that!" he snarled,
suddenly losing control of himself as they walked back to the little
cabin. The girl looked at him in hurt amazement. Never in all her life
had a man spoken to her in such a tone. It was inconceivable that the
man she was going to marry could address her so, if he even pretended
to love her.

"Possibly you have," she returned, not without a touch of asperity;
"but you know as well as I do that you will have to deal with a
Gloucester-built schooner before you are through with this voyage."

In her efforts to placate him she had touched upon his sorest spot.
His defeat by the American fishermen had been hard for his pride.

"I suppose you mean that crooked Schofield's boat?" he flashed back,
his face darkening.

"What do you mean by that?"

They were below now in her father's little cabin, and she turned upon
him with flashing eyes.

"Just what I said," he returned sullenly.

"You say things then that have no foundation in fact," she retorted
vigorously. "You have no right to say a thing like that about Code
Schofield."

"I haven't, eh?" he sneered, furious. "Since when have you been takin'
his side against me? No facts, eh? I'll show him an' you an' everybody
else whether there's any foundation in fact! What do you suppose the
insurance company is after him for if he isn't a crook?"

Like all the people in Freekirk Head, Nellie had heard some of the
rumors concerning Code's possible part in the sinking of the _May
Schofield_. Nat, for reasons of his own, had carefully refrained from
enlarging on these to her, and in the absorption of her wooing by him
she had let them go by unnoticed. Now, for the first time, the
consequences they might have in Code's life were made clear to her.

"I--I don't know," she faltered, unable to reply to his direct
question. "But I know this, that all his life Code has been an honest
man and one of my best friends. I grew up with him just as I did with
you, and I resent such talk about him as much as I would if it were
about you."

"Yes," he sneered, "he has been entirely too much of a good friend.
What was he always over to your place for, I'd like to know? And, even
after he knew we were engaged, what was he doin' down at Ma Sprague's
that night I called? An' what did you go to his place for after the
fire when I tried to get you to come to mine?"

The last question he roared out at the top of his voice, and the girl,
now afraid of him, shrank back against