pened that she had
other company--some of the young men of the neighborhood. The presence
of such seemed to make no difference to Hiram; he bore whatever broad
jokes might be cracked upon him, whatever grins, whatever giggling
might follow those jokes, with the same patient impassiveness. There
he would sit, silent, unresponsive; then, at the first stroke of nine
o'clock, he would rise, shoulder his ungainly person into his
overcoat, twist his head into his three-cornered hat, and with a "Good
night, Sally, I be going now," would take his departure, shutting the
door carefully to behind him.

Never, perhaps, was there a girl in the world had such a lover and
such a courtship as Sally Martin.

V

It was one Thursday evening in the latter part of November, about a
week after Blueskin's appearance off the capes, and while the one
subject of talk was of the pirates being in Indian River inlet. The
air was still and wintry; a sudden cold snap had set in and skins of
ice had formed over puddles in the road; the smoke from the chimneys
rose straight in the quiet air and voices sounded loud, as they do in
frosty weather.

Hiram White sat by the dim light of a tallow dip, poring laboriously
over some account books. It was not quite seven o'clock, and he never
started for Billy Martin's before that hour. As he ran his finger
slowly and hesitatingly down the column of figures, he heard the
kitchen door beyond open and shut, the noise of footsteps crossing the
floor and the scraping of a chair dragged forward to the hearth. Then
came the sound of a basket of corncobs being emptied on the smoldering
blaze and then the snapping and crackling of the reanimated fire.
Hiram thought nothing of all this, excepting, in a dim sort of way,
that it was Bob, the negro mill hand, or old black Dinah, the
housekeeper, and so went on with his calculations.

At last he closed the books with a snap and, smoothing down his hair,
arose, took up the candle, and passed out of the room into the kitchen
beyond.

A man was sitting in front of the corncob fire that flamed and blazed
in the great, gaping, sooty fireplace. A rough overcoat was flung over
the chair behind him and his hands were spread out to the roaring
warmth. At the sound of the lifted latch and of Hiram's entrance he
turned his head, and when Hiram saw his face he stood suddenly still
as though turned to stone. The face, marvelously altered and changed
as it was, was the face of