the family had never amounted to
anything, and now there was so very little left of it. For Richard as
Richard Lemuel cared nothing; for Richard as a Shackford he had a
chaotic feeling that defied analysis and had never before risen to
the surface. It was therefore with a disgust entirely apart from the
hatred of Slocum or regard for Richard that the old man exclaimed, "A
Shackford a miserable marble-chipper!"

"That is better than hanging around the village with my hands in
my pockets. Isn't it?"

"I don't know that anybody has demanded that you should hang
around the village."

"I ought to go away, you mean? But I have found work here, and I
might not find it elsewhere."

"Stillwater is not the place to begin life in. It's the place to
go away from, and come back to."

"Well, I have come back."

"And how? With one shirt and a lot of bad sailor habits."

"My one shirt is my only very bad habit," said Richard, with a
laugh,--he could laugh now,--"and I mean to get rid of that."

Mr. Shackford snapped his fingers disdainfully.

"You ought to have stuck to the sea; that's respectable. In ten
years you might have risen to be master of a bark; that would have
been honorable. You might have gone down in a gale,--you probably
would,--and that would have been fortunate. But a stone-cutter! You
can understand," growled Mr. Shackford, reaching out for his straw
hat, which he put on and crushed over his brows, "I don't keep a
boarding-house for Slocum's hands."

"Oh, I'm far from asking it!" cried Richard. "I am thankful for
the two nights' shelter I have had."

"That's some of your sarcasm, I suppose," said Mr. Shackford, half
turning, with his hands on the door-knob.

"No, it is some of my sincerity. I am really obliged to you. You
weren't very cordial, to be sure, but I did not deserve cordiality."

"You have figured that out correctly."

"I want to begin over again, you see, and start fair."

"Then begin by dropping Slocum."

"You have not given me a chance to tell you what the arrangement
is. However, it's irrevocable."

"I don't want to hear. I don't care a curse, so long as it is an
arrangement," and Mr. Shackford hurried out of the room, slamming the
door behind him.

Then Richard, quite undisturbed by his cousin's unreasonableness,
sat himself down to eat the last meal he was ever to eat under that
roof,--a feat which his cousin's appetite had rendered comparatively
easy.

While engaged in this