ocket-knife; while Naomi watched with a smile
on her face. Whether or no William had recovered her soul, as he
promised, she had certainly given her heart into his keeping. The love
of such a widow, he found, is as the surrender of a maid, with wisdom
added.

The skewers finished, he walked out through the house with her and
down the garden-path, carrying the basket as far as the gate. The
scent of pine-shavings came with him. Half-way down the path Naomi
turned aside and picking a sprig of Boy's Love, held it up for him
to smell. The action was trivial, but as he took the sprig they both
laughed, looking in each other's eyes. Then they kissed; and the staid
woman went her way down the road, while the staid man loitered for a
moment by the gate and watched her as she went.

Now as he took his eyes away and glanced for an instant in the other
direction, he was aware of a man who had just come round the angle of
the garden hedge and, standing in the middle of the road, not a dozen
yards off, was also staring after his wife.

This stranger was a broad-shouldered fellow in a suit of blue seaman's
cloth, the trousers of which were tucked inside a pair of Wellington
boots. His complexion was brown as a nut, and he wore rings in his
ears: but the features were British enough. A perplexed, ingratiating
and rather silly smile overspread them.

The two men regarded each other for a bit, and then the stranger drew
nearer.

"I do believe that was Na'mi," he said, nodding his head after the
woman's figure, that had not yet passed out of sight.

William Geake opened his eyes wide and answered curtly, "Yes: that's
my wife--Naomi Geake. What then?"

The man scratched his head, contemplating William as he might some
illegible sign-post set up at an unusually bothersome cross-road.

"She keeps very han'some, I will say." His smile grew still more
ingratiating.

"Was you wishin' to speak wi' her?"

"Well, there! I was an' yet I wasn't. 'Tis terrible puzzlin'. You
don't know me, I dessay."

"No, I don't."

"I be called Abe Bricknell--A-bra-ham Bricknell. I used to be
Na'mi's husband, one time. There now"--with an accent of genuine
contrition--"I felt sure 'twould put you out."

The tongue grew dry in William Geake's mouth, and the sunlight died
off the road before him. He stared at a blister in the green paint of
the garden-gate and began to peel it away slowly with his thumb-nail:
then, pulling out his handkerchief, pick