.

"Your aunt has never called here since I have been on the Head."

"She don't call anywhere. She never did that I can remember. She goes to church on Sunday sometimes. Occasionally she has to go to town to buy things. Once in a dog's age she leaves anchor and gets as far as Paulmouth. But other times she's never off the place."

"I—I feel hesitant about doing what you ask, Captain—Tunis, I mean."

"Why?"

"You know well enough," said Sheila. "If anything should turn up—if the truth should come out—"

"Now, are you still worrying about that, Ida May?"

"Don't you think of it—Tunis?"

"Not a bit! We're as safe as a church. That girl will never show up here on Wreckers' Head. Of course not!"

He seemed absolutely confident. In the dim illumination of the lantern she looked very closely into his face. Then it was not fear of exposure that kept Tunis Latham silent. She moved closer to him, looking up into his countenance, holding the lantern so that her own face was in the shadow.

"Who suggested my coming to dinner, Tunis? You, or your Aunt Lucretia?"

"If you knew my aunt! Well! She seldom says a word. But when I have anything to say, I talk along just as though she answered back like an ordinary person would. I can tell if she's interested."

"Yes?"

"She's been interested in you from the start, I know. She showed it in her look the very first time I spoke of you—that day I brought you here to Wreckers' Head."

"But—but you have never spoken of this before. She did not come to call."

"I'll tell you," said Tunis earnestly. "I wanted to be sure. Aunt 'Cretia knew your—er—Sarah Honey very well."

"Oh."

"Just about as well as Mrs. Ball did. When she was staying here with Aunt Prue, she used to run over to our place a lot.

"You don't remember it," continued Tunis, grinning suddenly; "but you were taken over there when you were a baby."

"Oh, don't! Don't!" cried the girl. "Let us not speak so lightly—so carelessly. Suppose—suppose—"

"Suppose nothing!" exclaimed Tunis. "Don't have any fears. She wanted to know just how you looked—every particular. Oh, she has ways of showing what she wants without getting what you'd call voluble! I told her about your hair—your eyes—everything. I know from the way she looked that she accepts the fact of your being the real Ida May without more question than Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue."

She was silent, thinking. Then she sighed.

"I will accept the invitation, Tunis. But I feel—I feel that all is not for the best. But what must be must be. So—oh, I'll go!"



CHAPTER XVI

MEMORIES—AND TUNIS

The benison of that most beautiful season of all the year, the autumn, lay upon Wreckers' Head and the adjacent coast on that Sunday morning. Alongshore there is never any sad phase of the fall. One reason is the lack of deciduous trees. The brushless hills and fields are merely turned to golden brown when the frosts touch them.

The sea—ever changing in aspect, yet changeless in tide and restraint—was as bright and sparkling as at midsummer. Along the distant beaches the white ruffle of the surf seemed to have just been laundered. The green of the shallows and the blue of the deeper sea were equally vivid.

When she first arose Sheila Macklin looked abroad from that favorite north window of her bedroom, and saw that all the world was good. If she had felt secret misgivings and the tremor of a nervous apprehension, these feelings were sloughed away by this promising morning. The fear she had expressed to Tunis Latham the evening before did not obsess her. She continued placid and outwardly cheerful. Whatever threatened in the immediate future, she determined to meet it with as much composure as she could summon.

Nobody but Sheila Macklin knew wholly what she had endured since leaving her childhood's home. When Tunis Latham had come so dramatically into her life she had been almost at the limit of her endurance. To him, even, she had not confessed all her miseries. To escape from them she would have embraced a much more desperate expedient than posing as Ida May Bostwick.

The ethics of the situation had not really impressed her at first. The desire to get away from her unfortunate environment, from the city itself, and to go where nobody knew her history, not even her name, was the main thought at that time in the girl's mind. Tunis Latham's confident assurances that she would be accepted without question by Cap'n Ball and Prudence caused her to put aside all fear of consequences at the moment. It was a desperate stroke, but she had been in desperate need, and she had carried the matter through boldly.

Now that she seemed so securely established in the Ball household and was accepted by all the community of Big Wreck Cove as the real Ida May, it seemed foolish to give way to anxiety. Discovery of the imposture was remote.

Yet, as she had hinted to Tunis, she had an undercurrent of feeling—a more-than-faint apprehension—that all was not right. Something was lurking in the shadows of the future which menaced their peace and security.

She was ever mindful of the fact that Tunis had gone sponsor for her identity as Ida May. Should her imposture be revealed, her first duty would be to protect him. How could she do this? What tale could she concoct to make it seem that he was as much duped as were Cap'n Ball and Prudence?

This seemed impossible. She saw no way out. He had met the real Ida May Bostwick, and then had deliberately introduced Sheila Macklin as the girl he had been sent for! If the truth were revealed, what explanation could be offered?

Had she allowed her mind to dwell upon this phase of the affair she would surely have revealed to those about her, unobservant as they might be, that she had a secret cause for worry. She must drive it into the back of her mind—ignore it utterly.

And this she did on this beautiful Sabbath morning. When Tunis came up to the Head to accompany the Balls to church—Aunt Lucretia did not attend service on this day—a very close observer would have seen nothing in the girl's look or manner to suggest that so keen an anxiety had touched her.

This should have been Sheila's happy day—and it was. For the first time, the young captain of the Seamew linked his interest with her in a deliberate public appearance. Although she feared in secret the result of that appearance at church with Tunis Latham, it nevertheless thrilled her.

He harnessed Queenie after giving that surprised animal such a curry-combing and polishing as she had not suffered in many a day. Sheila rode with Prudence on the rear seat of the carryall.

"I'm berthed on the for'ard deck along o' you, Tunis," said the old man, hoisting himself with difficulty into the front seat. "If the afterguard is all ready, I be. Trip the anchor, boy, and set sail!"

As they passed down through Portygee Town the denizens of that part of Big Wreck Cove were streaming to their own place of worship. It was a saint's day, and the brown people—both men and women, ringed of ears and garbed in the very gayest colors—gave way with smiles and bows for the jogging old mare and the rumbling carryall. Some of the Seamew's crew were overtaken, and they swept off their hats to Prudence and the supposed Ida May, grinning up at Tunis with more than usual friendliness.

"Ah!" exclaimed Eunez Pareta to Johnny Lark, the Seamew's cook. "So you know she of the evil eye, eh?"

"What do you mean?" asked Johnny. "That pretty girl who rides behind Captain Latham?"

"Si!"

"She has no evil eye," declared the cook stoutly.

"It is told me that she has," said the smiling girl. "And she has put what you call the 'hoodoo' on that schooner. She come down in her from Boston."

"What of it?" retorted the cook. "She is a fine lady—and a pretty lady."

"So Tunis Latham think—heh?" demanded Eunez fiercely.

"And why not?" grinned Johnny.

"Bah! Has not all gone wrong with that Seamew ever since she sail in the schooner?" demanded the girl. "An anchor chain breaks; a rope parts; you lost a topmast—yes? How about Tony? Has he not left and will not return aboard the schooner for a price? Do you not find calm where other schooners find fair winds? Ah!"

"Pooh!" ejaculated Johnny Lark. "Old woman's talk!"

"Not!" cried the girl hotly. "It is a truth. The saints defend us from the evil eye! And Tunis Latham is under that girl's spell."

Johnny Lark tried to laugh again, but with less success. Many little things had marred the fair course of the Seamew and her captain's business. He, however, shook his head.

"Not that pretty girl yonder," he said, "has brought bad luck to the Seamew. No, no!"

"What, then?" asked Eunez, staring sidewise at him from eyes which seemed almost green.

"See!" said Johnny, seizing her wrist. "If the Seamew is a Jonahed schooner, it is because of something different. Yes!"

"Bah!" cried Eunez, yet with continued eagerness. "Tell me what it may be if it is not that girl with the evil eye?"

"Ask 'Rion Latham," whispered Johnny. "You know him—huh?"

The Portygee girl looked for a moment rather taken aback. Then she said, tossing her head:

"What if I do know 'Rion?"

"Ask him," repeated Johnny Lark. "He is cousin of our captain. He knows—if anybody knows—what is the trouble with the Seamew." And he shook his head.

Eunez stared at him.

"You know something you do not tell me, Juan?"

"Ask 'Rion Latham," the cook said again, and left her at the door of the church.

* * * * *

Those swains who had been "cluttering the course"—to quote Cap'n Ira—did not interfere in any way with the Balls' equipage on this Sunday at the church. There was none who seemed bold enough to enter the lists with Tunis Latham. He put Queenie in the shed and backed her out again and brought her around to the door when the service was ended without having to fight for the privilege.

'Rion Latham, however, was the center of a group of young fellows who were all glad to secure a smile and bow from the girl, but who only sheepishly grinned at Tunis. 'Rion was not smiling; there was a settled scowl upon his ugly face.

"I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira, as they drove away, "that 'Rion must have eat sour pickles for breakfast to-day and nothing much else. Yet he seemed perky enough last night at the sociable. I wonder what's got into him."

"I'd like to get something out of him," growled Tunis, to whom the remark was addressed.

"What's that?"

"Some work, for one thing," said the captain of the Seamew. "He's as lazy a fellow as I ever saw. And his tongue's too long."

"Trouble is," Cap'n Ira rejoined, "these trips you take in the schooner are too short to give you any chance to lick your crew into shape. They get back home too often. Too much shore leave, if ye ask me."

"I'd lose Mason Chapin if the Seamew made longer voyages. And I have lost one of the hands already—Tony."

"I swan! What's the matter with him?"

"His mother says Tony is scared to sail again with the Seamew. Some Portygee foolishness."

"I told you them Portygees warn't worth the grease they sop their bread in," declared Cap'n Ira.

The two on the rear seat of the carryall paid no attention to this conversation.

"I'm real pleased," said the old woman, "that you are going to dinner with Lucretia Latham, Ida May. Your mother thought a sight of her, and 'Cretia did of Sarah Honey, too. Sarah was one of the few who seemed to understand Lucretia. She's so dumb. I declare I can't never get used to her myself. I like folks lively about me, and I don't care how much they talk—the more the better.

"Lucretia Latham might have got her a good man and been happily married long ago, if it hadn't been that when a feller dropped in to call on her she sat mum all the evening and never said no more than the cat.

"I remember Silas Payson, who lived over beyond the port, took quite a shine to Lucretia, seeing her at church. Or, at least, we thought he did. Silas began going down to Latham's Folly of an evening, now and then, and setting up with Lucretia. But after a while he left off going and said he cal'lated he'd join the Quakers over to Seetawket. Playing Quaker meeting with just one girl to look at didn't suit, noway." And the old woman laughed placidly.

"Tunis says he understands his aunt," ventured the girl.

"Tunis has had to put up with her. But he can say nothing a good deal himself, if anybody should ask ye. That's the only fault I've found with Tunis. I've heard Ira talk at him for a straight hour in our kitchen, and all the answer Tunis made was to say 'yes' twice."

The girl did not find the captain of the Seamew at all inarticulate later, as they crossed the old fields of the Ball place and walked down the slope into the saucerlike valley where lay Latham's Folly. She had never known Tunis to be more companionable than on this occasion. He seemed to have gained the courage to talk on more intimate topics than at any time since their acquaintanceship had begun.

"I guess you know," he observed, "that most all the money Uncle Peke left me—after what the lawyers got—I put into that schooner. There's a mortgage on her, too. You see, although the old place will come to me by and by, Aunt Lucretia has rights in it while she lives. It's sort of entailed, you know. I could not raise a dollar on Latham's Folly, if I wanted to. So I am pretty well tied up, you see.

"But the schooner is doing well. That is, I mean, business is good, Ida May. Other things being equal, I will make more money with her the way I am doing now than I could in any other business. My line is the sea; I know that. I am fitted for it.

"And if I had invested Uncle Peke's legacy and kept on fishing, or tried for a berth in a deep bottom somewhere, I would not get ahead any faster or make so much money. Besides, long voyages would take me away from home, and, after all, Aunt Lucretia is my only kin and she would miss me sore."

"I am sure she would," said the girl with sympathy.

"But all ain't plain sailing," added the young skipper wistfully. "I am running too close to the reefs right now to crow any."

"But I am sure you will be successful in the end. Of course you will!"

"That's mighty nice of you," he said, smiling down into her vivid face. "With you and Aunt Lucretia both pulling for me, I ought to win out, sure enough.

"You can't fail to like her," he added. "If you just get the right slant on her character, I mean, Ida May. Hers has been a lonely life. Not that there has not almost always been somebody in the house with her. But she has lived with her own thoughts. She reads a great deal. There is not one topic I can broach of which she has not at least a general knowledge. I was sent away to school, but when I came home vacations I brought my books and she read them all.

"And she is a splendid listener." He laughed. "You'll find that out for yourself, I fancy. And I know she likes people to talk to her—when they have anything to say. Tell her things; that is what she enjoys."

In spite of his assurances, Sheila Macklin approached the old, brown house behind the cedars with much secret trepidation. Although Aunt Lucretia had a neighbor's girl come in to help her almost daily, she had preferred to prepare the dinner on this occasion with her own hands. And, perhaps, she did not care to have the neighbor's child around when the supposed Ida May came to the house for the first time.

They saw her watching from the side door—a tall, angular figure in a black dress. Her hair was done plainly and in no arrangement to soften the gaunt outline of her face, but there was much of it, and Sheila longed to make a change in that grim coiffure.

The woman smiled so warmly when she saw the two approach that almost instantly the girl forgot the grim contour of Aunt Lucretia's face. That smile was like a flash of sunshine playing over one of those barren, brown fields through which they had passed so quickly on the way down from the Ball house.

"This is Ida May, Aunt Lucretia," said Tunis, as they reached the porch.

The smiling woman stretched forth a hand to the girl. Her eyes, peering through the spectacles, were very keen, and when their gaze was centered upon the girl's face it seemed that Aunt Lucretia was suddenly smitten by some thought, or by some discovery about the visitor, which made her greeting slow.

Yet that may have been her usual manner. Tunis did not appear to observe anything extraordinary. But Sheila thought Aunt Lucretia had been about to greet her with a kiss, and then had thought better of it.



CHAPTER XVII

AUNT LUCRETIA

There was nothing thereafter in Aunt Lucretia's manner—surely not in her speech—to lead Sheila to fear the woman did not accept her at face value. Why should she suspect a masquerade when nobody else did? The girl took her cue from Tunis and placidly accepted his aunt's manner as natural.

Aunt Lucretia put the dinner on the table at once. They ate, when there was special company, in the dining room. The meal was generous in quantity and well cooked. It was evident that, like most country housewives, Lucretia Latham took pride in her table. Had the visitor come for the meal alone she would have been amply recompensed.

But the woman seldom uttered a word, and then only brief questions regarding the service of the food. She listened smilingly to the conversation between Tunis and the visitor, but did not enter into it. It was difficult for the girl to feel at ease under these circumstances.

Especially was this so after dinner, when she asked to help Aunt Lucretia clear off the table and wash and dry the dishes. The woman made no objection; indeed, she seemed to accept the girl's assistance placidly enough. But while they were engaged in the task—a time when two women usually have much to chatter about, if nothing of great importance—Aunt Lucretia uttered scarcely a word, preferring even to instruct her companion in dumb show where the dried dishes should be placed.

Yet, all the time, the girl could not trace anything in Aunt Lucretia's manner or look which actually suggested suspicion or dislike. Tunis seemed eminently satisfied with his aunt's attitude. He whispered to Sheila, when they were alone together:

"She certainly likes you, Ida May."

"Are you sure?" the girl asked.

"Couldn't be mistaken. But don't expect her to tell you so in just so many words."

Later they walked about the dooryard and out-buildings—Tunis and the visitor—and Aunt Lucretia watched them from her rocking-chair on the porch. What her thoughts were regarding her nephew and the girl it would be hard to guess, but whatever they were, they made her face no grimmer than usual, and the light in her bespectacled eyes was scarcely one of dislike or even of disapproval. Yet there was a strange something in the woman's look or manner which suggested that she watched the visitor with thoughts or feelings which she wished neither the girl nor Tunis to observe.

Late in the afternoon the two young people started back for the Ball house, taking a roundabout way. They did not even follow the patrol path, well defined along the brink of Wreckers' Head as far as the beach. Instead, they went down by the wagon track to the beach itself, intending to follow the edge of the sea and the channel around to a path that led up the face of the bluff to the Ball homestead. It was a walk the girl had never taken.

The reaction she experienced after having successfully met and become acquainted with Aunt Lucretia put Sheila in high spirits. Tunis had never seen her in quite this mood. Although she was always cheerful and not a little gay about the Ball homestead, she suddenly achieved a spirit of sportiveness which surprised the captain of the Seamew. But he wholly liked and approved of this new mood.

She had made herself a new fall frock and a pretty, close-fitting hat—something entirely different, as he had noticed, from the styles displayed by the other girls of Big Wreck Cove. And he was observant enough to see that this outfit was more like what the girls in Boston wore.

She ran ahead to pick up a shell or pebble that gleamed at the water's edge from a long way off. She escaped a wetting from the surf by a scant margin, and laughed delightedly at the chance she took. Back against the foot of the bluff certain brilliant flowers grew—fall blossoms that equaled any in Prudence Ball's garden—and the girl gathered these and arranged them in an attractive bouquet with a regard for color that delighted her companion.

They came, finally, in sight of a cabin back under the bank on the far side of the little cove, where once Tunis had reaped clams while Cap'n Ira and the Queen of Sheba made their unfortunate slide down the face of the bluff. The sea was so low now that Tunis could aid the girl across the mouth of the tiny inlet on the sand bar which defended it from the sea. There was but one channel over which she need leap with his help.

The cabin captivated Sheila, especially when she learned it was no longer occupied. It had a tight tin roof and a cement-pipe chimney with a cap to keep the rain out. The window sashes had been carried away and the door hung by a single hinge. However, the one-roomed cabin was otherwise tight and dry.

"Sometimes fishing parties from the port come around here and camp for a day or two," explained Tunis. "But Hosea Westcott used to live here altogether. Even in the winter. He caught his own fish and split and dried them; he dug clams and picked beach plums and sold them in town, or swapped them for what he needed. Sometimes the neighbors gave him a day's work."

"An old and lonely man, Tunis?" the girl murmured.

"That is what he was. All his immediate family was gone. So, when he fell ill one winter and one of the coast guards found him here almost starved and helpless, they took him away to the poor farm."

They went on around the end of the headland and walked up the beach toward the port. Before they reached the path by which they intended to mount to the summit of Wreckers' Head, they observed another couple going in the same direction, following the edge of the water on the firm strand. The woman was dressed in such brilliant hues that she could be mistaken for nobody but a resident of Portygee Town.

"That is the daughter of Pareta, who brought up your trunk when you came here, Ida May," said Tunis carelessly.

"But do you see who the man is?" she said, with some surprise. "It is your cousin."

"'Rion? So it is. Well," he added rather scornfully, "no accounting for tastes. She's a decent-enough girl, I guess, but we don't mix much with the Portygees. Although most of them are all right folks, at that. But fooling around those girls sometimes starts trouble, as 'Rion ought to know by this time."

As they climbed the path, Tunis aiding his companion at certain places, the girl, looking down, thought they were being closely watched by the other couple on the beach. There was nothing in this to disturb her mind; a feeling of confidence had overcome her since her experience with Aunt Lucretia. Her present environment was so far from the scenes of her old pain and misery that it seemed nothing actually could disturb her again.

The peacefulness of the scene impressed Tunis as well. When they came up finally upon the brink of the headland they saw a spiral of smoke rising from one of the chimneys of the distant Ball homestead. The man pointed to it and, smiling down upon her, repeated a verse he had read somewhere which he knew expressed the hope she held:

"I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled Above the green elms that a cottage was near; And I said, 'if there's peace to be found in the world, A heart that was humble might hope for it here.'"

"That is pretty near right, don't you think, Ida May?"

"It is, indeed! Oh, it is!" she cried. "And my heart is humble, Tunis. I feel that God has been very good to me—and you," she added softly.

"I've been mighty good to myself," he responded. "Ida May, there never was a girl just like you, I guess. Anyway, I never saw such a one. I—I don't know just how to put it, but I feel that you are the only girl in the world I can ever feel the same toward."

"Tunis!"

He took her hand, looking so hungrily into her face that she, blushing, if not confused, could not bear his gaze, and the long lashes drooped to veil the violet eyes.

"You understand me, Ida May?" whispered the captain of the Seamew eagerly. "I don't know, fixed as I am, that I've any right to talk to you like this. But—but I can't wait any longer!"

She allowed her hand to remain in his warm clasp, and now she looked up at him again.

"Have you thought of what all this may mean, Tunis?" she asked.

"You bet I have. I haven't been thinking of much else—not since the first time I saw you."

"What? You felt—felt that you could like me that night when we sat on the bench so long on the Common?"

"My Godfrey, Ida May!" he exclaimed. "Since that time you slipped on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and I caught you. That's when I first knew that you were the most wonderful girl in the world!"

"Oh, Tunis! Do you mean that?"

"I certainly do," he said stoutly.

"That—that you thought that? At very first sight?"

"I couldn't get you out of my mind. I went about in a sort of dream. Why, Ida May, when Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue talked so much about wanting that other girl down here, all I could think of was you! I half believed it must be you that they sent me for—until I came face to face with that other girl."

Her face dimpled suddenly; her eyes shone. The look she gave him passed through Tunis Latham like an electric shock. He trembled. He would have drawn her closer.

"Not here, Tunis," she whispered. "But if you dare take me—knowing what and who I am—I am all yours. Whenever you feel that you can take me I shall be ready. Can I say more, Tunis?"

He looked at her solemnly. "I am the happiest man alive. I am the happiest man alive, Ida May!" he breathed.



CHAPTER XVIII

IDA MAY THINKS IT OVER

The Seamew sailed next day, short-handed. Not only had Tony, the boy, left, but one of the foremast hands did not put in an appearance. A grinning Portygee boy came to the wharf and announced that "Paul, he iss ver' seek."

Tunis knew it would be useless to go after the man, just as it had been useless to go after Tony. He had been unable to ship another boy in Tony's place, and when he let it be known among the dock laborers and loungers about Luiz Wharf that there was a berth open in the Seamew's forecastle, nobody applied for it.

"What is the matter with those fellows?" the skipper asked Mason Chapin. "They were tumbling over each other a few weeks ago to join us, and now there isn't an offer."

"Some Portygee foolishness," grumbled the mate.

"I wonder," muttered Tunis.

"You wonder if it's so?" queried the mate. "You know how silly these people are once they get a crazy notion in their heads."

"What's the crazy notion, Mr. Chapin?"

The mate flung up his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

"A haunt—a jinx—something. The Lord knows!"

"I wonder if it is a Portygee notion or something else," said Tunis Latham, his eyes fixed on the back of Orion, busy, for once, at the other rail.

"Whatever it is, Captain Latham," said Mason Chapin with gravity, "I suggest you fill your berths at Boston."

"Guess I'll have to. But the offscourings of the city docks! They will be worse than these Portygees."

It was not a prospect he welcomed. He well knew the sort of dock rats he must put up with if he wished to make up his crew with city hands for a short trip. The sea tramps who are within reach of coasting skippers are the same kind of worthless material that shiftless farmers must depend upon in harvest time.

Even the lack of one man forward, to say nothing of the cook's boy, made a considerable difference in the working of the schooner. 'Rion Latham loudly proclaimed that he was being imposed upon when he was forced to work with the captain's watch. He had shipped as supercargo and clerk, he had! This treatment was an imposition.

"You know what you can do about it, 'Rion, if you like," the skipper said to him calmly, but aside. "I wouldn't want to feel that I was holding you to a job that you did not like. You can leave the Seamew any time you want."

"Huh! The rats will be doing that soon enough," growled 'Rion.

But he did not say this where Captain Latham could hear. It was Horry Newbegin who heard him.

"It strikes me, young feller, that if I quarreled with my victuals and drink the way you do, I'd get me another berth and get shet of all this." And the old salt wagged his head. "I don't get you at all, 'Rion."

"You wait," growled the younger man. "I'll leave at the right time. And if things go as I expect, everybody else will leave him flat, too."

"You're taking a chance talking that way," admonished the old man. "It's just as much mutiny as though you turned and hit the skipper or the mate."

"It is, is it? I'll show him!"

"Show who?" asked Horry, in some wonder at the other's spitefulness.

"That dratted cousin of mine. Thinks he owns the earth and sea, as well as this hoodooed tub of a schooner. Gets the best of everything. But he won't always. He never ought to have got the money to buy this old tub."

"You said you wouldn't have her for a gift," chuckled the old man.

"But that don't make it any the more right that he should have her. And she is hoodooed. You know she is, Horry."

The old mariner was silent. 'Rion craftily went on:

"Look what a number of things have happened since he put this derned schooner into commission. We broke an anchor chain in Paulmouth Harbor, didn't we? And the old mud hook lies there to this day. Did you ever see so many halyards snap in your life, and in just a capful of wind? Didn't we have a tops'l carried away—clean—in that squall off Swampscott? And now the hands are leaving her."

"Guess you know something about that," growled Horry.

'Rion grinned.

"Maybe I do. I don't say 'no' and I don't say 'yes.' However, we've all got to work like dogs to make up for being short-handed."

"Nobody is kicking much but you," said the older man.

"That's all right. I've got pluck enough not to stand being imposed upon. Them Portygees—well, there's no figuring on what they will do."

"I can see you are bent on making them do something that will raise trouble," Newbegin said, shaking his head once more.

"What do you expect? You know the Seamew is hoodooed. Huh! Seamew! That ain't no more her rightful name than it is mine."

"I wouldn't say that."

"I would!" snapped 'Rion. "She's the Marlin B., out o' Salem. No matter what he says, or anybody else. She's the murder ship. If he sailed her over that place outside o' Salem Harbor where those poor fellows was drowned, they'd rise again and curse the schooner and all aboard her."

The old man shuddered. He turned his face away and spat reflectively over the rail. The tug of the steering chains to starboard was even then thrilling the cords of his hands and arms with an almost electric shock. 'Rion watched him slyly. He knew the impression he was making on the old man's superstitious mind. He played upon it as he did upon the childish minds of some of the Portygee seamen.

So Captain Tunis Latham did not arrive in Boston in a very calm frame of mind. Although he had no words with 'Rion, and really no trouble with the crew in general, he felt that trouble was brewing. And the worst of it was, it was trouble which he did not know how to avert.

It was not so easy to fill the empty berth in the forecastle, even from the offscourings of the docks. It was a time when dock labor was at a premium. And short voyages never did interest good sailormen. In addition, knowing that the Seamew sailed from her home port, decent seafarers wanted to know what was the matter with her that the captain could not fill his forecastle at that end.

These men wondered about Captain Latham, too. They judged that infirmities of temper must be the reason his men did not stay with the schooner. He was, perhaps, a driver—too quick with his fist or the toe of his boot. Questions along this line were bound to breed answers—and answers from those members of the Seamew's crew who were not friendly to the skipper.

In some little den off Commercial Street 'Rion Latham had forgathered with certain dock loiterers, and, after that, word went to and fro that the Seamew was haunted. If she ever sailed off Great Misery Island, the crew of a run-under Salem fishing smack would rise up to curse the schooner's company. And that curse would follow those who sailed aboard her—either for'ard or in the afterguard—for all time. In consequence of this the only man who applied for the empty berth aboard the Seamew was more than a little drunk and so dirty that Captain Latham would not let him come over the rail.

Nor could the young shipmaster give much time to looking up hands. He had freight ready for his return trip. It must be got aboard, stowed properly, and advantage taken of the tide and a fair wind to get back to the Cape. He had not been in the habit of going up into the city at all of late. If that girl behind the lace counter of Hoskin & Marl's had expected to see Tunis Latham again, she had been disappointed. Her warm invitation to him to call on her—possibly to take her again to lunch—had borne only Dead Sea fruit. He had accepted her decision regarding the Balls and Cape Cod as final and irrevocable. At least, he had had no intention of ever going back and discussing the suggestion again.

The possibility of the real Ida May Bostwick changing her mind and reconsidering her refusal to communicate with the Balls or visit Wreckers' Head never once entered Tunis' mind, if it had Sheila Macklin's. He had seen how scornfully the cheap little shop-girl had refused the kind offer extended to her by her old relatives. He could not have imagined her thinking of the old people and their home and Big Wreck Cove in any different way.

He was quite right in this. Ida May Bostwick never would have looked upon these several matters differently. The thing was settled. Born and bred in the city, she could not conceive of any sane girl like herself deliberately burying herself down on the Cape, to "live on pollock and potatoes," as she had heard it expressed, and be the slave of a pair of old fogies.

Not for her! She would not think of it. Indeed, this phase of the offer Tunis had brought her really made Ida May Bostwick angry. What did he think she was, anyway? In fact, she was inclined to think that that seafaring person had almost insulted her. Although she had deliberately spoken of him as her "Cousin Tunis" to the girls who were her confidantes in the store and to her landlady, who was likewise curious about him, Ida May Bostwick was much pleased by the thought of him.

Then she began to compare Tunis with the young men she knew in Boston. She knew that the young men she got acquainted with were either very light minded or downright objectionable. If any of them contemplated marriage at all, they knew it could not be undertaken upon the meager salaries they were paid. Marriage meant teamwork, with the girl working down-town just as hard as ever, and then working at night when she went home, and on Sundays, even if she and her bridegroom lived only in a furnished room and did light housekeeping.

Ida May Bostwick had a brain explosion one day when she considered these all-too-evident facts. She said:

"I bet that fellow wouldn't expect his wife to stand behind a lace counter and take the sass of floorwalkers and buyers, as well as lady customers, all day long. Not much! He's a regular guy, if he is a hick. My gracious! Don't I wish he'd come back! If I ever get my claws on him again—"

Just what she might do to Tunis under those circumstances she did not even explain to herself. But she began to think of Tunis a good deal. He was a good-looking man, too. And he spent freely. Ida May Bostwick remembered the lunch at Barquette's.

It was true that Sarah Honey had been all Prudence Ball and Aunt Lucretia Latham and other Wreckers' Head folk believed her to be. But she died when Ida May was small, and the girl had been brought up wholly under the influence of the Bostwicks. That family had lacked refinement and breeding and graciousness of manner to a degree that would have amazed and shocked Sarah Honey's relatives down on the Cape.

Not that the girl thought of Tunis Latham's refinement with any wistfulness. She thought of his well-filled wallet, that he was something more than a common sailor, that he undoubtedly owned a good home, even if it was down at Big Wreck Cove, and that he seemed "soft" and "easy."

"A girl might wind him right around her finger, if she went at it right," Ida May Bostwick finally decided. "Some girl will. I wonder how long it would take to get him to sell out down there and live up here in town? My mother came from that awful hole, and she caught a city fellow. I bet I could do this, if it was worth my while. My goodness! Why not?

"There's property there, too. I wonder how much those old creatures are worth. And how long they will live. He spoke like they needed somebody because they were sick. Ugh! I don't like folks when they are sick. Ma was awful. I can remember it. And there was pa, when he was cripped with rheumatism before he died."

This phase of the matter fairly staggered Ida May Bostwick. She put the faint glimmerings of the idea out of her mind—or tried to. Yet that summer she kept delaying her vacation until all the other girls had come back and related all their adventures—those that had actually happened and those that they had imagined.

"Ain't you going to take any time off, Ida May?" they asked.

At last she said she expected to visit her folks "down on the Cape."

"You remember that nice-looking farmer that came in to speak to me that time and took me to lunch at Barquette's?" she asked Miss Leary.

"I know you said he took you there."

"Well, he did, smarty! He's my cousin—of course, not too close." And Ida May giggled. "Well, we've been corresponding."

"I hope it's all perfectly proper," grinned Miss Leary.

Ida May Bostwick stuck out her tongue. But she laughed.

"I've got a good mind," she said to her friend, "to go down and see that fellow's folks. They're well fixed, I guess. And the store pays you for one week of your vacation. I wouldn't lose much, even if it did turn out to be a dead-and-alive hole."



CHAPTER XIX

THE ARRIVAL

There was a driving road down past Latham's Folly and on across certain sand flats and by cranberry bogs to a small settlement where Prudence had a stepsister still living. This old woman lived with her granddaughter's husband's kinsfolk, who were so distantly related to Cap'n Ira's wife that the relationship could scarcely be followed.

"It takes us Cape Codders," remarked Cap'n Ira, "to study out the shoals and channels of kinship. It's 'cause we're such good navigators that we're able to do it."

"And now that we've got Ida May to harness up Queenie for us and look after the house while we're gone, and you feel so much spryer yourself, Ira, I don't see why we can't visit our folks a little," Prudence said.

He agreed, and they set off in high fettle just before noon, expecting to return before dark. Sheila was upstairs dusting when, not long after the noon hour, she saw from one of the windows the spread canvas of the Seamew—there was no mistaking the schooner—making through the channel into the cove.

"Tunis is coming! Tunis is coming! Tunis is coming soon!"

Her heart sang the refrain over and over again. She fairly danced about the household tasks she had set herself to do while the old couple were absent. Now and again she ran to some point where she could watch the Seamew. The memory of Tunis' kisses were on her lips and in her heart. In the dusk of the previous Monday morning, when he was on his way to the port to take command of his schooner, the young shipmaster had held her in his arms at the back door there, and had told her over and over again of his love for her. Thought of that moment was an exquisite memory to the girl.

She saw the schooner drop anchor off Portygee Town, with all its canvas rattling down in windrows of white. She even saw the little gig launched. Tunis was coming ashore. He would soon be up the hill. His long strides would soon bring him to her side again—open-eyed, ruddy-faced, a veritable sea god among men!

She ran out a dozen times to gaze down the road and wonder what kept him. Then she turned her back on the road and spent the next half hour in beating the dust out of all the parlor and sitting room sofa pillows and one or two of the covered chairs.

Peace, like the sunshine itself, lay over all of Wreckers' Head. Here and there a spiral of smoke rose from a chimney, and fowl wandered about the well-reaped fields. But not much other life was visible. The fall haze gave to distant objects a dimmer outline, softening the sharp lineaments of the more rugged landscape. Color and form took on new beauty.

It was all so lovely, so peaceful, that it was impossible that the girl should have dreamed of what was approaching. Since she had come her mind had not been so far from apprehension of disaster. Since Sunday, when she had wandered with Tunis along the shore, it had seemed to the young woman that no harm could assail her. She was secure, sheltered, impregnably fortified both in Tunis' love and in the situation she had gained with the Balls and in the community.

She knew, at last, that somebody was on the road, but she would not look. She heard the latch of the gate and the creak of its hinges. Somebody was behind her. How softly Tunis stepped! She thought that he was approaching her quietly, believing he could surprise her. In a moment she would feel his arms about her and would surprise him by laying her head back against his breast and putting up her lips to be kissed.

But, as he delayed, she turned her head ever so slyly. It was not the heavily shod feet of Tunis Latham she saw. What she saw was a pair of the very lightest of pearl-gray shoes, wonderful of arch and heel. Above were slim ankles and calves incased in fiber-silk hose the hue of the shoes.

She flashed a glance at the face of the stranger, and her gaze was immediately held by a pair of fixed brown eyes. There were green glints in the eyes—sharp, suspicious gleams that warned Sheila, before the other uttered a word, to set watch and ward upon her own lips. Not that she suspected who the stranger was.

"Good afternoon," was her greeting.

"Is this where the Balls live?" was the demand, with a note in the voice which betokened both weariness and vexation.

"Yes."

The girl set down her bag and gave a sigh of relief.

"Well, I am glad! I thought I'd never get here. I never did hear of such a hick place! No taxi, of course, and not even a hack or any other carriage to be hired. I've walked miles. And such a rough road!"

The parlor settee and easy-chairs had just been brought outdoors for their weekly beating and dusting. Sheila pointed to a seat.

"Do sit down," she urged. "It is a long walk from the port."

"You said it! And after riding over from Paulmouth in that dinky old stagecoach, too," went on the stranger, as though holding Sheila responsible for some measure of her discomfort. "Say, ain't the folks home?" She cast a sour look around the premises. "Gee! It's a lonesome place in winter, I bet."

"Did you wish to see Mrs. Ball?" asked Sheila, eying the visitor with nothing more than curiosity.

"I guess so. She is Mrs. Prudence Ball, isn't she?"

"Yes. Mrs. Ball and the captain have gone away for the day. I am ever so sorry. You wished to see her particularly?"

"I guess I did." The stranger looked her over with more interest. "Say, how old are the Balls?"

The abrupt question drew a more penetrating look from Sheila. The visitor certainly was not Cape bred. Her smart cheapness did not attract Sheila at all. There was something so unwholesome about her that the observer had difficulty in suppressing a shudder. Yet her prettiness was orchidlike. But there are poisonous orchids.

"They are quite old people," Sheila said, finally answering the question. "Cap'n Ira is over seventy and Prudence is not far from that age. You—you are not acquainted with them?"

"I never saw 'em. But I've heard a lot about 'em," said the stranger, with a light laugh. "They are sort of relations of mine."

"You are a relative?" asked the girl. Even then she had no thought of who this newcomer was. "Cap'n Ira's relative? Or Mrs. Ball's, if I may ask?"

"Well, I guess it is the old woman's. But I'm kind of curious to see 'em first, you know, before I make any strong play in the relationship game. Gee! Is this the parlor furniture?"

"Some of it," was the wondering rejoinder.

"Looks like the house, don't it? Down at the heel and shabby. Say, have they got much money, after all—them Balls? You're a neighbor, I suppose? You must know 'em well."

"I live here," said the other girl rather sternly.

"Huh? You mean around here?"

"I live here with Cap'n Ira and Mrs, Ball," was the further explanation.

"You do? You?"

Her voice suddenly became shrill. It rose half an octave with surprise. Her gaze, which had merely been insolent, now became suspicious. She scrutinized Sheila closely.

"I didn't know the Balls had anybody living with 'em," she resumed at length. "You ain't been here long, have you?"

"Oh, for some time," was the cheerful rejoinder.

"They hire you?"

"Not—not exactly. You see, I am sort of related to them, too."

"A relation of this old Cap'n Ira?"

"Of Mrs. Ball."

"Huh! Say, what's you name?"

"My name is Bostwick," was the composed reply. "You did not mention yours, did you?"

"Bostwick?"

"They call me Ida May Bostwick," said Sheila, demurely smiling, and even then without a suspicion of the vortex into which she was being drawn.

"Ida May Bostwick!"

The visitor rose out of her seat as though a spring had been released under her. Her eyes flattened, distended, and sparked like micaceous rock in the dark. Her hands clenched till the pointed, highly polished nails bit into the palms.

"What do you say? You are Ida May Bostwick?"

At that moment Sheila Macklin saw the light. It smote upon her brain like a shaft from a great searchlight; a penetrating, cleaving beam that might have laid bare her very soul before the accusing stranger. She staggered, retreating, shrinking, but only for a moment.

The pallor that had come into her face left it. Color rose softly under the exquisite skin and there came a haughty uplift of her chin. She stared back into the blazing, greenish-brown eyes of the other, her own eyes unafraid, challenging.

"Do you doubt me?" she demanded, with as much composure as though a secure position and a conscience quite at ease were hers. "Who are you? In what way are you interested in my name or in my identity?"

"Why, you—you—" The visitor was for the moment stricken speechless. But it was the speechlessness of rage—of wild and uncontrollable fury. Then she caught her breath. "You dirty cheat, you! You stand there and tell me you are Ida Bostwick? You've got gall—you certainly have got gall!

"I'd like to know who the devil you are? Comin' right here, wormin' your way into a place that don't belong to you, gettin' on the soft side of my aunt an' uncle, I s'pose, and thinkin' to grab all they got when they die. Oh, I know your kind, miss!

"But I'll show you up. I'll let 'em know what's what and who's who. They must be precious soft to take a girl like you in and think she's Ida Bostwick. How dare you?"

She stamped her foot. She advanced upon the other threateningly. But the girl she had accused did not retreat. The flush of outrage and that haughty expression were still upon her countenance. She spoke very firmly but in a voice so low that it contrasted the more sharply with the enraged squall of her opponent. She asked:

"Who are you, if you please?"

"You've cheek to ask me. I'd ought to spit on you, so I had! But I'll tell you who I am—and it'll hold you for a while, I guess. I am Ida May Bostwick. You know full and well you are makin' out to these rich relations of mine that you are me. I'll show you up, miss! I'll have you whipped—or jailed—or something. The gall of you!"

The other girl heard her with unchanging face. Somehow, that steady, unshrinking look gave Ida May Bostwick pause. It was she who recoiled.



CHAPTER XX

THE LIE

The girl who had seized upon the chance of becoming Ida May Bostwick, and so escaping the horror and despair that enshrouded Sheila Macklin like a filthy mantle, stood after the first blast as firm as a rock under the torrent of vituperation and rage which poured from the other girl's lips.

The real Ida May—weak, save in venomous hate, unstable as water, as shallow as a pool of glass—could have joined issue in a hair-pulling, face-scratching brawl. She was of that breed and up-bringing.

Sheila Macklin's very dignity held Ida May Bostwick at arm's length. With all right and title to the name and place Sheila had usurped, the new arrival was awed by the impostor's look. Following that first—and merely instantaneous—expression of horrified surprise at Ida May's announcement of her identity, this girl, who was so secure in the confidence of the Balls and the community, proceeded to look down at the claimant of her achieved position with utter calmness.

It made the real Ida May almost afraid. Certain as she was of her own name and the assertion of her own personality, the bold and unshaken opposition confronting her in the very look of the impostor abashed Ida May Bostwick. After her first outbreak she was silenced.

"Do you really know what you are saying?" the girl in possession asked. "Are you aware that I am Ida May Bostwick? There certainly cannot be two girls of the same name, both related to Mrs. Prudence Ball. That is too ridiculous."

The other gasped. Though red and white by turn, from impotence and rage, her fury was quelled under the look of the more composed young woman.

"There are twenty people almost within call who know me and who can swear to my name and my assertions that I am Miss Bostwick," went on Sheila, with a calmness which both frightened and daunted the other. "Just why you should come here and make such a preposterous claim I cannot understand. Where do you come from? Who are you—really?"

Ida May stared, flaccid, helpless. For the time being all her rage, her rudeness, her amazement, even, drained out of her. For this impostor to face her down in this way; for her to claim Ida May's name and identity with such utter calm—such sangfroid; for Sheila to stand before her and deliberately declare that what Ida May had known to be her own all her life long—her name and distinctive character—was actually another's—all this was so monstrous a thing that Ida May was stunned.

Suppose—suppose something had really happened to her mind? People did go mad, Ida May had heard. She had rather a vague idea as to what insanity was like, but she felt her mind slipping.

The sure and unafraid expression of the other girl's countenance gave Ida May no help at all. She was sure that her opponent had not lost her mind. She was just a wicked, bad, horrid girl who had somehow got something that belonged to Ida May Bostwick, and meant to keep it if she could.

Self-pity filled the visitor's mind in place of the fury she had expended in her first outburst. She dared not attack the other with tooth and nail, for she saw now that this girl was as much her superior in physical strength as she was in strength of character.

Therefore, Ida May fell back upon tears. She blubbered right heartily, and, being really weary after her walk from the port, she fell back into the spring rocker, which squeaked almost as protestingly as she did, put her beringed hands before her face, and gave herself to grief.

Sheila Macklin's expression did not change. She revealed no sympathy for Ida May Bostwick. If she felt sympathy, it was for that girl who had been persecuted, unfairly accused of stealing, sent to a place worse than prison, afterward branded with the stigma of "jailbird"; that girl whom Tunis Latham had befriended, had rescued from a situation which she could not think of now without a feeling of creeping horror.

Was she going to give over without a fight to this new claimant a place which had been and still was her only refuge? It could not be expected that she would do this. She had had no warning of this catastrophe. There had been no opportunity to prepare for a situation which must have shocked her terribly in any case. But if she had only had time—

Time? Time for what? To run away? Or to prepare the Balls, for instance, for the coming of this new claimant? And who knew this girl who said she was Ida May Bostwick? Sheila Macklin was fully aware of the history of Sarah Honey, of her marriage which had quite cut her off from her Cape Cod friends, and of the little that was known at Big Wreck Cove about her daughter, who, since babyhood, had never been seen here.

How was one to be sure if this were really the right Ida May? If one girl could make the claim and carry it through so easily, why not another? How could this girl, crying in the rocking-chair, prove her statement that she was Mrs. Ball's niece?

These thoughts seethed in Sheila Macklin's brain. She must keep cool! She must hold herself down, keep control of her own mind, and keep the whip hand of this girl before her.

And, then, there was Tunis to think of. The appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick wrecked all her happiness, of course, with Tunis. Sheila could not let him continue his association with her. Yet what course should she pursue to save him? That suddenly became the first consideration in Sheila Macklin's mind.

How to do this? How to save Tunis from being overwhelmed by the result of his own ill-considered deed? Impulse and love on Tunis Latham's part had brought about this terrible situation. Not that the girl blamed him in the least. Her thought was to protect the captain of the Seamew from being sucked into the whirlpool which she clearly beheld beside her path.

Save Tunis! It must be done. This little, inconsequential, weak-minded, loose-lipped girl must not be allowed to wreck Tunis Latham's life. If people came to accept as true the tale the girl could relate, Tunis' reputation would be smirched utterly in the opinion of all Big Wreck Cove folk.

Much as Sheila Macklin felt that her own happiness with Tunis was now impossible—a flash of Aunt Lucretia made this realization the more poignant—he must be sheltered from any folly regarding this thing. She knew well his impulsive, generous nature. Who had a fuller knowledge of it than she?

She must think and act for herself, without any conference with Tunis. But she must do the only thing, after all, that would balk this wretched girl from the city—for a time, at least.

The real Ida May Bostwick had no friends here and no acquaintances among the people of Big Wreck Cove. It would be no easy matter for her to establish either credit or the fact of her identity in the community. It would take time and perhaps be very difficult for Ida May to bring forward conclusive evidence that would convince the Balls, or anybody else, of her real personality and prove that the girl in possession was an impostor.

All the latter had to do was to maintain her already-accepted standing, deny the true Ida May's claim, and demand that the latter show proof of her apparently preposterous statement. At least, some considerable delay must ensue through Sheila's course before the girl could convince anybody that she only claimed what was her own.

Nor need the battle end there. Ida May Bostwick might find it very difficult to prove to the satisfaction of all concerned that she was the actual niece of Prudence Ball. The very fact that Tunis had brought Sheila and introduced her as the girl he had been sent for was proof so strong that it could not be lightly denied.

That phase of the matter—that Tunis was as deep in the conspiracy as she was herself—made Sheila Macklin desperate. She grasped at this only salvation—straw as it was!—for his sake more than for her own.

Later, when she was able to think and plan and plot again, she would evolve some method of rescuing Tunis from the results of his own impulsiveness and her weakness in accepting his suggestion as a way out of her personal difficulties. She should have known better! She should have scouted the idea at its inception!

She saw that this position in which she was placed was far and away more serious than that she had been in when she sat with Tunis upon the Boston Common bench. She had thought at that time that it needed little more to make her condition too desperate to bear. She would now, she felt, give life itself for the privilege of being back there and able to refuse the reckless plan of escape the captain of the Seamew had submitted to her.

She did not for a breath's length blame Tunis for the misfortune that had overtaken her—overtaken them both, indeed. She had accepted his plan with open eyes. In her desperation she had even foreseen the possibility of this outcome. She must blame nobody but herself.

But all these thoughts were futile. No use in considering for a single moment past situations and possibilities. She was confronted by a grim and adamant present! And that grim present was in the person of a girl with tear-streaked face who looked up at her, sobbing.

"You're the meanest girl I ever heard of. I'll pay you for this. Think of the gall of you comin' here and tellin' my rich relations you was me. I never heard of such a thing! It beats the movies, and and I thought they was just lies. Gee, but you must be a regular crook! I expect the very clothes you got on my aunt bought and gave you. I'll put you where you belong!"

"And suppose I put you where you seem to belong?" interrupted the girl in possession. "There is such a place as an insane hospital in this county, I believe. I think you must have either escaped from such a place, or that you belong in one."

"Oh!" gasped the other girl, staring up at her amazedly and not a little terrified by Sheila's emphatic speech.

"If you really are some distant relative of the family," the latter continued, "Mrs. Ball may wish to see you. Come into the house and I will make you a cup of tea. You need it. And you can wait for Mrs. Ball and the captain to return, if you like."

Ida May darted to her feet again.

"A cup of tea of your making!" she cried. "You'd put poison in it! You must be a wicked girl—anybody can see that. I wouldn't put anything bad past you. I guess them stories in the movies ain't so much lies, after all.

"I want nothing from you, whoever you are, only my name back and the chance you have grabbed off here. I'll go to the neighbors about it. I'll tell 'em what you've done. I guess I can find somebody to believe me."

Her abrupt halt warned Sheila that there was somebody approaching. Before she could turn to see who it was, the other girl ejaculated:

"My goodness! What is it—a junk wagon? Look at that horse, will you! Say! who's these folks? What a pair of old dubs!"

Cap'n Ira and Prudence had returned somewhat earlier than Sheila had expected. Old Queenie came up the lane and turned in at the open gateway beyond the garden.

The new girl tugged excitedly at Sheila's arm.

"Say! Who are they?" she demanded huskily.

"This is Cap'n Ball and Mrs. Ball," was the reply, and the girl in possession hurried forward to help them out of the carriage.

"Ahoy, Ida May!" the captain hailed cheerfully. "What's the good word?"

He prepared to climb down. The girl assisted Prudence first.

"Who's that with you, Ida May?" asked the old woman. Then, with keener eyes than the captain, she observed the change in the girl's face. "What's happened? Something has gone wrong, Ida May, I know. What is it?"

"That—that girl—"

Sheila almost choked. How could she prevaricate to the good old woman who had been so kind to her?

"Who is she, Ida May?"

"She says she is your niece," whispered the girl.

"My niece? Land's sake! I ain't got no niece but you, Ida May. Say, Ira, do you know this young woman? She ain't none o' your relations, is she?"

Cap'n Ira came to the ground finally with a thump of his cane. He straightened up and started at the new arrival.

"Red-headed, I swan!" he muttered. "Never was a Ball that I know of with that color topknot. And she looks like one o' these sandpipers ye see along shore. Look at that hat!"

"Ida May says she claims to be our niece," Prudence told him.

"I swan! I told you we was gettin' mighty popular."

Sheila, her limbs now trembling so that she feared she would fall, took Queenie by the head and backed the carriage around. The old mare would have to be put in her stall and the carryall run under cover. But the girl was fearful of moving out of earshot.

Cap'n Ira and Prudence approached the real Ida May. The latter had been staring at them, marveling. Unlike Sheila, almost everything that Ida May Bostwick thought was advertised upon her face.

"My goodness!" considered Ida May. "What a pair of hicks!"

"You was lookin' for somebody named Ball, I cal'late?" Cap'n Ira said within Sheila's hearing as she led the gray mare away.

She could not catch the reply. Whatever the real Ida May said, she could not stand by to deny it. Besides, the matter must rest for the present on the evidence, and she did not know yet how much proof Ida May might be able to advance to strengthen her case. If it rested upon mere assertion, then Sheila need merely deny its truth and hold her own!

And, frightened as she was, that was exactly what Sheila intended to do. For the sake of Tunis, as well as for her own salvation, she must stand up against the new girl and hold by her own first claim—that she was the girl the Balls had sent Tunis for.



CHAPTER XXI

AT SWORDS' POINTS

Sheila Macklin got Queenie to the stable and unharnessed her. She ran the carryall into the barn and then closed the big door for the night, although the sun was still an hour high. She stopped to fling grain to the poultry, too. These chores she did with the thought in her mind that she might never do them again for Cap'n Ira and Prudence.

If that girl could prove her claim, if she could satisfy the old people that they had been cheated by Sheila and Tunis Latham, they might be indignant enough to put her right out—to-night!

The trio had disappeared into the house. She heard voices from the sitting room. But she wanted to return the furniture to the front room and finish the task which the real Ida May's coming had interrupted.

She had been strong enough when she carried the chairs and the settee into the yard, but she could scarcely get them back again. The strength seemed to have deserted her arms. She staggered in with the last article of furniture and set it in place.

The murmur of voices from the room across the hall was steady. What were they saying? What had Ida May told them? How were the Balls taking it? Could that cheap, little thing convince the old people that she was their niece and that the girl they had come to love and trust was an impostor? Sheila Macklin's heart bled for Cap'n Ira and Prudence!

If she must go and they took this other girl in her place, would they be happy? And they had been happy during these last months! Would they not miss her if she left them to the mercy of this new claimant?

Yes, Sheila loved Cap'n Ira and Prudence. She loved them as though they were her very own! Not since her father had died had the girl been so fond of anybody—except Tunis, of course. And what would Tunis say when he came?

What would he expect her to do? To admit the truth of Ida May's claim and give up without a battle? If she did this, she would expose him as well as herself to infamy. It was a situation that would have appalled a person of much stronger character than Sheila Macklin, and she was no weakling.

No! She could not give up—not without a struggle. As she had first decided, she must confront the new girl boldly and deny, if she could, any claim Ida May Bostwick put forward. She must do this for Tunis even more than for herself.

She arose determinedly. With this thought, strength surged back into her limbs as well as into her mind. For a time she had been weak, undecided. Once more she gathered her energies to oppose the sea of adversity which threatened to overwhelm her.

She crossed the hall and opened the sitting room door. Cap'n Ira sat in his usual chair, leaning forward, with his hands clasped over the knob of his cane. Prudence, with a wondering look on her face, sat beside him, and just as far from the new girl as the length of the room would allow. The latter had been speaking with her usual vehemence, and she did not even glance at Sheila when the latter came quietly into the room.

"Oh, Ida May!" gasped Prudence, and almost ran to her. "Do you know what she is saying? I never heard of such a thing!"

"I tell you she ain't Ida Bostwick," cried the other. "Don't you dare call her that. I'll—"

"Hoity-toity, young woman! Avast there!" said the captain gruffly. "We won't get to the rights of this by quarreling. Wait!"

He looked at Sheila, and his weatherhued countenance was as kindly of expression as usual.

"You know what this young woman says?" he asked.

Sheila nodded, but she held Prudence closely. The old woman was sobbing.

"This won't do, you know," said Cap'n Ira. "I swan! It beats my time. I expect you've got friends somewhere, young woman, and you ought to be given into their charge. I'm real sorry for you, but what you say don't sound sensible. Ain't you made a mistake? I cal'late you heard about us and Ida May—"

"I tell you," cried the girl, starting to her feet again, the brown eyes flashing spitefully, "that that thing there is an impostor. She's got my place. She's took my name. Why, I'll—I'll have her arrested. Ain't there no police in this awful place?"

"There's a constable all right," said Cap'n Ira calmly. "But I wouldn't want to call him in. Not just now, anyway. It looks to me you wanted a doctor more than you wanted a constable."

"You think I'm crazy!" gasped Ida May.

"Well, it looks as though you was a leetle off your course," the old man told her calmly. "You don't talk with sense, to say the least. Making the claim you do would make most anybody think you was a little flighty. Yes, a little flighty, to say the least." And he wagged his head.

"Look here," he pursued soothingly. "Have you been sick, perhaps? You ain't quite yourself, be ye? I knowed a feller once that thought he was the angel Gabriel and went around with a tin fish horn, tooting it at all hours of the day and night. But no graves opened for him and nobody was resurrected. They finally put him in the booby hatch, poor feller."

"I'm your niece, I tell you," interrupted Ida May, pointing at Prudence, who shrank from her immediately in undeniable fear. "My mother was Sarah Honey before she was married. I guess there must be enough people in this Big Wreck Cove place who knew her and remember her to prove who I am."

"I wouldn't try to do that," said Cap'n Ira thoughtfully. "Telling such a thing as this among the neighbors would be the surest way of getting into trouble. That's right. If Prudence—Mrs. Ball—don't know ye, do you think strangers would be likely to back you up? Don't you think it would be better to sit down quietly and rest a while? Maybe you'd better stay with us overnight."

"Oh, Ira!" gasped his wife. "I wouldn't scurce dare have her stay. She—she's out of her head. She might do something."

"I'll do something fast enough!" cried Ida May, stamping her foot. "I'll do something to that hussy!"

"You hear her, Ira?" murmured Prudence, trying to draw Sheila away from the enraged girl.

"Threatening damage never broke no bones yet," said the captain calmly.

"I'll do her some damage," declared Ida May bitterly. "If none of you won't listen to me, I'll find somebody that will. I'll—"

She halted suddenly in her wild and angry speech. Her face changed as if by magic. The flush died in it and the expression of her sparkling eyes became subdued. A simpering look overspread Ida May Bostwick's countenance that warned the other girl, at least, that another person had entered the house.

Before Sheila could turn to look toward the kitchen door, Ida May cried:

"Oh, Cousin Tunis! If you ain't my cousin exactly, I guess you are pretty near. And ain't I glad you've come! Do you know what this awful girl is saying—what she is doing here? And these old fools won't believe me! I never heard of such a thing. Just you tell them who I am, and I guess they'll make her pack up and get out in a hurry."

In the doorway stood the captain of the Seamew. The two old people welcomed his appearance with a satisfaction that could not be mistaken.

"I swan, Tunis, you come at a mighty handy time," declared Cap'n Ira.

"Oh, Tunis! Take that girl away," cried Prudence faintly, pointing at Ida May.

The most difficult thing Sheila Macklin had ever done in all her life was what she did now. To act and speak a deliberate falsehood before Tunis Latham!

She disengaged herself from Prudence, and before the simpering Ida May could speak again Sheila ran to him. In her face was, for the moment, all the fear and horror of the situation which she felt. It was a warning to him, and he was acute enough to understand it even before she spoke.

"Oh, Tunis! This girl must be beside herself. She says her name is Ida May Bostwick and that she is Mrs. Ball's niece."

Involuntarily Tunis had stretched forth his hands to welcome Sheila. He drew her closer without giving the Balls any attention whatsoever. One flashing glance he gave to the girl he held so gently—a look which was both a promise and a reassurance. Then he gazed over her head at the smirking Ida May.

"What's the matter here?" he demanded.

"Matter enough," said Cap'n Ira, not without marking, however, the attitude of the two young people he and Prudence loved. He even nudged his wife, who now stood close beside him. "Matter enough. That gal there, Tunis, seems to have lost her top-hamper. Leastways, some of it is mighty loose."

"Tunis Latham!" gasped the new claimant. "You know who I am. Tell that girl—"

She halted again, realizing the young man's expression of countenance and his attitude with the other girl. She was quick enough of comprehension to see that this other girl had the advantage of her with the captain of the Seamew as well as with her relatives.

In Ida May's own artful mind she had decided that a smart girl could easily "twist that fellow around her finger." This girl who had usurped her name and identity had already succeeded in doing just that! The girl from Hoskin & Marl's halted, the wrathful flush came back into her pretty, insipid face, and she almost screamed:

"What's got into you folks? Are you all crazy? Why, that fellow knows who I am well enough! I bet he brought that girl here himself and palmed her off on you." She turned to blaze at Cap'n Ira and Prudence. "He picked her up somewhere—some low creature! But I'll show them both up; that's what I'll do. I'll make them both sorry for cheating me. I guess you folks have got a heap of money, and that fellow and that girl are trying to get it all. But they won't. I'll have my rights or—"

"Belay that!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira suddenly. "We won't listen to no more such talk. Whatever we have got—Prudence and me—and whoever you be, young woman, I cal'late we'll do about as we please with it. I think you have broke loose from them that had you in charge. And they ought to be hunting for you. Leastways, I guess you'd better be sent back to 'em."

"I'm her niece, I tell you!" reiterated Ida May, pointing at Prudence, who shrank again from the vehement girl.

Then she whirled on Tunis. She clasped her hands. Into her rage was distilled some fear because of Cap'n Ira's grim words.

"You got to help me," she said to the younger man. "You know who I am, and you daren't deny it!"

No man can pace the quarter-deck—even of a packet of no greater importance than the Seamew—without having developed the sterner side of his character. And Tunis Latham came of a long line of shipmasters who had handled all sorts and conditions of men. If a skipper does not command the respect of his crew, he'll not get far!

The grim mask that had settled upon the countenance of the captain of the Seamew might have stayed the tongue of a more courageous person than Ida May Bostwick. His severe look and manner appalled her.

"See here, young woman, I don't like your tone; nor do I understand what you mean. Who do you say this is, Ida May?" he added more gently, looking down into Sheila's face again.

"She—"

"I'm Ida May Bostwick. You know I am!" wailed the visitor. "Why—why, you must remember me, Tunis Latham. Don't you call her by my name. I won't stand it."

"Mad as a hatter! Mad as a hatter!" muttered Cap'n Ira to Prudence.

"There's something the matter with her, is there?" proceeded Tunis thoughtfully, eying the claimant as though she was indeed an utter stranger. "How did she get here? What does she want?"

"She wants a strait-jacket, I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira. "I don't know what is best to do about her. Prudence says she won't have her in the house overnight. 'Twould be too bad to have to put her in the town lockup."

"You dare to!" shrieked Ida May, with courage born of desperation.

Tunis put Sheila tenderly aside. He crossed the room to the other girl. He showed no manner of sympathy for her, but he spoke quietly.

"This won't do, you know. Mr. and Mrs. Ball don't want you here. You have no claim on them—none at all. Even if you chanced to be a relation, they have not got to take you in if they don't want to."

"They've taken that other girl in!" cried Ida May wildly.

"That is their business. They want her. They don't want you. You have no more standing here than you would have if you went into the house of the governor of the State and demanded recognition there."

"What a wicked man you are!" gasped Ida May. "And—and I thought you was a simp!"

Tunis did not even change color. He addressed her as though he believed she was not right in her mind. Sheila watched him, not now in fear, but in wonder. She had thought she must battle with this girl for Tunis' name and reputation. But the captain of the Seamew had seized the reins of affairs himself and was likely to do much better in the emergency than Sheila could ever dream of doing.

"Come, now," said Tunis Latham calmly. "I do not know where you belong or where you came from last. But you cannot stay here. Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue do not want you. If you have any friends near—"

"I've got friends all right! You'll find out that I've got 'em!" gasped the girl threateningly.

"You know anybody in Big Wreck Cove?"

"No, I don't. I've just come here. But I mean to stay here till I get my rights. I'll show you all!"

"You can't show us anything to-night," interposed Tunis firmly. "Whatever you mean to try to do cannot be done right now, you know. You will have to sleep somewhere, and I shall have to do one of two things—no, one of three things."

She looked at him wonderingly, but she was listening.

"I will take you back to the port. You cannot go home—wherever you live—to-night. In the morning you can go over with Ben Craddock on the stage to Paulmouth."

"I won't!" The girl's determination was roused. There was a stubborn streak in her character that would make her a bitter antagonist. Tunis, as well as Sheila, realized this.

"All right," said the captain of the Seamew calmly. "Then I'll get you a place to stay down in the port. Or I shall have to see the justice of the peace and have you committed for your own safety."

"You don't dare!" cried Ida May again.

"You tempt me too far, young woman," he said sternly, "and you'll find just how much I dare. Will you come along with me now and behave yourself?"

"That's the ticket, Tunis," muttered Cap'n Ira. "Put her where she belongs."

"So my own folks turn me out, do they?" cried Ida May, hatefully, staring at the two old people. "If anybody is crazy it is those two," and she pointed to the Balls. "Take in a drab like that girl and throw me out. Why, I believe I've seen her before. Somehow, she looks familiar," she added, her sharp gaze fixed on Sheila again. "Well, wherever it was, she was up to no good, I'll be bound."

"Are you coming with me willingly, and now?" put in Tunis more harshly. "You are taking a chance, young woman, in talking this way."

"Oh, she's got you going. That's plain to be seen! I thought you was a nice fellow. But I guess you're like other sailors. I always heard they was a bad lot—running after women—"

"Will you come without any more words?" interrupted Tunis grimly.

"I'll have to go back to the town, I suppose. But remember! This ain't the end of this," she weakly blustered.

"This your bag?" said Tunis calmly, picking up Ida May's satchel. "All right. We'll go."

He did not attempt to look at Sheila again, nor at Cap'n Ira and Prudence. He walked behind Ida May, but rather hustled her out of the door. She might have cast back some final defiance, but he gave her no chance.

It was almost twilight when they went out at the kitchen door. They left the trio in the sitting room speechless for the moment. But Sheila Macklin's speechlessness arose through different thoughts from those of the Balls.

The girl left behind realized that this almost unexpected outcome was but the momentary triumph of falsehood.



CHAPTER XXII

A WAY OUT

"Ida May, you'd better sit down. You look like you'd had a stroke," declared the captain.

"Why wouldn't she, the dear child?" cried Prudence. "What do you suppose is the matter with that girl? Is she crazy?"

"Crazy ain't no name for it," her husband rejoined. "Her top-hamper is all askew, I cal'late. I never see the beat."

But just now Sheila could not endure any discussion of the strange girl. She rose as quickly as she had seated herself.

"I must fix supper," she said briskly. "You sit still, Aunt Prudence. You're flustered, I can see. There is nothing for you to do."

"That's right," put in Cap'n Ira. "Get a bite ready against Tunis comes back. He'll want something fillin' after handling that crazy gal."