b."

"Cousin Phineas brought us more squeteague than we can eat. Mom told
me to cut one up for the hens. I'll bring it down to you in a
little. It's a fresh one."

In spite of her refusal, he did this, and brought along, too, a box
of sweet crackers which he had bought and hidden away in his bedroom
closet in preparation for some time when he might wake up in the
night and feel that he was on the verge of famine.

"Though I never did wake up in the night that I can remember, 'cept
that time I had the toothache," he observed.

And in this way Sheila began her hermit life in the fisherman's
cabin.

But Sheila was not without a practical design as to her future. In
her determination to accept no further aid from the Balls she had
crippled her finances. Back in the inland town where she had spent
her girlhood, and where Dr. Macklin had served the community so
long, there were those who, in disapproving Sheila's venture into
the city, at least had a sense of justice. Some of these critical
friends whom the young woman had shrunk from appealing to
heretofore, still owed for Dr. Macklin's services; and Sheila felt
that in this present tragic emergency she must attempt the
collection of these old debts.

She wrote letters praying that money might be sent her by express to
Paulmouth, but with the orders addressed under cover to "John-Ed
Williams, Jr." at the Big Wreck Cove post office. She explained her
design to her juvenile confidant and little John-Ed was made
immensely proud of such mark of her trust. She could have found no
more faithful adherent than the boy, and with him the secret of her
dwelling on the lonely shore and in her hermit-like state was safe.

But her presence there could not be hidden for long; of that she was
well aware. Little John-Ed, however, told nobody of her whereabouts
until the day Tunis Latham came back from Boston and learned that
the girl he loved had stolen away from her home in the Ball house.

Coming out of the rear door of the barn, fresh from the interview
with the old captain which had so shocked him, Tunis saw a small boy
astride the low stone fence that marked the rear boundary of the
Ball farm. The captain of the _Seamew_ was in no mood to bandy words
with little John-Ed Williams, but the sharp tooth of his troubled
thought fastened upon one indubitable fact: if there is anything odd
going on in a community, the small boy of that community knows all
about it--or, at least, as