ers, expressed or intimated. Judah was no mutineer.

CHAPTER VI

Sears put in a disagreeable day or two after his call upon the judge. He
was dissatisfied with the ending of their interview. He felt that he had
been foolishly soft-hearted in promising to call at the Fair Harbor, or,
to consider for another hour the preposterous offer of management of
that institution. He must say no in the end. How much better to have
said it then and there. Fifteen hundred a year looked like a lot of
money to him. It tempted him, that part of the proposition. But it did
not tempt him sufficiently to overcome the absurdities of the remaining
part. How could _he_ manage an old woman's home? And what would people
say if he tried?

Nevertheless, he had promised to visit the place and look it over and
the promise must be kept. He dreaded it about as much as he had ever
dreaded anything, but--he had promised. So on the morning of the third
day following that of his call upon Judge Knowles he hobbled painfully
and slowly up the front walk of the Fair Harbor to the formidable front
door, with its great South Sea shells at each end of the granite
step--relics of Captain Sylvanus's early voyages--and its silver-plated
name plate with "SEYMOUR" engraved upon it in Gothic lettering. To one
looking back from the view-point of to-day such a name plate may seem a
bit superfluous and unnecessary in a village where every one knew not
only where every one else lived, but how they lived and all about them.
The fact remains that in Bayport in the '70's there were many name
plates.

Sears gave the glass knob beside the front door a pull. From the
interior of the house came the resultant "_JINGLE_; _jingle_; jingle,
jing, jing." Then a wait, then the sound of footsteps approaching the
other side of the door. Then a momentary glimpse of a reconnoitering eye
behind one of the transparent urns engraved in the ground glass pane.
Then a rattle of bolt and latch and the door opened.

The woman who opened it was rather good looking, but also she
looked--well, if the captain had been ordered to describe her general
appearance instantly, he would have said that she looked "tousled." She
was fully dressed, of course, but there was about her a general
appearance of having just gotten out of bed. Her hair, rather
elaborately coiffured, had several loose strands sticking out here and
there. She wore a gold pin--an oval brooch with a lock of hair in it--at