way. Say nothin'
and keep her on the course, that was Marcellus. I swan I can hardly make
it seem possible that he's gone!"

"Neither can I, Shadrach. And to think that you and me, his old partners
and lifelong chums as you might say, hadn't seen nor spoken to him
for over two years. It makes me feel bad. Bad and sort of
conscience-struck."

"I know; so it does me, in a way. And yet it wasn't our fault, Zoeth.
You know as well as I do that Marcellus didn't want to see us. We was
over to see him last and he scarcely said a word while we was there.
You and me did all the talkin' and he just set and looked at us--when
he wasn't lookin' at the floor. I never saw such a change in a man. We
asked--yes, by fire, we fairly begged him to come and stay with us for
a spell, but he never did. Now it ain't no further from Ostable to South
Harniss than it is from South Harniss to Ostable. If he'd wanted to come
he could; if he'd wanted to see us he could. We went to see him,
didn't we; and WE had a store and a business to leave. He ain't had any
business since he give up goin' to sea. He--"

"Sshh! Shh!" interrupted Mr. Hamilton, mildly, "don't talk that way,
Shadrach. Don't find fault with the dead."

"Find fault! I ain't findin' fault. I thought as much of Marcellus Hall
as any man on earth, and nobody feels worse about his bein' took than
I do. But I'm just sayin' what we both know's a fact. He didn't want to
see us; he didn't want to see nobody. Since his wife died he lived alone
in that house, except for a housekeeper and that stepchild, and never
went anywhere or had anybody come to see him if he could help it. A
reg'lar hermit--that's what he was, a hermit, like Peleg Myrick down
to Setuckit P'int. And when I think what he used to be, smart, lively,
able, one of the best skippers and smartest business men afloat or
ashore, it don't seem possible a body could change so. 'Twas that woman
that done it, that woman that trapped him into gettin' married."

"Sshh! Shh! Shadrach; she's dead, too. And, besides, I guess she was a
real good woman; everybody said she was."

"I ain't sayin' she wasn't, am I? What I say is she hadn't no business
marryin' a man twenty years older'n she was."

"But," mildly, "you said she trapped him. Now we don't know--"

"Zoeth Hamilton, you know she must have trapped him. You and I agreed
that was just what she done. If she hadn't trapped him--set a reg'lar
seine for him and hauled him aboard lik