she's seen some
picter in a book she liked better. Bart's that mad he's took his sea
chest in the wheelbarrow an' set out for his mother's. I met him goin'
just now."

"Bless my soul!" gasped Willie in consternation. "How far had he got?"

"He was about quarter way to the Junction," was the response. "He sung
out he was headed where he'd be sure of gettin' three meals a day, an'
where somebody'd pay some attention to him."

"H--m!" Willie reflected, scratching his thin locks. "Sorter looks as
if it was time I took a hand, don't it?"

"I figger if anybody's goin' to interfere, now's the minute. Bart's
got his sails set an' is clearin' port fur good an' all this time, no
mistake. 'Twas sure to come sooner or later."

Their roads parted and Willie turned toward the town, while Jack
Nickerson, with rolling gait, pursued his way to the beach where at the
tip of a slender bar of sand jutting out into the ocean the low roofs
of the life-saving station lay outlined against a somber sky. Great
banks of leaden clouds sagging over the horizon had dulled the water to
blackness, and a stiff gale was whistling inshore. Already the billows
were mounting angrily into caps of snarling foam and dashing themselves
on the sands with threatening echo. It promised to be a nasty night,
and Jack remembered as he looked that he was on patrol duty. Yet
although the muscles of his jaw tightened into grimness, it was not the
prospective tramp along a lonely beach in the darkness and wind that
caused the stern tensity of his countenance. Storms and their perils
were all in the day's work, and he faced their possible catastrophes
without a tremor. It would have been hard to find anywhere along the
Massachusetts coast a braver man than Jack Nickerson. Not only was he
ready to lead a crew of rescuers to succor the perishing, fearlessly
directing the surfboat in its plunge through a seething tide, but many
a time he had dashed bodily into the breakers, despite the hazard of a
powerful undertow, and dragged some drowning creature to a place of
safety. The fame of his many deeds of heroism had spread from one end
of the Cape to the other, and as he was native-born the community never
tired of relating his feats to any sojourner who strayed into the
locality.

Yet courageous as was Jack Nickerson, there was one thing he was afraid
of and that was a woman. Not that he trembled in the presence of all
women--no, indeed! He had brought