ou can
always run into port here if the weather gets too squally over yonder.
Yes, sir there'll always be a snug harbor under my lee when the Fair
Harbor's too rugged. Eh? Ha, ha!"

Just before retiring Sears said, "There's just one thing I want you to
do, Judah. You may feel--as I know you do feel--that my takin' this job
is a foolish thing. But don't you let any one else know you feel that
way."

Judah snorted. "Don't you worry, Cap'n Sears," he said. "If any one of
them sea lawyers down to Bassett's store gets to heavin' sass at me
about your takin' the hellum at the Harbor I'll shut their hatches for
'em. I'll tell 'em the old judge and Lobelia was ondecided between you
and Gen'ral Grant for the job, but finally they picked you. Don't
mistake me now, Cap'n. Your goin' over there is the best thing for
the--the henroost that ever was or ever will be. It's you I'm thinkin'
about. It ain't--well, by the crawlin' prophets, 'tain't the kind of
berth you've been used to. Now is it, Cap'n Sears?"

Kendrick smiled, a one-sided smile.

"Maybe not, Judah," he admitted. "It is a queer berth, but it's a berth,
and, unless these legs of mine get well a lot quicker than I think they
will, I may be mighty thankful to have any berth at all."

He told his sister this when she called to learn if the rumor she had
heard was true. She shook her head.

"Perhaps it is all right, Sears," she said. "I suppose you know best.
But, somehow, I--well, I hate to think of your doin' it."

"I know. You're proud, Sarah. Well, I used to be proud too, before the
ship-chandlery business and the Old Colony railroad dismasted me and
left me high and dry."

She put a hand on his arm. "Don't, Sears," she pleaded. "You know why I
hate to have you do it. It don't seem--it don't seem--you know what I
mean."

"A man's job. I know. Judah said the same thing. I took Judge Knowles'
offer because it seemed the only way I could earn my salt. If I didn't
take it you and Joel might have had a poor relation to board and lodge.
And you've got enough on your hands already, Sarah."

She sighed. "Of course I knew that was why you took it," she said.

Yet, even as he said it, he realized that the statement was not the
whole truth. The fifteen hundred a year salary had tempted him, but if
he had not gone to the Fair Harbor on that forenoon and seen Elizabeth
Berry brave the committee and her mother, it is extremely doubtful if he
would have yielded. In all pro