"Why, she's a thief! She was arrested! I guess you can see now that I'm not crazy—far from it. She won't dare say again that she is Ida May Bostwick. I—guess—not!"

The malevolent exultation of the girl was fearful to behold. But neither Cap'n Ira nor Prudence now looked at Ida May. Leaning against her husband, the tears coursing over her withered cheeks, Prudence joined Cap'n Ira in gazing at the other girl.

She rose slowly to her feet. Something like strength came back to her; even into her voice, as Sheila again spoke. Nor did she look at Ida May, but fixed her feverish gaze upon the two old people.

"What—what she says is true—as far as I am concerned. But—but Tunis did not know. It is not his fault. I was desperate. I heard what he said to—to Miss Bostwick. I chanced to overhear it. I was desperate; I hated the city. I was willing to take a chance for the sake of getting among people who would be kind to me—who were good."

"Bah!" exclaimed Ida May raucously. "You're not fit to go among good people!"

Sheila did not heed her. She spoke slowly—haltingly, but what she said held the old people silent.

"Tunis is not to blame. I told him this—this girl"—she pointed to Ida May, but did not look at her—"was not the right Miss Bostwick. I said that I was the girl he wanted to see. I made him think so. I tricked him. Don't listen to her!" she added wildly, as the enraged Ida May would have interposed. "Tunis thought she had talked to him just for a joke. I made him believe that. I—I would have done anything then to get away from the city and to come down here. Perhaps he was at fault because he did not take more time to find out about me—to be sure I was the right girl. But he cannot be blamed for anything else. I tell you, it was all my fault."

"I don't believe it!" snapped Ida May.

But Cap'n Ira put her aside with his hand, and there was returned firmness in his voice.

"Is this the truth? Are you what she says you are?" he asked.

"Oh, don't, Ira!" gasped his sobbing wife. "She—"

"We've got to learn the straight of it," said the old man sternly. "If we've been bamboozled, we've got to know it. Now's the time for her to speak."

Sheila was still gazing at him. She nodded, indicating that his question was already answered.

"You—you mean to say you stole—like she says?"

"I was arrested in Hoskin & Marl's. They accused me of stealing. Yes."

She said no more. She turned, when he did not speak again, and walked slowly to the stairway door. She opened it and went up, closing the door behind her.

It was Ida May who moved first when she was gone. She jumped up once more and started for the stairway.

"I'll tell her what's what!" she ejaculated. "The gall of her to come here and say she was me and get my rightful place! I'll put her out with my own hands!"

Somehow—it would be hard to say just how—Cap'n Ira was before her, ere she could arrive at the stairway door.

"Avast!" he said throatily. "Don't take too much upon yourself, young woman. You don't quite own these premises—yet."

"You ain't going to stand for her stayin' here any longer, are you?" demanded the amazed Ida May.

"Whether or not she stays here is more my business and Prudence's business than it is yours," said the old man. "But there's one thing sure, and you may as well l'arn it first as last: you're not to speak to her nor do anything else to annoy her. Understand?"

"You—you—"

"Heed what I tell ye!" said Cap'n Ira, grim-lipped and with flashing eyes. "You interfere with that girl in any way and it won't be her I'll put out o' the house. I'll put you out—night though it is—and you'll march yourself down to the port and to the Widder Pauling's alone. Understand me?"

There was silence again in the kitchen, save for Prudence's pitiful sobbing.

* * * * *

In Tunis Latham's mind as he came up from the port four days later was visioned no part of the tragedy which had occurred at the Ball homestead during his absence on this last voyage to Boston. He had suffered trouble enough during the trip even to dull the smart of Sheila's renunciation of him before he had left the Head. Indeed, he could scarcely realize even now that she had meant what she said—that she could mean it!

So brief had been their dream of love—only since that recent Sunday when they walked the beaches about the foot of Wreckers' Head—that it seemed to the captain of the Seamew it could not be so soon over. If Sheila really and truly loved him, how could anything part them?

When he considered her wild manner and her trenchant words when last he had seen her, however, his heart sank. He had gained during the few months of their acquaintance a pretty accurate idea of how firm she could be—how unwavering in face of any difficulty. He realized that her obstinacy, when her mind was once settled on a course of action, was not easily overcome. She had declared that they could not be lovers any longer; that the situation which had arisen through the appearance of the real Ida May upon Wreckers' Head had made her decision necessary; and she had refused to consider any other outcome of this dreadful affair.

In his business there was much which would have disturbed Tunis in any event. The negro cook had deserted the Seamew the moment after she touched the Boston wharf. Although the other hands had remained by the schooner until she had just now dropped anchor in the cove below, he was not at all sure that they would sail with him for another voyage.

Why these new men should be more troubled by the silly tattle of the hoodoo than even the Portygees had been was a problem Tunis could not solve. And seamen were so scarce just then in Boston that he had been obliged to risk another voyage without engaging strangers to man the Seamew. Besides, being a true Cape Codder, he disliked hiring other than Cape men to work the schooner.

For one thing he could be grateful. Orion Latham had taken his chest ashore this very day. And Zebedee Pauling had offered himself in Orion's place on the wharf as Tunis had just now come ashore.

He had been glad to take on Zeb in place of his cousin. And from young Pauling he had learned at least one piece of news connected with affairs on Wreckers' Head. Zeb told him that the girl he had brought to the Pauling house had talked with Elder Minnett and that the elder had later taken her up to the Ball house, where she had remained.

There was not much gossip about the matter it seemed. Nobody seemed to know who the young woman was; nor did Zeb know what was going on at the Ball homestead. It was with this slight information only that Tunis now approached the old place. He saw Cap'n Ira hobbling into the barn, but he saw nobody else about.

The day was gray, and a chill wind crept over the brown earth, rustling the dead stalks of the weeds and curling little spirals of dust in the road which rose no more than a foot or two, then fell again, despairingly. In any event the young shipmaster must have felt the oppression of the day and the lingering season. His spirits fell lower, and he came to the Ball place with such a feeling of depression that he hesitated about turning in at the gate at all.

As Cap'n Ira did not at once come out of the barn, the younger man made his way there instead of going first to the kitchen door. He shrank from meeting the real Ida May again. At any rate, he wanted first to get the lay of the land from the old man.

He looked into the dim interior of the place and for a moment did not see Cap'n Ira at all. The ghostly face of the Queen of Sheba appeared at the opening over her manger. Tunis was about to call when he saw the old man straining upon the lower rungs of the ladder to reach the loft to pitch down a bunch of fodder. Queenie whinnied softly.

"Hello, Cap'n Ira!" Tunis hailed. "What are you doing that for?" He hastened to cross the barn floor to his aid. "Where's Ida May that she lets you do this?"

"Ida May?" The old man repeated the name with such disgust that Tunis was all but stunned and stopped to eye Cap'n Ira amazedly. "D'ye think she'd take a step to save me a dozen? Or lift them lily-white hands of hers to keep Prudence from doing all the work she has to do? I swan!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Tunis. "You sound mighty funny, Cap'n Ira. Hasn't Ida May been doing all and sundry for you for months? Is she sick?"

"I—I don't mean that gal," quavered Cap'n Ira. "I mean the real Ida May."

He half tumbled off the ladder into Tunis Latham's arms. He clung to the young man tightly, and, although it was dark in the barn, Tunis could have sworn that there were tears on the old man's cheeks.

"Don't you know we've got the right Ida May with us at last—Prudence's niece that has come here to visit for a while and play lady? Yes, you was fooled; we was bamboozled. That—that other gal, Tunis, is a real bad one, I ain't no doubt. She pulled the wool over your eyes and made a monkey of most everybody, it seems. She—"

"Who are you talking about?" cried Tunis, in his alarm almost shaking the old man.

"I'm telling you the girl you brought down here, thinking she was Ida May Bostwick, turned out to be somebody else. I don't know who. Anyway, she ain't no relation of Prudence or me. I ain't blaming you none, boy; she told us we musn't blame you, for you didn't know the truth about her, either."

"Cap'n Ira, where is she?" demanded the younger man hoarsely.

"She ain't here. She's gone. She left four nights ago—after Ida May had remembered what she'd done in that big store in Boston. Oh, she admitted it—"

"You mean to tell me she's gone? That you don't know where she is?" almost shouted Tunis.

"Easy, boy! Remember I got some feeling yet in them arms you was squeezing. It ain't our fault she went. She left us in the night—stole out with just a bundle of clothes and things. Left, Prudence says, every enduring thing she'd got since she come here—that we give her."

Tunis groaned.

"Yes, she's gone. And she's left that other dratted girl in her place. I swan, Tunis, I'd just as leave have the figgerhead of the old Susan Gatskill sittin' by our kitchen stove as to have that useless critter about. She ain't no good to Prudence and me—not at all!"



CHAPTER XXIX

ON THE TRAIL

There was but a single idea in Sheila Macklin's mind when she left those three people in the kitchen and mounted to her room. Indeed, there was scarcely left to the sadly distracted girl another sane thought.

She must leave the house before she could be further questioned. She hoped that she had said enough to exonerate Tunis. If she said more, it might be to raise some doubt in the minds of Cap'n Ira and Prudence as to Tunis' ignorance of her true reputation. She must escape any cross-examination—on that or any other topic.

She believed that the captain of the Seamew possessed sufficient caution to keep secret the particulars of their first meeting until he had heard from the old people the few false details she had left in their minds. She had done all she could to make Tunis' reputation secure in the eyes of those who must know any particulars of his connection with her. She had kept her vow to the dead woman whom the young shipmaster had, throughout his life, so revered—his mother.

She did not light her bedroom lamp until she knew by the sounds from below that the family had retired for the night. Then, stepping softly, she went over her small possessions and made a bundle of those which she had brought with her when she came from Boston. The articles of apparel purchased with money given her by the Balls she left in the closet or in the bureau drawers.

This done, she did not lie down on the bed, but sat by the north window staring out into the starlit dark. There was no lamp to watch in the window of Latham's Folly to-night. Tunis was far away. Had she been prepared for this unexpected catastrophe, she would have been far, far away from Wreckers' Head before Tunis returned.

As it chanced, she possessed very little money—scarcely more than enough to take her to Paulmouth. There she would be no better off than she was at Big Wreck Cove. Sheila was not, in truth, quite accountable for her actions at this time. To get away from the Ball house was her only really clear thought. What followed must fall as fate directed.

At the first faint gleam of dawn in the sky, and as the distant stars paled and disappeared, the girl crept down the stairs with her bundle, her shoes in her hand, and went out by the kitchen door. She heard only the deep breathing of the old captain from across the sitting room and now and then the sobbing breath of Prudence, like the breathing of a hurt child that has fallen asleep in pain and half wakes to a realization of it.

As she turned to close the outer door softly behind her, the girl's heart throbbed in response to the old woman's sorrow. While she sat on the bench to lace her shoes the cat, old Tabby, came rubbing and purring about her skirts. Muffled, as though from a great distance, a rooster vented a questioning crow as though he doubted that it was yet time to announce the birth of another day.

She went to the barn to feed Queenie for the last time. That outraged old creature displayed her surprised countenance at the opening above her manger and blew sonorously through her nostrils. Perhaps the gray mare remembered how she had been aroused at a similar hour once before, and by Cap'n Ira himself. That experience must have been keen in the Queen of Sheba's memory if she had any memory at all.

But the troubled girl gave the mare less attention than usual, throwing down some fodder and pouring a measure of corn into the manger. The mare turned to that with appetite. Corn came not amiss to Queenie, no matter at what hour it was vouchsafed her. Her sound old teeth did not stop crunching the kernels as Sheila went out of the barn.

From the shed she secured an ax and a spade, as well as a basket. In spite of her condition of mind she knew exactly what she wanted to do—and she did it. Had she thought out her intention for months she could have gone about the matter no more directly and practically. Yet, had one stopped Sheila and asked her what she was about—exactly what her intentions were—the query would have found her unprepared with an answer.

Both her physical and mental condition precluded Sheila from going far from the Ball homestead. What she had been through during these past few days had drained out of her physical vigor as well as all intellectual freshness.

When Cap'n Ira Ball had led the feebly protesting Queen of Sheba across these empty fields to her intended sacrifice, the two had made no more dreary picture against the dim dawn than did Sheila now. She carried the bundle she had made slung over one shoulder by a length of rope. The spade, ax, and basket balanced her figure on the other side; she bent forward as she walked and, from a distance, Prudence herself would have looked no older or more decrepit than did the girl now leaving the Ball premises.

She did not follow the same course that the captain and Queenie had followed on that memorable occasion, but took a path that led to a cart track to the beach behind John-Ed Williams' house. Nobody was astir anywhere on Wreckers' Head but herself.

In an hour she arrived at the objective point toward which she had been headed from the first. Why and how she had thought of this refuge it would be hard to tell. Least of all could Sheila have explained her reason for coming here. It was in her mind, it was away from all other human habitations, and she did not think anybody would have the right to drive her from it.

The cabin formerly occupied by Hosea Westcott was well above the tide, was, or could be made, perfectly dry, was roughly, if not comfortably furnished, and offered the girl a shelter in which she thought she would be safe.

To one who had spent such weary months in a narrow room in a Hanover Street lodging house, going in and out with speech with scarcely any one save the person to whom she paid her weekly dole of rent, there could be no loneliness in a place like this, where the surf soughed continually in one's ear, a hundred feathered forms flashed by in an hour, sails dotted the dimpling sea, and the strand itself was spread thick with many varieties of nature's wonders.

During the summer and early fall, Sheila had become a splendid oarswoman. In a skiff belonging to little John-Ed which was drawn up on the sands not far from the cabin she had paddled out through the narrow neck of the tiny cove's entrance and pulled bravely through the surf and out upon the sea beyond. She had learned more than a bit of sea lore, too, from Cap'n Ira and Tunis. And regarding the edible shellfish to be found along the beaches, she was well informed.

If an old man such as Hosea Westcott, feeble and spent, no doubt, could pick up a living here, why could not she? Sheila did not fear starvation. Indeed, she did not even look forward to such a possibility. She did not fear work of any kind. With every salt breath she drew, strength, like the tide itself, flowed into her body. Although her mind remained in a partially stunned condition, her muscles soon recovered their vigor.

Of course the girl's presence here in the abandoned cabin, her taking up a hermit life on the shore, could not remain unknown to the neighbors on Wreckers' Head for long. Yet at this season of the year the men were all busy elsewhere and the women almost never came down to the beaches. It is a remarkable fact that most longshore women have little interest in the beauties or wonders to be found along the beaches, even in the sea itself. Perhaps this is because the latter is such a hard mistress to their menfolk.

Nevertheless, Sheila could not hide herself away from everybody—not even on that first day. The Balls made no outcry when they found that she had disappeared. And no near-port fishing craft came by. But the smoke from the chimney of the cabin, when she had swept and made comfortable its interior and built a fire of driftwood in the rusty pot stove, attracted at least one sharp eye.

Down the bank, along with a small avalanche of sand and gravel, plunged little John-Ed and his freckled face appeared at the doorway.

"By the great jib boom!" he cried. "What you doing here? Playing castaway?"

"Yes, John-Ed," said Sheila. "That is it exactly. I am a castaway."

He stared at her. She could not take this boy into her confidence. But already little John-Ed was a henchman of hers, in spite of the fact that Sheila often had made him work.

"I am going to stay here for a while," she told him. "But I would rather nobody but you knew about it."

"By the great jib boom!" exploded the boy for a second time. "Not even Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prudence?"

"Not even them," sighed the girl.

"I bet it's because you don't want to stay there while that other girl is visitin' them. Ain't that it? She's a snippy thing!"

"You must not say so to anybody," urged Sheila. "It will not be wrong for you to say nothing about my being here to your father and mother. Do you understand?"

"I can keep a secret, all right," he assured her proudly.

"I believe you can. And do you think you could get off to go down to the store for me this evening?"

"Going down anyway for mom," he assured her.

Sheila had a dollar and a little change besides. She had already planned just what the dollar would buy in the way of necessaries. There were cooking utensils in the cabin sufficient for her modest needs. She gave little John-Ed the dollar and her list and warned him to hide her purchases safely until the next morning and bring them to her on his way to school.

"What you going to eat to-night?" he asked her bluntly.

"I dug some clams at low water and caught a big horseshoe crab."

"Cousin Phineas brought us more squeteague than we can eat. Mom told me to cut one up for the hens. I'll bring it down to you in a little. It's a fresh one."

In spite of her refusal, he did this, and brought along, too, a box of sweet crackers which he had bought and hidden away in his bedroom closet in preparation for some time when he might wake up in the night and feel that he was on the verge of famine.

"Though I never did wake up in the night that I can remember, 'cept that time I had the toothache," he observed.

And in this way Sheila began her hermit life in the fisherman's cabin.

But Sheila was not without a practical design as to her future. In her determination to accept no further aid from the Balls she had crippled her finances. Back in the inland town where she had spent her girlhood, and where Dr. Macklin had served the community so long, there were those who, in disapproving Sheila's venture into the city, at least had a sense of justice. Some of these critical friends whom the young woman had shrunk from appealing to heretofore, still owed for Dr. Macklin's services; and Sheila felt that in this present tragic emergency she must attempt the collection of these old debts.

She wrote letters praying that money might be sent her by express to Paulmouth, but with the orders addressed under cover to "John-Ed Williams, Jr." at the Big Wreck Cove post office. She explained her design to her juvenile confidant and little John-Ed was made immensely proud of such mark of her trust. She could have found no more faithful adherent than the boy, and with him the secret of her dwelling on the lonely shore and in her hermit-like state was safe.

But her presence there could not be hidden for long; of that she was well aware. Little John-Ed, however, told nobody of her whereabouts until the day Tunis Latham came back from Boston and learned that the girl he loved had stolen away from her home in the Ball house.

Coming out of the rear door of the barn, fresh from the interview with the old captain which had so shocked him, Tunis saw a small boy astride the low stone fence that marked the rear boundary of the Ball farm. The captain of the Seamew was in no mood to bandy words with little John-Ed Williams, but the sharp tooth of his troubled thought fastened upon one indubitable fact: if there is anything odd going on in a community, the small boy of that community knows all about it—or, at least, as much about it as it is possible to know.

Tunis could not have walked up to any adult person on Wreckers' Head and asked the question which he put to little John-Ed on the spur of the moment:

"Where is she?"

He did not have to utter Sheila's name. Indeed, he was doubtful by what name it would be wise to call her. But he did not have to be plainer with little John-Ed. He saw in the sly expression of the boy's eyes that he knew whom he meant. But he shook his head.

"You know where she went," was the schooner captain's accusation. "Where is she?"

"I—I can't tell you," stammered the boy. "I promised not."

A promise is a promise, especially to a small boy who scorns to "snitch." Tunis thought a moment.

"Show me," he said, and his voice had in it that tone which made the foremast hands jump to obey when a squall was coming.

The boy got promptly off the wall.

"All right," he said gruffly. "But don't you tell her I showed you, Cap'n Tunis Latham."

"Trust me," agreed the captain of the Seamew, and followed after little John-Ed with such tremendous strides that the latter had to run to keep ahead of him.

Tunis was led to that point on the bluff from which a curl of smoke from the cabin chimney could be seen. He halted almost in horror—stricken to the heart when he understood.

"Alone?" he muttered.

"Yep," was the reply. "She's playing she's a castaway. Nobody but me knows it."

Then, fearing he had said too much, John-Ed ran away.

Tunis descended the bluff by a perilous path—he would not delay to go around by the cart track—and came in plain view of the cabin. The door hinge had been repaired, and the door now swung freely. A strip of cotton cloth had been tacked over the gaping window. There was that neatness about the abandoned cabin which must always be associated in his mind with Sheila Macklin, even had he not seen her sitting pensively upon a driftwood timber by the door.

The ax had been doing good service, for there was a great heap of wood cut into stove lengths. The fragrant odor of something—chowder, perhaps—simmering on the stove, floated through the open door.

It was the coarse sand crunching under his boots which aroused her. She did not start at his approach, but raised her eyes languidly. He wondered if she had expected him. She must have seen the Seamew pass several hours earlier as they headed in toward the channel.

"My God, Sheila!" he exclaimed with bitterness, but without anger. "You can't stay here."

"I must—for a while. No. Don't talk about it, please, Tunis." Her gesture had a finality to it which silenced the objections rising to his lips. "Nothing you can say will change my determination. And you must not come here again."

"What will people say?" he gasped.

The violet eyes blazed suddenly while she surveyed him. This was not the girl he had known before. At least, she was not the same as when he had seen her last. Even at that previous interview her look and manner had not so reminded him of the girl he had sat beside on the bench on Boston Common.

She was alone again. The flower of her nature that had expanded while she lived her all too brief and happy life with the Balls was now withered. She was hopeless again; she had become once more the Sheila Macklin that he had met under such wretched circumstances at that past time. But in spite of her helplessness and her wretchedness, there was something in the girl's expression which convinced Tunis Latham before he again spoke that nothing he could say would in any degree change her determination.

"That confounded girl never should have been allowed to come back to the house up there," he cried almost wildly. "Why did Elder Minnett want to interfere? It was not his business! No one need have known the truth."

"Don't you see, Tunis, that just because it was the truth it was sure to become known? At least, the main points in the whole matter were sure to come out. But if you are careful, if you are wise, nobody need know more of your share in the transaction than I have told already."

"Cap'n Ira asked me if it was true. He told me what you said. Sheila, you ruined your own reputation with the old folks to save me. Girl—"

"Did I have any reputation to lose, Tunis?" she interrupted, yet speaking softly. "I could not save myself. I have tried to save you. Don't be ill-advised; don't be foolish. Say nothing, and it will all blow over—for you."

"You think I'll accept such a sacrifice on your part?" he demanded fiercely.

"I am making no sacrifice. Nothing I can do or say; nothing you can do or say; nothing anybody can do or say; will change my situation. We need not both be ruined in the eyes of the community. Soon I will get away. They will forget me. It will all blow over. You need not suffer."

"What do you think I am?" he cried again. "Am I the sort of a fellow, you think, to shelter myself behind you?"

"Shelter your Aunt Lucretia. Shelter your business prospects. Shelter the good name of your mother's son. You can do me absolutely no good by telling any different story from the one I was forced to tell. Let it be, Tunis."

She said it wearily. She dropped her eyes again, looking away from him. But when he would have stepped nearer and caught her to him, she leaped up and with look and tone warded him away.

"Don't touch me! Be at least so kind, Tunis. Make it no harder for me than you can help."

"You are breaking my heart, Sheila!"

"Mine is already broken," she told him. "And I do not blame you, Tunis. It is the punishment for my own sins. I attempted to escape from my overwhelming troubles in a wrong way. I see it now. I know it to be so. I must go somewhere else and build again—if I may. But never again upon a foundation of trickery and deceit. Oh! Never! Never!"

She stepped around the big block on which she had been sitting, entered the cabin, and closed the door behind her. She left him standing there hopeless, miserable, almost distraught by all the entanglements of this tragedy that had come upon them.



CHAPTER XXX

THE STORM

Captain Tunis Latham, pacing the deck of the Seamew, had come to a conclusion which was by no means complimentary to his own self-respect. During his manifold duties and the business bothers connected with the sailing of the undermanned schooner, his mind had seized upon and grappled with a train of ideas which brought him logically to the decision that he was playing a weak and piffling part.

Strong in most things, Tunis Latham had allowed his better sense to be throttled and his purpose balked in the thing which meant more to him than the schooner, his business success, or anything else in life. The broader the rift grew between Sheila and himself, the clearer he saw that without her he was a ship without a rudder and that nothing could come of his life save wreck and disaster.

She had renounced him for his own good, as she believed, and he had tacitly consented to her ruling. He might be slow of thought regarding such things, but once having made up his mind—and it was made up now—he was of the kind that obstacles do not frighten.

Not only did he realize that by bowing to the girl's will he had been weak, but he was determined to take matters in the future into his own hands. He should not have allowed Sheila, in the first place, to shoulder the responsibility of handling the emergency of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at Big Wreck Cove.

Sheila, in an attempt to save his reputation, to save his self-respect in the eyes of the home folks and of the world in general, had uttered a direct falsehood and cut herself off from him and from those who loved her. This was too much for any decent man to stand. Was he a coward? Would he shelter himself—as he had told her—behind her skirts?

Tunis believed that Cap'n Ira and Prudence, when once the shock of the girl's revelation was past, loved her so dearly that they would forgive Sheila if they knew all the truth—if they knew the girl as he knew her. He was not so sure of Aunt Lucretia. He had feared to tell her the night before that Sheila had gone to live in the old fisherman's cabin, in spite of the sympathy Lucretia had previously shown him. But he believed his silent aunt fully appreciated the better qualities of the girl she had seen on but one occasion, and that she would, in time, admit that Sheila was more than worthy of her nephew's love.

In any event he had his own life to make or mar. Without Sheila he knew it would be utterly fruitless and without an object. Rather than lose Sheila he would sell the schooner, cut himself off from friends and home, and, with her, face the world anew. He was determined, if Sheila left Big Wreck Cove, that he would go with her. Nobody—not even the girl herself—could shake this determination now born in the mind of the captain of the Seamew.

Sheila had borne his reputation upon her heart from the beginning, but he should have at first thought of her good name and the opinion the world must needs hold of Sheila Macklin. She had been unfairly accused. She had been abused, ill-treated, punished for a sin which was not hers. It was not enough that he had tried to help her hide away from those who knew of her persecution. The only right thing to do—the only sane course, and the one which should have been pursued from the start—was to attempt to disprove the accusation under which the girl had suffered and set her right not only before Big Wreck Cove folk, but before the whole world.

The poignant feeling of sin committed, with which Sheila herself was now burdened, did not influence Tunis Latham. It was the logic of the idea which convinced him that they had been totally wrong in what they had done. He should have married Sheila on the night they had met in Boston and set about first of all tracing back her trouble and disproving the flimsy evidence which must have convicted her of stealing from Hoskin & Marl's.

He told himself it was not piety, but hard common sense which suggested this as the only and practical way to handle the matter. It was, in truth, the awakened hope in a loving heart.

Tunis had been able to keep scarcely enough of his crew to handle the Seamew in fair weather; and the barometer was falling, with every indication in sea and sky of the approach of bad weather. He feared the few hands he had would desert when they reached Boston. Zebedee Pauling was a young host in himself—far and away a better seaman than Orion Latham, as well as a better fellow. But the schooner could not be sailed with good will.

Tunis' mind, however, remained fixed upon Sheila's troubles rather than upon his own; and as soon as the schooner docked, he went up into the town and wended his way directly to the great department store in which he had once interviewed the troublesome Ida May Bostwick.

* * * * *

The cargo was out, and the Seamew had already been warped into another wharf where freight was awaiting her when the skipper returned to the water front that afternoon. The three men remaining of the forecastle crew were still at work, assisted by Zebedee and Horry Newbegin. They had not had a regular cook for two trips now.

But a new complication had arisen. Mason Chapin stood at the rail waiting his return, and a taxicab had been summoned. The mate carried a bag.

"A telegram from Doctor Norris. My wife's worse, Mr. Latham. I've got to go back just as fast as steam will get me there," was his greeting to the skipper of the Seamew.

This was according to the agreement Mason Chapin had made in the beginning. His wife was sorely ill, and surely Tunis would not stand between a man and his sick wife!

But it left a very serious situation upon the schooner when the mate drove away in the taxicab. Six men, forward and aft, to handle a suit of sails which equaled those of any seagoing racing yacht. If it had not been for the freight—some of which was perishable—the master of the Seamew would have laid up until he could have got together a more numerous crew at least.

But instead of going to the seamen's employment offices, Tunis had to turn to himself, while the heavier pieces of freight were lowered down the hatchway of the schooner. It was near evening when the hatch was battened down and a small tug snaked them out of the dock and from among the greater shipping, and gave them a whistled blessing in midstream.

All hands and the skipper tailed on to the sheets and got her canvas spread. Then the skipper went below to the galley and prepared supper. Tunis Latham could be no stickler for quarter-deck etiquette on this voyage, that was sure.

But although the hands growled, and even Horry looked sour, Tunis seemed strangely excited; indeed, he looked less woebegone than he had for many a day. Something seemed to have given him a new zest in life. He even spoke to the hands cheerfully, and they were a trio of as surly dogs as ever quarreled with their food and a ship's officers.

"I'll lay up at the cove until I get a decent crew this time, if I lose all my existing contracts," Tunis said to Zebedee. "I'll find a bunch of men who are not afraid of their shadows. Huh! Hoodooed, is she? I'll show 'em that she can sail, even if Davy Jones himself sits on her bowsprit!"

There was wind enough, in all good conscience. They discovered that before they were out of the bay. It had shifted into the northeast, and the Seamew went roaring away on her course under reefed canvas, heeling over to it like a racing yacht.

But the long tacks to seaward which the gale enforced made it impossible for the schooner to beat back to Hollis where the first of her freight must be discharged until after breakfast the next morning. By that time the three foremast hands who had been obliged to work double watches were fairly stewing in their own rage.

Tunis had to see his consignees while the freight was being discharged; when he got back to the wharf there was nobody aboard the schooner save Horry and Zebedee. The latter had a broken oar in his hand and he and the ancient seaman seemed to be in a condition of utter amazement.

"What's to do now?" demanded the skipper.

"They've gone, Cap'n Latham," stammered Zebedee. "Say they won't put foot on the Seamew's deck again. That—that confounded 'Rion—"

"What's the matter with Orion now?" exclaimed Tunis. "I hoped I was well rid of him. Has he turned up here at Hollis?"

"Look at this," said Zebedee, shaking the broken oar. "Here's what it seems 'Rion found in the hold two trips back. So those fellows say. He left it with 'em. And they say the schooner is a murder ship and they won't try to work her no further."

Tunis seized the piece of oar. Along one side was a streak of faint blue paint. He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar before—leaning against the door frame of Pareta's cottage in Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man's daughter.

"What in thunder!"

He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into the wood: MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression which betrayed a great perturbation of soul. The old man could scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was plain that superstition had him by the throat.

"So this is the thing that rotten 'Rion played them with, is it?" Tunis demanded. "Trying to make them think my beautiful Seamew was once the Marlin B.? Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out of Mike Pareta's woodpile, or I'm a dog-fish! See that blue streak? I saw this broken oar at Pareta's house. Bet you anything Eunez had something to do with it, too. Though why she should want to harm me, who never said a cross word to her, I can't see."

"She and your cousin are mighty thick," Zebedee said reflectively. "That's a fact."

"Thicker than they ought to be for the girl's good, I guess," agreed Tunis. Then he said to Horry: "What's the matter with you, old man? Do you want to desert me, too, all along of a broken oar with some silly letters burned into it?"

The ancient mariner had got a grip upon himself. The simple explanation that punctured the bubble of superstition so convincingly might not have altogether satisfied Horry. But he was a true and just man.

"I never deserted your father, Cap'n Randall Latham, not even when his ship sunk under him," the old man declared. "I was saved from that wreck by chance, not because I tried to be. And I ain't likely to desert his son."

"How about you, Zebedee?" demanded the captain of the Seamew.

"I am not afraid of any foolish talk, anyway, Captain Latham. Had I been I wouldn't have applied for the berth. I had heard enough about it. Eunez Pareta, I believe, talked too much to the Portygees, and that is why you couldn't keep them. But I'm not a Portygee."

"I'll say you're not," agreed Tunis. "But we're left in something of a fix. This freight for Josh Jones and his father is needed. Some other stuff consigned to Big Wreck Cove ought to be there by to-night. And I can't get a man for love or money here to help us out. I tried while I was uptown."

Zeb showed no hesitation. He shrugged his blue-jerseyed shoulders.

"Don't you cal'late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail and jib? It'll take time, but she's the sweetest sailing craft I was ever in in my life," he said.

"She's certainly all right, 'cept for that pull to sta'bbo'd," muttered Horry.

"Humph! Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage. And this isn't any capsize wind at that," murmured the captain of the Seamew. "But it's got to be done. Come! Will you risk it with me?"

They looked aloft and then at each other. There was little save reflection in their several glances. Men of this caliber do not hesitate over a risk of life or ship. Cautious as Tunis Latham was, his agreement with those he had contracted with called for a prompt fulfillment of the details of the pact. Nor did the prospect of the rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the Seamew should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale. And they knew that a gale was coming.

This was no place for a schooner of the Seamew's size to ride out the storm. She might easily drag her anchors and go ashore on the Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship. So the trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better chance.



CHAPTER XXXI

BITTER WATERS

Ah, yes! youth, and romance linked with a self-scrutiny born of her New England ancestry if not of her father's Celtic blood, had brought Sheila Macklin to her dreadful pass. One might have said, if one were hardened enough, that had the young woman "possessed an ounce of sense" she would not have made herself penniless, an outcast, and so suffered because she could not escape quickly from an environment well-nigh poignant enough to turn her brain.

She was days in recovering from the shock of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at the Ball homestead. And those hours of torture that had followed had eaten like acid into Sheila's soul.

She had by no means recovered herself when Tunis had his brief interview with her. Had she not shut herself away from him—refused to even discuss the situation with the troubled skipper of the Seamew—she must have broken down, given way to that womanly weakness born of love for the man of her choice.

For Sheila knew how Tunis Latham suffered. She felt that her course was right; nevertheless she fully appreciated how keen the blow of her decision fell upon the partner in her sin.

A sin it was—almost, it seemed to her now, an unpardonable crime. To seize upon another girl's identity; to usurp another's chance; to foist herself upon the unsuspecting and kindly souls at the Ball homestead in a way that raised for them a happiness that was merely a phantom—the thought of it all was now a draught of which the dregs were very, very bitter.

Over and over again she recalled all that Ida May Bostwick had said to and of her. It was all true! Coarse and unfeeling as the shopgirl was, Sheila lashed her troubled soul with the thought that what Ida May had said was deserved. Neither circumstances nor the fact that Tunis had suggested the masquerade excused the transgression.

The days of her waiting on fate, alone in the cabin under Wreckers' Head, gave no surcease to her mental castigation. Her sin loomed the more huge as the hours dragged their slow length by.

And yet, with it all, Sheila's keenest anguish came through her renunciation of Tunis' love. She could see no possible way of holding to that if she would purge herself of the fault she had committed.

And above the stain of her false position since she had come to the Cape was the overcloud of that accusation which had first warped Sheila Macklin's life and humbled her spirit. She believed that she could never escape the shame of that prosecution and punishment for a crime she had not committed.

She believed that, no matter where she might go nor how blamelessly she might live, the fact that she had been sentenced to a woman's reformatory would crop up like the ugly memory of a horrid dream to embitter her existence. Was her life linked with Tunis Latham's, he must suffer also from that misfortune.

And so Sheila Macklin waited from hour to hour, from day to day, dully and in a brooding spirit, for release from a situation which must in time embitter her whole nature.

* * * * *

From the cabin at the foot of the seaward bluff of Wreckers' Head, the coming of the black gale out of the northeast was watched anxiously by Sheila, from the very break of this day. Tunis might be on the sea. She doubted if the threat of bad weather would hold the Seamew in port.

There was no rain—just a wind which tore across the waste of waters within view of her station, scattering their crests in foam and spoondrift, and rolling them in huger and still huger breakers on the strand. It was a magnificent sight, but a terrifying one as well. The girl watched almost continually for a white patch against the black of the storm which might mark a sailing craft in peril.

Steam vessels went past, several of them. They, surely, were in little danger, were their hulls ordinarily sound and their engines perfect. All the fishing craft had made for cover the night before. The New York-Boston steamers would keep to the inside passage in this gale.

Sheila had made all taut and trim inside the cabin. She had plenty of firewood and sufficient provisions to last her for a time.

About noon she heard the crunch of footsteps on the sand. It was little John-Ed who first appeared before her eyes. He thrust a letter into Sheila's hand.

"Dad brought it up from the port this morning, and I got it away from him. Say," he continued, evidently much disturbed, "he's coming here."

"Who is coming here—your father?"

"No, no! Not dad. I—I couldn't help it. I didn't tell him. I said you wanted to play alone here at being shipwrecked, and I was just like you said—your man Friday."

"Who do you mean?" asked Sheila, greatly agitated. "Not—"

"I bet 'twas that Tunis Latham told him you was here," continued John-Ed. "Anyway, don't blame me. All I done was to help him down the path."

He disappeared. Sheila stepped to the door. Cap'n Ira was laboring over the sands toward the cabin, leaning on his cane, his coat flapping in the wind and his cap screwed on so tightly that a hurricane could not possibly have blown it away.

But in addition and aside from the buffeting he had suffered from the wind, the old man looked much less trim and taut than Sheila had ever before seen him. He had not been shaved for at least three days; a button hung by a thread upon his coat; there was a coffee stain on the bosom of his shirt.

He looked so miserable, and so faint, and so buffeted about, that the girl cried out, running from the door of the cabin to meet him. The sweat of his hard effort stood on his brow, and he panted for breath.

"I swan! Ida May—er—well, whoever you be, gal, let me set down! I'm near spent, and that's a fact."

"Oh, Cap'n Ball, you should not have done this!" cried the girl, letting him lean upon her and aiding him as rapidly as possible to the cabin door. "You should not have done this. You—you can do nothing for me. You can do no good by coming here."

"Humph! P'r'aps not. Mebbe you're right. Let me set down on that box, gal," he muttered.

He eased himself down upon the rough seat against the wall. He removed the cap with an effort and took his huge handkerchief from its crown. He mopped his brow and face and finally heaved a huge sigh.

"I swan! That was a pull," he said. "So you're settled here. Gone to housekeeping on your own hook, have ye?" he said.

"Just for a little while, Cap'n Ira. Only—only until I can get away. I—I have been expecting some money—payment of one of my father's old bills."

She slit the envelope of the letter little John-Ed had just brought her. Inside was a pale-blue slip—a money order.

"Yes," she said. "I can get away now. I must go somewhere to earn my living, and as far away from here as I can get."

"So you think on traveling, do you?" said the old man. "You ain't content with Big Wreck Cove and the Head?"

"Oh, Cap'n Ira!" she cried. "You know I can't stay here. Winter is coming. Besides, the people here—"

"Ain't none of 'em asked ye to come an' live with them?"

"Cap'n Ball!"

"Ain't ye seen Tunis?"

The girl hid her face from him. She put her hands over her eyes. Her shoulders shook with her sobbing. Cap'n Ira took a reflective pinch of snuff.

"I cal'late," he said, after wiping his eyes, "that it ain't Tunis' fault that you are going away any more than it is mine and Prudence's. You just made up your mind to go."

"Cap'n Ball!" she exclaimed faintly, and again raised her eyes to his. "Can—can I help it? Now?"

"I don't know," he said, pursing his lips. "I don't know, gal, as anybody is driving you away from Wreckers' Head and them that loves ye here."

She was speechless. She gazed at him with drenched eyes, her face quivering uncontrollably. A hand pressed tightly to her breast seemed endeavoring to still the wild fluttering there.

"I don't know," he repeated, "that we got much to offer a gal like you, and that's a fact. We learned to know you pretty well while you stayed with us, Prue and me did. Somehow, we can't just seem to get the straight of what you told us that night you left. It—it ain't possible that you made some mistake, is it? Mebbe you was talking about some other gal?"

"Oh, Cap'n Ball!" she sighed. "I am able to tell you nothing that will change your opinion of me."

"Well, I don't know. I don't know. What you did say," he observed in that same reflective, gentle tone, "didn't seem to change our opinion much. Not mine and Prudence's."

"Cap'n Ball!"

"No," he went on, wagging his head. "You committing such a fault as you say you was accused of, and you coming down here as you did, through a trick—somehow those facts, if they be facts, don't seem to have much effect on our opinion. Me and the old woman feel that somehow—we don't know how—what you told us that night and what you done for us before that night don't fit together nohow."

She stared at him without understanding. He cleared his throat and mopped his brow again with the big silk handkerchief.

"No, gal, we can't understand how anybody as good and loving as you have been to us can be at heart as bad as—as other folks might try to make out. Fact is, we know you can't be bad."

"What—what do you mean, Cap'n Ball?" she asked faintly.

"I swan! I tell ye what I'm getting at," burst out the old man. "We want you to come back. Prudence, she wants you to come back. I swan! I want you to come back. Why, even that dratted Queen of Sheby needs you, Ida May—or, whatever your name is! We've got to have you!"

"Prudence can't scurcely get around the house. And that niece of hers sits there like a stick or a stun, not willin' to scurce lift her hand to help. Thank the Lord she's goin' home to-day. Her visit's come to an end. She don't like it down here. She says we're all a set of—er—hicks, I believe she calls us.

"Howsomever, we're all high and dry on the reefs, gal, and it seems likely you're the only one can get us off. You ain't got to go away from here, if you don't want to. I've made it pretty average plain to that Bostwick gal that no matter what happens, she's got no expectations as far as Prudence and me are concerned. It was money and nothing but money she was after. Her being Prudence's niece in kind of a far-fetched way don't make it our duty—not even our Christian duty, as Elder Minnett calls it—to keep a gal in the house that we don't want, nor yet die at her convenience and leave her our money. And so I'll tell the elder if he undertakes to put his spoon in the dish again."

Sheila was listening to words that she had never expected to hear from the old captain. Could this be true? Were Cap'n Ira and Prudence, in spite of what they knew about her—what she had told them and Ida May had told them—desirous of having her back? Was there a chance, no matter what the real Ida May Bostwick could say, for Sheila to return and take up her peaceful life with the Balls?

Could this be real? Indeed, was it right for her to do this? Tunis—

She arose and walked to the open door, looking out almost blindly at first upon the gale-smitten sea. It was like her heart—so tossed about and fretted by winds of opinion. What should she do? Which way should she turn? Not to save Sheila Macklin from trouble or disgrace. Not even to save Tunis from possible scorn. The question that assailed her now was only: Was it right?

Suddenly, out upon the mountainous waves, she spied a sail. It was reefed, flattened down, almost tri-cornered. The two sticks of the schooner and the jaunty bowsprit pointing skyward heaved again into view. She stood so long gazing at the craft that Cap'n Ira spoke again.

"What d'ye say, gal?" he asked anxiously.

"Look—look here, Cap'n Ira!" she exclaimed. "Can it be the Seamew? Is she trying to head in for the channel? Oh! Are they in danger out there?"

The old man rose with his usual difficulty and hobbled to the door, leaning on his cane. He peered out over her shoulder, and his keen and experienced eyes saw and identified the laboring vessel almost at once.

"I swan! That is the Seamew, Ida May," he exclaimed. "Tut, tut! What's Tunis got himself into such a pickle for? 'Tain't reasonable he should—being as good a seaman as he is.

"My, my! Why don't he get some cloth on her? He can't have lost all his upper canvas. Don't he know he needs tops'ls to beat up aslant of this gale and get into the shelter of the Head? I swan! If there's men enough there to man her proper, why don't they do the right thing?"

"Oh, Cap'n Ball," gasped the girl, "perhaps there are not enough men with him. Perhaps his crew has deserted again."

"I swan!" rejoined the old man. "What did he set sail for, then? Ain't he got a mite of sense? But, I tell ye, Ida May, if he don't get more canvas on her, and get under better way, he'll never make that channel in this world."

"Oh!"

"The schooner's sure to go on the outer reef. She never can claw off the land now. Without help—if that's his trouble—Tunis Latham will never get that schooner into Big Wreck Cove. And God help him and them that's with him!" added the captain reverently.



CHAPTER XXXII

A GIRL TO THE RESCUE

On shore the gale seemed a stiff and dangerous blow. At sea, even with a stanch deck under one's feet, the wind proved to have passed the hurricane mark long since. The captain of the Seamew felt that the elements had conspired bitterly to assail his schooner. Before they were a mile beyond the end of the Hollis breakwater, Tunis knew that he had the fight of his seagoing experience on his hands.

When they were fairly out of the semi-shelter of the point behind which Hollis lay, Tunis and his two companions realized very quickly just what they had to contend with. They had spread a handbreadth of mainsail, but the jib was blown out of the boltropes by one big swoop of wind and carried down to leeward, looking like a giant's shirt.

"Still feel that tug to sta'bbo'd," grumbled Horry. "Just like—"

"Belay that!" commanded Tunis. "I begin to believe that's bad luck, anyway. If you hadn't got on to that tack when we first put the schooner into commission, those Portygees wouldn't have even remembered the Marlin B. And that schooner thousands of miles away from these seas!"

"I cal'late 'Rion Latham would have found something else to harp on then," said Zebedee. "He was bound to ruin you if he could."

Quickly the gale increased instead of abating, and it was utterly impossible for the trio to get topsails on her. She needed the pull of upper canvas if she was to tack properly for the mouth of the channel into Big Wreck Cove.

They fought for two hours to bring this much-desired object to pass, hoping for a lull or a shifting of the gale which might aid them. The yellow sands of Wreckers' Head were plainly in view all that time. To give up the attempt and run before the gale was a folly of which Tunis Latham had no intention of being guilty if it could possibly be avoided. Manned as she was, the schooner might never be worked back to a landfall if they did so.

The keen old eyes of Horace Newbegin first spied the thing which promised hope. From his station at the wheel he shouted something which the younger men did not catch, but his pointing arm drew their gaze shoreward.

Coming out from the Head was an open boat. Four figures pulled at the oars while another held the steering sweep. The daring crew was heading the boat straight on for the pitching schooner!

"The coast guard!" the old man was now heard to shout. "God bless them fellers!"

But Tunis knew it was not the lifeboat from the distant station. He knew the boat, if he could not at first identify those who manned it. It was an old lifeboat that had been stored in a shed below John-Ed Williams' place, and these men attempting their rescue were some of the neighbors from Wreckers' Head.

They came on steadily, the steersman standing at his post and handling the long oar as though it was a feather's weight. His huge figure soon identified him. It was Captain John Dunn, who, like Ira Ball, had left the sea, and he had left his right forearm, too, because of some accident somewhere on the other side of the globe. But with the steel hook screwed to its stump and the good hand remaining to him, Captain Dunn handled that steering oar with more skill than most other men with two good hands could have done.

How the four at the oars pulled the heavy boat! Tunis sought to identify them as well. He saw John-Ed Williams—in a place at last where he was forced to keep up his end, though he was notably a lazy man. Ben Brewster had the oar directly behind John-Ed.

The third figure Tunis could not identify—not at once. The man at the bow oar was Marvin Pike, who pulled a splendid stroke. So did that unknown oarsman. They were all bravely tugging at the heavy oars. Tunis had faith in them.

Zebedee suddenly plunged across the pitching deck and reached the rail where Tunis stood. Discipline—at least seagoing etiquette—had been somewhat in abeyance aboard the Seamew during the last few hours. Zeb caught the skipper by the arm.

"See her?" he bawled into the ear of the surprised Tunis.

"What's that?"

"See her hair? It's a girl! As I'm a living sinner, it's a girl! Pulling number three oar, Captain Latham! Did you ever?"

Clinging to a stay, the captain of the Seamew flung himself far over the rail as the schooner chanced to roll. He could look down into the approaching lifeboat. He saw the loosened, dark locks of the girl who was pulling at number three oar. On the very heels of Zeb's words the captain was confident of the girl's identity.

"Sheila!"

His voice could not have reached her ear because of the rush and roar of the wind and sea, but, as though in answer to his shout, the girl glanced back and up, over her shoulder. For a moment Tunis got a flash of the face he so dearly loved.

What a woman she was! She lacked no more in courage than she did in beauty and sweetness of disposition. What other girl along all this coast—even one born of the Cape strain—would have dared take an oar in that lifeboat in face of such dire peril as this?

"Good Lord, Cap'n Latham!" shrieked Zeb. "That's Miss Bostwick!"

Tunis straightened up, squared his shoulders, and looked at Zebedee proudly. He wanted Zeb to know—he wanted the whole world to know, if he could spread the news abroad—that the girl pulling number three oar was the girl he loved, and was going to marry!

* * * * *

An hour later the Seamew, her topsails drawing full and her lower canvas properly handled, drove on like the bird she was through the channel into the cove, trailing the old lifeboat behind her. The skipper had taken the wheel himself, but that "tug to sta'bbo'd" did not disturb his equanimity as it sometimes did Horry's.

Sheila, muffled in oilskins and sea boots, but with her wet hair flowing over her shoulders, stood beside the skipper. No matter how satisfied and confident Tunis might appear, the girl was still in an uncertain state of mind.

"And so," she said to him anxiously, "I do not know what to tell them. Cap'n Ira seemed so poorly and so unhappy. And he says Aunt Prue is almost ill.

"But it was Cap'n Ira who told me what to do when we saw the Seamew in danger; how to get the men together and how to launch the boat! Oh, it was wonderful! He was not too overcome to be practical and realize your need, Tunis."

"Trust Cap'n Ira," agreed the young man. "And what other girl could have done what you did, Sheila? Hear what Cap'n John Dunn says? You ought to be a sailor's daughter. I can tell him you are going to be a sailor's wife."

"No, no! Oh, Tunis! It can't—"

"No 'can't' in the dictionary," interrupted the captain of the Seamew. "You and I are going to have one big talk, Sheila, after I take you up home."

"Up home?" she repeated.

"You are going back to Cap'n Ira's. You know you are. That other girl has beat it for Boston, you say, and there's not a living reason why you shouldn't return to the Balls. Besides, they need you. I could see that with half an eye when I went away the other morning. The old man hobbling around the barn trying to catch an old hen was a sight to make the angels weep."

"Poor, poor Cap'n Ira!" she murmured.

"And poor Aunt Prudence—and poor me!" exclaimed Tunis. "What do you think is going to happen to me? If you go away, I shall have to sell all I own in the world and follow you."

"Tunis!" she cried, almost in fear. "You wouldn't."

"I certainly would. I am going to have you, one way or another. Nobody else shall get you, Sheila. And you can't go far enough or fast enough to lose me."

"Don't!" she said faintly. "You cannot be in earnest. Do you know what it means if you and I have any association whatsoever? Oh! I thought this was all over—that you would not tear open the wound—"

"I don't mean to hurt you, Sheila," he said softly. But he was smiling. "I have got something to tell you that will, I believe, put an entirely different complexion on your affairs."

"What—what can you mean?" she burst out. "Oh, tell me!"

"I'll tell you a little of it now. Just enough to keep you from thinking I am crazy. The rest I will not tell you save in the Balls' sitting room before Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue."

"Tunis!" she murmured with clasped hands.

"Yesterday I spent two hours in the manager's office of Hoskin & Marl's. They have been looking for you for more than six months. Naturally, there was no record of you after you left that—that school when your time was out. They didn't seem to guess you'd have got work in that Seller's place."

"What do you mean? What did they want me for?" gasped the girl.

"Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your pardon. He cried, that manager did. He broke down and cried like a baby—especially after I had told him a few things that had happened to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn't found such good friends in Cap'n Ira and Prudence. That's right. He was all broke up."

The girl stood before him, straight as a reed. She rocked with the pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were glued to the planks. She could not have fallen!

"They—they know—"

"They know they sent to jail the wrong girl. The woman that stole the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote 'em all about it from the sanitarium where the firm sent her. They are sending you papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the pawnbroker and the store detective, and—and a lot of other folks. Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated."

She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face, although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him.

"Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here—and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found all this out. And—and I would never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done."

"Huh! Yes. I cal'late that's so, Sheila," he said. "But how about me? Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you? Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that thought. There is for me, at any rate."

She flashed him a look then that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham's very soul. His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden. She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct words to Cap'n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis. But that prevarication, at least, had been for no purpose of self gain.

And so Sheila looked at her lover for just that passing moment with all the passion which filled her heart for him. Had Tunis not been steering the Seamew through a pretty tortuous channel at just that moment there is no knowing what he would have done—spurred by Sheila's look!



CHAPTER XXXIII

A HAVEN OF REST

Wreckers' Head so shelters the cove from the northeast that the schooner could be brought safely in to Luiz Wharf, instead of dropping her anchor in deep water. Half the port, and all of Portygee Town, crowded nearby wharves and streets to welcome Tunis Latham's schooner; for news of her peril and the way in which help had reached the Seamew had come down from the Head as on the wings of the wind itself.

There was one face on the wharf Tunis Latham sought out with grim persistency as the schooner was made fast. He had purposely placed Sheila in Zebedee Pauling's care. Tunis kept, directly under his hand, the broken oar which had helped to make so much of his recent trouble. When the Seamew was safe, her skipper leaped ashore. And he carried the broken oar with him.

Orion, grinning and sneering by turns, saw his cousin coming. It must have been preternatural sagacity which caused him to see and recognize the broken oar. Having seen it, he jumped for the head of the wharf.

Tunis leaped away on his cousin's trail. The crowd parted to let them through, and then joined in a streaming, excited tail to their kite of progress. Most of the spectators lived in Portygee Town. Some of them had been members of the Seamew's deserting crews. They were afraid of Tunis Latham, but they had little sympathy for Orion.

The skipper caught up with him in the middle of the road and almost opposite the Pareta cottage. Orion had picked up a cobblestone as he reached the street and, finding himself about to be overtaken, he turned and threw the missile at Tunis' head. The latter dodged it and, with a single, savage blow of the oar felled his cousin to the roadway.

"You unmitigated scoundrel!" Tunis roared. "I ought to take your life. Because of you I nearly lost my own to-day—and the lives of two other men and my schooner into the bargain. You villain!"

As Orion tried to scramble up, the skipper of the Seamew made another pass at him with the oar, and the fellow fell again.

"Don't hit me! Don't hit me again, Tunis! Remember I'm your cousin. I—I haven't done a thing—true an' honest, I haven't!"

The listeners gathered closer. Tunis Latham's face displayed such rage that the Portygees expected him to continue his attack with the oar. But instead he shook it before their eyes—and Orion's.

"See it?" he demanded of the bystanders. "That's the scurvy trick the dog played me. Found this broken oar in somebody's woodpile, burned the name of the Marlin B. into the handle, and foisted it on a fool crew to prove that my schooner was once called by that name. I ought to pound him to death!"

Suddenly a brilliant figure whirled into the midst of the crowd and reached the angry skipper and his victim. Eunez, her black eyes ablaze, her face ruddy with anger, planted herself before Tunis Latham, hands on hips, confronting him boldly. One glance at the prostrate Orion assured her that, although there was blood upon his face, he was not much hurt. She tossed her head and snapped her fingers under the nose of the captain of the Seamew.

"So now, Tunis Latham! It is that you have waked up! Of a gr-r-reat smartness are you, eh?" she cried. "You scorn us all, and tr-r-reat us as you would dogs. Heh! All you shipmasters are alike.

"But you—we put the laugh on you, eh? That oar in your hand—ha, ha! Do not lay the blame altogether upon your cousin. I burned those letters into that wood with my curling irons. Fooled by a girl, eh, Tunis Latham? Ah! Learn your lesson, Captain Latham! We Portygee women are not to be scorned by any schooner captain. No!"

She snapped her fingers again in his face and turned away, swaying her hips and tossing her head as she disappeared into her father's cottage. When Tunis looked around for his cousin, he found that that facile young man, taking advantage of the girl's intervention, had slipped away.

* * * * *

A winter hurricane had pounced upon the Cape and torn at it with teeth and claws, as though seeking to dismember it—to wrench the forty-mile curved claw of the Cape from the remainder of Barnstable County.

The driven snow masked everything—earth, houses, trees, and the shivering bushes; it clung to these objects, iced upon them like frosting. No craft ventured out of Big Wreck Cove, least of all the Seamew, although she had a cargo in her hold and a complete and satisfied crew in her forecastle.

Tunis Latham was speaking of the latter fact to Aunt Lucretia in the warm and homelike kitchen of Latham's Folly.

"Zeb is a good fellow. He has got together a bunch of hands that aren't afraid of ghosts or bogies. You couldn't make those Portygees or some of the other hands we had see the ridiculousness of their fear of the Seamew—bless her! But with this bunch Zeb has got together I wouldn't fear to sail around the Horn."

His aunt looked startled at the suggestion and shook her head.

"I know you wouldn't want I should go for such a long voyage, Aunt Lucretia," he replied. "And I don't want to myself. But I couldn't be content here if I didn't see the prospect bright before me of getting Ida—I mean, of getting Sheila."

His aunt looked at him again not unkindly, but said not a word.

"I've told you all about it, Aunt Lucretia," the skipper of the Seamew pursued. "Everything. If Sheila did wrong to come down here as she did, I did a greater wrong in encouraging her to come and in tempting her with the chance of escaping from the mess she was in. And she's paid—we've both paid—for our folly.

"As for folks talking, if that Bostwick girl wants to keep her job with Hoskin & Marl's she'll keep her mouth shut about Sheila. She understands that. And Hoskin & Marl—everybody, in fact that was connected with that awful thing that happened to Sheila—have done all in their power to make amends."

For the first time his aunt's lips opened.

"The poor child!" she said.

"I want more than your sympathy for Sheila, auntie," he urged earnestly. "I want your approval of what Sheila and I mean to do—in time. Of course, I must be better established first and be making money enough to support a—a family. And Sheila would not think of leaving the old people up there. They need her so sorely."

"But you may as well know, first as last, Aunt Lucretia, that I mean to marry Sheila. I know it was wrong in me to try to palm her off on you as somebody she wasn't—to try to fool you—"

"You did not fool me, Tunis; not for a moment," she told him softly.

He stared at her in amazement.

"No," went on his usually inarticulate aunt. "The moment I first looked into her face I knew she was not Sarah Honey's daughter. That baby's eyes were brown when Sarah brought her here years ago; and no brown eyes could change to such a beautiful violet-blue as—as Sheila's. I knew you and she were trying to deceive me, but I could not help loving the dear girl from my first sight of her."

That was a very long speech indeed for Aunt Lucretia to make. She put her arms about Tunis Latham's neck and said all the rest she might have said in a loving kiss.

Driving as the storm was, there remained something that took the skipper of the Seamew out into the welter of it. With the wet snow plastering his back he climbed out of the saucerlike valley to the rear premises of the Ball place. He even gave a look in at the barn to make sure that all the chores were done for the night. The gray ghost of the Queen of Sheba's face was raised a moment from her manger while she looked at him inquiringly, blowing softly through her nostrils the while.

"You're all right, anyway," said Tunis, chuckling as he closed the barn door. "You've got a friend for life."

He went on to the kitchen door. Inside he could hear the bustle of Sheila's swift feet, the croon of Prudence's gentle voice, and then a mighty "A-choon!" as Cap'n Ira relieved his pent-up feelings.

"Don't let them fish cakes burn, gal," the old man drawled. "If Tunis ain't here mighty quick he can eat his cold. Oh! Here he is—right to the nick o' time, like the second mate's watch comin' to breakfast."

Tunis had shaken his peacoat free of the clinging snow and now stamped his sea-boots on the rug. He smiled broadly and confidently at Sheila and she returned it so happily that her whole face seemed to irradiate sunshine. Prudence nudged Cap'n Ira's elbow.

"Ain't it a pretty sight, Ira?" she whispered.

"She looks 'most as sweet as you did, Prue, when I took you to the altar," sighed the old man windily. "I swan! Women is most alike, young an' old. All but that dratted Ida May Bostwick. She was a caution to cats."

"Now you hush, Ira. She's our own rel'tive and we ought not to speak ill of her."

"Ha!" blew Cap'n Ira, reminding Tunis of the old mare when she snorted. "Ha! Maybe she is. But even so I want none o' her. An' I told Elder Minnett so. I got kinder of an idee that the elder won't be so brash, puttin' his spoon into other folks' porridge again."

"Hush, Ira! Don't be irreverent. Remember he's a minister."

"So he is. So he is," concluded Cap'n Ira. "They say charity covers a multitude of sins; and I expect the call to be a preacher covers a multitude of sinners." He chuckled mellowly again. "But sometimes I've thought that the 'call' some of our preachers hear 'stead o' being the voice of God is some other noise they mistook for it. Well, there, Prudence, I won't say no more. But you must allow that Elder Minnett's buttin' in, as the boys say, come pretty nigh bustin' everything to flinders.

"Come, Tunis. Do sit down or that gal won't be able to dish up supper, and I'm as hungry as a wolf. Pull up your chair, Prudence. Ain't this livin', I want to know?" He shuddered luxuriously at the howl and rattle of the wind without. "Now, folks: 'For that with which we are about to be blessed make us truly thankful. Amen.' Put your teeth in one o' them biscuit, Tunis. I want to recommend 'em to you. Ain't none better on this endurin' Cape—no, sir. We got the best cook on the Head. If you are ever lucky enough to get one ha'f as good, Tunis—"

"Now, you be still, Ira," admonished Prudence, smiling comfortingly at the blushing girl.

"You better sing small, Cap'n Ira," said the skipper of the Seamew hoarsely. "It's mebbe just because we're good-natured and forbearing that you are keeping your cook for a while."

"Ha! So that's the way the wind blows, eh?" croaked Cap'n Ira. "You talk big, young man. But we know Sheila better than you do, p'r'aps. Don't we, Prue?"

His little old wife, with her winter-apple face wrinkled in a smile of utter confidence, leaned nearer Sheila to pat her hand. The girl seized the wrinkled claw suddenly and pressed it with both of hers—pressed it gratefully and with a full-charged heart.

"Don't be disturbed. Don't fear," she whispered so that the old woman only might not hear. "I will not leave you."

The two men looked deeply into each other's eyes and with a great understanding. They are not demonstrative, these Cape men, not as a rule; but Cap'n Ira and Tunis Latham understood all entailed in that promise so softly given, and they subscribed to it. Sheila was to have her way.

Hours later Tunis lit the lamp in his bedroom and then stood before his window, gazing out into the driving snow. Almost immediately he saw the gleam of another lamp, far up the slope, showing from that north window of Sheila's chamber in the old Ball house.

This was the signal they had agreed upon—their good-night symbol whenever he was at home. He stood there a long time, looking out.

Although the wintry wind raved across Wreckers' Head and the snow scurried wildly before it, there was springtime in the hearts of Tunis Latham and Sheila—the springtime of their hopes.

THE END