"He planned to weaken me where I needed sail most and he succeeded. Why, Elsa, that topm'st must have been sawed a quarter of the way through and that mainstay as much again. I don't really believe he did anything to the foregaff; it appeared to be the natural result of the topm'st's falling, but the damage he did resulted in the wreck of the schooner—"

"And the death of his own father. Yes, Code, we've got him where he is probably the wretchedest man in the world. Fury and hurt pride made him injure the May so he would be sure to win the second time, and instead of that fate intervened, sent you on the cargo voyage, and killed his father. Now it is perfectly plain to me why he is charging you with all these crimes."

"Why?"

"Nat is a weak nature, because uncontrolled, and when weak natures do wrong they suffer agonies of fear that they will be found out. Nat committed this double crime in a momentary passion. Then as the weeks passed by and the village talked of nothing else, he finally began to fear that he would be found out.

"There was no one who could have found him out, but there was that haunting terror of the weak nature.

"Somebody spoke a word, perhaps in jest, that you must have wanted a new schooner since the May's policy was to run out so soon, and he seized the thought in a frenzy of joy and began to spread rumors. This grip on you gave him courage. He remembered that his revenge against you was still unsatisfied and it became clear to him that perhaps, after all, he could get one much more complete.

"Code, the picture of that man's mind is a terrible one to me. He may have hated you before, but just think how he must have hated you after knowing how he had wronged and was going to ruin you. It is only the one of two people who does the injury whose hatred grows. An injured person who is sensible in regard to such matters, as you have been with Nat all your life, throws them off and thinks nothing more about them.

"So Nat's hatred of you and the fear of discovery, preying on his mind, finally urged him into the course he has taken."

"And he went into it with open eyes," rejoined Code, "for his plans were perfect. He pays his crew double wages and they ask no questions. Had it not been for you on two occasions I should have been in jail long before this."

"Yes, but now that is past—"

"No," interrupted Code, "it isn't, Elsa. He has just as much power over me as he ever had. I am still a criminal at large to be arrested, and you can wager your last dollar that if he can bring it about I will be picked up by the first gunboat that finds me."

"But after all this?"

"Yes, after all this. We have made a beautiful case against him and it fits, but, Elsa, there's one thing we haven't got, and that is a single word of proof! We haven't enough to even bring a charge against him. Do you realize that?"

The girl sat back, unable to reply. Code had expressed the situation in a sentence. Despite all they had pieced together he, Code, was still the man against whom the burden of circumstantial evidence rested. Nat was, and always could go, scot free.

"Code, this is terrible!" she said. "But there may be a way out yet. No man with the right on his side has ever failed to triumph, however black things looked."

"But how?" he cried despairingly. "I have racked my brains for some means of closing the net about him, but there seems no way."

"Now there is not," she returned, "but, Code, you can rest assured that I will do everything I can."

"God bless you," he said, taking her hand; "you are the best friend a man ever had."



CHAPTER XXVI

WETTING THEIR SALT

Pete Ellinwood, alone except for the cook, who sat peeling potatoes just outside the galley, paced the quarter-deck of the Charming Lass.

He seemed to be an older man than that night when, goaded beyond endurance by the taunts of the big Frenchman, he had fought a fight that would long be remembered in the streets of the roaring town of St. Pierre.

He felt that he had broken his promise to Ma Schofield that he would keep guard over her boy. Now, for all he knew, that boy was lying in jail at St. Andrew's, or was perhaps defending his life in the murderer's pen.

The night of the fight had been a wild one for Ellinwood.

At the cry of "Police!" the crowd had seemed to melt away from him like the bank fog at the sweep of a breeze. A dozen comrades had seized the prostrate Jean and hurried him away, and Pete, with the instinct of self-preservation, had snatched up his clothes and dodged down a dark alley toward the dirty drinking-shops along the water-front.

There, as he dressed himself, he first asked the question, "Where is Code?"

Then, in a frenzy of remorse, he returned to the street and began a wild and fruitless search all night. Then he accidentally learned that the Nettie B. had been in port two days and that her crew had been ashore on the night of the fracas.

Sorrowful, bedraggled, and bruised, he rowed out to the Charming Lass just as the whole crew was setting out for shore to search for Code and himself.

During the night the barrels of fresh bait had been lightered to the Lass, and there was nothing for it but to make sail and get back on the Banks as soon as possible, leaving Code to his fate but carrying on the work he had begun.

In accordance with Code's instructions, Pete automatically became the skipper of the schooner, and he selected Jimmie Thomas as his mate. By nightfall they had picked up the fleet, and early the next morning the dories were out. Then for eight days it had been nothing but fish, fish, fish.

Never in all his experience had Pete seen such schools of cod. They were evidently herding together in thousands, and had found but scanty food for such great hosts, for they bit almost on the bare hook.

Now, as he looked around the still sea, the white or yellow sails of the fishing fleet showed on all sides in a vast circle. Not five miles away was the Rosan, and to the southward of her the Herring Bone with mean old Jed Martin aboard. Bijonah Tanner had tried his best to shake Martin, but the hard-fisted old skipper, knowing and recognizing Tanner's "nose" for fish, had clung like a leech and profited by the other's sagacity.

Nor was this all the Grande Mignon fleet.

There were Gloucestermen among it, the champion fishers of the world, who spent their spare time in drifting past the English boats and hurling salty wit—at which pastime they often came off second best.

There were Frenchmen, too, from the Miquelon Islands, who worked in colored caps and wore sheath-knives in belts around their waists. Pete often looked over their dirty decks and wondered if his late enemy were among them. There were also vessels called "toothpicks" that did an exclusive trawling business, never using dories except to underrun the trawls or to set them out. These vessels were built on yacht lines and, because they filled their holds quickly, made quick runs to port with their catches, thus getting in several trips in a season.

Also, there were the steam trawlers, the most progressive of the fleet, owned and operated by huge fish firms in Boston or Portland. These were not dependent on the vagaries of the wind and steamed wherever their skippers divined that fish might be.

Last of all were the seiners after herring and mackerel, schooners mostly, and out of Gloucester or Nova Scotia ports, who secured their catch by encircling schools of fish that played atop of the water with nets a quarter of a mile long, and pursued them in by drawstrings much as a man closes a tobacco-pouch.

This was the cosmopolitan city that lived on the unmarked lanes of the ocean and preyed upon the never-failing supplies of fish that moved beneath.

Among the Grande Mignon boats there was intense rivalry. In the holds the layers of salted fish rose steadily under the phenomenal fishing. The salt-barrels were emptied and crowded out by the cod, hake, and pollock. It was these boats that Ellinwood watched with the eye of a hawk, for back in Freekirk Head he knew that Bill Boughton stood ready to pay a bonus for the first cargo to reach port. Now was the time when the advance orders from the West Indies were coming up, and, because of the failure of the season on the island itself, these orders stood unfilled.

One or two of the smallest sloops had already wet their salt and weighed anchor for home, taking letters and messages; but these, Pete knew, could only supply an infinitesimal portion of the demand. What Boughton looked for was a healthy load of fifteen hundred to two thousand quintals all ready for drying.

Night and day the work went on. With the first signs of daylight the dories were swung outboard and the men took their positions. A catch of two hundred good-sized cod was now considered the usual thing for a handliner, and night after night the piles of silver fish in the pens amidships seemed to grow in size.

Now they dressed down under lantern light, sometimes aided by the moon, and the men stood to the tables until they fell asleep on their feet and split their fingers instead of the fish. Then, after buckets of hot coffee, they would fall to again and never stop until the last wet body had been laid atop of its thousands of brothers.

The men were constantly on the trawls. Sometimes they did nothing all day but pick the fish and rebait, finding, after a trip to the schooner to unload, that a thousand others had struck on the long lines of sagging hooks while they were gone.

It was fast and feverish work, and it seemed as though it would never end.

The situation had resolved itself into a race between the schooners, and Ellinwood was of no mind to come off second best. Like a jockey before a race, he watched his rivals.

He knew that foxy Bijonah Tanner, who sometimes looked like an old hump-backed cod himself, was his most dangerous rival. Tanner said nothing, but his boats were out early and in late, and the lanterns on his deck over the dressing pens could sometimes be seen as late as ten o'clock at night.

Visits among the fleet had now ceased, both because there was no time for it, and because a man from another schooner was looked upon as a spy.

At the start of the season it had been expected that Nat Burns in the Nettie B. would prove a strong contender for premier honors, but, because of his ceaseless efforts to drive home his revenge, Nat had done very little fishing and therefore could not possibly be in the market.

Other Freekirk Head men shrugged their shoulders at this. Nat had the money, and could act that way if it pleased him, they said. But, nevertheless, he lost favor with a great many of his former friends, for the reason that the whole fishing expedition had been a concerted movement to save the people and credit of the island, and not an exploitation of individual desires.

Burns had, with his customary indifference to others, made it just exactly such an exploitation, and the sentiment that had been strong for him at the outset of the cruise was now turning decidedly the other way; although he little guessed this or would have been influenced had he done so.

In reality, then, the race for fish was keenest between the Charming Lass, the Rosan, and the Herring Bone, with three other schooners very close on their heels.

At the end of the nine days there was little space beneath the deck planks of the Charming Lass, but every night Pete would come up, slapping his hands free of salt, and say, "Wal, boys, I guess we can crowd another day's work into her," and the exhausted men would gather themselves for another great effort as they rolled forward into their bunks.

Every twenty-four hours they did crowd another day's work into her, so that she carried nearly a hundred and fifty tons and the dripping brine had to be pumped out of the hold.

It was the night of the day that opened this chapter.

The lanterns by which the men had dressed down had been lifted from their supports, the cod livers dumped into the gurry-butt, and the tables removed from the rails. The two men on the first watch were sharpening the splitting knives on a tiny grindstone and walking forward occasionally to see that the anchor and trawl buoy lights were burning.

The still air resounded with the snores of the exhausted men forward in the forecastle.

Silently out of the darkness a dory came toward the schooner, pulled by the brawny arms of two men. In the stern of the oncoming boat sat a solitary figure, who strained his eyes toward his destination.

The dory was within fifty yards of the Lass before the men on deck became aware of its approach. Then, fearing some evil work in connection with the last desperate days of fishing, they rushed to the bulwarks and challenged the newcomers. They did not see, a mile away, a schooner without lights gently rising and falling on the oily sea.

"Who is that?" demanded one man, but he received no answer except "A friend," and the boat continued its stealthy approach. It drew alongside the ladder in the waist, and the man in the stern-sheets rose. Kent of the Lass's crew leaned over the side and threw the light of his lantern upon the man.

"By God," he cried like one who has seen a ghost, "it's the skipper."



CHAPTER XXVII

THE REWARD OF EVIL

The Nettie B. was surging north, nearing Cape Breton. Nat Burns sat moodily on the top of the house and watched the schooner take 'em green over her bows.

Within the last day a fog with a wind behind it had drifted across the lead-colored ocean; and now, although the fog was gone, the wind was still howling and bringing with it a rising sea.

The equinoxes were not far off, and all skippers had a weather eye out, and paid especial attention to the stoutness of lashings and patched canvas.

Never had Burns been in a blacker mood, and never had he better cause.

He was three days from St. Andrew's, and there he had become acquainted with several facts.

The first was that no Canadian gunboat by the name of Albatross had called at said port and left any prisoner by the name of Code Schofield—in fact, such gunboat had not called at all.

Investigation at the admiralty office proved to Nat that the real Albatross had reported from St. John's, Newfoundland, on the very day he supposed he had met her. As the waters near St. Andrew's and St. John's are several hundreds of miles apart, Nat was not long in forming the opinion that he had been duped.

Fuming with rage, he began to investigate. Gradually he learned the story (from sailors in wine-shops and general hearsay) of the mysterious schooner that had twice saved Code Schofield from actual capture, and had aided him on one or two other occasions.

One man said he had heard of a retired naval officer named Foraker, who was supposed to be in command. As a matter of fact, there was a Captain Foraker aboard the schooner who navigated her and instilled the "run and jump" discipline that had so excited Code's admiration. Outside of this vague fact, Nat's knowledge was scant.

He was ignorant of who owned the swift vessel. He would never have connected Elsa Mallaby with her in ten years of hard thinking. All he did know was that some unknown agency was suddenly at work in behalf of the man he hated.

He notified the admiralty that a strange schooner had impersonated the gunboat of H. I. M. George V, and gave a very accurate description of her.

As this was a new offense for the vessel that had already interfered with justice twice, the skippers of all the revenue cutters along the coast bent their energies to capturing or sinking this semipiratical craft, upon the receipt of radiograms to that effect.

Not only had Nat set the machinery of the law in motion against the mystery schooner, but he had provided against any future dabbling with his constabulary powers by the simple expedient of having with him an officer of the law who was empowered to bring the accused murderer of Michael Burns before the bar of justice without transfer.

When the supposed gunboat had removed the prisoner from his deck and borne away (for a while) on the course to St. Andrew's, Nat, relieved of responsibility, ran over to Grande Mignon and into the harbor of Freekirk Head.

His purpose in this was twofold, and treacherous in both cases. First he lost no time in spreading the details of how Code Schofield had been captured in a drunken brawl at St. Pierre and was fighting the jailers in St. Andrew's. Secondly, he had a long private interview with Bill Boughton, in which he tried to get the storekeeper to sign a contract for his (Burns's) fish at a certain price.

While the former was meanness of a hideous kind, this latter move was one of treachery against the men of Freekirk Head. The worst part of it was that Nat had about a hundred quintals of splendid-looking cod (every pound he had caught) in his hold, and these he handed over to Boughton as a sample of what was to come from him very shortly.

Boughton was hard up for fish, for none had come from the Banks, and bought them at a big price. But as to the signing of the contract, he demurred. When Nat could not explain why he had caught so few fish in such a long time, the storekeeper became wary and refused to commit himself. Finally he agreed to the price if Nat would deliver a thousand quintals before any of the rest of the fleet arrived home.

Consequently it was up mainsail and sway 'em flat and a fast run north for the Nettie B.

During his day's stay in Freekirk Head he had received a great bag of mail for the men of the fleet from their women-folk at home, and this he had in his cabin, now all distributed and tied into bundles, one for each schooner, so that they could be easily sorted and thrown aboard as he met them.

Burns caught the fleet of a Thursday morning, just as they had dropped anchors after making a night berth, and the dories were out sampling the ground and the fish. It was just three days after Code had arrived aboard the Charming Lass again.

As Nat worked his way in and out among the vessels, throwing their mail aboard attached to pieces of coal, he kept an eye out for the Rosan. One very important piece of business that had brought him North was a reconciliation with Nellie Tanner, and he meant, while his men were out in the dories, to accomplish this first.

At last he sighted her near the very front line of the fleet. The Charming Lass he could not see, for Code had taken a different direction from the Rosan, and was one of the score of sails scattered around the horizon. But Nat was in no great hurry to get him on the minute; if the mystery schooner were attended to, then it would be merely a matter of time until the capture of Code.

He ranged up astern of the Rosan with a cheery yell and let go his anchor, ordering the dories over the side in the same breath. But his aspirations received a chilling setback from none other than Bijonah Tanner himself. The old man had been sleepless for a week, trying to nose out the Lass for the top haul of the fleet, and here was a young scapegrace who came and cast anchor within a hundred yards of his chosen ground.

Nat laughed carelessly at the storm of abuse that rattled over the stern of the Rosan and rowed over to her in his dory with the package of mail.

"Forget it, papa," he said, easily insolent, as he climbed over the rail in the teeth of a broadside. "We're not goin' to foul your rodin' or steal your fish. I've just come to make a call and tell you the news from home."

He handed Bijonah a couple of letters and a package containing those of the men. Two others he kept in his hand.

For a few moments he chatted with the old man, telling him what had happened in Freekirk Head. Then he asked for Nellie, whom he had not seen. As he asked she came up out of the cabin, having just finished breakfast.

She was dressed in white this morning; a white canvas blouse with a broad blue collar and V-neck held to modest stricture by a flowing blue tie, a white duck skirt and whitened shoes—a costume that set off her pink cheeks and bright eyes.

Since the violent emotions of the fire at the Head, her courtship, and her self-analyzation since her split with Nat, she had seemed to become more of a woman.

Nat had not the slightest doubt but that Nellie by this time would have recovered from her angry pet of their last interview. He was very certain that their ruction had only been temporary.

Nellie was unfeignedly glad to see him.

He stretched out his arms to her impulsively, but she refused him, and he laughed the rebuff off good-naturedly.

"Oh, did you bring any letters for me?" she cried eagerly.

He held out the two he had kept in his hand.

"Oh, goodness, Nat—only from mama and Lutie Bissell. You excited me so!"

He spread a tarpaulin amid the clutter amidships and they sat down.

She excused herself and began to read her letters, first opening the one from the girl friend, which, as such letters usually do, contained nothing of importance. Then she opened the one from her mother. It was long, and she settled back to the pleasure of deciphering it.

Nat smoked and whistled and looked out to sea, waiting for her to finish. Therefore he did not observe the changes that passed across her face. Near the middle of the letter the color rose to her forehead in a hot wave, but at the end it had receded, leaving her pale. Methodically she folded the letter and returned it to its envelope.

"Well, dearest," he said cheerfully, "all through? Now I want to talk to you—" He reached for her hand, but she withdrew it beyond his reach and looked at him with the steady brown eyes whose level gaze he hated.

"Come on, now, Nellie," he said impatiently, stung by her relentlessness, "you ain't goin' to be mad forever about that other time, are you? I was out of temper an' said things—"

"Mother was up to Mallaby House for dinner a little while ago," interrupted Nellie, as though she had not heard him.

"Yes? That's good. Fine place, ain't it? As I was sayin', I forgot myself—"

"They talked about us, too; mother says that's nearly all they talked about."

"Must've been short of conversation. An' I want to say, Nellie, that I'll try never to speak like that to you again. I—"

"Mother says she learned things about you that she never had imagined before," persisted Nellie, with quiet insistence. But again Nat did not seem to have heard her. With an awkward motion he drew from his pocket the little glazed paper box that contained the engagement-ring.

"Please," he said, "I want you to take this again." He was in earnest.

"It's strange Elsa Mallaby should be able to tell mother things about you."

Nat lost his patience. He had tried his best to make peace, and the girl was only baiting him for her own amusement.

"What the deuce is all this about that Mallaby woman?" he asked. "I should think you'd listen to me, Nellie."

"If you will listen to me first, then I'll listen to you as long as you like."

"I agree," he said, thrusting the ring-box back into his pocket, "only make it short, will you, little girl?"

"Yes, I will," she promised, without smiling. "I merely said that mother and Mrs. Mallaby had discussed you and me, and our marriage, and that Mrs. Mallaby had said some things about you."

"Well, lots of people do that," he smiled.

"Yes—but they haven't said just this thing, Nat."

"What was that?"

"I'm going to let you think. Just suppose that Mrs. Mallaby hated you very much and wanted to do you harm. What would she tell my mother?"

The girl, pale and on the verge of an hysterical outburst, watched his face out of her mask of self-control.

The blood beneath his tan receded and was replaced by a sickly greenish hue. That flash had brought its memory—a memory that had lain buried beneath the events of his later life. Did she know? How could she know?

To the girl watching him there was confirmation enough. She was suddenly filled with inexpressible distaste for this man who had in days past smothered her with caresses and dinned into her ears speeches concerning a passion that he called love.

"I see it is all true," she said quietly. "This is all I have to say. Now I will listen to what you were going to tell me a few minutes ago—that is, if you still wish to say it."

Nat read his doom in those few calm words. The things that had been in his mind to say rose and choked his throat; the thought of the ring in his pocket seemed like profanation. He gulped twice and tried to speak, but the words clotted on his tongue.

Still she sat quietly looking at him, politely ready to listen.

With a horrible croaking sound he got to his feet, looked irresolutely at her for a moment, and then went to the side where his dory lay. She next saw him rowing dazedly to the Nettle B., and then she turned her face from the sight of him.

And suddenly into her mind, long prepared, came the thought of Code Schofield. Amid the chaos of her shattered ideals his face and figure rose more desirable than all the earth.

"Oh, Heaven, give him to me—some time!" she breathed in a voice of humble prayer.

Nat Burns went back to his schooner, squarely defeated for the first time in his life. Humbled, and cringing like a whipped dog, he made his dory fast to the Nettie's rail and slunk aft to the solitude of his cabin. He was glad that even the cook was looking the other way.

"She has flouted me, and the whole of Grande Mignon will know it," he said to himself. "Then they will want to know why, but that is easy enough to lie about. Hang that Mallaby woman! Who would ever think she'd squeal? Yes, and Schofield, the smug crook! They're the two that are doin' the damage to me."

Nat's lifelong knowledge of Code's and Nellie's affection returned to him now with a more poignant pang of memory than he had ever experienced. With the hopeless egotism of a totally selfish nature, he laid his calamity in love to activity on Code's part. He was pretty well aware of Elsa's extravagant favoritism of Code, and he immediately figured that Code had enlisted Elsa on his side to the ruin of Nat.

"So I've got to beat 'em all now, have I?" he asked grimly, his jaw setting with an ugly click. "Schofield and Mallaby, and—yes—while I'm about it, Tanner, too. The old man never liked me, the girl hates me, and I wouldn't mind giving 'em a dig along with the rest. Just to show 'em that I'm not so easy an' peaceful as I look! But how?"

For a considerable space of time he sat there, his head low on his breast, and his eyes half closed as his brain went over scheme after scheme. The detective that Nat had brought from St. Andrew's stuck his head down the cabin and remarked:

"Look here, captain, I want to arrest my man and get back. Why don't you hunt up that ship and let me finish?"

"I've got something a lot better on hand, Durkee," remarked Nat with a grin, rising from his chair, a plan having leaped full blown into his mind. "Just stick along with me and you'll get your man, all right."

He went outside and called the men in with a revolver-shot and a trawl tub run to the masthead. It was about noon when they came in, and, after eating, three o'clock passed before they had finished dressing down.

"Any of you boys run across a dory from the Night Hawk?" asked Nat as the men came inboard with their shower of fish.

"Yes," said a youth, "I f'und one of 'em an' he told me the Hawk's luck was Jonahed this trip."

"Where's the packet lyin'?"

"About twelve mile sou'east near the edge of the Bank."

Nat went to the wheel himself.

"Up jib an' fores'l," he sung out, "and sway 'em flat! Mains'l and tops'ls after that! Raymond, overhaul the balloon, stays'l, and trys'l! Mebbe we'll drive her a little afore we're through."

Burns found the Night Hawk in a patch of sea by herself, more or less deserted by the other schooners because of the Jonah report that had gone abroad concerning her. Her dories were just coming in from the day's work partially loaded with fish.

"Hello!" bawled Nat. "Is Billy Stetson aboard?" Billy was the skipper.

"Yas; d'ye want to see him?"

"Yes, send him along over. It's mighty important, but I ain't goin' aboard no Jonah boat. Tell him he'll be glad he came."

Presently Stetson came and the two retired into the cabin of the Nettie B.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RACE

It was dawn of a heavy, dark day. There was a mighty sea rolling and a forty-mile wind off the Cape shore that promised a three-day ruction. The Charming Lass at her anchor reared and plunged like a nervous horse.

Weighty with fish, she struggled heroically up the great walls of water, only to plump her sharp bows into the hollow with a force that half buried her. Between times she wriggled and capered like a dancing elephant and jerked at her cable until it seemed as though she would take her windlass out.

In the midst of all this Code Schofield struggled aft and began hauling forth the mains'l that at the first edge of the Bank had been relegated in favor of the triangular riding sail.

Pete Ellinwood saw him, and in a great voice bawled down the hatchway to the fo'c's'le.

"Salt's wet, boys; the skipper's haulin' out the mains'l!" At which there broke forth the most extravagant sounds of jubilation and all hands tumbled up to help bend it on.

The crew of the Lass did not know it, but Bijonah Tanner and the Rosan had actually been gone twelve hours, having stolen away from the fleet before dressing down the night before when darkness had fallen. And so successfully had Jed Martin stolen Bijonah's thunder that he had left but three hours later—when the fish had been dressed.

Schofield was honest with himself, and he waited until morning to see if the great stacks of fish would not settle enough to allow of another day's work to be crowded in. But when he saw that space above the fish was very small he waited no longer.

Four men heaved on the windlass brakes, and the others got sail on her as fast as they could haul halyards. She started under jib, jumbo, fore and mains'l, with the wind a little on her port quarter and every fiber of her yearning to go.

When the sails were apparently flat as boards Schofield made Ellinwood rig pulleys leading to the middle of the halyards so that the men could sway on them. She was fit as a racing yacht; her load was perfectly distributed and she trimmed to a hairbreadth.

An hour later they snored down upon the Night Hawk, the last vessel at the edge of the fleet.

"Better hurry!" megaphoned Stetson, tickled with himself. "Burns cleared six hours ago for Freekirk Head with a thousand quintal. He's got Boughton sewed up to buy 'em, too."

"Bring her to!" snarled Code, and the Lass, groaning and complaining at the brutality, whirled up into the wind enough to take her sticks out. "Burns's going home, you say? And with fish? Where'd he get 'em?"

"From me. I sold him my whole load at a better price than I would have got if I had waited to fill the Hawk's belly and then gone home. Gave me cash and threw in a lot of bait, so I'll stay right out here and get another load. Petty good for a Jonah—what? Ha, ha!" The man roared exasperatingly.

"Damnation!" rapped out Schofield. "Lively now! Tops'ls on her, and two of you stay aloft to shift tacks if we should need to come about."

"Hey, you!" bawled Stetson as the Lass began to heel to the great sweep of the wind. "There's two ahead of him, Bijonah Tanner an' Jed Martin! Better hurry if you're going to catch the market!"

"Hurry, is it?" growled Code to himself. "I'll hurry so some people won't know who it is."

It was the first time that Code had had occasion to drive the Lass, for the Mignon fishermen heretofore had confined their labor to the shoals near home or, at farthest, on the Nova Scotia coast. The present occasion was different.

Between where he lay and the friendly sight of Swallowtail Light was more than eight hundred and fifty miles of wallowing, tumbling ocean. Treacherous shoals underran it, biting rocks pierced up in saw-toothed reefs, the bitterest gales of all the seas swept in leaden wastes.

It was a cutthroat business, this mighty pull for the market; but upon it not only depended the practical consideration of the highest market prices, but the honor and glory of owning the fastest schooner out of Freekirk Head. The task of the Charming Lass was delightful in its simplicity, but fearful in its arduousness.

Jimmie Thomas came aft and stood by the wheel on the port side. It took two men to handle her now, for the vast, dead weight in her hold flung her forward and sidewise, despite the muscular clutch on the wheel, and when she rolled down she came up sluggishly.

"Isn't she a dog, though, Code?" exclaimed Jimmie in admiration. "Look at that now! Rose to it like a duck. See her now jest a-playin' with them waves! Jest a-playin'! Oh, she's a dog, skipper—a dog, I tell ye! Drive her! She loves it!"

"I'll drive her, Jimmie; don't you worry. Before I get through some fellers I know'll wish they'd never heard of driving." He motioned Pete Ellinwood aft with a free hand.

"Tell the boys," said Code, "that what sleepin' they do between here and home will be on their feet, for I want all hands ready to jump to orders. They can mug-up day and night, but let nobody get his boots off."

"Ay, ay, sir!" replied Pete involuntarily. This bright-eyed, firm-mouthed skipper was a different being from the cheerful, careless boy he had been familiar with for years. There was the ring of confidence and command in his voice that inspired respect. "Look out there! Jump for it!"

The head of the Lass went down with a sickening swoop and the sound of thunder. A great, gray-and-white wall boiled and raced over her bows. Ellinwood leaped for the weather-rigging and the other two clutched the wheel as they stood waist-deep in the surge that roared over the taffrail and to leeward.

"Pass the life-lines, Pete," ordered Code, and all hands passed stout ropes from rigging to house to rail, forward and astern, so that there might be something to leap for when the Lass was boarded by a Niagara.

Ellinwood got out two stout lines and made one fast around Code's waist, leading it to the starboard bitt. The other fastened Jimmie to the port bitt, so that if they were washed overboard they might be hauled back to safety and life again.

"Looks like she was blowin' up a little!" remarked Pete later in the day as the Lass rolled down to her sheerpoles in a sudden rain squall. "Better take in them tops'ls, hadn't ye, skipper?"

"Take in nothing!" snapped Code across the cabin table. "Any canvas that comes off this vessel between here and Freekirk Head blows off, unless we have passed all those schooners ahead of us. Haven't raised any of 'em, have you?"

"Not yet, skipper; but we ought to by night," said Ellinwood as though he felt he was personally to blame. "But let me tell you somethin', skipper. It's all right to carry sail, but if you get your sticks ripped out you won't be able to get anywhere at all."

"If my sticks go, let 'em go, I'll take my medicine; but I'll tell you this much, Pete, that nobody is going to beat me home while I've got a stick to carry canvas, unless they have a better packet than the Charming Lass—which I know well they haven't."

"That's the spirit, skipper!" yelled Ellinwood, secretly pleased.

There is no telling exactly what speed certain fishing schooners have made on their great drives from the Banks. Some men go so far as to claim that the old China tea clippers have lost their laurels both for daily runs and for passages up to four thousand miles.

One ambitious man hazards his opinion (and he is one who ought to know) that a fishing schooner has done her eighteen knots or upward for numerous individual hours, for fishermen, even on record passages, fail to haul the log sometimes for half a day at a time.

Schofield, however, took occasion to have the log hauled for one especially squally mile, and the figures showed that the Lass had covered fifteen knots in the hour—seventeen and a half land miles.

She was booming along now, seeming to leap from one great crest to the next like a giant projectile driven by some irresistible force. She was canted at such an angle that her lee rail was invisible under the boiling white, and her deck planks seemed a part of the sea.

The course was almost exactly southwest, and that first day the Lass roared down the Atlantic, passing the wide mouth of Cabot Strait that leads between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They passed one of the Quebec and Montreal liners, and took pleasure shooting the schooner under her flaring bows.

The next morning at seven, twenty-four hours out, found them three hundred and fifty miles on their course, but what was better than all, showed three sails ahead. Then did the crew of the Charming Lass rejoice, climbing into the spray-lashed rigging, and yelling wildly against the tumult of the waters.

Nor did the wind subside. It had gone to forty-five miles an hour over night, and in landlocked harbors the skippers of big steel passenger vessels shook their heads and refused to venture out into the gale.

As well as could be judged, the Nettie B., Rosan, and Herring Bone were nearly on even terms twenty miles ahead, all with every stitch set and flying like leaves before a wind.

"Bend on balloon jib!" snapped Schofield when he had considered the task before him. Pete ran joyfully to execute the order, but some of the men hesitated.

"Up with her!" roared Pete, and up she went, a great concave hollow of white like the half of a pear. The Lass's head went down, and now, instead of attempting to go over the waves, she went through them without argument.

Tons of divided water crashed down upon her decks and roared off over the rails, the men at the wheel were never less than knee-deep. The sheets strained, the timbers creaked, and the sails roared, and back of all were the wind and the North Atlantic in hot pursuit.

By noon it could be seen that the three vessels ahead were commencing to come back, but with terrible slowness. Code, lashed in the weather-rigging, studied them for more than an hour through his glasses. Then he leaped to the deck.

"Hell's bells! No wonder we can't catch 'em! Burns has got stays'l set, and I think Tanner has, too. Couldn't see Martin. Set stays'l, all hands!"

Under the driving of Ellinwood the staysail was set, and from then on the Charming Lass sailed on her side.

At every roll her sheerpoles were buried, and it seemed an open question whether she would ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O'Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man crazy enough to desire it.

That Ellinwood and the daring Jimmie Thomas were thoroughly in accord with Schofield's preposterous sail-carrying was a foregone conclusion. But others of the crew were not of the same mind. An hour more here or there seemed a small matter to them as compared to the chance of drowning and leaving a family unprotected and unprovided for.

Schofield sensed this feeling immediately it had manifested itself, and he called his lieutenants to him. He wished to provide against interference.

"House the halyards aloft!" he commanded, and at this even those two daring souls stood aghast, for it meant that whatever the emergency no sail could be taken off the Charming Lass. With the end of the halyards aloft no man could reach them in time to avert a catastrophe.

"You're sure drivin' her, skipper!" roared Pete in amazed admiration. "Up them halyards go. Oh, Lord, but she's a dog, an' she'll stand it."

So up the halyards went, and with them went a warning that whoever jumped to loosen them would get a gaff-hook in his breeches and be hauled down ignominiously.

This time when the log was hauled for the hour from three to four in the afternoon it showed a total of seventeen knots, or a fraction under twenty miles for the hour. And best of all, the three flying schooners had come back five miles. By ten o'clock that night Code judged they had come back five more, and knew that the next day would bring the test.

They were not in over-deep water here, for the coast of Nova Scotia is extended for miles out under the sea in excellent fishing shoals and banks.

At Artimon Bank they switched their course to westward so as to pass inside of Sable Island and round Cape Sable in the shoalest water possible. Down across Western they roared, and almost to Le Have before midnight came.

Now it is one thing to sail like the Flying Dutchman with the sun up and one's eyes to use, but it is another to career through the night without taking in a stitch of canvas, trusting to luck and the Providence that watches over fishermen that the compass is good and that no blundering coasters will get in the way.

When dawn broke wild and dirty, the Charming Lass was reeling through the water less than a quarter of a mile astern of the Rosan and the Herring Bone. Through the murk Code could see the Nettie B. three miles ahead.

An hour and she had drawn abreast of her two rivals; another hour and she had left them astern. Day had fully broken now, and Code, grinning over his shoulder at the defeated schooners, gave a cry of surprise. For no longer were there two only. Another, plunging through the mist, had come into view; far back she was, but carrying a spread of canvas that gave indications enough of her speed.

But Code spent little time looking back. He gripped the wheel, set his teeth, and urged the Lass forward after the Nettie with every faculty of his power. After that terrible night the crew had lost their fear and worked with enthusiasm.

Some hands were always at the pumps, when they could be worked, for besides the brine from the fish gathering below, Code feared the vessel had spewed some oakum and was taking a little water forward. Now, too, the horrible stench of riled bilge-water floated over all—compared to which an aged egg is a bouquet of roses.

At eight o'clock that morning they rounded Cape Sable at the tip of Nova Scotia, and laid a course a trifle west of north for the final beat home. There was a hundred miles to go, and Burns still held his three-mile lead.

By herself and loaded only with ballast, the Nettie was a better sailor in a beating game, for she was older and heavier than the Charming Lass. But now she had but a thousand quintal of fish compared to the sixteen hundred of her rival. This difference gave the Lass much needed stability without which she could never have hoped to win from the Burns schooner.

The two were, therefore, about equally matched, and it was evident that the contest would resolve itself into one of sail-carrying, seamanship, and nerve.

"That other feller's comin' up fast!" said Pete Ellinwood, and Code looked back to see the strange schooner looming larger and larger in his wake. He knew that no vessel in the Grande Mignon fleet could ever have caught the Lass the way he had been driving her, and yet she was not near enough for him to get a good view of her.

"If she's a fisherman," said Code, "I'll pull the Lass out of water before she beats us in."

It was killing work, the last beat home.

"Hard a-lee!" would come the command, and some men would go down into the smother of the lee rail and haul in or slack away sheets, while others at the mastheads would shift top- and staysail tacks.

Her head would swing, there would be a minute of thrashing and roaring of gear, and the gale would leap into her sails and bend her down on her side again. Then away she would go.

The station of those on deck was a good two-handed grip on the ringbolts under the weather-rail, where, so great was the slope of the deck, they clung desperately for fear of sliding down and into the swirling torrent.

Hour after hour the Nettie and the Lass fought it out, and hour after hour the gale increased. Hurricane warnings had been issued all along the coast, and not a vessel ventured out, but these stanch fishing vessels cared not a whit.

It was evident, however, that something must give. Human ingenuity had not constructed a vessel that could stand such driving. Even Pete Ellinwood began to lose his heartiness as the Lass went down and stayed down longer with each vicious squall.

"Shut up, Pete!" said Code, when the mate started to speak. "No sail comes off but what blows off, and while there's all sail on the Nettie I carry all sail if I heave her down for it. Watch him, he'll break. Burns is yellow."

The words were a prophecy. He had hardly uttered them when down came the great balloon jib of the Nettie B. At once the Lass began to gain in great leaps and bounds. They were fifty miles from home and two miles only separated them.

But fortune had not finished with Code. Half an hour later there came a great sound of tearing like the volley of small arms, and the Lass's balloon jib ripped loose and soared to heaven like some gigantic wounded bird.

"Let it go, curse it," growled Code. "Anyway, I didn't take it down."

The loss of her big jib was the only thing that saved the Lass from being hove down completely, for two hours later the gale had reached its height, and she was laboring like a drunken man under her staysail, topsail, and four lowers.

Twenty miles from home and the two schooners were abreast, tacking together on the long leeward reaches and the short windward ones, as they made across the Bay of Fundy.

"Look at her comin' like a racehorse!" cried Ellinwood again, and this time Code recognized the vessel that was pursuing them. It was the mystery schooner, and in all his life at sea Code had never seen a ship fly as that one was flying then.

"Wonder what she's up to now?" he asked vaguely. But he gave no further thought to the matter, for the Nettie B. claimed all his attention. Suddenly from between the masts of the Burns schooner a great flutter of white appeared as though some one had hung a huge sheet from her stay.

"Ha, I told you he was yellow!" shouted Code in glee. "Somebody's cut away one edge of the stays'l. Now we've got 'em!"

And they had; for within a quarter of an hour they left the Nettie B. astern, finally defeated, Nat Burns's last act of treachery gone for nothing.

But the mystery schooner would not be denied. Though the Lass made her seventeen knots, the wonderful Mallaby schooner did her twenty, with everything spread in that gale; and when the white lighthouse of Swallowtail Point was in plain sight through the murk, she swept by like a magnificent racer and beat the Charming Lass to moorings by twenty minutes.

Half an hour behind Schofield came the Burns boat, but in that time Code Schofield had already hurried ashore in his dory and clinched his sale price with Bill Boughton, who also assured him of the bonus offered for the first vessel in.

Like Code, the first thing Nat did, when his schooner had come up into the wind with jib and foresail on the run, was to take a dory ashore. In it, besides himself, was a man. These two encountered Code just as he came out of Boughton's store.

The second, who was tall and broad-shouldered, threw back his coat and displayed a government shield. Then he laid his hand on Code's arm.

"Captain Schofield," he said, "you are under arrest!"



CHAPTER XXIX

A FATAL LETTER

For the last of many days the light-housekeeper had watched from his aerie for the coming of the fleet—and had not been disappointed.

His horse and buggy stood by the tower doorstep, and into it he leaped, whipping up the horse with the same motion. Then down the road he had flown like Paul Revere rousing the villagers, and followed by an excited, half-hysterical procession of women and children.

So thick had been the murk and scud that he had only caught sight of the approaching leader while she was a bare two miles off the point, and even when Nat had landed the crowd was momentarily being augmented from all the houses along the King's Road and as far south as Castalia.

When the officer of the law laid his hand on Code's arm and spoke the words that meant imprisonment and disgrace in the very heart of the village festival, a groan went up that caused the officer to look sharply about him.

Despite the work Nat had done on his brief stop at the Head, Code was the hero of the day, for he had come in with the first cargo of fish and had won the distinction of being the first to effect the salvation of the island.

"Oh, let him go!" said a voice. "He ain't goin' to run away!" Nat, standing behind his captive, turned sharply upon the offender.

"No, you bet he ain't!" he snapped. "He's been doin' that too long already. He's got somethin' to answer for this time."

Into the harbor at that moment swept the Tanners' Rosan, and abreast of her the steamer from St. John's. Five minutes behind came Jed Martin's Herring Bone, and the first of the fleet was safely in.

As the discontented and muttering mob followed Code toward the little jail back of the Odd Fellows' Hall, none noticed that the lovely schooner that had led the procession in was stealing quietly out again into the thick of the gale.

And those who did notice it thought nothing of it in the excitement of the moment, probably judging her to be some coaster who had run in to look for a leak. She had been tied up just ten minutes at the Mallaby wharf.

As the sorry procession passed the Schofield cottage, Code's mother ran out sobbing and threw herself upon him. She had not seen her son before (although orphan Josie had told her the Lass was in), for Code had been closeted with Boughton, and now her first glimpse of him was as an accused criminal.

But, regardless of watching eyes and public opinion, she walked all the way to the jail with him and went inside; and the two were absolutely oblivious to their surroundings, so overjoyed were they to see each other and so intimate was their companionship.

Along the edge of the crowd great Pete Ellinwood slouched, looking with dimmed eyes at mother and son.

"Ain't she the mother, though?" he said to himself. "Just like a girl she is—not a day past thirty by her looks!"

The jailer, who was regularly employed as janitor of the Free Baptist Church, opened the little house for his unexpected guest. It consisted of a room, fitted for sleeping, and a cell. These were not connected, but were side by side, facing the passage that ran through from front to back of the building.

Code was taken to the cell, and only his mother and Pete stayed with him to talk over the situation. It was determined to have Squire Hardy come over in the evening (it was now five o'clock) and give his opinion on the legal situation.

Ma Schofield went home and prepared her boy's supper herself, and brought it with her own hands for him to eat. Code was in the best of spirits at his success of the afternoon, and had no fear whatever as to the outcome of his present situation.

Pete had gone away for an hour, and Ma Schofield had taken the dishes back home, when the detective came in, saying that a little girl who called herself Josie had come with a message.

Code asked to see her, and the great-eyed, dark little thing wept bitterly over him, for to her fourteen years he represented all the heroes of romance. Even as she passed him the message she knew that she could never love again and that she would shortly die of a broken heart.

Code kissed her, promptly forgot her presence, and opened the note.

It was from Elsa.

"Will be down to see you to-night at eight. Have sent a note to Nat in your name, telling him to be there, too. I think we have him on the hip, so be sure and have the squire and the officer present."

Code wondered vaguely how they had Nat on the hip, as he had been unable to find a single iota of proof to push home the case he and Elsa had built up against him.

The note brought him stark awake and eager for the conference. He had begun to drowse after a good home dinner and sixty hours without sleep, but this acted like an electric shock. He was keen and alert, for he knew that this was the night of his destiny. Either he should triumph as he had in the grueling race, or he should have to face the ignominy of transfer and legal proceedings at St. Andrew's.

At half-past seven Squire Hardy, his round, red face fringed by snowy whiskers, came in. He dragged a chair into the passageway in front of the bar and was beginning a long and laborious law opinion when the detective, who had been to Mis' Shannon's boarding-house for dinner, returned.

The two began to fight the matter out between them when, at a quarter to eight, Nat came in, dressed in his best clothes and smoking a land cigar.

"Well, what do you want of me, Schofield?" he asked. "You sent for me, but you needn't try to beg off. I won't listen to it. Now, go ahead."

On the instant a feminine voice was heard outside, and a moment later Elsa Mallaby stepped into the little four-foot passage.

"Oh, how many there are here!" she said in a surprised voice. "Perhaps, Code, I had better wait until later."

"Hey, Roscoe!" sung out Code, hardly able to control his desire to grin. "Bring Mrs. Mallaby a chair." Roscoe obeyed and added two more, so that all were placed within a small compass just outside Code's cell.

From Elsa Mallaby's first entrance Nat had observed her with a certain flicker of fear and hatred in his eyes. She, on the other hand, greeted him with the same formal cordiality she had used toward the others. Though utterly incongruous in such surroundings, she seemed absolutely at her ease and instantly assumed command of the situation.

"Excuse me," said Nat, who had not sat down and shifted from one foot to the other, "but Schofield sent for me, an' I would like to find out what he wants. I've got to go along."

"Schofield didn't send for you—I sent for you. There are several things about this imprisonment of Code that don't look right to me, and we may as well settle the whole business once and for all while we are here together. Now, Mr. Durkee," she said, turning to the detective, "would you mind telling me what the charge is against Captain Schofield?"

"To tell you the truth, ma'am," said he respectfully, "there are two charges out against him. One, by the insurance company, sues for recovery of money paid on the schooner May Schofield, and charges that the said schooner was sunk intentionally, first because Schofield wanted a newer boat, and second because the policy of the May was to expire in a few days and could not have been renewed except at a much advanced rate."

"And the other charge?"

"Is for murder in the first degree, growing out of the intentional sinking of the schooner. Captain Burns is the complainant."

"Thank you." She flashed one of her radiant smiles at him and made him a friend for life.

"That was a great race to-day," she remarked irrelevantly, but with enthusiasm. "How much did you beat the Nettie B., Code?"

"A half an hour," he replied, mystified at the turn of the conversation.

"Well, that is a coincidence." She looked from one to the other. "It's exactly the same amount of time he beat you seven months ago when he raced the old May against the M. C. Burns, isn't it?" Her glance shot to Nat.

"Why, I believe it is, Mrs. Mallaby," he stammered. The quick transition to that painful and dangerous period had caught him off his guard.

"That was a great race, too," she said cheerfully, "and it's too bad you never sailed the second one. Especially after you wanted to bet so much. You thought you would win the second race, didn't you, Nat?" She was sweetness itself.

"Why, yes, I thought so," he admitted guardedly. "But I don't see what all this has got to do—"

"Well, it hasn't very much," she said deprecatingly, "but I was just interested. What made you so sure you would win that second race that you tried to bet?"

"Oh, I don't know," he answered easily. "I just had confidence—"

"In what, Nat Burns? Your schooner had easily been beaten the first time and she was notoriously slower than the May. Every one in the island knows that you can't sail a vessel like Code Schofield can, and that you are afraid to carry sail. To-day proved it. Anybody with half an eye could see that that stays'l was cut with a knife and didn't blow off. All these things being so, what made you so sure that you would win that second race seven months ago?"

Nat looked at her steadily. His nervousness had gone, apparently, and he was his old crafty self once more.

"That is none of your business, Mrs. Mallaby," he said insolently. "And now if you'll let me pass I'll keep an engagement."

"Mr. Durkee," she said, "please keep Mr. Burns here until we have entirely finished."

"Yes, ma'am, I will," said the hypnotized man, and Nat, after a glare around upon the unsympathetic audience slumped down into a chair and smoked sullenly.

"Steady as she goes my friend," broke in Squire Hardy, looking at Nat. "Answer the lady's question. What made you think you would win?"

"I refuse to answer."

"He really doesn't need to answer," said Elsa. "I will answer for him. Code kindly let me have the log of the M. C. Burns."

Schofield drew the old book from his pocket and handed it through the bars. Then Elsa, opening it to the last pages, read aloud the few entries that Code had discovered that day when he was a prisoner aboard the Nettie B. As she read the silence was intense, but all eyes were upon Nat, who, startled at the sudden appearance of this document he had so long forgotten, chewed savagely upon his dead cigar. His face had grown pale and his rough hands were clasped tightly together.

"You see," said Elsa, when she had finished, "that Burns had determined upon the winning of his next race. It is perfectly clear, is it not?"

The breathless circle nodded.

It was a strange setting for the working out of the drama. Overhead a suspended oil-lamp flamed and smelled. Outside the crash of surf against the rocks came to them, and the wind whistled about the eaves of the little stone building.

"Now the mirror," she said to Code, and, still wondering, he handed the trinket to her. "Tell about this," she directed him with a smile and a long look from her deep dark eyes.

And Code told them. He told of the time his father first gave it to him, of his experiments in astronomy, and of Nat's coveting the mirror. He told of that night after the first race when he had looked for the log-book of the May and had seen the mirror in its drawer. He told of its final discovery in the secret box of the storeroom on the Nettie.

As he talked the memory of the wrongs against him flamed in his breast, and he directed his story at Nat, who sat silent and immovable in the corner.

"If I found this aboard the Nettie it proves that he must have come and got it!" he cried. "He boarded the old May, but it was not for this that he came!"

"What, then?" asked Hardy.

"To damage the schooner so that she would break down under the strain of the next race," flared Code, facing Nat dramatically. Burns only clenched his jaws tighter on his cigar.

"You don't believe this, perhaps, squire, but listen and I'll tell you how the old May sank." And once again he described the crashing calamity aboard the overloaded boat as she struggled home to Freekirk Head with the last of her strength.

"You, squire, you've sailed your boats in your time! You know that never could have happened even to the old May unless something had been done. And something was done! Burns had weakened the topm'st and the mainstay!"

All eyes were fixed on Nat, but he did not move. He was very pale now, but apparently self-possessed. Suddenly, with a hand that appeared firm, he removed the cigar from his mouth and cast it on the floor.

"That," he said with deadly coolness, "is a blasted fine plot that you have all worked out together. But every word of it is a lie, for the whole thing is without a single foundation in fact. Prove it!"

"I'll give you a last chance, Burns," said Elsa in a level voice that contained all the concentrated hatred that Code had detected in her before. "Dismiss these charges against Code."

"Never!" The word was catapulted from him as though by a muscular convulsion. "He murdered my father, and he shall pay for it!"

Without a word Elsa rose from her chair and walked back into the adjoining room. A moment later she reappeared, leading a beautiful girl who was perhaps twenty years old.

The effect was electric. The people in the little group seemed frozen into the attitudes they had last assumed.

Only in Nat Burns was there a change.

He seemed to have shrunk back into his clothes until he was but a little, wizened man. His face was ghastly and clammy perspiration glittered on his forehead in the lamplight.

"Caroline!" he cried in a hoarse voice that did not rise above a whisper.

"Yes, Caroline," said Elsa, her black eyes flashing fire. "You had forgotten her, hadn't you? You had forgotten the girl who loved you, that you drove away from the island! You had forgotten the girl that gave you everything and got nothing! But that has come back upon you now, and these people are here to see it. Even your father, in his log-book, mentioned when my sister left Grande Mignon, apparently to work in the factory at Lubec. As though my sister should ever work in a factory!"

"So this explains why she went that time," said Squire Hardy gently. "We all wondered at it, Elsa—we all wondered at it."

"And well you might. But he is the cause! And he wouldn't marry her! I have waited for this chance of revenge, and now he shall pay."

Caroline Fuller, who was even more beautiful than her sister, looked at Nat in a kind of daze. Suddenly there was a spasmodic working of her features.

"Oh, that I could ever have loved him!" she said in a faint voice. "Here, Elsa, read it to them all!"

From under her cloak she drew a crumpled envelope which she passed to her sister.

With a snarl like that of a wild animal Nat leaped from his chair toward the girl, but Durkee struck him violently and he reeled back into it.

"You swore you burned them all!" muttered Nat. "You swore it! You swore it!"

"Yes, and she did, the innocent child—all but this one that she had mislaid in a book you once sent her," cried Elsa. "But I found it, Burns. Where do you think I've been all this while? At St. John's, where she lives with my aunt. And do you think there was no reason for that letter being saved? God takes care of things like this, and now you've got to pay, Nat Burns! I knew there would come a time. I knew there would!"

She was still standing, and she drew the letter out of the envelope.

"Look, squire, Code, any of you who know. Is this Nat's writing?"

"Yes," they all declared as the letter passed from hand to hand.

"Read it," said the squire, forcing Caroline Fuller to sit down in his chair.

"I'll spare him hearing the first of it," said Elsa. "It is what men write to women they love or feign to love, and it belongs to my sister. But here"—she turned the first sheet inside out—"listen to this."

Involuntarily they all leaned forward, all except Durkee, who went over and stood beside Nat. The latter gave no sign except a dry rattling sound in his throat as he swallowed involuntarily.

"I've got him, Caroline—I've got him!" she read. "He'll beat me again, will he? Well, not if I know it! Everybody in the Head seems tickled to death that he won, but you know how little that means to me. It is simply another reason why I should beat him the next time.

"Dearest little girl, it's the easiest thing in the world. I've just come back from going over the May (it's midnight), and the thing looks good. You know Schofield is a great hand to carry sail. Well, when you hear about the race, maybe you'll hear that his foretopmast came down in a squall. If you don't, I'll be much surprised, for I've attended to it myself, and I don't think it will take much of a squall.

"Maybe you'll hear, too, that his mainstay snapped and his sticks went into the water all because he carried too much sail. I shouldn't be surprised. I've attended to that, too. So I guess with his foretopmast cracked off and his mainstay snapped the old M. C. ought to romp home an easy victor, if she is an old ice-wagon. I tried to get Schofield to bet, but he's so tight with his cash he wouldn't shake down a five-cent piece. Good thing for him, though, he doesn't know it. Nothing would do me more good than to get his roll, the virtuous old deacon!"

She stopped reading as a rumble of mirth went round the circle. Code in the role of a virtuous deacon was a novelty. Even the hard lines of Elsa's face relaxed and she smiled, albeit a trifle grimly.

"That's all," she said, folding up the letter and putting it back into the envelope. "The rest is personal and not ours. Now, Mr. Durkee, if you still care to consider Captain Schofield as the defendant in those two suits I want your arguments."

"I don't, Mrs. Mallaby," said the detective, and called the Freekirk Head jailer. "But I know who is going to take Schofield's place."

He glared at Nat Burns, who cowered silent and miserable in his corner. Despite his sailing as Nat's guest he had never brought himself to like the man, and now he was glad to be well rid of him.

Code stepped out a free man, and his first action was to take both of Elsa's hands and try to thank her. Her eyes dropped and she blushed. When he had stammered through his speech he turned to Caroline Fuller and repeated it, but the sad smile she gave him tore at his heart.

"I came because Elsa asked me to save a friend," she said, "not because I wished to revenge myself on Nat. I am glad it was you, for I would do anything on earth for Elsa."

Code turned mystified eyes upon Mrs. Mallaby.

"I thought you did this to revenge yourself on Nat," he half whispered.

"I did, partly," she replied. She lifted her eyes to his and he saw something in them that startled him—something that, in all his association with her, he had never seen before. He stood silent, amazed, overwhelmed while she turned her face away.



CHAPTER XXX

ELSA'S TRIUMPH

Code Schofield's appearance at his schooner the next morning to help the crew unload was the signal for a veritable native-son demonstration. Not only had the story of Code's sudden liberation and Nat's as sudden imprisonment spread like wild-fire clear to Southern Head Light, twenty miles away, but the tale was hailed with joy.

For Nat had come into his own in the hatred of his townsfolk. Among the fleet he was heartily unpopular because he had not fished all season and then had tried to catch the first market with a purchased cargo, merely to revenge himself on Code and the Tanners. Throughout his conduct had been utterly selfish, whereas others had worked for the island and for its salvation.

With the landing of the two schooners from the fleet the women-folk were soon apprised of Nat's action, and, had it not been for Elsa's sensational disclosures in the little jail that made him the sudden occupant of a cell, there is no question but what the women of Marblehead would have been equaled by the women of Freekirk Head; and Skipper Ireson would not have ridden down history alone in tarry glory.

But now, since Code was free, the whole town exulted, and there was a steady procession to the jail to look in upon the first real criminal the village had mustered in years.

Code, after checking the scale-tally all morning as his stalwart men swung the baskets of salted fish out of the hold, went along the road to Squire Hardy's house after dinner and interviewed that worthy man.

"You've got him where you want him," said the squire, "but you can't get much except damages."

"I don't want even damages," said Code. "I want him to take all his things and go away from here and never come back. Since he didn't do any real damage to anybody I don't care what becomes of him so long as he leaves here."

"Well, all you must do is to withdraw your charges against him—they were put in your name so that Mrs. Mallaby's would not have to appear."

"But even if I do, won't the State take it up. You know a murder case—"

"Yes, my boy, but this is no murder case now. On the face of it Nat did not set out to murder his father; he did not set out really to sink your schooner—merely to disable it; the proof is indisputable and self-evident by his own confession and letter.

"Well, now, in a private racing agreement between gentlemen, if both vessels are registered and rated seaworthy, nothing that happens to one can be laid to the other unless, as in the present case, one deliberately damages the other. The principal punishment is a moral one administered by the former friends of the dishonest man, but the victim can collect money damages. Naturally the insurance company will change its charge so as to accuse Nat instead of you.

"They have a proven case against him already, and he will have to pay them nearly all they gave you—so that, in the end, he really pays you for the damage he did that day. Then, I understand, he is going to pay an amount to the family of each man who lost his life in the May, on condition that they will never sue him."

"Whee-ew!" whistled Code. "When he gets through he won't have much money left, I guess."

"No, I guess he won't," agreed the judge, "and it serves him right. He'll probably have to sell his schooner and start life over again somewhere else. I hope he starts honestly this time. Then you won't take any action against him, Code?"

"Me? Oh, no!" said Schofield. "I've nothing against him now. Let him go. But I'll tell you one thing, squire—he had better be smuggled away to-night quietly, because, if the crowd gets hold of him, it might not be good for his health."

The squire agreed and Code went back to his work. Late that afternoon Pete Ellinwood swung the last basket of the catch to the scales and Code completed his tally.

"Sixteen hundred and seventy quintal," he announced, "and forty-three pounds. At a hundred pounds a quintal that makes 167,078 pounds, and at three cents a pound totals to $5,012.34. Not bad for a two months' cruise, but my soul and body, Bill Boughton, how the fish did run!"

"It's a good catch, Code, and fine fish," answered Boughton, who had been writing. "How will you have the money—in a lump or individual checks?"

"Separate checks." Boughton went back to his glass-surrounded desk to write them.

Code, being the sole owner of the Charming Lass, took two thousand dollars as his share, and the rest was divided almost equally among the other nine men, a trifle extra going to Pete Ellinwood for his services as mate.

"It was a toppin' haul," declared Pete jovially, slapping his well-filled pocket after a visit to the bank, "an' the rest of them poor devils won't get over two and a half a pound—some of 'em only two, when there's lots of fish. Half a cent a pound is a pretty good bonus!"

Code had dinner with his mother that night, and appeared for it carefully dressed. What was his surprise to see his mother in her one silk dress.

"I'm going up to Mallaby House," he said in answer to her inquiring look. "But you! What's all this gaiety, mother?"

"I am going to hear an account of how you behaved yourself on the voyage, Code," she said, attempting severity.

"By an eye-witness?" Visions of Ellinwood, painfully arrayed, danced in his head.

"Yes."

"Um-m. Well, I won't be home until late, then, because it's a long story."

"You rascal!" said his mother, and kissed him.

On the way to Mallaby House (it was up the old familiar path that he had raced down so recklessly the night of the great fire), he thought over the thing that his eyes had seen for an instant the night before in the jail.

Elsa loved him, he knew now, and she had always loved him. He cursed himself for a stupid fool in that it had taken him so long to find out, but he was relieved to know at last upon what footing to meet her. She was no longer a baffling and alluring creature of a hundred chameleon moods; she was a lonely girl.

Martin, who had been his body-servant while aboard the mystery schooner, opened the door, and bowed with decided pleasure at seeing his temporary master. He ventured congratulations that Schofield was free of the law's shadow.

"Mrs. Mallaby is up-stairs, sir," he said, taking Code's hat. "Just step into the drawing-room, sir, and I'll call her."

It was a sample of Elsa's taste that she illuminated all her rooms with the soft flame of candles or the mellow light of lamps. The mahogany furniture, much of it very old and historic among the island families, gleamed in the warm lights. There were built-in shelves of books against one wall, splendid engravings, etchings, and a few colored prints of the daughters of Louis XV.

Presently Elsa came down the broad staircase. Her hair was parted simply in the middle and done into two wheels, one over each pink ear. Her dress was a plain one of China silk with a square Dutch neck. It fitted her splendid figure beautifully.

Never had she appeared to Code so fresh and simple. The great lady was gone, the keen advocate had disappeared, the austere arbiter of Freekirk Head's destinies was no more. She seemed a girl. He arose and took her hand awkwardly.

"I am glad you came so soon," she said; "but aren't you neglecting other people? I'm sure there must be friends who would like to see you."

"Perhaps so, but this time they must wait until I have paid my respects to you. As far as actions go, you are the only friend I have."

"You are getting quite adept at turning a phrase," she said, smiling.

"Not as adept as you in turning heaven and earth to liberate an innocent man."

"I have no answer to that," she replied. "But seriously, Code, I hope you didn't come up to thank me again to-night. Please don't. It embarrasses me. We know each other well enough, I think, to do little things without the endless social prating that should accompany them."

"You've been a dear!" he cried, and took one of her hands in his. She did not move. "Elsa, I want you for my wife!"

"What can I say?" she began in a low voice. "You are noble and good, Code, and I know what has actuated you to say this to me. Some women would be resentful at your offer, but I am not. A week ago, even yesterday, I should have accepted it gladly and humbly, but to-day—no.

"Since last night I have thought, and somehow things have come clearer to me. I have tried to do too much. I have always loved you, Code, but I can see now that you were not meant for me. I tried to win you because of that love, not considering you or others—only myself. And I defeated my own end. I overshot the mark."

"I don't understand," said Code.

"Perhaps not, but I will tell you. In the first place, I deliberately managed so that Nat Burns and Nellie could never be married. I know now that they have separated for good. I hated Burns for his part in my sister's life, and I resolved to wreck his happiness if his engagement to Nellie was happiness. So now she is free and you can have her, I think, for the asking."

"But," cried Schofield in protest, "I have never said—"

"You did not need to say that you loved some one," she told him, with a faint smile. "That night at dinner on the schooner with me proved it. I have talked to your mother since I came home, and she told me what Nat's engagement meant to you, so that I know Nellie is the girl you have always loved. Isn't it so?"

"Yes," he replied gently.

"Now is it plain to you how I have undone my own plans? Two things I desired more than anything else on earth, you, and Burns's ruin. I ruined Burns and paved the way for the loss of you, for, unscrupulous as I am in some things, I could never marry you when Nellie was free and you loved her. I have wanted happiness so hard, Code, that when I see others who have it within their grasp, I cannot stand in their way.

"But I don't mind now—I really don't. That was all in the past, and it's over now. If you want to make me happy, be happy yourself. I see there are forces that guide our lives that must have their will whatever our own private plans may be, and, having learned that lesson, I feel that perhaps now I shall be happier, somehow, than I ever would have been if my own selfishness had triumphed."

Code lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.

"What a splendid woman you are! I know that happiness and joy will come to you. One who has done what you have done cannot fail to realize it. This hour will always be a very sweet one in my memory, and I shall never forget it."

"Nor I," she said softly, "for, through you, I have begun to find myself."



CHAPTER XXXI

PEACE AND PROSPERITY

The village of Freekirk Head prospered once Code Schofield, Bijonah Tanner, and Jed Martin had started the ball rolling. Inside a week another large consignment of fish arrived. Boughton was ready for it, and for all that could come, he said, in the next two months.

This was music to the ears of Code Schofield and the crack crew of the Charming Lass, and nine days after they had picked up their mooring in the little crescent harbor they were off again, salt and bait-laden, for the Banks, expecting to do a little haddocking if they failed to load down with cod before they disappeared in October.

Seven schooners sailed with him that day, and, at the end of nine weeks, the Lass weighed anchor and charged home with the first halibut that had come into Freekirk Head in years. On this trip, when he was left in peace, Code displayed all the remarkable "nose" for fish that his father had had before him.

And when he had weighed out the last of his halibut Bill Boughton led him into the little office of the fishstand and offered him a quarter interest in the business.

Thereafter Code was to make only such trips as he could spare time for, and Pete was to have charge of the Lass on other occasions.

He had proved himself worth his salt in the eyes of the whole village, and Boughton needed some one to do the heavy work, while he collected most of the profits. This business future, and three thousand dollars in the bank, led Code one day to send to St. John's for an architect, and to haggle with Al Green concerning the cost of a piece of land overlooking the blue bay.

The very night that Code and Elsa had their last talk Nat Burns was smuggled aboard a motor sloop lying in Whale Cove and taken over to Eastport, where he was turned loose in the United States.

Half of the value of the Nettie was eaten up by his debts and damage settlements, and so, the better to clear the whole matter up, he sold her at auction inside a week and departed with the remnants of his cash to parts unknown.

Since that time not a word or trace of him had been heard in Freekirk Head except once. That was when the St. John's paper printed a photograph of an automobile that made a trip across the Hudson Bay country.

Beside the machine stood a man in furs who was claimed by all who saw the picture to be Nat Burns. Was he running a trap line in the wilds with the Indians, or was he a passenger in the car under an assumed name?

Elsa Mallaby did not even wait for the departure of the Charming Lass on her second voyage before she acted on a determination that had come to her. She shut up Mallaby House entirely, and, with Caroline as her companion, started on a trip around the world, promising to be back in three years.

But she did not go on the mystery schooner, nor did anybody ever see or hear of it again.

It soon developed that the government officials were hard after the boat that had impersonated a gunboat, and would make it very hot both for owners and crew. Elsa knew this the day she made her final triumphant dash into Freekirk Head, and that was the reason that the ship only stayed ten minutes.

So quietly and skilfully was the whole thing managed that, in the excitement of Code's arrest, every one thought Elsa and her sister had come on the evening boat from St. John's.

Not three men in the island would have connected her with this strange craft, and two of those weren't sure enough of anything to speak above a whisper. The third was Code Schofield.

Captain Foraker took the mystery schooner outside the harbor, pointed her nose straight south by the compass, and held her there for a matter of ten days. At the end of that time he was in danger of pushing Haiti off the map, so he went to Port-au-Prince and sold the schooner at a bargain to the government, which, at that time, happened to need a first-class battle-ship. Then Captain Foraker and the crew divided the money (by Elsa's orders), and returned to the States.

It was only after the return from his second cruise that Code paid attention to Nellie Tanner. Something in him that respected her trouble and Elsa's confession at the same time had kept his lips sealed during that short stay at home. But one Sunday after the second trip they climbed to the crest of the mountain back of the closed Mallaby House, and Code told her what had been in his heart all these years.

For a while she said nothing. The sun was setting over the distant Maine coast and the clouds all round the horizon were wonderful masses of short-lived rainbow texture. The sea was the pink and greenish blue of floating oil.

"You get me a trifle shop-worn," she said at last, laughing uncertainly.

"Then I get you?" He had turned toward her with a flash of boyish eagerness. One look at her radiant face and shining eyes found the answer.

"Shop-worn?" he said after a while. "Well, so am I, a trifle, but not in the way you mean. If having the down knocked off one and seeing things truer and better for it is being shop-worn, then thank God for the wearing.

"It has been a roundabout way for us, little girl, but at last our paths have met, and from now on, God willing, they shall go together. Come, I want to show you something."

They walked through the woods until they found the place where the surveyors had laid out the foundation plan for the little house. There they found an interested couple gravely discussing a near-by excavation with the aid of a blue-print.

Presently the couple turned around, and the lovers clutched each other in amazement.

"Bless me," gasped Code, "if it isn't ma and Pete Ellinwood!"

THE END



JOHN FOX, JR'S.

STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.

THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE.

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.

The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine."

THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.

This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often springs the flower of civilization.

"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better than anyone else in the mountains.

A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND.

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.

The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of the mountaineers.

Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives.

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JOHN BARLEYCORN. Illustrated by H. T. Dunn.

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