"Kenneth is your brother?"

"Kenelm. Does that mean something?"

The old gentleman plucked May-flowers for a moment. "It means, if I remember rightly, 'a defender of his kindred.' It is a good Anglo-Saxon name."

"What does my name mean?" Kirk asked.

The Maestro laughed. "Yours is not a given name," he said. "It has no meaning. But—you mean much to me."

He caught Kirk suddenly in a breathless embrace, from which he released him almost at once, with an apology.

"Let us make the wreath," he said. "See, I'll show you how."

He bound the first strands, and then guided Kirk's hands in the next steps, till the child was fashioning the wreath alone.

"'My love's an arbutus On the borders of Lene,'"

sang the Maestro, in his gentle voice. "Listen and I will tell you what you must say to Felicia when you crown her Queen of the May."

The falling sun found the wreath completed and the verse learned, and the two went hand in hand back through the shadowy garden.

"Won't you make music to-day?" Kirk begged.

"Not to-day," said the old gentleman. "This day we go a-maying. But I am glad you do not forget the music."

"How could I?" said Kirk. At the hedge, he added: "I'd like to put a bit of arbutus in your buttonhole, for your May."

He held out a sprig in not quite the right direction, and the Maestro stepped forward and stooped to him, while Kirk's fingers found the buttonhole.

"Now the Folk can do me no harm," smiled the old gentleman. "Good-by, my dear."

* * * * *

Felicia was setting the table, with the candle-light about her hair. If Kirk could have seen her, he would indeed have thought her beautiful. He stood with one hand on the door-post, the other behind him. "Phil?" he said.

"Here," said Felicia. "Where have you been, honey?"

He advanced to the middle of the room, and stopped. There was something so solemn and unchancy about him that his sister put a handful of forks and spoons on the table and stood looking at him. Then he said, slowly:

"I come a-maying through the wood, A-for to find my queen; She must be glad and she must be good, And the fairest ever seen.

And now have I no further need To seek for loveliness; She standeth at my side indeed— Felicia—Happiness!"

With which he produced the wreath of Mayflowers, and, flinging himself suddenly upon her with a hug not specified in the rite, cast it upon her chestnut locks and twined himself joyfully around her. Phil, quite overcome, collapsed into the nearest chair, Kirk, May-flowers and all, and it was there that Ken found them, rapturously embracing each other, the May Queen bewitchingly pretty with her wreath over one ear. "I didn't make it up," Kirk said, at supper. "The Maestro did—or at least he said the Folk taught him one like it. I can't remember the thanking one he sang before the feast. And Ken, he says your name's good Anglo-Saxon and means 'a defender of his kindred.'"

"It does, does it?" said Ken. "You'll get so magicked over there some time that we'll never see you again; or else you'll come back cast into a spell, and there'll be no peace living with you."

"No, I won't," Kirk said. "And I like it. It makes things more interesting."

"I should think so," said Ken—secretly, perhaps, a shade envious of the Maestro's ability.

As he locked up Applegate Farm that night, he stopped for a moment at the door to look at the misty stars and listen to the wind in the orchard.

"'A defender of his kindred,'" he murmured. "H'm!"

* * * * *

Hardly anything is more annoying than a mysterious elder brother. That Ken was tinkering at the Flying Dutchman (as he had immediately called the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not fathom.

"We can't afford to run around in her as a pleasure yacht," Felicia said. "Are you going to sell her?"

"I am not," Ken would say, maddeningly, jingling a handful of bolts in his pocket; "not I."

The patch in the Flying Dutchman was not such as a boat-builder would have made, but it was water-tight, and that was the main point. The motor required another week of coaxing; all Ken's mechanical ingenuity was needed, and he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected and indignant. But when the last tinkering was over, when frantic spinnings of the flywheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and deep-chested gurgle from the engine, Ken clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on the rocks like a madman.

He took the trial trip secretly—he did not intend to run the risk of sending Phil and Kirk to that portion of Davy Jones' locker reserved for Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, charging through baybush and alder, till he tumbled into Felicia on the door-step of Applegate Farm.

"I didn't want to tell you until I found out if she'd work," he gasped, having more enthusiasm than breath. "You might have been disappointed. But she'll go—and now I'll tell you what she and I are going to do!"



CHAPTER VIII

WORK

On a morning late in May, a train pulled into the Bayside station, which was the rail terminal for travelers to Asquam, and deposited there a scattering of early summer folk and a pile of baggage. The Asquam trolley-car was not in, and would not be for some twenty minutes; the passengers grouped themselves at the station, half wharf, half platform, and stared languidly at the bay, the warehouse, and the empty track down which the Asquam car might eventually be expected to appear. It did not; but there did appear a tall youth, who approached one of the groups of travelers with more show of confidence than he felt. He pulled off his new yachting-cap and addressed the man nearest him:

"Are you going to Asquam, sir?"

"I am, if the blamed trolley-car ever shows up."

"Have you baggage?"

"Couple of trunks."

"Are you sending them by the electric freight?"

"No other way to send them," said the man, gloomily. "I've been here before. I've fortified myself with a well-stocked bag, but I sha'n't have a collar left before the baggage comes. As for my wife—"

"I can get your luggage to Asquam in a bit over an hour," said the businesslike young gentleman.

The somewhat bored group lifted interested heads. They, too, had trunks doomed to a mysterious exile at the hands of the electric freight.

"I'm Sturgis," said the youth, "of the Sturgis Water Line. I have a large power-boat built for capacity, not looks. Your baggage will be safe in a store-room at the other end,"—Captain Sturgis here produced a new and imposing key,—"and will be taken to your hotel or cottage by a reliable man with a team at the usual rate of transfer from the trolley. My charges are a little higher than the trolley rates, but you'll have your baggage before luncheon, instead of next week." A murmuring arose in the group.

"Let's see your vessel, Cap," said another man.

Ken led the way to a boat skid at the foot of the wharf, and pointed out the Flying Dutchman, unpainted, but very tidy, floating proudly beside the piles.

"I have to charge by bulk rather than weight," said the proprietor of the Sturgis Water Line, "and first come, first served."

"Have you a license?" asked a cautious one.

Ken turned back a lapel and showed it, with the color rushing suddenly to his face.

But the upshot of it was, that before the Asquam car—later than usual—arrived at Bayside, the Flying Dutchman was chugging out into the bay, so loaded with trunks that Ken felt heartily for the Irishman, who, under somewhat similar circumstances, said "'t was a merrcy the toide wasn't six inches hoigher!" Out in the fairway, Ken crouched beside his engine, quite thankful to be alone with his boat and the harvest of trunks—so many more than he had hoped to have. For this was the first trip of the Sturgis Water Line, and its proprietor's heart, under the new license, had pounded quite agonizingly as he had approached his first clients.

Down at Asquam, the room on the wharf under the harbor-master's shop stood waiting to receive outgoing or incoming baggage; at the wharf, Hop would be drawn up with his old express-wagon. For Hop was the shore department of the Line, only too glad to transport luggage, and in so doing to score off Sim Rathbone, who had little by little taken Hop's trade. He and Ken had arranged financial matters most amicably; Ken was to keep all his profits, Hop was to charge his usual rates for transfer, but it was understood that Hopkins, and he alone, was shore agent of the Sturgis Water Line, and great was his joy and pride.

Ken, on this first day, helped the old man load the trunks, rode with him to their various destinations, saw them received by unbelieving and jubilant owners, and then tore back to Applegate Farm, exultant and joyful. Having no breath for words, he laid before Felicia, who was making bread, four dollars and a half (six trunks at seventy-five cents apiece), clapped the yachting cap over Kirk's head, and cut an ecstatic pigeon-wing on the kitchen floor. "One trip!" gasped Phil, touching the money reverently with a doughy finger. "And you're going to make two round trips every day! That's eighteen dollars a day! Oh, Ken, it's a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week! Why, we're—we're millionaires!"

Ken had found his breath, and his reason.

"What a little lightning calculator!" he said. "Don't go so fast, Philly; why, your castle scrapes the clouds! This time of year I won't carry any baggage on the up trips—just gasolene wasted; and there's the rent of the dock and the store-room,—it isn't much, but it's quite a lot off the profit,—and gas and oil, and lots of trips when I sha'n't be in such luck. But I do think it's going to work—and pay, even if it's only fifteen or twenty dollars a week."

Whereupon Felicia called him a lamb, and kissed him, and he submitted.

That night they had a cake. Eggs had been lavished on it to produce its delectable golden smoothness, and sugar had not been stinted.

"It's a special occasion," Felicia apologized, "to celebrate the Sturgis Water Line and honor Captain Kenelm Sturgis—defender of his kindred," she added mischievously.

"Cut it!" muttered Ken; but she took it to mean the cake, and handed him a delicious slice.

"All right," said Ken. "Let's feast. But don't be like the girl with the pitcher of milk on her head, Phil."

* * * * *

If you suppose that Miss Felicia Sturgis was lonely while her brother, the captain, was carrying on his new watery profession, you are quite mistaken. She hadn't time even to reflect whether she was lonely or not. She had no intention of letting Applegate Farm sink back to the untidy level of neglect in which she had found it, and its needs claimed much of her energy. She tried to find time in which to read a little, for she felt somewhat guilty about the unceremonious leave she had taken of her schooling. And there was cookery to practise, and stockings to mend, and, oh dear, such a number of things!

But Kirk's education filled the most important place, to her, in the scheme of things at Asquam. If she had not been so young, and so ambitious, and so inexperienced, she might have faltered before the task she set herself, temporary though it might be. Long before the Sturgis Water Line had hung out its neat shingle at the harbor-master's wharf; before the Maestro and music had made a new interest in Kirk's life; while Applegate Farm was still confusion—Felicia had attacked the Braille system with a courage as conscientious as it was unguided. She laughed now to think of how she had gone at the thing—not even studying out the alphabet first. In the candle-light, she had sat on the edge of her bed—there was no other furniture in the room—with one of Kirk's books on her knee. Looking at the dots embossed on the paper conveyed nothing to her; she shut her eyes, and felt the page with a forefinger which immediately seemed to her as large as a biscuit. Nothing but the dreadful darkness, and the discouraging little humps on the paper which would not even group themselves under her fingers! Felicia had ended her first attempt at mastering Braille, in tears—but not altogether over her own failure.

"Oh, it must be hideous for him!" she quavered to the empty room; "simply hideous!"

And she opened her eyes, thankful to see even good candle-light on bare walls, and the green, star-hung slip of sky outside the window. But somehow the seeing of it had made her cry again.

Next day she had swallowed her pride and asked Kirk to explain to her a few of the mysteries of the embossed letters. He was delighted, and picked the alphabet, here and there, from a page chosen at random in the big book. The dots slunk at once into quite sensibly ordered ranks, and Felicia perceived a reason, an excuse for their existence.

She learned half the alphabet in an hour, and picked out b and h and l joyfully from page after page. Three days later she was reading, "The cat can catch the mouse"—as thrilled as a scientist would be to discover a new principle of physics. Kirk was thrilled, also, and applauded her vigorously.

"But you're looking at it, and that's easier," he said. "And you're growner-up than me."

Felicia confessed that this was so.

And now what a stern task-mistress she had become! She knew all the long words in the hardest lessons, and more too. There was no escaping school-time; it was as bad as Miss Bolton. Except that she was Felicia—and that made all the difference in the world. Kirk labored for her as he had never done for Miss Bolton, who had been wont to say, "If only he would work—" The unfinished sentence always implied untold possibilities for Kirk.

But Felicia was not content that Kirk could read the hardest lessons now. They plunged into oral arithmetic and geography and history, to which last he would listen indefinitely while Phil read aloud. And Felicia, whose ambition was unbounded,—as, fortunately, his own was,—turned her attention to the question of writing. He could write Braille, with a punch and a Braille slate,—yes, indeed!—but who of the seeing world could read it when he had done? And he had no conception of our printed letters; they might as well have been Chinese symbols. He would some day have a typewriter, of course, but that was impossible now. Phil, nothing daunted by statements that the blind never could write satisfactorily, sent for the simplest of the appliances which make it possible for them to write ordinary characters, and she and Kirk set to work with a will.

On the whole, those were very happy mornings. For the schoolroom was in the orchard—the orchard, just beginning to sift scented petals over the lesson papers; beginning to be astir with the boom of bees, and the fluttering journeys of those busy householders, the robins. The high, soft grass made the most comfortable of school benches; an upturned box served excellently for a desk; and here Kirk struggled with the elusive, unseen shapes of A. B. C.—and conquered them! His first completed manuscript was a letter to his mother, and Phil, looking at it, thought all the toil worth while. The letter had taken long, but Felicia had not helped him with it.

DEAR MOTHER

I AM WRITING THIS M YSELF A ROBIN IS SINGI NG NEARME BECAUSE HE H AS THREE EGGS WHICH FI L FOUND YESTERDAY. I H OPE YOU AREBETTER DEAR AND CAN COME BACK SOON YOUR KIRK XXXXXXXXXXXX

Mrs. Sturgis's feelings, on reading this production, may be imagined. She wept a little, being still not herself, and found heart, for the first time, to notice that a robin was singing outside her own window. There is no question but that Kirk's days were really the busiest of the Sturgis family's. For no sooner did the Three R's loose their hold on him at noon, than the Maestro claimed him for music after lunch, three times a week. Rather tantalizing music, for he wasn't to go near the piano yet. No, it was solfeggio, horrid dry scales to sing, and rhythm, and notation. But all was repaid when the Maestro dropped to the piano-stool and filled a half-hour with music that made Kirk more than ever long to master the scales. And there was tea, always, and slow, sun-bathed wanderings in the garden, hand in hand with the Maestro.

He must hear, now, all about the Sturgis Water Line, and Ken's yachting cap with the shiny visor, and how Kirk had taken the afternoon trip three times, and how—if the Maestro didn't know it already—the sound of water at the bow of a boat was one of the nicest noises there was.

"There are those who think so," said the old gentleman. "Kirk, tell Ken not to let the sea gain a hold on him. He loves it, does he not?"

"Yes," said Kirk, aghast at the sudden bitter sorrow in the gentle voice. "Why?"

"The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases. I know."

He stood among the gently falling blossoms of the big quince-tree by the terrace. Then he suddenly drew Kirk to him, and said:

"I spoke of the garden being filled, to me, with the memory of children; did I not?"

Kirk remembered that he had—on May-day.

"A little boy and a little girl played here once," said the Maestro, "when the pools were filled, and the garden paths were trim. The little girl died when she was a girl no longer. The boy loved the sea too well. He left the garden, to sail the seas in a ship—and I have never seen him since."

"Was he your little boy?" Kirk hardly dared ask it.

"He was my little boy," said the Maestro. "He left the garden in the moonlight, and ran away to the ships. He was sixteen. Tell Kenelm not to love the sea too much."

"But Ken wouldn't go away from Phil and me," said Kirk; "I know he wouldn't."

Kirk knew nothing of the call that the looming gray sails of the Celestine had once made.

"I thought," said the Maestro, "that the other boy would not leave his sister and his father." He roused himself suddenly. "Perhaps I do Ken injustice. I want to meet the gallant commander of the Flying Dutchman. It seems absurd that such close neighbors have not yet met. Bring him—and Felicia, when you come again. We'll drink to the success of the Sturgis Water Line. And don't dare to tell me, next time, that you never heard of the scale of A flat major, my little scamp!"

Kirk, to whom the Maestro's word was law, delivered his message very solemnly to Ken, who laughed.

"Not much fear of my cultivating too strong an affection for Mud Ocean, as navigated by the Dutchman. If I had a chance to see real water and real ships, it might be different."

"But how horrid of his son never to let him know—poor old gentleman!" said Felicia, who was putting on her hat at the window.

"Probably the old gentleman was so angry with him in the beginning that he didn't dare to, and now he thinks he's dead," Ken said.

"Who thinks who's dead?" Phil asked. "You'd never make a rhetorician."

"I should hope not!" said her brother. "Why, the sailor thinks his father's dead. Get your hat, Kirk."

"We're going to an auction," Felicia explained.

"A 'vandew'," Ken corrected. "You and Phil are, that is, to buy shoes and ships and sealing-wax, and a chair for my room that won't fall down when I sit in it, and crockery ware—and I guarantee you'll come home with a parlor organ and a wax fruit-piece under a glass case."

Phil scoffed and reproved him, and he departed, whistling "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," lugubriously. His brother and sister caught up with him, and they all walked together toward Asquam, Ken bound for his boat, and the others for the "vendu," which was held at an old farm-house where Winterbottom Road joined Pickery Lane.

Many ramshackle old wagons were already drawn up in the barn-yard and hitched to trees along the cart track. Their owners were grouped in the dooryard around the stoves and tables and boxes of "articles too numerous to mention," chattering over the merits and flaws of mattresses and lamps, and sitting in the chairs to find out whether or not they were comfortable. A bent old farmer with a chin-beard, stood chuckling over an ancient cradle that leaned against a wash-tub.

"There's one most 's old 's I be!" he said, addressing the world at large; "fust thing I 'member, I crawled outen one like thet!"

The auctioneer was selling farm tools and stock at the other side of the house, and most of the men-folks were congregated there—tall, solemn people, still wearing winter mufflers—soberly chewing tobacco and comparing notes on the tools. Felicia and Kirk, though they would have liked well enough to own the old white horse and the Jersey heifers, felt themselves unable to afford live stock, and stayed in the dooryard. Among the furniture so mercilessly dragged from its familiar surroundings to stand on the trampled grass, was a little, square, weathered thing, which Felicia at first failed to recognize as the inevitable melodeon. It lacked all the plush and gewgaws of the parlor organ of commerce; such a modest, tiny gray box might easily have passed for a kitchen chest.

Felicia pushed back the cover, and, pressing a pedal with one foot, gave forth the chords of her favorite, "How should I your true love know?" The organ had a rather sweet old tone, unlike the nasal and somewhat sanctimonious drone of most melodeons, and Felicia, hungry for the piano that had not been brought to Asquam, almost wished she could buy it. She remembered Ken's prophecy—"you'll come home with a melodeon"—and turned away, her cheeks all the pinker when she found the frankly interested eyes of several bumpkins fixed upon her. But Kirk was not so ready to leave the instrument.

"Why don't we get that, Phil?" he begged. "We must have it; don't you think so?"

"It will go for much more than we can afford," said Felicia. "And you have the Maestro's piano. Listen! They're beginning to sell the things around here."

"But you haven't the Maestro's piano!" Kirk protested, clinging very tightly to her hand in the midst of all this strange, pushing crowd.

The people were gathering at the sunny side of the house; the auctioneer, at the window, was selling pots and candles and pruning-shears and kitchen chairs. Felicia felt somehow curiously aloof, and almost like an intruder, in this crowd of people, all of whom had known each other for long years in Asquam. They shouted pleasantries across intervening heads, and roared as one when somebody called "'Lisha" bought an ancient stovepipe hat for five cents and clapped it on his head, adding at least a foot to his already gaunt and towering height. She felt, too, an odd sense of pathos at the sight of all these little possessions—some of them heirlooms—being pulled from the old homestead and flaunted before the world. She did not like to see two or three old women fingering the fine quilts and saying they'd be a good bargain, for "Maria Troop made every stitch on 'em herself, and she allus was one to have lastin' things." Poor little Mrs. Troop was there, tightly buttoned up in her "store clothes," running hither and thither, and protesting to the auctioneer that the "sofy" was worth "twicet as much's Sim Rathbone give for 't."

A fearful crash of crockery within brought her hand to her heart, and a voice from the crowd commented jocularly, "Huh! Breakin' up housekeepin'!" Even Mrs. Troop smiled wryly, and the crowd guffawed.

"Now here," bellowed the auctioneer, "is a very fine article sech as you don't often see in these days. A melodeon, everybody, a parlor organ, in size, shape, and appearance very unusual, so to say."

"Ain't it homely!" a female voice remarked during the stout auctioneer's pause for breath.

"Not being a musician, ladies and gents, I ain't qualified to let you hear the tones of this instrument, but—I am sure it will be an ornament to any home and a source of enjoyment to both old and young. Now—what'll you give me for this fine old organ?"

"Seventy-five cents," a deep voice murmured.

"Got your money with you, Watson?" the auctioneer inquired bitingly. "I am ashamed of this offer, folks, but nevertheless, I am offered seventy-five cents—seventy-five cents, for this fine old instrument. Now who'll—"

The melodeon climbed to two dollars, with comparative rapidity. The bidders were principally men, whose wives, had they been present, would probably have discouraged the bidding, on the score that it was impossible to have that thing in the house, when Jenny's had veneer candle-stands and plush pedals. Felicia was just beginning to wonder whether entering into the ring would push the melodeon too high, and the auctioneer was impatiently tapping his heel on the soap-box platform, when a clear and deliberate voice remarked:

"Two dollars and ten cents."

Several heads were turned to see the speaker, and women peeped over their husbands' shoulders to look. They saw a child in green knickerbockers and a gray jersey, his hand in that of a surprised young girl, and his determined face and oddly tranquil eyes turned purposefully to the auctioneer.

"Make it a quarter," said a man lounging against the leader-pipe.

"Two and a quarter," said the auctioneer. "I'm bid two dollars and a quarter for the organ."

"Two dollars and fifty cents," said the young bidder, a shade of excitement now betraying itself in his voice. The girl opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, and then closed it again. "Two-fifty!" bawled the auctioneer. "Two-fifty? Going—any more? Going—going—" he brought his big hands together with a slap, "Gone! at two dollars and fifty cents, to—who's the party, Ben?"

Ben, harassed, pencil in mouth, professed ignorance.

"Kirkleigh Sturgis," said the owner of the musical instrument, "Winterbottom Road."

"Mister Sturgis," said the auctioneer, while Ben scribbled. "Step right up, young man. Give Ben your money and put your pianner in your pocket. Now folks, the next article—"

Kirk and Felicia, not to speak of the organ, two chairs, a wash-basin, a frying-pan, two boxes of candles, a good mop, and a pot of soft soap, were all carted home by the invaluable Hop. They met Ken, in from his second trip, in the middle of Winterbottom Hill, and they gave him a lift.

"Oh, if you knew what you're sitting on!" Phil chuckled.

"Good heavens! Will it go off?" cried Ken, squirming around to look down at his seat. "I thought it was a chest, or something."

"It's—a melodeon!" Phil said weakly.

"A melodeon! Oh, ye gods and little fishes!" shouted Ken. "Oh, my prophetic soul!" and he laughed all the way to Applegate Farm.

But while Felicia was clattering pans in the kitchen, and Ken went whistling through the orchard twilight to the well, the purchaser of the organ felt his way to it, not quite sure, yet, of its place by the window. He sat down in front of it, and pressed the stiff old pedals. His careful fingers found a chord, and the yellow notes responded with their sweet, thin cadence—the vox humana stop was out. He pulled, by chance, the diapason, and filled the room with deep, shaken notes. Half frightened at the magic possibilities, he slipped from the chair and ran out into the young May night, to whisper to it something of the love and wonder that the Maestro's music was stirring in him. Here in the twilit dooryard he was found by his brother, who gave him the hand unoccupied by the bucket and led him in to the good, wholesome commonplaces of hearth-fire and supper and the jolliest of jokes and laughter.



CHAPTER IX

FAME COMES COURTING

At first, each day in the old house had been an adventure. That could not last, for even the most exciting surroundings become familiar when they are lived in day after day. Still, there are people who think every dawn the beginning of a new adventure, and Felicia, in spite of pots and pans, was rather of this opinion.

It was, for instance, a real epoch in her life when the great old rose-bush below the living-room windows budded and then bloomed. She had watched it anxiously for weeks, and tended it as it had not been tended for many years. It bloomed suddenly and beautifully,—"out of sheer gratitude," Ken said,—and massed a great mound of delicate color against the silver shingles of the west wall. It bore the sweet, small, old-fashioned roses that flower a tender pink and fade gracefully to bluish white. Felicia gathered a bunch of them for the Maestro, who had bidden the three to come for tea. Neither Ken nor Felicia had, as yet, met Kirk's mysterious friend, and were still half inclined to think him a creature of their brother's imagination.

And, indeed, when they met him, standing beside the laden tea-table on the terrace, they thought him scarcely more of an actuality, so utterly in keeping was he with the dreaming garden and the still house. Felicia, who had not quite realized the depth of friendship which had grown between this old gentleman and her small brother, noted with the familiar strangeness of a dream the proprietary action with which the Maestro drew Kirk to him, and Kirk's instant and unconscious response. These were old and dear friends; Ken and Felicia had for a moment the curious sensation of being intruders in a forgotten corner of enchanted land, into which the likeness of their own Kirk had somehow strayed. But the feeling passed quickly. The Maestro behind the silver urn was a human being, after all, talking of the Sturgis Water Line—a most delightful human being, full of kindliness and humor. Kirk was really their own, too. He leaned beside Felicia's chair, stirring his tea and she slipped an arm about him, just to establish her right of possession.

The talk ran on the awakening of Applegate Farm, the rose-bush, lessons in the orchard, many details of the management of this new and exciting life, which the Maestro's quiet questioning drew unconsciously from the eager Sturgises.

"We've been talking about nothing but ourselves, I'm afraid," Felicia said at last, with pink cheeks. She rose to go, but Kirk pulled her sleeve. No afternoon at the Maestro's house was complete for him without music, it seemed, and it was to the piano that the Maestro must go; please, please! So, through the French windows that opened to the terrace, they entered the room which Kirk had never been able to describe, because he had never seen it. Ken and Phil saw it now—high and dim and quiet, with book-lined walls, and the shapes of curious and beautiful things gleaming here and there from carved cabinet and table.

The Maestro sat down at the piano, thought for a moment, and then, smiling, rippled into the first bars of a little air which none of his listeners had ever before heard. Eerily it tripped and chimed and lilted to its close, and the Maestro swung about and faced them, smiling still, quizzically.

"What does it mean?" he asked. "I am very curious to know. Is it merely a tune—or does it remind you of something!"

The Sturgises pondered. "It's like spring," Felicia said; "like little leaves fluttering."

"Yes, it is," Ken agreed. "It's a song of some sort, I think—that is, it ought to have words. And it's spring, all right. It's like—it's like—"

"It's like those toads!" Kirk said suddenly. "Don't you know? Like little bells and flutes, far off—and fairies."

The Maestro clapped his hands.

"I have not forgotten how, then," he said. "It has words, Kenelm. I hope—I hope that you will not be very angry with me."

He played the first twinkling measures again, and then began to sing:

"Down in the marshes the sounds begin Of a far-away fairy violin, Faint and reedy and cobweb thin." Cobweb thin, the accompaniment took up the plaintive chirping till the Maestro sang the second verse.

"I say," said Ken, bolt upright in his chair. "I say!"

"Are you angry?" asked the Maestro. He flung out his hands in a pleading gesture. "Will he forgive me, Kirk?"

"Why, why—it's beautiful, sir!" Ken stammered. "It's only—that I don't see how you ever got hold of those words. It was just a thing I made up to amuse Kirk. He made me say it to him over and over, about fifty-nine times, I should say, till I'm sure I was perfectly sick of it."

"Having heard it fifty-nine times," said the old gentleman, "he was able to repeat it to me, and I took the opportunity to write it off on a bit of paper, because, my dear boy, I liked it."

"A lovely, scrumptious tune," said Kirk. "It makes it nicer than ever."

"What do you say," said the Maestro, "to our giving this unsurpassed song to the world at large?"

"Do you mean having it printed?" Felicia asked quickly, "Oh, what fun!" She beamed at Ken, who looked happy and uncomfortable at once.

"I'm afraid I'm too unknown, sir," he said. "I—I never thought of such a thing."

"Perhaps," said the Maestro, with a smile, "the composer is sufficiently well known to make up for the author's lack of fame."

Ken's face grew a shade redder. "Of course," he stammered. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"Then the permission is granted?"

Quite naturally, Ken granted it, with what he thought ill-worded thanks, and the Sturgises walked home across the meadow without knowing on what they trod.

"A real author!" Felicia said. "I told you that wasn't a pome, when I first heard it."

But Ken chose to be severe and modest, and frowned on the "Toad Song"—as it was familiarly called—for a topic of conversation. And as weeks slid by, the whole affair was almost forgotten at Applegate Farm.

Those were weeks during which the Maestro, from the shadowy hero of Kirk's tales, became a very real part of this new life that was slowly settling to a familiar and loved existence. The quiet garden and the still old house became as well known to Ken and Felicia as to their brother, and, indeed, the Maestro might often have been seen in the living-room at Applegate Farm, listening to Kirk's proud performance on the melodeon, and eating one of Phil's cookies.



CHAPTER X

VENTURES AND ADVENTURES

Ken had not much time for these visits. The Sturgis Water Line was so popular that he could not even find a spare day or two in which to haul out the Dutchman and give her the "lick of paint" she needed. He had feared that, with the filling of the cottages at the beginning of the season, business would fall off, but so many weekly visitors came and went at the hotels that the Dutchman rarely made a trip entirely empty, and quite often she was forced to leave, till the next time, a little heap of luggage which even her wide cockpit could not carry. Sometimes Ken made an extra trip, which brought him back to the pier at Asquam as the first twilight was gathering.

He had just come in from such an "extra," one day during the busy Fourth of July weekend, and climbed out upon the wharf when the shadows of the pile-heads stretched darkly up the streetway. Hop fastened the tail-board of his wagon behind the last trunk, rubbed his hands, and said:

"Wife sent ye down some pie. Thought ye desarved it a'ter runnin' up 'n' down all day."

He produced the pie, wrapped up in a paper, from under the seat, and presented it to Ken with a flourish and a shuffle that were altogether characteristic. Supper was waiting at Applegate Farm, Ken knew, but the pie—which was a cherry one, drippy and delectable—was not to be resisted, after long hours on the water. He bit into it heartily as he left Asquam and swung into Pickery Lane.

He hurried along, still wrapped in the atmosphere which had surrounded him all day. He felt still the lift of the boat over the short swell, he smelled the pleasant combination of salt, and gasolene, and the whiff of the hayfields, and his eyes still kept the glare and the blue, and the swinging dark shape of the Dutchman's bows as he headed her down the bay. Just before he reached Winterbottom Road, he saw, rather vaguely through the twilight, the figures of a man and a small boy, coming toward him. They had, apparently, seen him, also, for the man walked more quickly for a step or two, then stopped altogether, and finally turned sharply off the road and swung the child over a stone wall, with a quick remark which Ken did not hear.

He did hear, however, the child's reply, for it was in a clear and well-known voice. It said: "I don't think this can be the way. I didn't come over a wall."

The remainder of the cherry pie dropped to the dust of the Winterbottom Road. Not more than three gigantic leaps brought Ken to the spot; he vaulted the wall with a clean and magnificent spring that would have won him fame at school. The man was a stranger, as Ken had thought—an untidy and unshaven stranger. He was not quite so tall as Ken, who seized him by the arm.

"May I ask where you're going?" roared Ken, at which the small boy leaped rapturously, fastened himself to Ken's coat-tail, and cried:

"Oh, I'm so glad it's you! I started to come and meet you, and I walked farther than I meant, and I got lost, and I met this person, and he said he'd take me home, and—"

"Shut up!" said Ken. "And let go of me!" at which Kirk, thoroughly shocked, dropped back as though he could not believe his ears.

"I was takin' the kid home," muttered the man, "just like he says."

"Why were you going in exactly the opposite direction, then?" Ken demanded.

As he leaped abreast of the man, who was trying to back away, the day's receipts of the Sturgis Water Line jingled loudly in his trousers pocket. The stranger, whose first plan had been so rudely interfered with, determined on the instant not to leave altogether empty-handed, and planted a forcible and unexpected blow on the side of Ken's head. Ken staggered and went down, and Kirk, who had been standing dangerously near all this activity, went down on top of him. It so happened that he sprawled exactly on top of the trousers pocket aforesaid, and when the man sought, with hasty and ungentle hands, to remove him from it, Kirk launched a sudden and violent kick, in the hope of its doing some execution.

Kirk's boots were stout, and himself horrified and indignant; his heel caught the stranger with full force in the temple, and the man, too, was added to the prostrate figures in the darkening field. Two of them did not long remain prostrate. Ken lurched, bewildered, to his feet, and seeing his foe stretched by some miracle upon the ground, he bundled Kirk over the wall and followed giddily. Stumbling down the shadowy road, with Kirk's hand in his, he said:

"That was good luck. I must have given the gentleman a crack as he got me."

"He was trying to steal your money, I think," Kirk said. "I was lying on top of you, so I kicked him, hard."

"Oh, that was it, was it?" Ken exclaimed. "Well, very neat work, even if not sporting. By the way, excuse me for speaking to you the way I did, but it wasn't any time to have a talk. You precious, trusting little idiot, don't you know better than to go off with the first person who comes along?"

"He said he'd take me home," Kirk said plaintively. "I told him where it was."

"You've got to learn," said his brother, stalking grimly on in the dusk, "that everybody in the world isn't so kind and honest as the people you've met so far. That individual was going to take you goodness knows where, and not let us have you back till we'd paid him all the money we have in the world. If I hadn't come along just at that particular moment, that's what would have happened."

Kirk sniffed, but Ken went on relentlessly:

"What were you doing outside the gate, anyway? You're not allowed there. I don't like your going to the Maestro's, even, but at least it's a safe path. There are automobiles on Winterbottom Road, and they suppose that you can see 'em and get out of their way. I'm afraid we'll have to say that you can't leave the house without Phil or me."

Ken was over-wrought, and forgot that his brother probably was, also. Kirk wept passionately at last, and Ken, who could never bear to see his tears, crouched penitent in the gloom of the road, to dry his eyes and murmur tender apologies. At the gate of the farm, Ken paused suddenly, and then said:

"Let's not say anything about all this to Phil; she'd just be worried and upset. What do you say?"

"Don't let's," Kirk agreed. They shook hands solemnly, and then turned to the lighted windows of Applegate Farm. But it would not have been so easy to keep the unpleasant adventure secret, or conceal from Felicia that something had been wrong, if she herself had not been so obviously cherishing a surprise. She had thought that Kirk was waiting at the gate for Ken, and so had been spared any anxiety on that score. She could hardly wait for Ken to take off his sweater and wash his hands. Supper was on the table, and it was to something which lay beside her elder brother's plate that her dancing eyes kept turning.

Ken, weary with good cause, sat down with a sigh, and then leaned forward as if an electric button had been touched somewhere about his person.

"What—well, by Jiminy!" shouted Ken. "I never believed it, never!"

"It's real," Phil said excitedly; "it looks just like a real one."

"What?" Kirk asked wildly; "tell me what!"

Ken lifted the crisp new sheet of music and stared at it, and then read aloud the words on the cover.

"Fairy Music," it said—and his name was there, and the Maestro's, and "net price, 60c" "like a real one," indeed. And within were flights of printed notes, and the words of the "Toad Pome" in cold black and white. And above them, in small italics, "Dedicated to Kirkleigh Sturgis."

"Just like Beethoven's things to the Countess von Something, don't you know!" Phil murmured, awed and rapturous.

When Ken laid the pages down at last, Kirk seized on them, and though they could mean nothing to him but the cool smoothness of paper and the smell of newly dried printers' ink, he seemed to get an immense satisfaction from them.

But the surprise was not yet over. Beneath the copy of the song lay a much smaller bit of paper, long, narrow, and greenish. It bore such words as Central Trust Company, and Pay to the Order of Kenelm Sturgis. The sum which was to be paid him was such as to make Ken put a hand dramatically to his forehead. He then produced from his pocket the money which had so nearly gone off in the pocket of the stranger, and stacked it neatly beside his plate.

"One day's bone labor for man and boat," he said. "Less than a quarter as much as what I get for fifteen minutes' scribbling."

"And the Maestro says there'll be more," Felicia put in; "because there are royalties, which I don't understand."

"But," said Ken, pursuing his line of thought, "I can depend on the Dutchman and my good right arm, and I can't depend on the Pure Flame of Inspiration, or whatever it's called, so methinks the Sturgis Water Line will make its first trip at 8:30 promptly to-morrow morning, as advertised. All the same," he added jubilantly, "what a tremendous lark it is, to be sure!"

And he gave way suddenly to an outburst of the sheer delight which he really felt, and, leaping up, caught Felicia with one hand and Kirk with the other. The three executed for a few moments a hilarious ring-around-a-rosy about the table, till Felicia finally protested at the congealing state of the supper, and they all dropped breathless to their seats and fell to without more words.

After supper, Felicia played the Toad Song on the melodeon until it ran in all their heads, and Kirk could be heard caroling it, upstairs, when he was supposed to be settling himself to sleep.

It was not till Ken was bending over the lamp, preparatory to blowing it out, that Phil noticed the bruise above his eye.

"How did you get that, lamb?" she said, touching Ken's forehead, illuminated by the lamp's glow.

Ken blew out the flame swiftly, and faced his sister in a room lit only by the faint, dusky reflection of moonlight without.

"Oh, I whacked up against something this afternoon," he said. "I'll put some witch-hazel on it, if you like."

"I'm so awfully glad about the Toad Song," whispered Felicia, slipping her hand within his arm. "Good old brother!"

"Good old Maestro," said Ken; and they went arm in arm up the steep stairs.

Ken lighted his sister's candle for her, and took his own into the room he shared with Kirk. There was no fear of candle-light waking Kirk. He was very sound asleep, with the covers thrown about, and Ken stood looking at him for some time, with the candle held above his brother's tranquil face. "I wonder where he'd have been sleeping to-night if I hadn't come along just about when I did?" mused Ken. "The innocent little youngster—he never supposed for a minute that the rapscallion would do anything but take him home. How's he ever going to learn all the ways of the wicked world? And what ever possessed him to shoot off the Toad Pome to the Maestro?"

Ken put the candle on the bureau and undid his necktie.

"The blessed little goose!" he added affectionately.

There is nothing like interesting work to make time pass incredibly quickly. For the Sturgises were interested in all their labors, even the "chores" of Applegate Farm. It goes without saying that Kirk's music—which was the hardest sort of work—absorbed him completely; he lived in a new world. So, almost before they could believe it, September came, filling the distance with tranquil haze, and mellowing the flats to dim orange, threaded with the keen blue inlets of the bay. Asters began to open lavender stars at the door-stone of Applegate Farm; tall rich milkweed pressed dusty flower-bunches against the fence, and the sumach brandished smoldering pyramids of fire along the roadsides.

Ken came home late, whistling, up from Asquam. Trade for the Sturgis Water Line was heavy again just now; the hotels and cottages were being vacated every day, and more baggage than the Dutchman could carry lay piled in the Sturgis "warehouse" till next morning. Ken's whistle stopped as he swung into Winterbottom Road and began to climb the hill. Just at the crest of the rise, where the pale strip of road met the twilight of the sky, the full moon hung, a golden disc scarcely more luminous than the sky around it. As he moved up the hill, it moved also, till it floated clear of the dark juniper-trees and stood high above them. Crickets were taking up their minor creaking, and there was no other sound.

Through the half dusk, the white chimneys of Applegate Farm showed vaguely, with smoke rising so lazily that it seemed almost a stationary streak of blue across the trees. What a decent old place it was, thought Ken. Was it only because it constituted home? No; they had worked to make it so, and it had ripened and expanded under their hands.

"I shouldn't mind Mother's seeing it, now," Ken reflected.

He sighed as he remembered the last difficult letter which he and Phil had composed—a strictly truthful letter, which said much and told nothing. He wondered how much longer the fiction would have to be sustained; when the doctor at Hilltop would sanction a revelation of all that had been going on since that desolate March day, now so long ago.

As Ken neared the house, he heard the reedy voice of the organ, and, stopping beside the lighted window, looked in. Felicia was mending beside the lamp; Kirk sat at the melodeon, rapturously making music. From the somewhat vague sweetness of the melody, Ken recognized it as one of Kirk's own compositions—without beginning, middle, or end, but with a gentle, eerie harmony all its own. The Maestro, who was thoroughly modern in his instruction, if old-school himself, was teaching composition hand in hand with the other branches of music, and he allowed himself, at times, to become rather enthusiastic. "Even if I didn't want him to make music of his own," he told Felicia, "I couldn't stop him. So I supply the bricks and mortar for the foundation. He might as well build his little tunes rightly from the beginning. He will go far—yes, far. It is sheer harmony." And the Maestro would sigh deeply, and nod his fine head.

Ken, remembering these words with some awe, studied his brother's face, through the pane, and then came quietly in at the door. Kirk left his tune unfinished, and launched himself in the direction of Ken, who scooped him into his arms.

"Do you know, Phil," Ken said, voicing at once the thought he had felt all the way up Winterbottom Road; "do you know, I think, after all, this is the very best thing we could have done."

"What?" Phil asked, not being a mind-reader.

"This," Ken said, sweeping his arm about the lamplit room. "This place. We thought it was such a horrible mistake, at first. It was a sort of venture to take."

"A happy venture," Felicia murmured, bending over her sewing. "But it wouldn't have been so happy if the defender of his kindred hadn't slaved on the high seas 'for to maintain his brither and me,' like Henry Martin in the ballad."

"Oh, fiddlestick!" said Ken. "Who wants to loaf around? Speaking of loaf, I'm hungry."

"Supper's doing itself on the stove," Phil said. "Look lively with the table, Kirk."

Kirk did so,—his efficiency as a table-setter had long since been proved,—and Ken, as the weary breadwinner, stretched out in a chair.

"Did you happen to remember," said Felicia, coming to the door, spoon in hand, "that the Kirk has a birthday this week?"

"It has?" exclaimed Ken. "I say, I'd forgotten."

"It's going to be nine; think of that!" said Phil. "Woof! My kettle's boiling over!" She made a hasty exit, while Ken collared his brother and looked him over.

"Who'd ha' thunk it!" he said. "Well, well, what's to be done about this?"

"Lots," said Felicia, suddenly appearing with the supper. "Lots!"



CHAPTER XI

THE NINE GIFTS

Two evenings later, Ken confronted his sister at the foot of the stairs as she came down from seeing Kirk to bed.

"Where," said Ken, "is your Braille slate?"

"What," said Felicia, "do you want with a Braille slate, if I may ask?"

"You mayn't," said Ken, conclusively.

"But it makes a difference," Phil argued. "If you want to write Braille with it,—which seems unlikely,—I'll consider. But if you want it to prop open the door with, or crack nuts on, or something, you can't have it."

"I can think of lots better things to crack nuts on than a Braille slate," said Ken. "I want to use it for its rightful purpose. Come now, my girl, out with it!"

"Wish you luck," said Felicia, going to the educational shelf; "here it is."

Ken eyed it mistrustfully—a slab of wood, crossed by a movable metal strip which was pierced with many small, square openings. "Also," said Ken, "the alphabet of the language."

"American Uncontracted, or Revised, Grade One and a Half?" Phil asked airily.

"They sound equally bad, but if there's any choice, give me the easiest. Sounds like geological survey stuff."

Phil rummaged again, and brought to light an alphabet which she had made for herself in her early Braille days.

"And the paper and stuff you use," Ken demanded.

"Here, take everything!" cried Felicia, thrusting out handfuls of irrelevant books and papers. "Stop asking for things in dribbles."

Ken settled himself at the table, scowled at the embossed alphabet, and then clamped a piece of the heavy paper into the slate. He grasped the little punch firmly, and, with a manner vigorous, if not defiant, he set to work.

"You just poke holes in the paper through the squares, eh, and they turn into humps?"

"The squares don't turn into humps; the holes do. Don't whack so hard."

There was silence for a short time, broken only by Ken's mutterings and the click of the stylus. Felicia looked up, then gazed meditatively across the table at the enterprise.

"Is it for a Hebrew person?" she inquired gently.

"Hebrew?" Ken said; "I should rather say not. Why?"

"You're writing it backward—like Yiddish."

"I'm doing it from left to right, which is the way one usually writes," said Ken, in a superior tone. "You're looking at it upside-down. You're twisted."

"The holes," said Felicia, mildly, "in order to become readable humps on the other side, have to be punched right to left."

"Oh!" said Ken. After a moment of thought he exclaimed, somewhat indignant: "You mean to say, then, that you have to reverse the positions of all these blooming dots, besides writing 'em backward?"

"Yes."

"You have to read 'em one way, and write 'em another, and remember 'em both?"

"You do."

"And—and Kirk does that?"

"Yes; and he knows Revised, Grade One and a Half, too, and our alphabet besides, and embossed music, a little, and arithmetic, and—"

"Don't," said Ken. "It makes a fellow feel cheap."

With which he removed the paper and clamped in a fresh sheet. The work progressed silently; Ken occasionally gnashed his teeth and tore away the paper, but after a time the mistakes grew fewer, and Felicia, looking across at her brother's brown, handsome face, found it tranquil and sober, an earnest absorption in his gray eyes and a gently whimsical smile about his mouth. She knew of whom he was thinking, and smiled tenderly herself as she watched his big hand plod systematically and doggedly across the unfamiliar way. Bedtime found Ken elated and exhibiting to his sister several neatly embossed sheets of paper.

"'All day my—'" read Felicia.

"Murder!" cried Ken. "I forgot you could read the stuff! Go to bed, go to bed!"

At a rather early hour the next morning, Felicia was awakened by the stealthy approach to her bedside of a small and cautious figure in pajamas. It stood quite still beside the bed, listening to find out whether or not she was asleep. She spread her arms noiselessly, and then flung them about the pajamaed one. When the confusion of kisses, hugs, and birthday greetings had subsided, and Kirk was tucked under the quilt, he said:

"Now see me a story."

"But I can't—not like Ken," Felicia protested.

"Oh, Phil!" Kirk said in a tone of withering reproach. "Silly! A birthday special one, please."

Felicia thought for some time; then she said:

"It's not very nice, but it's a sort of birthday one. It's called The Nine Gifts."

"One for each year," said Kirk, wriggling comfortably.

"Exactly. Once upon a time there was a nice person who lived in an old house on a hill. One autumn day was his birthday, but he wasn't thinking of any gifts, because there could be no one to give him anything, and he was quite poor—as far as gold and silver went. So he was feeling just a little sad, because people like to have gifts. He came downstairs and unlocked his door, and opened it to the beautiful young day all strung with dew—"

"Could he see it?" asked Kirk.

"No," said Felicia, "he couldn't."

"Then it was me."

"We-e-ll," said his sister, "possibly. But when he opened the door, in came the wind, all as fresh and dewy as a dawn-wind can be. It ruffled up his hair, and fluttered the curtains at the windows, and ran all about the room. Then it said:

"'I am the wind. I give you the breath of the dawn, and the first sigh of the waking fields and hedge-rows, and the cool stillness of the forest that is always awake. Take my birthday kiss upon your forehead!'

"And that was the First Gift. The person was quite surprised, but he was very much pleased, too. He went out and brought in some bread and milk for his breakfast, and then he went to get some water at the well. There was a gentle, delicious warmth all about in the air, and a far-off, round voice said:

"'I am the sun. I wrap you in a glowing mantle of warmth and light. I make the earth grow and sing for you. It is I who wake the dawn-wind and the birds. Take my warm kiss on your upturned face.'

"And that was the Second Gift. The person thanked the sun very much, and went in, with his heart all warmed, to eat his breakfast. As he sat eating, in at the window came all manner of little sounds—twitterings and sighings and warblings and rustlings, and all the little voices said together:

"'We are the sounds of the open. We are the birds in the russet meadow, and the whispering of the orchard trees, the cheep of the crickets in the long grass, and the whole humming, throbbing voice of out-of-doors. Take our kiss upon your waiting senses.'

"That was the Third Gift. The person ran out at the door to thank the little sounds, when what should meet him but a host of the most delicious scents!

"'We are the smell of the tawny grass, and the good tang of the wood-smoke. We are the fragrance of ripening apples in the orchard, and honeysuckle over the wall. We are the clean, cool, mellowing atmosphere of September. Breathe our sweetness!'

"That was the Fourth Gift. To be sure, the nice person was quite overwhelmed by this time, for he never had expected such a thing. As he stooped to thank the delicious scents, he touched a little clump of asters by the door-stone.

"'Greeting!' they piped. 'We are the flowers. We are the asters by the door, and burnished goldenrod in the orchard; trumpeting honeysuckle on the fence, sumach burning by the roadside, juicy milkweed by the gate. Take our cool, green kiss on your gentle fingers!'

"He stroked their little purple heads, and flung himself down beside them for a moment, to thank them. As he did so, a big, warm voice came from beneath him:

"'I am the earth. I am the cool clasp of the tall grass by the gate. I am the crispness of the heath-grass on the upland. I will rock you to sleep on my great, grass-carpeted breast. I will give you rest and security. Take my great kiss on your body.'

"That was the Sixth Gift. Dear me! the person was delighted. He lay with his cheek to the good earth's heart, thanking it, when a big gusty voice came swinging out of the east.

"'I am the sea. I give you the sound of water about the boat's bow, and the cry of the gulls; the wet, salt smack of me, the damp fog on your face, and the call out into the wide places.'

"The person jumped up and turned his face to the blue glint of the bay, and thanked the sea for the Seventh Gift. Then he went into the house to tidy up the hearth. As he came into the room, a queer, gentle, melodious voice, which seemed to come from the organ, said:

"'I am Music. I hold the key to enchantment. It is I who will sum up for you all the other gifts and make them mine—and yours. Take my kiss within your soul.'

"And that was the Eighth Gift," Felicia paused.

"But the ninth?" Kirk whispered.

"I'm trying to think of it."

Kirk clapped his hands suddenly.

"I know what it was!" he cried. "Don't you? Oh, don't you, Phil?"

"No, I don't. What was it?"

"Shall I finish?" Kirk asked.

"Please do."

"And the person said, 'Thank you,' to the organ," Kirk proceeded gleefully; "and then in the door what should stand but a beautiful lady. And she said: 'I'm your sister Felicia—Happiness.' And that was the most best gift of all!"

"Naughty person!" said Felicia. "After all those really nice gifts! But—but if you will have it that, she said, 'Take my kiss upon your heart of hearts.' Oh, Kirk—darling—I love you!"

Flowers twined Kirk's chair at the breakfast table—golden honeysuckle, a sweet, second blooming, and clematis from the Maestro's hedge. Kirk hung above it, touching, admiring, breathing the sweetness of the honeysuckle; aware, also, of many others of the Nine Gifts already perceptible about the room. But his fingers encountered, as he reached for his spoon, a number of more substantial presents stacked beside his plate. There was the green jersey which Felicia had been knitting at privately for some time. He hauled it on over his head at once, and emerged from its embrace into his sister's. There was, too, a model boat, quite beautifully rigged and fitted, the painstaking care with which it was fashioned testifying to the fact that Ken had not been quite so forgetful of his brother's approaching birthday as he had seemed to be. "She's called the Celestine," said Ken, as Kirk's fingers sought out rapturously the details of the schooner. "It's painted on her stern. She's not rigged according to Hoyle, I'm afraid; I was rather shaky about some of it."

"She has a flag," Kirk crowed delightedly. "Two of 'em! And a little anchor—and—" he became more excited as he found each thing: "oh, Ken!"

There was another gift—a flat one. A book of five or six short stories and poems that Kirk had loved best to hear his sister read—all written out in Braille for him in many of Felicia's spare hours. Now he could read them himself, when Phil had no time to give him. Breakfast was quite neglected; the cereal grew cold. Kirk, who had not, indeed, expected so much as the nine gifts of Phil's tale, was quite overcome by these things, which his brother and sister had feared were little enough. There was one thing more—some sheets of paper covered with Braille characters, tucked beside Kirk's plate.

"That's Ken's handiwork," Felicia said, hastily disclaiming any finger in the enterprise. "I don't know what you may find!"

"It's perfectly all right, now," Ken protested. "You'll see! You can read it, can't you, Kirk?"

Kirk was frowning and laughing at once.

"It's a little bit funny," he said. "But I didn't know you could do it at all. Oh, listen to it!"

He declaimed this, with some pauses:

"TO MY RELATIVE, K. S.

"While I am at my watery work All up and down the bay, I think about my brother Kirk A million times a day.

"All day my job seems play to me, My duties they are light, Because I know I'm going to see My brother Kirk that night.

"I ponder over, at my biz, How nice he is (That smile of his!), And eke his cheerful, open phiz.

"And also I am proud of him, I sing the praises loud of him, And all the wondering multitude At once exclaims: 'Gee Whiz!'

"It seems this relative of mine Is going to have a fete. They tell me that he'll now be nine, Instead of half-past eight. How simply fine! We'll dance and dine! We'll pass the foaming bowl of wine!

"And here's our toast (We proudly boast. There isn't any need to urge us): Hip, Hip, Hooray for Kirkleigh Sturgis!"

Ken gave the three cheers promptly, and then said: "That one's silly. The other's the way I really feel. Oh, don't read it aloud!"

Kirk, who had opened his mouth to begin the next page, closed it again, and followed the lines of Braille silently. This is what he read:

"At eight o'clock on the day you were born, I found a fairy under a thorn; He looked at me hard, he looked at me queerly, And he said, 'Ah, Ken, you shall love him dearly.'

"I was then myself but a wee small lad, But I well remember the look that he had; And I thought that his words came wondrous true, For whom could I love more dear than you?

"To-day at dawn I was out alone, I found a wee fairy beside a stone; And he said, as he looked at me, far above him, 'Ah, Ken, you have only begun to love him!'"

There could be no possible answer to this but a rush from Kirk and an onslaught of hugs, from which it was long before Ken could disentangle himself.

"Oh, what have I done!" Ken cried. "Yes, of course I mean it, silly! But do, do have a care—we're all mixed up with the marmalade and the oatmeal, as it is!"

Ken had proclaimed the day a half-holiday for himself, but Kirk was to go with him on the morning trip, and Phil, too, if she wanted to go. She did want, so Applegate Farm was locked up, and three radiant Sturgises walked the warm, white ribbon of Winterbottom Road to the Dutchman. Kirk was allowed to steer the boat, under constant orders from Ken, who compared the wake to an inebriated corkscrew. He also caught a fish over the stern, while Ken was loading up at Bayside. Then, to crown the day's delight, under the door at Applegate, when they returned, was thrust a silver-edged note from the Maestro, inviting them all to supper at his house, in honor of the occasion.



CHAPTER XII

"ROSES IN THE MOONLIGHT"

The Maestro's house wore always a mantle of gentle aloofness, like something forgotten among its over-grown garden paths. To Kirk, it was a place under a spell; to the others, who could see its grave, vine-covered, outer walls and its dim interior crowded with strange and wonderful things, it seemed a lodging place for memories, among which the Maestro moved as if he himself were living a remembered dream.

On this rich September afternoon, they found him standing on the upper terrace, waiting for them. He took Kirk's hand, offered his arm gallantly to Felicia, and they all entered the high-studded hall, where the firelight, reaching rosy shafts from the library, played catch-as-catch-can with the shadows.

Supper, a little later, was served in the dining-room—the first meal that the Sturgises had eaten there. Tall candles burned in taller silver candlesticks; their light flowed gently across the gleaming cloth, touched the Maestro's white hair, and lost itself timidly in the dim area outside the table. Kirk was enthroned in a big carved chair at the foot of the table, very grave and happy, with a candle at either side.

"A fit shrine for devotion," murmured the Maestro, looking across at him, and then, turning, busied himself vigorously with the carving.

It was a quite wonderful supper—banquet would have been a more fitting name for it, the Sturgises thought. For such food was not seen on the little table at Applegate Farm. And there was raspberry wine, in which to drink Kirk's health, and the Maestro stood up and made a beautiful speech. There was also a cake, with nine candles flaring bravely,—no one had ever before thought to give Kirk a birthday cake with candles that he could not see, and he was deeply impressed.

And after it was all over, they gathered content about the library fire, and the Maestro went to the piano.

"Kirk," he said quietly, "I have no very exciting present for you. But once, long ago, I made a song for a child on his birthday. He was just as old as you. He has no longer any need of it—so I give it, my dear, to you. It is the greatest gift I have to give."

In the silence that followed, there crept into the firelit room the star-clear notes of a little prelude. Then the Maestro sang softly:

"Roses in the moonlight, To-night all thine, Pale in the shade, and bright In the star-shine; Roses and lilies white, Dear child of mine!

My heart I give to thee, This day all thine; At thy feet let it be— It is the sign Of all thou art to me, Dear child—"

But the poor Maestro could not finish the verse. He swung about on the piano-stool, trying to frame a laughing apology. Kirk went to him instantly, both hands outstretched in his haste. His fingers found the Maestro's bowed shoulders; his arms went tight about the Maestro's neck. In his passionately whispered confidence the old gentleman must have found solace, for he presently smiled,—a real smile,—and then still keeping Kirk beside him, began playing a sonata. Ken and Felicia, sunk unobtrusively in the big chairs at the hearth, were each aware of a subtle kindredship between these two at the piano—a something which they could not altogether understand.

"He brings out a side of Kirk that we don't know about," Felicia thought. "It must be the music. Oh, what music!"

It was difficult to leave a place of such divine sounds, but Kirk's bedtime was long past, and the moon stood high and cold above the Maestro's garden.

"Is it shining on all the empty pools and things?" Kirk asked, at the hedge.

"Yes, and on the meadow, and the silver roof of Applegate Farm," Phil told him.

"'Roses in the moonlight, to-night all thine,'" Kirk sang dreamily.

"Do you mean to say you can sing it so soon?" Ken gasped.

"He ran away in the moonlight," Kirk murmured. "Away to sea. Would you, Ken?"

"Not if I had a father like the Maestro, and a brother like you," said Ken, fitting the key to the door of Applegate Farm.

A very few days after Kirk had begun on his new year, he and Felicia went into Asquam to collect a few things of which the farm-house stood in need. For there had been a hint that Mrs. Sturgis might soon leave Hilltop, and Felicia was determined that Applegate Farm should wear its best face for her mother, who did not, as yet, even know of its existence. A great many little things, which Felicia had long been meaning to buy, now seemed to find a legitimate hour for their purchase. So she and Kirk went the round of the Asquam Utility Emporium, B. B. Jones Co., and the Beacon Light Store, from each of which places of business they emerged with another package.

"I told Ken we'd meet him at the boat," Felicia said, "so we might as well walk over there now, and all come home together. Oh, how thick the fog is!"

"Is it?" Kirk said. "Oh, yes, there goes the siren."

"I can hardly see the Dutchman, it's so white at the end of the pier. Ken isn't there; he must have gone with Hop to see about something."

"Let's wait in the boat," Kirk suggested. "I love the gluggy way it sounds, and the way it sloshes up and down."

They put the bundles on the wharf and climbed into the boat. The water slapped vigorously against its side, for the tide was running, and above, a wraith-like gull occasionally dropped one creaking, querulous cry.

"Goodness!" Felicia exclaimed, "with all our shopping, I forgot the groceries! I'll run back. I'll not be a minute. Tell Ken when he comes." She scrambled up the steps and ran down the pier, calling back to Kirk: "Stay just where you are!"

There were more people in the grocery store than Felicia had ever seen there, for it was near the closing hour. She was obliged to wait much longer than she had expected. When she returned to the wharf, Ken was not in sight. Neither was the Flying Dutchman.

"How queer!" Phil thought. "Ken must have taken her out. How funny of him; they knew I was coming right back."

She sat down on a pile-head and began humming to herself as she counted over her packages and added up her expenditure. She looked up presently, and saw Ken walking toward her. He was alone. Even then, it was a whole second before there came over her a hideous, sickening rush of fear.

She flew to meet him. "Where's the boat—Ken, where's the boat?"

"The boat? I left her temporarily tied up. What's the mat—" At that moment he saw the empty gray water at the pier head. Two breathless voices spoke together:

"Where's Kirk?"

"He was in the boat," Felicia gasped hoarsely. "I ran back after the groceries."

Ken was at the end of the wharf in one agonized leap. In another second he had the frayed, wet end of rope in his hand.

"That salvaged line!" he said. "Phil, couldn't you see that only her stern line was made fast? I left her half-moored till I came back. That rope was rotten, and it got jammed in here and chafed till it parted."

"It's my fault," Felicia breathed.

"Mine," Ken snapped. "Oh, my heavens! look at the fog!"

"And the tide?" Felicia hardly dared ask.

"Going out—to sea."

A blank, hideous silence followed, broken only by the reiterated warning of the dismal siren at the lighthouse.

"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. A boat would have to comb every foot of the bay in this fog, and night's coming. How long have you been gone?"

Felicia looked at her watch. She was astonished to find it had been over half an hour.

"Heaven knows where the boat could have got to in half an hour," Ken muttered, "with this tide. And the wind's going to sea, too."

Felicia shook him wildly by the arm. "Do you realize—Kirk's in that boat!" she moaned. "Kirk's in that boat—do you realize it?"

Ken tore himself free.

"No, I don't want to realize it," he said in a harsh, high voice. "Get back to the house, Phil! You can't do anything. I'm going to the harbor master now—I'm going everywhere. I may not be back to-night." He gave her a little push, "Go, Phil."

But he ran after her. "Poor old Phil—mustn't worry," he said gently. "Get back to the farm before it's dark and have it all cheerful for us when we come in—Kirk and I."

And then he plunged into the reek, and Felicia heard the quick beat of his steps die away down the wharf.

The harbor master was prompt in action, but not encouraging. He got off with Ken in his power boat in surprisingly short order. The coast guard, who had received a very urgent telephone message, launched the surf-boat, and tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog—now darkening to twilight—with their big searchlight. Lanterns, lost at once in the murk, began to issue from wharf-houses as men started on foot up the shore of the bay.

Ken, in the little hopeless motor-boat, sat straining his eyes beyond the dripping bow, till he saw nothing but flashes of light that did not exist. The Flying Dutchman—the Flying Dutchman—why had he not known that she must be a boat of ill omen? Joe Pasquale—drowned in February. "We got him, but we never did find his boat"—"cur'ous tide-racks 'round here—cur'ous tide-racks."

The harbor master was really saying that now, as he had said it before. Yes, the tide ran cruelly fast beside the boat, black and swirling and deep. A gaunt something loomed into the light of the lantern, and made Ken's heart leap. It was only a can-buoy, lifting lonely to the swell.

Far off, the siren raised its mourning voice.



CHAPTER XIII

"THE SEA IS A TYRANT"

Ken stumbled into the open door of Applegate Farm at three the next morning. Felicia was asleep in a chair by the cold ashes of the fire. A guttering candle burned on the table. She woke instantly and stared at him with wide eyes.

"What is it?" she said, and then sprang up. "Alone?"

"Yes," Ken said. "Not yet. I'm going back in a little while. I wanted to tell you how everybody is working, and all."

She ran to bring him something to eat, while he flung himself down before the hearth, dead tired.

"The fog's still down heavy," he said, when she came back. "The coast guard's been out all night. There are men on shore, too, and some other little boats."

"But the tide was running out," Phil said. "He's gone. Kirk's—gone, Ken!"

"No," Ken said, between his teeth. "No, Phil. Oh, no, no!". He got up and shook himself. "Go to bed, now, and sleep. The idea of sitting up with a beastly cold candle!"

He kissed her abruptly and unexpectedly and stalked out at the door, a weary, disheveled figure, in the first pale, fog-burdened gleam of dawn.

It was some time after the Flying Dutchman parted her one insufficient mooring-rope before Kirk realized that the sound of the water about her had changed from a slap to a gliding ripple. There was no longer the short tug and lurch as she pulled at her painter and fell back; there was no longer the tide sound about the gaunt piles of the wharf. Kirk, a little apprehensive, stumbled aft and felt for the stern-line. It gave in his hand, and the slack, wet length of it flew suddenly aboard, smacking his face with its cold and slimy end. He knew, then, what had happened, but he felt sure that the boat must still be very near the wharf—perhaps drifting up to the rocky shore between the piers. He clutched the gunwale and shouted: "Ken! Oh, Ken!" He did not know that he was shouting in exactly the wrong direction, and the wind carried his voice even farther from shore. His voice sounded much less loud than he had expected. He tried calling Felicia's name, but it seemed even less resonant than Ken's. He stopped calling, and stood listening. Nothing but the far-off fog-siren, and the gulls' faint cries overhead. The wind was blowing fresher against his cheek, for the boat was in mid-channel by this time. The fog clung close about him; he could feel it on the gunwale, wet under his hands; it gathered on his hair and trickled down his forehead. The broken rope slid suddenly off the stern sheets and twined itself clammily about his bare knee. He started violently, and then picked it off with a shiver.



The lighthouse siren, though still distant, sounded nearer, which meant that the boat was drifting seaward. Kirk realized that, all at once, and gave up his shouting altogether. He sat down in the bottom of the boat, clasped his knees, and tried to think. But it was not easy to think. He had never in his life wanted so much to see as he did now. It was so different, being alone in the dark, or being in it with Ken or Felicia or the Maestro on the kind, warm, friendly land. He remembered quite well how the Maestro had said: "The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases."

The sea's voice hissed along the side of the boat, now,—the voice of a monster ready to leap aboard,—and he couldn't see to defend himself! He flung his arms out wildly into his eternal night, and then burst suddenly into tears. He cried for some time, but it was the thought of Ken which made him stop. Ken would have said, "Isn't there enough salt water around here already, without such a mess of tears?"

That was a good idea—to think about Ken. He was such a definite, solid, comforting thing to think about. Kirk almost forgot the stretch of cold gray water that lay between them now. It wasn't sensible to cry, anyway. It made your head buzzy, and your throat ache. Also, afterward, it made you hungry. Kirk decided that it was unwise to do anything at this particular moment which would make him hungry. Then he remembered the hardtack which Ken kept in the bow locker to refresh himself with during trips. Kirk fumbled for the button of the locker, and found it and the hardtack. He counted them; there were six. He put five of them back and nibbled the other carefully, to make it last as long as possible.

The air was more chill, now. Kirk decided that it must be night, though he didn't feel sleepy. He crawled under the tarpaulin which Ken kept to cover the trunks in foul weather. In doing so, he bumped against the engine. There was another maddening thing! A good, competent engine, sitting complacently in the middle of the boat, and he not able to start it! But even if he had known how to run it, he reflected that he couldn't steer the boat. So he lay still under the tarpaulin, which was dry, as well as warm, and tried to think of all sorts of pleasant things. Felicia had told him, when she gave him the green sweater on his birthday, that a hug and kiss were knit in with each stitch of it, and that when he wore it he must think of her love holding him close. It held him close now; he could feel the smooth soft loop of her hair as she bent down to say good-night; he could hear her sing, "Do-do, p'tit frere."

That was a good idea—to sing! He clasped his hands nonchalantly behind his head, and began the first thing that came to his mind:

"Roses in the moonlight To-night all thine, Pale in the shade—"

But he did not finish. For the wind's voice was stronger, and the waves drowned the little tune, so lonely there in the midst of the empty water. Kirk cried himself to sleep, after all.

He could not even tell when the night gave way to cold day-break, for the fog cloaked everything from the sun's waking warmth. It might have been a week or a month that he had drifted on in the Flying Dutchman—it certainly seemed as long as a month. But he had eaten only two biscuits and was not yet starved, so he knew that it could not be even so much as a week. But he did not try to sing now. He was too cold, and he was very thirsty. He crouched under the tarpaulin, and presently he ate another hardtack biscuit. He could not hear the lighthouse fog-signal at all, now, and the waves were much bigger under the boat. They lifted her up, swung her motionless for a moment, and then let her slide giddily into the trough of another sea. "Even if I reached a desert island," Kirk thought mournfully, "I don't know what I'd do. People catch turkles and shoot at parrots and things, but they can see what they're doing."

The boat rolled on, and Kirk began to feel quite wretchedly sick, and thirstier than ever. He lay flat under the tarpaulin and tried to count minutes. Sixty, quite fast—that was one minute. Had he counted two minutes, now, or was it three? Then he found himself counting on and on—a hundred and fifty-one, a hundred and fifty-two.

"I wish I'd hurry up and die," said poor Kirk out loud.

Then his darkness grew more dark, for he could no longer think straight. There was nothing but long swirling waves of dizziness and a rushing sound.

"Phil," Kirk tried to say. "Mother."

At about this time, Ken was standing in the government wireless station, a good many miles from Asquam. He had besieged an astonished young operator early in the morning, and had implored him to call every ship at sea within reach. Now, in the afternoon, he was back again, to find out whether any replies had come.

"No boat sighted," all the hurrying steamers had replied. "Fog down heavy. Will keep look-out."

Ken had really given up all hope, long before. Yet—could he ever give up hope, so long as life lasted? Such strange things had happened—Most of all, he could not let Phil give up. Yet he knew that he could not keep on with this pace much longer—no sleep, and virtually no food. But then, if he gave up the search, if he left a single thing undone while there was still a chance, could he ever bear himself again? He sat in a chair at the wireless station, looking dully at the jumping blue spark.

"Keep on with it, please," he said. "I'm going out in a boat again."

"The fog's lifting, I think," said the operator.

"Oh, thank the Lord!" groaned Ken. "It was that—the not being able to see."

Yes—Kirk had felt that, too.

At Applegate Farm, Felicia wandered from room to room like a shadow, mechanically doing little tasks that lay to her hand. She was alone in her distress; they had not yet told the Maestro of this disaster, for they knew he would share their grief. Felicia caught the sound of a faint jingling from without, and moved slowly to the gate, where Mr. Hobart was putting the mail into the box. She opened her mother's letter listlessly as she walked back to the house, and sat down upon the door-step to read it—perhaps it would take her mind for a moment, this odd, unconscious letter, addressed even to a house which no longer sheltered them. But the letter smote her with new terror.

"Oh, if you only knew, my dear, dear chicks, what it will be to escape this kindly imprisonment—what it will mean to see you all again! I can hardly wait to come up the dear old familiar path to 24 Westover Street and hug you all—I'll hug Ken, even if he hates it, and Kirk, my most precious baby! They tell me I must be very careful still, but I know that the sight of you will be all that I need for the finishing remedy. So expect me, then, by the 12.05 on Wednesday, and good-by till then, my own dears."

Felicia sat on the door-stone, transfixed. Her mother coming home, on Wednesday—so much sooner than they had expected! She did not even know of the new house; and if she were to come to a home without Kirk—if there were never to be Kirk! Almost a week remained before Wednesday; how could she be put off? What if the week went by without hope; no hope, ever? Felicia sat there for hours, till the sun of late afternoon broke through the fog at last, and the mellow fields began one by one to reappear, reaching into the hazy distance. Felicia rose and went slowly into the house. On top of the organ lay the book of stories and poems she had written out in Braille for Kirk. It lay open, as he had left it, and she glanced at the page.

"When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still. Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of the night arise.'". .. .

Felicia gave up the struggle with her grief. Leaving the door of Applegate Farm wide, she fled blindly to the Maestro. He was playing to himself and smiling when she crept into the library, but he stopped instantly when he saw her face. Before she could help herself, she had told him everything, thrust her mother's letter into his hand, and then gave way to the tears she had fought so long. The Maestro made no sign nor motion. His lips tightened, and his eyes blazed suddenly, but that was all.

He was all solicitude for Felicia. She must not think of going back to the empty farm-house. He arranged a most comfortable little supper beside the fire, and even made her smile, with his eager talk, all ringing with hope and encouragement. And finally he put her in charge of his sympathetic little housekeeper, who tucked her up in a great, dark, soft bed.

Left alone in the library, the Maestro paced unsteadily up and down. "It is the sea that takes them!" he whispered. "It took my son; now it has taken one whom I loved as my son."

He sank down upon the piano-stool and gazed at the sheet of music on the music-rack. It was Kirk's last exercise, written out carefully in the embossed type that the Maestro had been at such pains to learn and teach. Something like a sob shook the old musician. He raised clenched, trembling fists above his head, and brought them down, a shattering blow, upon the keyboard. Then he sat still, his face buried in his arms on the shaken piano. Felicia, lying stiff and wide-eyed in the great bed above, heard the crash of the hideous discord, and shuddered. She had been trying to remember the stately, comforting words of the prayer for those in peril on the sea, but now, frightened, she buried her face in the pillow.

"Oh, dear God," she faltered. "You—You must bring him back—You must!"



CHAPTER XIV

THE CELESTINE PLAYS HER PART

"He's a deader," said one of the men, pulling off his watch-cap.

"No, he ain't," said another. "He's warm."

"But look at his eyes," said the first. "They ain't right."

"Where's the old man?" inquired one.

"Skipper's taking a watch below, arter the fog; don't yer go knockin' him up now, Joe."

"Wait till the mate comes. Thunder, why don't yer wrop somep'n round the kid, you loon?"

The big schooner was getting under way again. The mate's voice spoke sharply to the helmsman.

"Helm up—steady. Nothing off—stead-y."

Then he left the quarter-deck and strode rapidly down to the little group amidships. He was a tall man, with a brown, angular face, and deep-set, rather melancholy, blue eyes. His black hair was just beginning to gray above his temples, and several lines, caused more by thought than age, scored his lean face.

"What have we picked up, here, anyway?" he demanded. "Stand off, and let me look."

There was not much to see—a child in a green jersey, with blown, damp hair and a white face.

"You tink he's dead?" A big Swede asked the question.

The mate plunged a quick hand inside the green sweater.

"No, he's not. But he's blind. Get out with that stuff, Jolak, what d'ye think this is? Get me some brandy, somebody."

Jolak retired with the pickled cabbage he had offered as a restorative. No one looked to see where the brandy came from on a ship where none was supposed to be but in the medicine chest. It came, however, without delay, and the mate opened the flask.

"Now," he said, when he had poured some of its contents down the child's throat, and lifted him from the deck, "let me through."

The first thing of which Kirk was conscious was a long, swinging motion, unlike the short roll of the Dutchman. There was also a complex creaking and sighing, a rustling and rattling. There was a most curious, half-disagreeable, half-fascinating smell. Kirk lay quietly on something which seemed much softer and warmer than the bottom of the Flying Dutchman, and presently he became aware of a soft strumming sound, and of a voice which sang murmurously:

"Off Cape de Gatte I lost my hat, And where d'ye think I found it? In Port Mahon Under a stone With all the girls around it."

"I like that," said Kirk, in a small voice. "Go on."

But the singing stopped immediately, and Kirk feared that he had only dreamed it, after all. However, a large, warm hand was laid quite substantially on his forehead, and the same voice that had been singing, said:

"H'm! Thought you'd have another go at the old world, after all?"

"Where is this?" Kirk asked.

"This is the four-mast schooner Celestine, returning from South America. I am Martin, mate of said schooner—at your service. Hungry?"

"That's funny," said Kirk; "the boat Ken gave me is called the Celestine. And she's a four-masted schooner. Where's Ken?"

"I'm sorry—I don't know. Hungry?"

"I think I am," said Kirk.

Certainly the mate of the Celestine had a most strong and comfortable arm wherewith to raise a person. He administered bread and hot condensed milk, and Kirk began to realize that he was very hungry indeed.

"Now you go to sleep," Mr. Martin advised, after his brief manner. "Warm, now?"

Yes, Kirk was quite warm and cozy, but very much bewildered, and desirous of asking a hundred questions. These the mate forbade.

"You go to sleep," he commanded.

"Then please sing another tune," Kirk said. "What was that you were playing on?"

"Violin," said Mr. Martin. "Fiddle. I was plunking it like a banjo. Now I'll play it, if you'll stop talking."

Kirk did, and the mate began to play. His music was untaught, and he himself had made up the strange airs he played. They sighed fitfully through the little cabin like the rush of wind and water without; blended with it, mingled with the hundred little voices of the ship. The Celestine slipped on up the coast, singing softly to herself, and Kirk fell asleep with the undulating wail of the violin and the whisper of water filling his half-awakened senses.

He woke abruptly, much later, and called for Felicia suddenly; then, recollecting hazily where he was, for Mr. Martin. Hearing no sound, he was frightened, and cried out in remembered terror.

"Steady!" said the mate's voice. "What's the trouble?"

"I don't know," said Kirk. "I—I think I need to talk to somebody. There hasn't been anybody for so long."

"Well, go ahead," said the mate. "I'm in my bunk. If you think there's room enough, I'll put you in here. More sociable, rather."

There was not much room, but Kirk was so thankful to clasp a human being once more, that he did not care how narrow the quarters might be. He put his cheek against the mate's arm, and they lay silent, the man very stiff and unyielding. "The Maestro would like to hear you play," Kirk murmured. "He loves queer tunes like that. He even likes the ones I make up."

"Oh, you make up tunes, do you?"

"Little ones. But he makes wonderful ones,—and he plays wonderfully, too."

"Who?"

"The Maestro."

"Who's he?"

Kirk told him—at great length. He likewise unburdened his heart, which had been steeped so long in loneliness and terror, and recounted the wonder and beauty of Applegate Farm, and Felicia and Ken, and the model ship, and the Maestro's waiting garden, and all that went to make up his dear, familiar world, left so long ago, it seemed.

"But," he said rather mournfully, "I don't know whether I shall ever see any of them again, if we just keep on sailing and sailing. Are you going back to South America again?"

The mate laughed a little. "No," he said. "The Celestine's going to Bedford. We can't put her off her course to drop you at Asquam—harbor's no good, anyhow. My time's up when she docks. I'll take you home."

"Have you always been mate of the Celestine?" Kirk inquired.

"I have not," said Mr. Martin. "I signed aboard of her at Rio this trip, to get up into the Christian world again. I've been deckhand and seaman and mate on more vessels than I can count—in every part of the uncivilized world. I skippered one ship, even—pestilential tub that she was."

He fell silent after this speech, longer than any he had made so far.

"Then I'll get home," Kirk said. "Home. Can't we let 'em know, or anything? I suppose they've been worrying."

"I think it likely that they have," said the mate. "No, this ship's got no wireless. I'll send 'em a telegram when we dock to-morrow."

"Thank you," said Kirk. Then, after a long pause: "Oh, if you knew how awful it was out there."

"I know," said Mr. Martin.

The Celestine was bowling into Bedford Harbor with a fair wind. Kirk, in a reefer any number of sizes too large for him, sat on a hatch-coaming and drank in the flying wonder of the schooner's way. He was sailing on a great ship! How surprised Ken would be—and envious, too, for Ken had always longed to sail in a ship. The wind soughed in the sails and sang in the rigging, and the water flew past the Celestine and bubbled away behind her in a seething curve of foam. Mr. Martin stood looking up at the smooth, rounded shape of the main topsail, and whistling the song about the hat which he had lost and so miraculously found. He looked more than usually thoughtful and melancholy.

A fussy tug took the Celestine the last stage of her journey, and early afternoon found her warped in to the wharf where Ken had seen her on the eve of her departure. Then, she had been waking to action at the beginning of a long cruise; now, a battered gull with gray, folded wings, she lay at the dock, pointing her bowsprit stiffly up to the dingy street where horses tramped endlessly over the cobblestones. The crew was jubilant. Some were leaving for other ships; some were going on shore leave, with months' pay unspent.

"I'm attending to this salvage, sir," said Mr. Martin, to the captain. "My folks live up Asquam way. I'll take him along with me."

Asquam's languid representative of the telegraph knocked upon the door of Applegate Farm, which was locked. Then he thrust the yellow envelope as far under the door as possible and went his way. An hour later, a tall man and a radiant small boy pushed open the gate on Winterbottom Road and walked across the yellow grass. Kirk broke away and ran toward the house, hands outflung.

"Phil! Ken!" he called jubilantly.

His face shadowed as his hands came against the unyielding door of the house.

"Phil—" he faltered.

"Perhaps they haven't the telegram," Mr. Martin said. "We'll have to wait around."

"They might be at the Maestro's," Kirk said suddenly. "Come—run quick—I'll show you the way. There's a hole in the hedge—are you too big to get through?"

"I think not," said the mate.

In the Maestro's library, Felicia leaned suddenly upon the piano. "Ken," she said, breathing hard, "something's going to happen—something!"

"What more can happen?" Ken said gently.

"But—oh, please! Do something—I don't know—"

"Poor child!" murmured the Maestro. "Sit here, Felicia. Help her, Ken."

"I don't need help," said Phil. "Oh, you think I'm mad, I suppose. I'm not. Ken—please go and look out—go to the house. Oh, Kirk!"

The Maestro shook his head and put a hand on Felicia's shoulder.

"Better go, Ken," he said quietly.

Kenelm stepped upon the terrace. Through the long window, which he left open behind him, a joyous voice came quite clearly to the library.

"And this is the poor empty pool that I told you about, that never has had any water in it since then—and aren't we at the terrace steps now?"

Felicia vowed afterward that she didn't faint. Yet she had no clear recollection of seeing Kirk between the time when she saw him drop the hand of the tall, strange man and run up the steps, and when they all were standing around her in the library, looking a little grave.

"Phil—Phil!" Kirk was saying then. "Oh, aren't you glad to see me at all? It's me—oh, Phil!"

His eager hands sought her face, to be sure it was she, so strange and quiet.

"Just a minute, lamb," she heard Ken say, with a hand on Kirk's shoulder. "Phil doesn't feel quite right."

Then warm, delicious life rushed over her, and she could move again and fling her trembling arms around Kirk. She and Ken and the Maestro all managed to embrace Kirk at once, so that they embraced each other, too. And Ken was not ashamed of his tears, nor was the Maestro.

The ex-mate of the Celestine stood discreetly on the terrace, whistling to himself. But he was not whistling the song about his hat. No, it was a little plaintive air, dimly familiar, Ken thought. Where had he heard it before? And why was the Maestro straightening with a stricken face, from Kirk?



CHAPTER XV

MARTIN!

"Roses in the moonlight, To-night all thine."

That was the tune, to be sure! The Maestro was on his feet. He walked slowly to the open French window.

"What—what right have you to come here whistling—that?" he breathed. He wheeled suddenly on Kirk. "Did you sing it to him?" he demanded. "Is this—what is this?"

"I didn't," said Kirk, quickly; "Oh, I didn't."

The air seemed tense, burdened with something that hovered there in the stillness of the waiting garden.