ess cheerful, and certainly less confidentially
communicative. At times he caught her looking at him as if doubtful or
troubled. When he asked her what was the matter she said "Nothing," and
began to speak of the bills they had been considering.

On one occasion she asked him a point blank question, one quite
irrelevant to the subject at hand.

"Cap'n Kendrick," she asked, "how do you think Judge Knowles came to
appoint you to be manager here at the Harbor?"

He was taken by surprise, of course. "Why," he stammered, "I--why, I
don't know. That is, all I know about it is what he told me. He said he
felt he ought to have some one, and I was near at home, and--and so he
thought of me, I suppose."

"Yes, I know. You told me that.... But--but how did he know you wanted
the position?"

"Wanted it? Good heavens and earth, I didn't want it! I fought as hard
as I could not to take it. Why, I told you--you remember, that day when
I first came over here; that time when Elvira and the rest wanted to buy
the cast-iron menagerie; I told you then----"

"Yes," she interrupted again. "Yes, I know you did. But.... And the
judge had never heard from you--had never...."

"Heard from me! Do you mean had I sent in an application for the job?"

"Oh, no, no! Not that. But you and he had never been--er--close friends
in the old days, when you were here before?"

He could not guess what she was driving at. "Look here, Elizabeth," he
said, "I've told you that I scarcely knew Judge Knowles before he sent
for me and offered me this place. No man alive was ever more surprised
than I was then. Why, I gathered that the judge had talked about me to
you before he sent for me. Not as manager here, of course, but as--well,
as a man. He told you that I was goin' to call, you said so, and I
_know_ you and he had talked and laughed together about my fight with
the hens in Judah's garden."

The trouble, whatever its cause, seemed to vanish. She smiled. "Yes,
yes," she said. "Of course we had. He did like you, Judge Knowles did,
and that was all--of course it was."

"All what?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing. How is Judah? I haven't seen him for two days."

She would not mention Judge Knowles again, but for the remainder of
their session with the accounts she was more like her old self than she
had been for at least a week, or so it seemed to him.

This was but one of those queer and disconcerting flare-ups of hers. One
day, a week or so after she had