s six
o'clock, supper time, when he entered the kitchen. Keziah, looking up
from the ironing board, saw him. He was white and worn and grim, but he
held out his hand to her.

"Mrs. Coffin," he said, "I'm not going away. You've shown me what
devotion to duty really means. I shall stay here and go on with my
work."

Her face lit up. "Will you?" she said. "I thought you would. I was sure
you was that kind."

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH THE SEA MIST SAILS

They buried Captain Eben in the little Come-Outer cemetery at the rear
of the chapel. A bleak, wind-swept spot was that cemetery, bare of trees
and with only a few graves and fewer headstones, for the Come-Outers
were a comparatively new sect and their graveyard was new in
consequence. The grave was dug in the yellow sand beside that of Mrs.
Hammond, Nat's mother, and around it gathered the fifty or sixty friends
who had come to pay their last tribute to the old sailor and tavern
keeper.

The Come-Outers were there, all of them, and some members of the Regular
society, Captain Zeb Mayo, Dr. Parker, Keziah Coffin, Mrs. Higgins, and
Ike. Mrs. Didama Rogers was there also, not as a mourner, but because,
in her capacity as gatherer of gossip, she made it a point never to
miss a funeral. The Rev. Absalom Gott, Come-Outer exhorter at Wellmouth,
preached the short sermon, and Ezekiel Bassett added a few remarks. Then
a hymn was sung and it was over. The little company filed out of the
cemetery, and Captain Eben Hammond was but a memory in Trumet.

Keziah lingered to speak a word with Grace. The girl, looking very white
and worn, leaned on the arm of Captain Nat, whose big body acted as
a buffer between her and over-sympathetic Come-Outers. Mrs. Coffin
silently held out both hands and Grace took them eagerly.

"Thank you for coming, Aunt Keziah," she said. "I was sure you would."

"Least I could do, deary," was the older woman's answer. "Your uncle
and I was good friends once; we haven't seen each other so often of
late years, but that ain't changed my feelin's. Now you must go home and
rest. Don't let any of these"--with a rather scornful glance at Josiah
Badger and Ezekiel and the Reverend Absalom--"these Job's comforters
bother you. Nat, you see that they let her alone, won't you?"

Captain Nat nodded. He, too, looked very grave and worn. "I'll tend to
them," he said shortly. "Come, Grace," he added; "let's go."

But the girl hung back. "Just a minute, Nat," she sa