elf was a big, well-built, handsome
man--an unusually good-looking man, I'd call him--and a great
heart-breaker, according to report--some of it his own. And he was
wealthy, too. I did not know, but somehow or other I did not believe
it, or maybe it was that I hoped rather than believed that Miss
Foster did not care particularly for him; for I did not like him
myself, although I worked for him and was taking his money. Being day
in and day out with him in the store, you see I saw him pretty much
as he really was, and I hated to think of a fine girl--for with
all her cool ways I knew Miss Foster was that--marrying him. Just
how Withrow thought he stood with Miss Foster I did not know--he
was a pretty close-mouthed man when he wanted to be. Miss Foster
herself was that reserved kind of a girl that you cannot always
place. She struck me as being a girl that would die before she would
confess a weakness or a troublesome feeling. And yet, without
knowing how it came there, there was always a notion in the back of
my head that made me half-believe that she did not come to the
store with my cousin out of pure companionship. There was something
besides--and what could it be but Withrow?

After the weighing was done Nell asked me all at once, "I hear, Joe,
that Captain Hollis is going to have your new vessel? How is that?
We--I thought that Captain Blake was going master of her--and such a
pretty vessel!"

I answered that I didn't know how it was, and looked over at my
employer, as much as to say, "Maybe he can tell you."

I think now that I must have been a pretty impudent lad, letting my
employer know what I thought of him as I did in those days. I think,
too, he had a pretty shrewd notion of what I thought of himself and
Maurice Blake. At any rate, after the girls had gone, he worked
himself into a fine bit of temper, and I talked back at him, and the
end of it was that he discharged me--or 1 quit--I'm not sure which. I
do know that it was rapid-fire talk while it lasted.

It was some satisfaction to me to tell Withrow just about what I did
think of him before I went. He didn't quite throw me out of the door,
although he was big enough for that; but he looked as if he wanted to.
And maybe he would have, too, or tried it, only I said, "Mind I don't
give you what Tommie Clancy threatened to give you once," and his
nerve went flat. I couldn't have handled him as Clancy had any more
than I could have hove a barrel of salt ma