trod on a stick maybe I'd have heard more, but the racket
broke up the party. Barbara come hurrying past me into the house, and
by the light from the back door, I see her face. 'Twas white as a
clam-shell, and she looked frightened to death.

"Thinks I: 'That's funny! It's a providence Eben's coming home so soon.'

"And the next day I saw her again, and she was just as white and
wouldn't look me in the eye. Wednesday, though, I felt better, for the
servants on the Davidson place told me that Allie had gone to Boston on
the morning train to be gone for good, and that they was going to shut
up the house and haul up the launch in a day or so.

"Early that afternoon, as I was coming from my shanty to the bluff on
my way to the shore after dinner, I noticed a steam-yacht at anchor two
mile or so off the bar. She must have come there sence I got in, and I
wondered whose she was. Then I see a dingey with three men aboard rowing
in, and I walked down the beach to meet 'em.

"Sometimes I think there is such things as what old Parson Danvers used
to call 'dispensations.' This was one of 'em. There was a feller in
a uniform cap steering the dingey, and, b'lieve it or not, I'll be
everlastingly keelhauled if he didn't turn out to be Ben Henry, who was
second mate with me on the old Seafoam. He was surprised enough to see
me, and glad, too, but he looked sort of worried.

"'Well, Ben,' says I, after we had shook hands, 'well, Ben,' I says, 'my
shanty ain't exactly the United States Hotel for gilt paint and bill of
fare, but I HAVE got eight or ten gallons of home-made cherry rum and
some terbacker and an extry pipe. You fall into my wake.'

"'I'd like to, Obed,' he says; 'I'd like to almighty well, but I've got
to go up to the store, if there is such a thing in this metropolus, and
buy some stuff that I forgot to get in Newport. You see, we got orders
to sail in a tearing hurry, and--'

"'Send one of them fo'mast hands to the store,' says I. 'You got to come
with me.'

"He hemmed and hawed a while, but he was dry, and I shook the cherry-rum
jug at him, figuratively speaking, so finally he give in.

"'You buy so and so,' says he to his men, passing 'em a ten-dollar
bill. 'And mind, you don't know nothing. If anybody asks, remember that
yacht's the Mermaid--M-U-R-M-A-D-E,' he says, 'and she belongs to Mr.
Jones, of Mobile, Georgia.'

"So the men went away, and me and Ben headed for my shanty, where we
moored abreast of eac