folks that his schooner had been over the course so often she COULDN'T
get lost. She found her way home herself. WHAT do you think of that?"

The two members of the parish committee left the parsonage soon after
Captain Mayo had finished his story. Elkanah had listened with growing
irritation and impatience. Zebedee lingered a moment behind his
companions.

"Don't you fret yourself about what happened last night, Mr. Ellery,"
he whispered. "It'll be all right. 'Course nobody'd want you to keep up
chummin' in with Come-Outers, but what you said to old Eben'll square
you this time. So long."

The minister shut the door behind his departing guests. Then he went out
into the kitchen, whither the housekeeper had preceded him. He found her
standing on the back step, looking across the fields. The wash bench was
untenanted.

"Hum!" mused Ellery thoughtfully, "that was a good story of Captain
Mayo's. This man Hammond must be a fine chap. I should like to meet
him."

Keziah still looked away over the fields. She did not wish her employer
to see her face--just then.

"I thought you would meet him," she said. "He was here a little while
ago and I asked him to wait. I guess Zeb's yarn was too much for him; he
doesn't like to be praised."

"So? Was he here? At the Regular parsonage? I'm surprised."

"He and I have known each other for a long while."

"Well, I'm sorry he's gone. I think I should like him."

Keziah turned from the door.

"I know you would," she said.

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH CAPTAIN NAT PICKS UP A DERELICT

It is probable that John Ellery never fully realized the debt of
gratitude he owed to the fog and the squall and to Captain Nat Hammond.
Trumet, always hungry for a sensation, would have thoroughly enjoyed
arguing and quarreling over the minister's visit to Come-Outer meeting,
and, during the fracas, Keziah's parson might have been more or less
battered. But Captain Nat's brilliant piloting of the old packet was
a bit of seamanship which every man and woman on that foam-bordered
stretch of sand could understand and appreciate, and the minister's
indiscretion was all but forgotten in consequence. The "Daily
Advertisers" gloated over it, of course, and Captain Elkanah brought it
up at the meeting of the parish committee, but there Captain Zeb Mayo
championed the young man's course and proclaimed that, fur's he was
concerned, he was for Mr. Ellery more'n ever. "A young greenhorn
with the spunk to