seshoe charm.

"I wonder the old woman don't take a dog with her and trace 'em out, she
spends so much time on the hunt," he said to himself. "I declare for't,
it's a sing'lar thing the way she everlastin' does get onto them
'prentices; ain't old enough to talk about settin' sail by themselves."

His quid of tobacco again resumed its claim to his undivided attention,
and he leaned back against the fence and waited as idly as the drooping
sails for a breath of something stirring. By and by it appeared in the
shape of another old sailor, between whom and himself there was the
likeness of two peas, save for a slight discrepancy of feature useful
for purposes of identification.

"You told her where they'd gone, I reckon," he remarked, with a slight
chuckle, as he too leaned up against the fence and looked out over the
harbor.

"Yes, I did," replied Captain Phippeny. "I didn't have no call to tell
her a lie."

"Kinder hard on the young uns," observed the new-comer.

"They ain't ever anythin' as hard on the young uns as on the old uns,"
asserted Captain Phippeny, "because--well, because they're _young_, I
guess. That's Chivy's yacht that came in just at sundown, ain't it?"

"Yare. They say she's seen dirty weather since she was here last."

"Has? Well, you can't stay in harbor allers, and git your livin' at the
same time. She's got toler'ble good men to handle her."

There was a pause. The soft twilight was battening down the hatches of
the day, to drop into the parlance of the locality.

"Well, I do suppose old Pember warn't an easy shipmate, blow or no
blow," observed Captain Smart. He was a small, keen-eyed, quickly moving
old man, seasoned with salt.

"I reckon he warn't. And she thinks she can keep that girl of hers out
of the same kind of discipline that she had to take,--that's the truth
of it."

"Cur'ous, ain't it?" ruminated Captain Smart. "A woman's bound to take
it one way or 'nother; there seems to be more sorts of belayin' pins to
knock 'em over with than they, any on 'em, kinder cal'late on at first."

"So there be," assented Captain Phippeny.

Near the water, with its fading, rose-colored reflections, not so far
from the anchored vessels but they might, had they chosen, have spoken
across to those on board, the monotonous, austere, and yet vaguely soft
gray of the old town rising behind them against the melting sky, sat
Mellony Pember and Ira Baldwin.

"If you'd only make up your mind, Mellony