take me aboard.'

"'Oh, I don't know,' says I. 'You're safe there, and, even if the
yacht folks don't come hunting for you by and by--which I cal'late they
will--the tide'll be low enough in five hours or so, so's you can walk
ashore.'

"'What--what do you mean?' he says. 'Ain't you goin' to take me off?'

"'I was,' says I, 'but I've changed my plans. And, Mr. Allie
Vander-what's-your-name Davidson, there's other things--low-down, mean
things--planned for this night that ain't going to come off, either.
Understand that, do you?'

"He understood, I guess. He didn't answer at all. Only gurgled, like
he'd swallered something the wrong way.

"Then the beautiful tit for tat of the whole business come to me, and I
couldn't help rubbing it in a little. 'As a sartin acquaintance of mine
once said to me,' I says, 'you look a good deal handsomer up there than
you do in a boat.'

"'You--you--etcetery and so forth, continued in our next!' says he, or
words to that effect.

"'That's all right,' says I, putting on the power. 'You've got no kick
coming. I allow you to--er--ornament my weir-pole, and 'tain't every
dude I'd let do that.'

"And I went away and, as the Fifth Reader used to say, 'let him alone in
his glory.'

"I went back to the launch, pulled up her anchor and took her in tow. I
towed her in to her pier, made her fast and then left her for a while.
When I come back the little cabin-door was open and the girl's jacket
was gone.

"Then I walked up the path to the Saunders house and it done me good to
see a light in Barbara's window. I set on the steps of that house until
morning keeping watch. And in the morning the yacht was gone and the
weir-pole was vacant, and Cap'n Eben Saunders come on the first train.

"So's that's all there is of it. Allie hasn't come back to Bayport
sence, and the last I heard he'd married that Newport girl; she has my
sympathy, if that's any comfort to her.

"And Barbara? Well, for a long time she'd turn white every time I met
her. But, of course, I kept my mouth shut, and she went to sea next
v'yage with her dad. And now I hear she's engaged to a nice feller up to
Boston.

"Oh, yes--one thing more. When I got back to my shanty that morning I
wiped the chalkmark off the door. I kind of figgered that I'd paid that
debt, with back interest added."

THE LOVE OF LOBELIA 'ANKINS

Obed's yarn being done, and friend Davidson done too, and brown at that,
Peter T. passed arou