had striven and starved and frozen on the
dreadful southern ice-fields, who had shared the Viking deeds of
the heroes--whom just to think of warmed my heart with a safe,
cuddled, little-girl feeling that I had never known since I was a
child on my father's knee. There he was, waiting for us, and
splashing into the foam to help Cuthbert beach the boat--he for
whom a thousand years ago the skalds would have made a saga--

The b. y. hailed him cheerfully as we sprang out upon the sand.
But the Scotchman was unsmiling.

"Make haste after your tools, lad," he ordered. "We'll have fine
work now to get inside the cave before the turn."

Those were his words; his tone and his grim look meant, _So in
spite of all my care you are being beguiled by a minx_--

It was his tone that I answered.

"Oh, don't scold Mr. Vane!" I implored. "Every paradise has its
serpent, and as there are no others here I suppose I am it. Of
course all lady serpents who know their business have red hair.
Don't blame Mr. Vane for what was naturally all my fault."

Not a line of his face changed. Indeed, before my most vicious
stabs it never did change. Though of course it would have been
much more civil of him, and far less maddening, to show himself a
little bit annoyed.

"To be sure it seems unreasonable to blame the lad," he agreed
soberly, "but then he happens to be under my authority."

"Meaning, I suppose, that you would much prefer to blame _me_," I
choked.

"There's logic, no doubt, in striking at the root of the trouble,"
he admitted, with an air of calm detachment.

"Then strike," I said furiously, "strike, why don't you, and not
beat about the bush so!" Because then he would be quite hopelessly
in the wrong, and I could adopt any of several roles--the coldly
haughty, the wounded but forgiving, etc., with great enjoyment.

But without a change in his glacial manner he quite casually
remarked:

"It would seem I had struck--home."

I walked away wishing the dynamite would go off, even if I had to
be mixed with Violet till the last trump.

Fortunately nobody undertook to exercise any guardianship over
Crusoe, and the little white dog bore me faithful company in my
rambles. Mostly these were confined to the neighborhood of the
cove. I never ventured beyond Lookout ridge, but there I went
often with Crusoe, and we would sit upon a rock and talk to each
other about our first encounter there, and the fright he had given
me.