interest. "It was a muddled account that was sent up to Washington."

"Likely. Yes, I knew. I've been in the wracking and life-saving service
thirty years come June."

When Jane came to that side of the fire twenty minutes later, none of the
crabs were cleaned, and the ham and stick burned black together while
Neckart held them in the fire.

"I ought not to have allowed two men to sit together: I might have known
they would gossip," she said.

Mr. Neckart had just made up his mind that Sutphen and the two Lantrims
were as shrewd, common-sensed witnesses as he had ever examined. He was
hungry too, and as they ate together he borrowed Sutphen's clamp-knife,
and told some capital stories, and handed about his cigars when they had
all finished.

"I misjudged that black-a-vised fellow," said Ichabod to Lantrim. "He's
consid'able of a man."

Lantrim nodded ponderously. One story or slow monologue followed
another--of shipwrecks, frequent on that murderous coast, of rescues by
wreckers, of "vyages" down the coast or to India, Africa, with plenty of
sailors' superstition in it all. Neckart lay on his back smoking, his
hands under his head. It seemed as if he were the boy he was on that day's
fishing long ago. His blood quickened and heated at these tales of
adventure, just as it used to do when he pored over La Perouse or the
_History of Great Navigators_. The afternoon was darkening, raw and cold;
their fire was a mere ruddy speck in the indistinct solitudes; a wall of
gray mist moved down the marshes toward them.

Jane, he noticed, was uneasy, watching her father anxiously after the
dinner was over, until Sutphen proposed to have some music and begged the
captain to sing. Then she was quite happy, sat closer to him, taking his
hand, and as his cracked voice piped manfully out some ancient
drinking-song she nodded complacently and beat the time softly with his
hand upon his arm.

Mr. Neckart watched her furtively through his half-shut eyes. She was
wrapped in her cloak, her head rose in clear relief against the background
of fog. The men and their wives, he saw, looked upon her as a child, a
straightforward little girl, with whom they had fished or cooked crabs
for years: very different from the ladies who came down in summer, and
were a fearfully and wonderfully made species of human being. Neckart
would have analyzed these women at a glance as easily as he could impale a
butterfly on a pin: why should he watch Jane