r dipped in the still water, a hint of
action, modified, softened into repose. Along one of the quaint streets
of the irregular town, winding where it would, climbing where it
climbed, hurried an angular figure,--that of a woman of about fifty
years, whose tense expression suggested an unrest at variance with the
keen calmness of that of the other faces about the streets and doorways.
Not that it was feverish in its intensity; rather, it was an expression
of resolution, undeviating and persistent, but not sure of sympathy or
support.

"They've gone down yonder, t'other side of the wharf, Mis' Pember," said
a middle-aged sea captain, whose interest in his kind had not been
obliterated by the forced loneliness of northern voyages.

The woman paused and glanced doubtfully down one of the byways that led
between small, weather-beaten houses and around disconcerting abutments
to the water, and then forward, straight along the way she had been
travelling, which led out of the town.

"I'd rather fixed on their going down Point-ways this evening," she
said.

"Well, they ain't," rejoined Captain Phippeny, with that absence of mere
rhetoric characteristic of people whose solid work is done otherwise
than by speech.

Mrs. Pember nodded, at once in acknowledgment and farewell, and, turning
about, followed the path he had indicated, her gait acquiring a certain
precipitancy as she went down the rough, stony slope. At the foot of the
descent she paused again, and looked to the right and left. Captain
Phippeny was watching her from his vantage ground above. His figure was
one unmistakably of the seaboard. His trousers were of a singular cut,
probably after a pattern evolved in all its originality by Mrs.
Phippeny, her active imagination working towards practical effect. In
addition, he wore a yellow flannel shirt ribbed with purple, which would
hopelessly have jaundiced a rose-leaf complexion, but which, having
exhausted its malignancy without producing any particular effect, ended
by gently harmonizing with the captain's sandy hair, reddish beard, and
tanned skin. His mouth was like a badly made buttonhole, which gaped a
little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot's beak, and his eyes
were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would
render his costume absolutely _de rigueur_, he wore a leathern jacket
with manifold pockets, from one to another of which trailed a gold
watch-chain with a dangling hor