sobbed and laughed as if her heart would break!

Nor did she scarcely hear his hurried comment to the officer and
unconscious corroboration of her story: how a brig had raced them from
the Gate, was heading for the bar, but suddenly sheered off and put
away to sea again, as if from some signal from the headland. "Yes--the
bluff," interrupted Captain Jennings bitterly, "I thought of that, but
the old man said it was more diplomatic just now to PREVENT an attempt
than even to successfully resist it."

But when they were alone again in their little cottage, and Zephas'
honest eyes--with no trace of evil knowledge or suspicion in their
homely, neutral lightness--were looking into hers with his usual
simple trustfulness, Mrs. Bunker trembled, whimpered, and--I grieve
to say--basely funked her boasted confession. But here the Deity which
protects feminine weakness intervened with the usual miracle. As he
gazed at his wife's troubled face, an apologetic cloud came over his
rugged but open brow, and a smile of awkward deprecating embarrassment
suffused his eyes. "I declare to goodness, Mollie, but I must tell you
suthin, although I guess I didn't kalkilate to say a word about it. But,
darn it all, I can't keep it in. No! Lookin' inter that innercent
face o' yourn"--pressing her flushing cheeks between his cool brown
hands--"and gazing inter them two truthful eyes"--they blinked at this
moment with a divine modesty--"and thinkin' of what you've just did for
your kentry--like them revolutionary women o' '76--I feel like a darned
swab of a traitor myself. Well! what I want ter tell you is this: Ye
know, or ye've heard me tell o' that Mrs. Fairfax, as left her husband
for that fire-eatin' Marion, and stuck to him through thick and thin,
and stood watch and watch with him in this howlin' Southern rumpus
they're kickin' up all along the coast, as if she was a man herself.
Well, jes as I hauled up at the wharf at 'Frisco, she comes aboard.

"'You're Cap Bunker?' she says.

"'That's me, ma'am,' I says.

"'You're a Northern man and you go with your kind,' sez she; 'but you're
a white man, and thar's no cur blood in you.' But you ain't listenin',
Mollie; you're dead tired, lass,"--with a commiserating look at her now
whitening face,--"and I'll haul in line and wait. Well, to cut it short,
she wanted me to take her down the coast a bit to where she could
join Marion. She said she'd been shook by his friends, followed by
spies--and, b