lack eye.

The man she selected for her nod was Sam Dreed, however.

Peter Loud felt the walls of his heart pinch together with jealousy.

It was all in a second's dreaming. "Gape and swallow," as Zinie Shadd
said, from his end of the bench. The woman passed with a supercilious
turn of her head away from them.

"That's a foot-loose woman if ever there was one."

With all her gift of badinage, she was a solitary soul. The men feared
no less than they admired her. They were shy of that wild courage,
fearful to put so dark a mystery to the solution. The women hated her,
backbit and would not make friends, because of the fatal instantaneous
power she wielded to spin men's blood and pitch their souls derelict on
that impassioned current. Who shall put his finger on the source of this
power? There were girls upon girls with eyes as black, cheeks as like
hers as fruit ripened on the same bough, hair as thick and lustrous--yet
at the sound of Caddie Sills's bare footfall eyes shifted and glowed,
and in the imaginations of these men the women of their choice grew pale
as the ashes that fringe a fallen fire.

"She's a perilous woman," muttered the collector of the port. "Sticks in
the slant of a man's eye like the shadow of sin. Ah! there he goes, like
the leaves of autumn."

Samuel Dreed trod the dust of the road with a wonderful swaying of his
body, denominated the Western Ocean roll. He was a mighty man, all were
agreed; not a nose of wax, even for Cad Sills to twist.

"Plump she'll go in his canvas bag, along with his sea boots and his
palm and needle, if she's not precious careful, with her
shillyshallying," said Zinie Shadd. "I know the character of the man,
from long acquaintance, and I know that what he says he'll do he'll do,
and no holding off at arm's length, either, for any considerable period
of time."

Such was the situation of Cad Sills. A dark, lush, ignorant, entrancing
woman, for whose sake decent men stood ready to drop their principles
like rags--yes, at a mere secret sign manifested in her eye, where the
warmth of her blood was sometimes seen as a crimson spark alighted on
black velvet. She went against the good government of souls.

Even Rackby had taken note of her once, deep as his head was in the
clouds by preference and custom. It was a day in late November. No snow
had fallen, and she floated past him like a cloud shadow as he plodded
in the yellow road which turned east at the Preaching Tree