Caleb West

VIII.

THE “ HEAVE HO ” OF LONNY BOWLES,

THE accident to the Screamer had delayed work at the Ledge but a few days. Other men had taken the place of those injured, and renewed efforts had been made by Sanford and Captain Joe to complete to low-water mark the huge concrete disk, forming a bedstone sixty feet in diameter and twelve feet thick, on which the superstructure was to rest. This had been accomplished after three weeks of work, and the men stood in readiness to begin the masonry of the superstructure itself so soon as the four great derricks required in lifting and setting the cut stone of the masonry could be erected. They were only waiting for Mr. Carleton’s acceptance of the concrete disk, the first section of the contract. The superintendent’s certificate of approval was important, one rule of the Department being that no new section should be begun until the preceding one was officially approved.

Carleton, however, declined to give it. His ostensible reason was that the engineer-in-chief was expected daily at Keyport, and should therefore pass upon the work himself. His real reason was a desire to settle a score with Captain Joe by impeding the progress of the work.

This animosity to Captain Joe had grown out of an article — very flattering to the superintendent — published in the Medford Journal, in which great credit had been given to Carleton for his “heroism and his prompt efficiency in providing a hospital for the wounded men.” The day after its publication, the Noank Times, a political rival, sent to make an investigation of its own, in the course of which the reporter encountered Captain Joe. The captain had not seen the Journal article until it was shown him by the reporter. He thereupon gave the exact facts in regard to the accident and the subsequent care of the wounded men, generously exonerating the government superintendent from all responsibility for the notice ; adding with decided emphasis that “ Mr. Carleton couldn’t ’a’ said no such thing 'bout havin’ provided the hospital himself, ’cause he was over to Medford to a circus the night the accident happened, and did n’t git home till daylight next mornin’, when everything was over an’ the men was in their beds. ’ The result of this interview was a double - leaded column in the next issue of the Noank Times, which not only ridiculed its rival for the manufactured news, but read a lesson on veracity to Carleton himself.

The denial made by the Times was the thrust that had rankled deepest; for Carleton, unfortunately for himself, had inclosed the eulogistic article from the Medford Journal in his official report of the accident to the Department, and had become the proud possessor of a letter from the engineer-in-chief commending his “ promptness and efficiency.”

So far the captain had kept his temper, ignoring both the obstacles Carleton had thrown in his way and the ill-natured speeches the superintendent was constantly making. No open rupture had taken place. Those, however, who knew the captain’s explosive temperament confidently expected that he would break out upon the superintendent, in answer to some brutal thrust, in a dialect so impregnated with fulminates that the effect would be fatal. But they were never gratified. “ ’T ain’t no use answerin’ back,” was all he said. “ He don’t know no better, poor critter.”

Indeed, it was only when a great personal danger threatened his men that the captain’s every-day, conventional English seemed inadequate. On such occasions, when the slightest error on the part of his working force might result in the instant death or the maiming of one of them, certain harmless because unintentional outbursts of profanity, soaring into crescendos and ending in fortissimos, would often escape from the captain’s lips with a vim and a rush that would have raised the hair of his Puritan ancestors, — rockets of oaths, that kindled with splutters of dissatisfaction, flamed into showers of abuse, and burst into blasphemies which cleared the atmosphere like a thunderclap. For these delinquencies he never made any apology. In the roar of the sea they seemed sometimes the only ammunition he could depend upon. “ Somebody ’ll git hurted round here, if ye ain’t careful; somehow I can’t make ye understand no other way,” he would say. This was as near as he ever came to apologizing for his sinfulness. But he never wasted any of these explosives on such men as Carleton.

As the superintendent persisted in his refusal to give the certificate of acceptance, and as each day was precious, Sanford, whose confidence in the stability and correctness of the work which he and Captain Joe had done was unshaken, determined to begin the erection of the four derricks at once. He accordingly gave orders to clear away the mixingboards and tools ; thus burning his bridges behind him, should the inspection of the engineer-in-chief necessitate any additional work on the concrete disk.

The derricks, with their winches and chain guys, were now lying on the jagged rocks of the Ledge, where they had been landed the day before by Captain Brandt with the boom of the Screamer, — once more stanch and sound, a new engine and boiler on her deck. They were designed to lift and set the cut-stone masonry of the superstructure,— the top course at a height of fifty-eight feet above the water-line. These stones weighed from six to thirteen tons each.

During the delay that followed the accident the weather had been unusually fine. Day after day the sun had risen on a sea of silver reflecting the blue of a cloudless sky, with wavy tide-lines engraved on its polished surface. At dawn Crotch Island had been an emerald, and at sunset an amethyst.

With the beginning of the dogdays, however, the weather had changed. Dull leaden fog-banks on the distant horizon had blended into a pearly-white sky. Restless, wandering winds sulked in dead calms, or broke in fitful, peevish blasts. Opal-tinted clouds showed at sunrise, and prismatic rings of light surrounded the moon, — all sure signs of a coming storm.

Captain Joe redoubled his efforts on the lines of the watch-tackles at which the men were tugging, pulling the derricks to their places, and watched the changing sky where hour by hour were placarded the manifestoes of the impending outbreak.

By ten o’clock on the 15th of August, three of the four derricks, their tops Connected by heavy wire rope, had been stepped in their sockets and raised erect, and their seaward guys had been made fast, Caleb securing the ends himself. By noon, the last derrick — the fourth leg of the chair, as it were — was also nearly perpendicular, the men tugging ten deep on the line of the watch-tackles. This derrick, being the last of the whole system and the most difficult to handle, was under the immediate charge of Captain Joe. On account of its position, which necessitated a bearing of its own strain and that of the other three derricks as well, its outboard seaward guy was as heavy as that of a ship’s anchor-chain. The final drawing taut of this chain, some sixty feet in length, stretching, as did the smaller ones, from the top of the derrickmast down to the enrockment block, and the fastening of its sea end in the block, would not only complete the system of the four erected derricks, but would make them permanent and strong enough to resist either sea action or any weight that they might be required to lift. The failure to secure this chain guy to the anchoring enrockment block, or any sudden break in the other guys, would result not only in instantly toppling over the fourth derrick itself, but in dragging the three erect derricks with it. This might mean, too, the crushing to death of some of the men ; for the slimy, ooze-covered rocks and concrete disk on which they had to stand and work made hurried escape impossible.

To insure an easier connection between this last chain and the enrockment block, Caleb had fastened below water, into the “ Lewis ” hole of the block, a long iron hook. Captain Joe’s problem, which he was now about to solve, was to catch this hook into a steel ring which was attached to the end of the chain guy. The drawing together of the hook and the ring was done by means of a watchtackle, which tightened the chain guy inch by inch, the gang of men standing in line while Captain Joe, ring in hand, waited to slip it into the hook. A stage manager stretching a tight-rope supported on saw-horses, with a similar tackle, solves, on a smaller scale, just such a problem every night.

Carleton, who never ran any risks, sat on the platform, out of harm’s way, sneering at the men’s struggles, and protesting that it was impossible to put up the four derricks at once. Sanford was across the disk, some fifty feet from Captain Joe, studying the effect of the increased strain on the outboard guys of the three derricks already placed.

The steady rhythmic movement of the men, ankle-deep in the water, swaying in unison, close-stepped, tagging at the tackle-line, like a file of soldiers, keeping time to Lonny Bowles’s “ Heave ho,” had brought the hook and the ring within six feet of each other, when the foot of one of the men slipped on the slimy ooze and tripped up the man next him. In an instant the whole gang were floundering among the rocks and in the water, the big fourth derrick swaying uneasily, like a tree that was doomed.

“ Every man o’ ye as ye were! ” shouted Captain Joe, without even a look at the superintendent, who had laughed outright at their fall. While he was shouting he had twisted a safety-line around a projecting rock to hold the strain until the men could regain their feet. The great derrick tottered for a moment, steadied itself like a drunken man, and remained still. The other three quivered, their top connecting guys sagging loose.

“ Now make fast, an’ two ’r three of ye come here ! ” called the captain again. In the easing of the strain caused by the slipping of the men, the six feet of space between hook and ring had gone back to ten.

Two men scrambled like huge crabs over the slippery rocks, and relieved Captain Joe of the end of the safetyline. The others stood firm and held taut the tug-lines of the watch-tackle. The slow, rhythmic movement of the gang to the steady “ Heave ho ” began again. The slack of the tackle was taken up, and the ten feet between the hook and the ring were reduced to five. Half an hour more, and the four great derricks would be anchored safe against any contingency.

The strain on the whole system became once more intense. The seaward guy of the opposite derrick — the one across the concrete disk — shook ominously under the enormous tension. Loud creaks could be heard as the links of the chain untwisted and the derricks turned on their rusty pintles.

Then a sound like a pistol-shot rang out clear and sharp.

Captain Joe heard Sanford’s warning cry, but before the men could ease the strain one of the seaward guys that fastened the top of its derrick to the enrockment-block anchorage snapped with a springing jerk, writhed like a snake in the air, and fell in a swirl across the disk of concrete, barely missing the men.

The gang at the tug-line turned their heads, and the bravest of them grew pale. The opposite derrick, fifty feet away, was held upright by but a single safety-rope. If this should break, all the four derricks, with their tons of chain guys and wire rope, would be down upon the men.

Carleton ran to the end of the platform, ready to leap. Sanford ordered him back. Two of the men, in the uncertainty of the moment, slackened their hold. A third, a newcomer, turned to run towards the concrete, as the safer place, when Caleb’s vise-like hand grasped his shoulder and threw him back in line.

There was but one chance left,— to steady the imperiled derrick with a temporary guy strong enough to stand the strain.

“ Stand by on that watch-tackle, every — — man o’ ye! Don’t one o’ ye move ! ” shouted Captain Joe in a voice that drowned all other sounds.

The men leaped into line and stood together in dogged determination.

“ Take a man, Caleb, as quick ’s God 'll let ye, an’ run a wire guy out on that derrick.” The order was given in a low voice that showed the gravity of the situation.

Caleb and Lonny Bowles stepped from the line, leaped over the slippery rocks, splashed across the concrete disk, now a shallow lake with the rising tide, and picked up another tackle as they plunged along to where Sanford stood, the water over his rubber hoots. They dragged a new guy towards the imperiled derrick. Lonny Bowles, in his eagerness to catch the dangling end of the parted guy, began to scale the derrick-mast itself, climbing by the foot-rests, when Captain Joe’s crescendo voice overhauled him. He knew the danger better than Bowles.

“ Come down out’er that, Lonny ! ” (Gentle oaths.) “ Come down, I tell ye ! ’’ (Oaths crescendo.) “ Don’t ye know no better ’n to ” — (Oaths fortissimo.) “ Do ye want to pull that derrick clean over ? ” (Oaths fortissimisso.)

Bowles slid from the mast just as Sanford’s warning cry scattered the men below him. There came a sudden jerk; the opposite derrick trembled, staggered for a moment and whirled through the air towards the men, dragging in its fall the two side derricks with all their chains and guys.

“ Down between the rocks, heads under, every man o’ ye! ” shouted the captain.

The captain sprang last, crouching up to his neck in the sea, his head below the jagged points of two rough stones, as the huge fourth derrick, under which he had stood, lunged wildly, and fell with a ringing blow across the captain’s shelter and within three feet of his head, its great anchor-chain guy twisting like a cobra over the slimy rocks.

When all was still, Sanford’s head rose cautiously from behind a protecting rock near where the first derrick had struck. There came a cheer of safety from Caleb and Bowles, answered by another from Captain Joe, and the men crawled out of their holes, and clambered upon the rocks, the water dripping from their clothing.

Not a man had been hurt!

“What did I tell you?” called out Carleton sneeringly, more to hide his alarm than anything else.

“ That’s too bad, Mr. Sanford, but we can’t help it,” said Captain Joe in his customary voice, paying no more attention to Carleton’s talk than if it had been the slop of the waves at his feet. “ All hands, now, on these derricks. We got ’er git ’em up, boys, if it takes all night.”

Again the men sprang to his orders, and again and again the crescendos of oaths culminated in fortissimos of profanity as the risks for the men increased. For five consecutive hours they worked without a pause. Slowly and surely the whole system, beginning with the two side derricks, whose guys had held their anchorage, was raised upright, Sanford still watching the opposite derrick, a new outward guy having replaced the broken one.

It was six o’clock when the four derricks were again fairly erect. The same gang was tugging at the watch - tackle, and the distance between the hook and the ring was once more reduced to five feet. The hook gained inch by inch towards its anchorage. Captain Joe’s eyes gleamed with suppressed satisfaction.

All this time the tide had been rising. Most of the rough, above-water rocks were submerged, and fully three feet of water washed over the concrete disk. Only the tops of the stones upon which Sanford stood, and the platform where Carleton sat, out of all danger from derricks or sea, were clear of the incoming wash.

The Screamer’s life-boat—the only means the men had that day of leaving the Ledge and boarding the sloop, moored in the lee of the Ledge — had broken from her moorings, and lay dangerously near the rocks. The wind had changed to the east. With it came a long, rolling swell that broke on the eastern derrick, — the fourth one, the key-note of the system, the one Captain Joe and the men were tightening up.

Suddenly a window was opened somewhere in the heavens, and a blast of wet air heaped the sea into white caps, and sent it bowling along towards the Ledge and the Screamer lying in the eddy.

Captain Joe, as he stood with the hook in his hand, watched the sea’s carefully planned attack, and calculated how many minutes were left before it would smother the Ledge in a froth and end all work. He could see, too, the Screamer’s mast rocking ominously in the rising sea. If the wind and tide increased, she must soon shift her position to the eddy on the other side of the Ledge. But not a shade of anxiety betrayed him.

The steady movement of the tugging men continued, Lonny’s “ Heave ho ” ringing out cheerily in perfect time. Four of the gang, for better foothold, stood on the concrete, their feet braced to the iron mould band, the water up to their pockets. The others clung with their feet to the slippery rocks.

The hook was now within two feet of the steel ring. Captain Joe standing on a rock at a lower level than the others, nearly waist-deep in the sea, getting ready for the final clinch.

Sanford from his rock had also been watching the sea. As he scanned the horizon, his quick eye caught to the eastward a huge roller pushed ahead of the increasing wind, piling higher as it swept on.

“ Look out for that sea, Cap’n Joe ! Hold fast, men, — hold fast! ” he shouted, springing to a higher rock.

Hardly had his voice ceased, when a huge green curling wave threw itself headlong at the Ledge, wetting the men to their armpits. Captain Joe had raised his eyes for an instant, grasped the chain as a brace, and taken its fall force on his broad back. When his head emerged, his cap was gone, his shirt clung to the muscles of his big chest, and the water streamed from his hair and mouth.

Shaking his head like a big waterdog, he waved his hand, with a laugh, to Sanford, volleyed out another rattling fire of orders, and then held on with the clutch of a devil-fish as the next green roller raced over him. It made no more impression upon him than if he had been an offshore buoy.

The fight now lay between the rising sea and the men tugging at the watchtackle. After each wave ran by the men gained an inch on the tightening line. Every moment the wind blew harder, and every moment the sea rose higher. Bowles was twice washed from the rock on which he stood, and the newcomer, who was unused to the slime and ooze, had been thrown bodily into a water-hole. Sanford held to a rock a few feet above Captain Joe. watching his every movement. His anxiety for the safe erection of the system had been forgotten in his admiration for the superb pluck and masterful skill of the surf-drenched sea-titan below him.

Captain Joe now moved to the edge of the anchor enrockment block, one hand holding the hook, the other the ring. Six inches more and the closure would be complete.

In heavy strains like these the last six inches gain slowly.

“ Give it to 'er, men — all hands now — give it to ’er ! Pull, Caleb! Pull. you — —! ” (Air full of Greek fire.) “Once more — all together — — ! " (Sky-bombs bursting.) “All to—”

Again the sea buried him out of sight, quenching the explosives struggling to escape from his throat.

The wind and the increased. The water swirled about the men, the spray flew over their heads, but the steady pull went on.

A voice from the platform now called out, — it was that of Nickles, the cook : “ Life-boat’s a-poundin’ bad, sir ! She can’t stan’ it much longer.”

Carleton’s voice shouting to Sanford from the platform came next: “ I’m not going to stay here all night and get wet. I’m going to Keyport in the Screamer. Send some men to catch this life-boat.”

The captain raised his head and looked at Nickles ; Carleton he never saw.

“ Let 'r pound an’ be d— to ’er!

Go on, Caleb, with that tackle. Pull, ye ” — Another wave went over him. and another red-hot explosive lost its life.

With the breaking of the next roller the captain uttered no sound. The situation was too grave for explosives. Whenever his profanity stopped short the men grew nervous : they knew then that a crisis had arrived, one that even Captain Joe feared.

The captain bent over the chain, one arm clinging to the anchorage, his feet braced against a rock, the hook in his band within an inch of the ring.

“ Hold hard!” he shouted.

Caleb raised his hand in warning, and the rhythmic movement ceased. The men stood still. Every eye was fixed on the captain.

“ LET GO ! ”

The big derrick quivered for an instant as the line slackened, stood still, and a slight shiver ran through the guys. The hook had slipped into the ring !

The system of four derricks, with all their guys and chains, stood as taut and firm as a suspension bridge !

Captain Joe turned his head calmly towards the platform, and said quietly, “ There, Mr. Carleton, they 'll stand now till hell freezes over.”

As the cheering of the men subsided, the captain sprang to Sanford’s rock, grasped his outstretched hand, and, squeezing the water from his hair and beard with a quick rasp of his fingers, called out to Caleb, in a firm, cheery voice that had not a trace of fatigue in it after twelve hours of battling with sea and derricks, “ All ’er you men what’s goin’ in the Screamer with Mr. Carleton to Keyport for Sunday’d better look out for that life-boat. Come, Lonny Bowles, pick up them tackles an’ git to the shanty. It ’ll be awful soapy round here ’fore mornin’.”

IX.

WHAT THE BUTCHER SAW.

Caleb sat on the deck of the Screamer, his face turned towards Keyport Light, beyond which lay his little cabin. His eyes glistened, and there came a choking in his throat as he thought of meeting Betty. He could even feel her hand slipped into his, and could hear the very tones of her cheery welcome when she met him at the gate and they walked together up the garden path to the porch.

Most of the men who had stood to the watch-tackles in the rolling surf sat beside him on the sloop. Those who were still wet had gone below into the cabin, out of the cutting wind. Those who, like Caleb, had changed their clothes sat on the after - deck. Captain Joe, against Sanford’s earnest protest, had remained on the Ledge for the night. He wanted, he said, to see how the derricks would stand the coming storm.

It had been a busy month for the diver. Since the explosion he had been almost constantly in his rubber dress, not only working his regular four hours under water, —all that an ordinary man could stand, —but taking another’s place for an hour or two when some piece of submarine work required his more skillful eye and hand. He had set some fifty or more of the big enrockment blocks in thirty feet of water, each block being lowered into position by the Screamer’s boom, and he had prepared the anchor sockets in which to step the four great derricks. Twice he had been swept from his hold by the racing current, and once his helmet had struck a projecting rock with such force that he was deaf for days. His hands, too, had begun to blister from the salt water and hot sun. Betty, on his last Sunday at home, had split up one of her own little gloves for plasters, and tried to heal his blisters with some salve. But it had not done them much good, he thought to himself, as he probed with his stub of a thumb the deeper cracks in his tough, leathery palms.

Betty’s skill with the wounded man had only increased Caleb’s love and his pride in her. Now that the man was convalescent he gloried more and more in her energy and capacity. To relieve a wounded man, serve him night and day, and by skill, tenderness, and self-sacrifice get him once more well and sound and on his legs, able to do a day’s work and earn a day’s pay, — this, to Caleb, was something to glory in. But for her nursing, he would often say, poor Billy would now be among the tombstones on the hill back of Keyport Light.

Caleb’s estimate of Betty’s efforts was not exaggerated. Lacey had been her patient from the first, and she had never neglected him an hour since the fatal night when she helped the doctor wind his bandages. When on the third day fever had set in, she had taken her seat, by his bedside until the delirium had passed. Mrs. Bell and Miss Peebles, the schoolmistress, had relieved each other in the care of the other wounded men, — all of them, strange to say, were single men, and all of them away from home; but Betty’s patient had been the most severely injured, and her task had therefore been longer and more severe.

She would go home for an hour each day, but as soon as her work was done she would pull down the shades, lock the house door, and, with a sunbonnet on her head and some little delicacy in her hand, hurry down the shore road to the warehouse hospital. This had been the first real responsibility ever given her, the first time in which anything had been expected of her apart from the endless cooking of three meals a day, and the washing up and sweeping out that followed.

There were no more lonely hours now. A new tenderness, too, had been aroused in her nature because of the boy whose feeble, hot fingers clutched her own. The love which this curly-headed young rigger had once avowed for her, when there were strength and ruggedness in every sinew of his body, when his red lips were parted over the white teeth and his eyes shone with pride, had been quite forgotten as she watched by his bed. It was his helplessness that was ever present in her mind, his suffering.

She realized that the prostrate young fellow before her was dependent on her for his very life and sustenance, as a child might have been. It was for her he waited in the morning, refusing to touch his breakfast until she gave it to him, — unable at first, reluctant afterward. It was for her last touch on his pillow that he waited at night before he went to sleep. It was she alone who could bring back the smiles to his face, inspire him with a courage he had almost lost when the pain racked him and he thought he might never be able to do a day’s work again.

The accident left its mark on Lacey. He was a mere outline of himself the first day he was able to sit in the sunshine at the warehouse door. The cut on his cheek and frontal bone, dividing his eyebrow like a sabre slash, had been deep and ugly and slow to heal; and the bruise on his back had developed into a wound that in its progress had sapped his youthful strength. His hands were white, and his face was bleached by long confinement. When he had gained a little strength, Captain Joe had given him light duties about the wharf, the doctor refusing to let him go to the Ledge. But even after he was walking about, Betty felt him still under her care, and prepared dainty delicacies for him. When she took them to him, she saw, with a strange sinking of her heart, that he was yet weak and ill enough to need a woman’s care.

The story of her nursing and of the doctor’s constant tribute to her skill was well known, and Caleb, usually so reticent, would talk of it again and again. Most of the men liked to humor his pride in her, for Betty’s blithesome, cheery nature made her a favorite wherever she was known.

“ I kind’er wish Cap’n Joe had come ashore to-night,” Caleb said, turning to Captain Brandt, who stood beside him, his hand on the tiller. “ He’s been soakin’ wet all day, an’ he won’t put nothin’ dry on ef I ain’t with him. ’T warn’t for Betty I ’d ’a’ stayed, but the little gal’s so lonesome’t ain’t right to leave her. I don’ know what Lacey ’d done but for Betty. Did ye see ’er, Lonny, when she come in that night ? ” All the little by-paths of Caleb’s talk led to Betty.

It was the same old question, but Lonny, seated on the other side of the deck, fell in willingly with Caleb’s mood.

“ See ’er ? Wall, I guess ! I thought she ’d keel over when the doctor washed Billy’s face. He did look ragged, an’ no mistake, Caleb ; but she held on an’ never give in a mite.”

Carleton sat close enough to hear what Lonny said.

“ Why should n’t she ? ” he sneered, behind his hand, to the man next him.

“ Lacey’s a blamed sight better looking fellow than what she’s got. The girl knows a good thing when she sees it. If it was me, I ’d ” —

He never finished the sentence. Caleb overheard the remark, and rose from his seat, with a look in his eyes that could not be misunderstood. Sanford, watching the group, and not knowing the cause of Caleb’s sudden anger, said afterwards that the diver looked like an old gray wolf gathering himself for a spring, as he stood over Carleton with hands tightly clenched.

The superintendent made some sort of half apology to Caleb, and the diver took his seat again, but did not forgive him ; neither did the older men, who had seen Betty grow up, and who always spoke of her somehow as if she belonged to them.

’T ain’t decent,” said Lonny Bowles to Sanford when he had joined him later in the cabin of the Screamer and had repeated Carleton’s remark, “ for a man to speak agin a woman ; such fellers ain’t no better ’n rattlesnakes an’ ought’ er be trompled on, if they is in guv’ment pay.”

When the sloop reached Keyport harbor, the men were landed as near as possible to their several homes. Caleb, in his kindly voice, bade good - night to Sanford, to Captain Brandt, to the crew, and to the working gang. To Carleton he said nothing. He would have forgiven him or any other man an affront put upon himself, but not one upon Betty.

“ She ain’t got nobody but an ol’ feller like me,” he often said to Captain Joe, — “ no chillen nor nothin’, poor little gal. I got to make it up to her some way.”

As he walked up the path he was so engrossed with Carleton’s flippant remark, conning it over in his mind to tell Betty, — he knew she did not like him, — that he forgot for the moment that she was not at the garden gate.

“ She ain’t sick, is she ? ” he said to himself, hurrying his steps, and noticing that the shades were pulled down on the garden side of the house. " I guess nussin’ Lacey ’s been too much for her. I ought’er knowed she ’d break down. Pears to me she did look peaked when I bid her good-by las’ Monday.”

“ Ye ain’t sick, little woman, be ye ? ” he called out as he opened the door.

There was no response. He walked quickly through the kitchen, passed into the small hall, calling her as he went, mounted the narrow stairs, and opened the bedroom door softly, thinking she might be asleep. The shutters were closed; the room was in perfect order. The bed was empty ; the sheet and covering were turned neatly on his side of it. He stooped mechanically, still wondering why Betty had turned the sheet, his mind relieved now that she was not ill.

He noticed that the bedding was clean and had not been slept in. At the foot of the bed, within reach of his hand, lay the big carpet slippers that she had made for him. Then he remembered that it was not yet dark, and that, on account of the coming storm, he was an hour earlier than usual in getting home. His face lightened. He saw it all now : Betty had not expected him so soon, and would be home in a little while. He would “ clean up ” right away, so as to be ready for her.

When he entered the kitchen again he saw the table. There was but one plate laid, with the knife and fork beside it. This was covered by a big china bowl. Under it was some cold meat with the bread and butter. Near the table, by the stove, a freshly ironed shirt hung over a chair.

He understood it all. She had put his supper and his shirt where he would find them, and was not coming home till late.

When he had washed, dressed himself in his house clothes, and combed his big beard, lie dragged a chair out on the front porch, to watch for her up and down the road.

The men going home, carrying their dinner - pails, nodded to him as they passed, and one stopped and leaned over the gate long enough to wonder whether the big August storm would break that night. “ We generally has a blow ’bout this time.”

The butcher stopped to leave the weekly piece of meat for Sunday, — the itinerant country butcher, with his shop in one of the neighboring villages, and his customers up and down all the roads that led out of it; supplies for every household in his wagon, and the gossip of every family on his lips.

His wagon had sides of canvas painted white, with “ Fish, Meat and Poultry ” in a half-moon of black letters arching over the owner’s name, and was drawn by a horse that halted and moved on, not by the touch of the lines, — they were always caught to a hook in the roof of the wagon, — but by a word from the butcher, who stood at the tail-board, where the scales dangled, sorting fish, hacking off pieces of red meat, or weighing scraggly chickens proportionate to the wants and means of his various customers. He was busying himself at this tail-board, the dripping of the ice pockmarking the dusty road below, when he caught sight of Caleb.

“ Wall, I kind’er hoped somebody ’d be hum,” he said to himself, wrapping the six-pound roast in a piece of yellow paper. Giving a tuck to his blue oversleeves, he swung open the gate. “ So ye did n’t go ’long, Caleb, with Mis’ West ? I see it begin to blow heavy, and was wond’rin’ whether you’d get in — best cut, you see,” opening the paper for Caleb’s inspection, and I broke them ribs jes’ ’s Mis’ West allers wants ’em. Then I wondered agin how ye could leave the Ledge at all to-day. Mis’ Bell tol’ me yesterday the cap’n was goin’ to set them derricks. I see em a-layin’ on the dock 'fore that Cape Ann sloop loaded ’em, an’ they was monstrous, an’ no mistake. Have some butter ? She did n’t order none this mornin’, but I got some come in this forenoon, sweet’s a nut. — four pounds for a dollar, an’ ” —

Caleb looked at him curiously. “ Where did the wife say she was a-goin’ ? ” he interrupted.

“ Wall, she did n’t say, ’cause I did n’t ketch up to her. I was comin’ down Nollins Hill over to Noank, when I see her ahead, walkin’ down all in her Sunday rig, carryin’ a little bag like. I tho’t maybe she was over to see the Nollins folks, till I left seven pounds fresh mackerel nex’ door to Stubbins’s, an’ some Delaware eggs. Then I see my stock of ice was nigh gone, so I druv down to the steamboat dock, an’ there I catched sight of er agin jes’ goin’ aboard. I knowed then, of course, she was off for Greenport an’ New York, an’ was jes’ sayin’ to myself. Wall, I 'll stop an’ see if anybody ’s ter hum, an’ if they re all gone I won’t leave the meat, but ” —

“ Put the meat in the kitchen,” said Caleb, without rising from his chair.

When the butcher drove off, the diver had not moved. His gaze was fixed on the turn of the road. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead ; a faint sickness unnerved him when he thought that Betty had gone without telling him. Had he been cross or impatient with her the last time he was at home, that she should serve him so ? Then a surge of anxiety filled him. Why should she walk all the way to Noank and take the boat across the Sound, twenty miles away, if she wanted to go to New York ? The station was nearer and the fare through was cheaper. He would have taken her himself, if he had only known she wanted to go. He would have asked Captain Joe to give him a couple of days off, and would have gone with her, if she had asked him. If she had only left some message, or sent some word by the men to the Ledge ! Then, as his thoughts traveled in a circle, catching at straws, his brain whirling, his eye fell upon the clump of trees shading Captain Joe’s cottage. Aunty Bell would know, of course ; why had he not thought of that before ? Betty told Aunty Bell everything.

The cheery little woman sat on the porch shelling peas, as Caleb came up the board walk.

“ Why, ye need n’t ’er give yerself the trouble, Caleb, to come all the way down ! ” she called out as he came within hearing. Lonny Bowles’s jest been here and told me cap’n ain’t comin’ home till Monday. I’m ’mazin’ glad them derricks is up. He ain’t done nothin’ but worrit about ’em since spring opened, ’fraid somebody ’d get hurted when he set ’em. Took a lantern, here, night ’fore last, jest as we was goin’ to bed, after he ’d been loadin’ ’em aboard the Screamer all day, an’ went down to the dock to see if Bill Lacey’d shrunk them collars on tight enough. Guess Betty’s glad ye ’re home. I ain’t see her to-day, but I don’t lay it up agin her. I knowed she was busy cleanin’ up ’gin ye come.”

Caleb’s heart leaped into his throat. If Betty had not told Aunty Bell, there was no one else who would know her movements. It was on his lips to tell her what the butcher had seen, when something in his heart choked his utterance. If Betty had not wanted any one to know, there was no use in his talking about it.

A man of different temperament, a nervous or easily alarmed or suspicious man, would have caught at every clue and followed it to the end. Caleb waited and kept still. She would telegraph or write him and explain it all, he said to himself, or send some one to see him before bedtime. So he merely said he was glad Aunty Bell knew about Captain Joe, nodded good-night, and passed slowly down the board walk and up the road, his head on his chest, his big beard blowing about his neck in the rising wind.

It was dark when be reached home. He lit the kerosene lamp and pulled down the shades. He did not want passers-by to know he was alone. For an hour or more he strode up and down the kitchen, his thumbs in his suspenders, his supper untouched. Now and then he would stop as if listening for a footfall, or fix his eye minutes at a time on some crack in the floor or other object, gazing abstractedly at it, his thoughts far away. Once he drew the lamp close and picked up the evening paper, adjusting his big glasses ; reading the same lines over and over, until the paper fell of itself from his hands. Soon, worn out with the hard fight of the day, he fell asleep in his chair, awaking some hours after, his mind torn with anxiety. He took off his shoes and crept upstairs in his stocking feet, holding to the balustrade as a tired man will do, entered the bedroom, and dropped into a chair.

All through the night he slept fitfully ; waking with sudden starts, roused by the feeling that some horrible shadow had settled upon him, that something he could not name to himself was standing behind him — always there. He was afraid to turn and look. When he was quite awake, and saw the dim outlines of the untouched bed with its smooth white pillows, the fear would take shape, and he would say as if convincing himself, “ Yes, I know, Betty’s gone.” Then, overcome with fatigue, he would doze again.

When the day broke, he sprang from his chair, half dazed, threw up the narrow sash to feel the touch of the cool, real world, and peered between the slats of the shutters, listening to the wind outside, now blowing a gale and dashing against the house.

All at once he turned and tiptoed downstairs. With nervous, trembling fingers he took a suit of tarpaulins and a sou’wester from a hook behind the porch door, and walked down to the dock. Some early lobstermen, bailing a skiff, saw him stand for a moment, look about him, and spring aboard a flatbottomed sharpie, the only boat near by, — a good harbor boat, but dangerous in rough weather. To their astonishment, he raised the three - cornered sail and headed for the open sea.

“ Guess Caleb must be crazy,” said one man, resting his scoop involuntarily, as he watched the boat dip almost bow under. “The sharpie ain’t no more fittin’ for thet slop sea ’n ever was. What do ye s’pose ails him, anyhow ? Gosh A’mighty ! see her take them rollers. If it was anybody else but him he would n’t git to the P’int. Don’t make no difference, tho’, to him. He kin git along under water jes’ ’s well’s on top.”

As the boat flew past Keyport Light and Caleb laid his course to the Ledge, the keeper, now that the dawn had come, was in the lantern putting out the light and drawing down the shades. Seeing Caleb’s boat tossing below him, he took down his glass.

“ What blamed fool is that tryin’ to get himself measured for a coffin ? ” he said half aloud to himself.

The men were still asleep when Caleb reached the Ledge and threw open the door of the shanty, — all but Nickles, who was preparing breakfast. He looked at Caleb as if he had been an apparition, and followed him to the door of Captain Joe’s cabin, a little room by itself. He wanted to hear what dreadful news he brought. Unless some one was dead or dying no man would risk such a sea alone, — not even an old sailor like the diver.

Caleb closed the door of the captain’s room tight behind him, without a word to the cook. The captain lay asleep in his bunk, his big arm under his head, his short curly hair matted close.

“ Cap’n Joe,” said Caleb, laying his hand on the sleeping man’s shoulder and shaking him gently, — “ Cap’n Joe, it’ s me, Caleb.”

The captain raised his head and stared at him. Then he sat upright, trying to collect his thoughts.

“Cap’n, I had to come for ye, — I want ye.”

“ It ain’t Aunty Bell, is it ? ” said Captain Joe, springing to the floor. The early hour, the sough of the wind and beating of the rain on the roof of the shanty, Caleb dripping wet, with white drawn face, standing over him, told him in a flash the gravity of the visit.

“ No, it’s my Betty. She’s gone, — gone without a word.”

“ Gone ! Who with ? ”

Caleb sunk on Captain Joe’s sea-chest, and buried his face in his blistered hands. He dared not trust himself to answer at once.

“ 1 don’t know — I don’t know ” — The broken words came between his rough fingers. Big tears rolled down his beard.

“ Who says so ? How do you know she ’s gone ? ”

“ The butcher seen ’er goin’ ’board the boat at Noank yesterday mornin’. She fixed everythin’ at home ’fore she went. I ain’t been to bed all night. I don’t know what ye kin do, but I had to come. I thought maybe you’d go home with me.”

The captain did not answer. Little scraps of gossip that he had heard now and then among the men floated through his memory. He had never paid any attention to them, except once when he had rebuked Nickles for repeating some slurring remark that Carleton had made one night at table. But even as he thought of them Betty’s face rose before him, — her sweet, girlish face with its dimples.

“ It’s a dirty lie. Caleb, whoever said it. I would n’t believe it if I see it myself. Ain’t no better gal ’n Betty ever breathed. Go with you ! Course I will’s soon ’s I get my clo’es on.” He dressed hurriedly, caught up his oilskins, flung wide the shanty door, and made his way over the platforms towards the wharf.

When they reached the little cove in the rocks below, where the smaller boats were always sheltered, and he saw the sharpie, he stopped short.

“You ain’t come out here in that, Caleb ? ” he asked in astonishment.

“ It was all I could get; there warn’t nothin’ else handy, Cap’n Joe.”

The captain looked the frail sharpie over from stem to stern, and then called to Nickles : “ Bring down one ’er them empty ker’sene five-gallon cans ; we got some bailin’ to do, I tell ye, 'fore we make Keyport Light. No, there ain’t nothin’ up,” noticing Nickles’s anxious face. “ Caleb wants me to Keyport, — that’s all. Get breakfast, and tell the men, when they turn out, that I 'll be back to-morrow in the Screamer, if it smooths down.”

Caleb took his seat on the windward side of the tossing boat, holding the sheet. The captain sat in the stern, one hand on the tiller. The kerosene-can lay at their feet. The knees of the two men touched.

No better sailors ever guided a boat, and none ever realized more clearly the dangers of their position.

The captain settled himself in his seat in silence, his eyes on every wave that raced by, and laid his course towards the white tower five miles away, its black band blurred gray in the driving rain. Caleb held the sheet, his face turned towards the long, low line of hills where his cabin lay. As he hauled the sheet closer a heavy sigh broke from him. It was the first time since he had known Betty that he had set his face homeward without a thrill of delight filling his heart. Captain Joe heard the smothered sigh, and, without turning his head, laid his great hand with its stiff tholepin fingers tenderly on Caleb’s wrist. These two men knew each other.

“ I would n’t worry, Caleb,” he said, after a little. “ That butcher sees too much, an’ sometimes he don’t know nothin’. He ’s allers got some cock-an’bull story ’bout somebody 'r other. Only las’ week he come inter Gardiner’s drug store with a yarn ’bout the old man bein’ pisened, when it warn’t nothin’ but cramps. Ease a little, Caleb — s-o. Seems to me it’s blowin’ harder.”

As he spoke, a quick slash of the cruel wind cut the top from a pursuing wave and flung it straight at Caleb’s face. The diver combed the dripping spray from his beard with his stiffened fingers, and without a word drew his tarpaulins closer. Captain Joe continued : —

“ Wust 'r them huckster fellers is they ain’t got no better sense ’an to peddle everythin’ they know ’long with their stuff. Take in — take in, Caleb ! ” in a quick voice. “ That was a soaker.” The big wave that had broken within a foot of the rail had drenched them from head to foot. " Butcher did n’t say nobody was with Betty, did he ? ” he asked, with a cant of his sou’wester to free it from sea-water.

Caleb shook his head.

“ No, and there warn’t nobody. I tell ye this thing ’ll straighten itself out.

Ye can’t tell what comes inter women’s heads sometimes. She might’er gone over to Greenport to git some fixin’s for Sunday, an’ would’er come back in the afternoon boat, but it blowed so. Does she know anybody over there ? ”

Caleb did not answer. Somehow since he had seen Captain Joe the little hope that had flickered in his heart had gone out. He had understood but too clearly the doubting question that had escaped the captain’s lips, as he sprang from the bed and looked into his eyes. Caleb was not a coward ; he had faced without a quiver many dangers in his time; more than once he had cut his air-hose, the last desperate chance of a diver when his lines are fouled. But his legs had shaken as he listened to Captain Joe. There was something in the tone of his voice that had unmanned him.

For a mile or more the two men did not speak again. Wave after wave pursued them and tossed its angry spray after them. Captain Joe now managed the sail with one hand, and steered with the other. Caleb bailed incessantly.

When they ran under the lee of the lighthouse the keeper hailed them. He had recognized Captain Joe. Indeed, he had followed the sharpie with his glass until it reached the Ledge, and had watched its return, “ with two fools instead of one,” he said.

“Anybody sick ? ” he shouted.

Captain Joe shook his head, and the sharpie plunged on and rounded the Point into the perfect calm of the protecting shore.

The captain sprang out, and when Caleb had made fast the boat they both hurried up the garden walk to the cabin door.

There was no change in the house. The white china howl still lay over the supper, the newspaper on the floor ; no one had entered since Caleb had left.

The captain began a close search through the rooms : inside the clock, all over the mantelpiece, and on the sittingroom table. No scrap of writing could he find that shed a ray of light on Betty’s movements. Then he walked upstairs, Caleb following him, and opened the bedroom closet door. Her dresses hung in their usual places, — all but the one she wore and her cloak, Caleb said.

“ She ain’t gone for long,” declared the captain thoughtfully, looking into the closet. “ You wait here, Caleb, and git yerself some breakfast. I may be gone two hours, I may be gone all day. When I find out for sure I ’ll come back. I 'm goin’ to Noank fust, to see them hands aboard the boat. It ’s Sunday, an’ she ain’t a-runnin’.”

Hour after hour went by. Caleb sat by the fireless stove and waited. Now and then he would open the front door and peer down the road, trying to make out the captain’s burly, hurrying form. When it grew dark he put a light in the window, and raised one shade on the kitchen side of the house, that the captain might know he was still at home and waiting.

About nine o’clock Caleb heard the whistle of a tug, and a voice calling for some one to catch a line. He opened the kitchen door and looked out on the gloom, broken here and there by the masthead lights rocking in the wind. Then he recognized one of the big Medford tugs lying off the dock below his garden ; the hands were making fast to a dock spile. Captain Joe sprang ashore, and the tug steamed off.

The captain opened the garden gate and walked slowly towards the porch. He entered the kitchen without a word, and sank heavily into a chair. Caleb made no sound ; he stood beside him, waiting, one hand grasping the table.

“ She’s gone, ain’t she ? ”

The captain nodded his head.

“ Gone ! Who with ? ” asked Caleb, unconsciously repeating the words that had rung in his ears all day.

“ Bill Lacey,” said the captain, with choking voice.

X.

STRAINS FROM BOCK’S ’CELLO.

Midsummer in New York, to those who know its possibilities, is by far its most delightful season. Then one can sleep from four to six in the afternoon without a ring at the bell, or dine at any hour one sees fit, and at home, without a waiting cab and a hurried departure at the bidding of somebody else. Then is the eleven o’clock morning lecturer silent, the afternoon tea a memory, and the ten-course dinner a forgotten plague. Then thin toilettes prevail, cool mattings and chintz-covered divans and lounges. Then, for those who know and can, begin long days and short nights, — long days and short nights of utter idleness, great content, and blessed peace of mind.

If we could impress the reality of these truths upon all the friends we love, and they, and only they, could tiptoe back into their houses, keep their blinds closed and their servants hidden, and so delude the balance of the world — those they do not love, the uncongenial, the tiresome, the bumptious, and the aggressive — into believing that they had fled ; if this little trick could be played on the world every June, and those we do love could for three long happy months spread themselves over space and eat their lotus in peace (and with their fingers, if they so pleased), then would each one discover that New York in summer could indeed be made the Eldorado of one’s dreams.

Mrs. Leroy had long since recognized these possibilities. Her front door on Gramercy Park was never barricaded in summer, nor was her house dismantled. She changed its dress in May and put it into charming summer attire, making it a rare and refreshing retreat; and more than half her time she spent within its walls, running down from Medford whenever the cares of that establishment seemed onerous, or a change of mood made a change of scene desirable.

While the men were at work on her new dining-room she remained in town, and since the visit when Captain Joe had dismissed her with his thanks from the warehouse hospital at Keyport she had not left New York again.

The major had been a constant visitor, and Jack Hardy and his fiancée, Helen Shirley, had on more than one occasion hidden themselves, on moonlight nights, in the shadows of the big palms fringing her balcony overlooking the Park. Sanford had not seen her as often as he wished. He had spent a night at her house in Medford, but the work on the Ledge kept him at Keyport, and allowed him but little time in the city.

With the setting of the derricks, however, he felt himself at liberty for a holiday, and he had looked forward with a feeling of almost boyish enthusiasm — which he never quite outgrew — to a few days’ leisure in town, and a morning or two with Mrs. Leroy.

She was at her desk when the maid brought up his card. The little boudoir in which she sat, with its heaps of silk cushions, its disorder of books, and its windows filled with mignonette and red geraniums, looked straight into the trees of the Park. Here the sun shone in winter, and the moonlight traced the outlines of bare branches upon her window-shades, and here in summer the coolest of shadows fell.

“Why, I expected you yesterday, Henry,” she said, holding out her hand, seating Sanford upon the divan, and drawing up a chair beside him. “ What happened ? ”

“ Nothing more serious than an elopement.”

“ Not Jack and Helen Shirley ? ” she said, laughing.

“No ; I wish it were ; they would go on loving each other ; but this elopement brings misery. It’s Caleb West’s wife. Captain Joe is half crazy about it, and poor Caleb is heartbroken. She has gone off with that young fellow she was nursing the day you came up with the major.”

“ Eloped ! Pretty doings, I must say. Yes, I remember her, — a trim little woman with short curly hair. I saw Caleb, too, as he came in from the Ledge. He looked years older than she. What had he done to her ? ”

“ Nothing, so far as I know, except love her and take care of her. Poor Caleb! He is one of the best men in the gang. I think the world of him.”

“ What did he let her go for, then ? I ’m sorry for the old diver, but it was his fault, somewhere. That girl had as good a face as I ever looked into. She never left her husband without some cause, poor child. He beat her, no doubt, when nobody could see, and she has run away because she was ashamed to let anybody know. What else has happened at Keyport ? ”

“ Kate, don’t talk so. Caleb could n’t be brutal to any human being. I know, too, that he loves this girl dearly. They’ve only been married two yearsShe’s treated him shamefully.”

Mrs. Leroy bent her head and looked out under the awnings for a moment in a thoughtful way. “ Only two years ? ” she said, with some bitterness. “ The poor child was impatient. When she had tried it for fifteen she would have become accustomed to it. Don’t blame her altogether, Henry. It is the same old story, I suppose. We hear it every day. He ugly and old and selfish, never thinking of what she would like and what she longed for, keeping her shut up to sing for him when she wanted now and then to sing for herself ; and then she found the door of the cage open, and out she flew. Poor little soul! I pity her. She had better have borne it; it is a poor place outside for a tired foot; and she’s nothing but a child.” Then musing, patting her slipper impatiently, “ What sort of a man has she gone with ? I could n’t see him that morning, she hung over him so close; his head was so bandaged.”

“ I don’t know much about him. I have n’t known him long,” replied Sanford carelessly.

“ Good-looking, is n’t he, and alive, and with something human and manlike about him ? ” she said, leaning forward eagerly, her hands in her lap.

“Yes, I suppose so. He could climb like a cat, anyway,” said Sanford.

“Yes. I know, Henry. I see it all. I knew it was the same old story. She wanted something fresh and young, — some one just to play with, child as she is, some one nearer her own age to love. Don’t hate her. She was lonely. Nothing for her to do but sit down and wait for him to come home. Poor child,” with a sigh, “ her misery only begins now. But what else have you to tell me?”

“ Nothing, except that all of the derricks tumbled. I wired you about it. They are all up now, thank goodness.” He knew her interest was only perfunctory. Her mind, evidently, was still on Betty, but he went on with his story: “ Everybody got soaking wet. Captain Joe was in the water for hours. But we stuck to it. Narrowest escape the men have had this summer, Kate, except the Screamer’s. It’s a great mercy nobody was hurt. I expected every minute some one would get crushed. No one but Captain Joe could have got them up that afternoon. It blew a gale for three days. When did you get here ? I thought you had gone back to Medford until Sam brought me your note.”

“ No, I am still here, and shall be here for a week. Now, don’t tell me your ’re going back to-night ? ”

“ No, I ’m not, but I can’t say how soon ; not before the masonry begins, anyhow. Jack Hardy is coming to-morrow night to my rooms. I have asked a few fellows to meet him, — Smearly, and Curran, and old Bock with his ’cello, and some others. Since Jack’s engagement he’s the happiest fellow alive.”

“ They all are at first, Henry,” said Mrs. Leroy, laughing, her head thrown back. The memory of Jack and Helen was still so fresh and happy a one that it instantly changed her mood.

They talked of Helen’s future, of the change in Jack’s life, of his new housekeeping, and of the thousand and one things that interested them both, — the kind of talk that two such friends indulge in who have been parted for a week or more, and who, in the first ten minutes, run lightly over their individual experiences, so that they may start fresh again with nothing hidden in either life. When he rose to go, she kept him standing while she pinned in his buttonhole a sprig of mignonette picked from her window-box, and said, with the deepest interest, “ I can’t get that poor child out of my mind. Don’t be too hard on her, Henry; she’s the one who will suffer most.”

When Sanford reached his rooms again, Sam had arranged the most delightful of luncheons : cucumbers sliced lengthwise and smothered in ice, softshell crabs, and a roll of cream cheese with a dash of Kirsch and sugar. “ Oh, these days off ! ” he sighed contentedly, sinking into his chair.

The appointments of his own apartments seemed never so satisfying and so welcome as when he had spent a week with his men, taking his share of the exposure with all the discomforts that it brought. His early life had fitted him for these changes, and a certain cosmopolitan spirit in the man, a sort of underlying stratum of Bohemianism, had made it easy for him to adapt himself to his surroundings, whatever they might be. Not that his restless spirit could long have endured any life that repeated itself day after day. He could idle with the idlest, but he must also work when the necessity came, and that with all his might.

“ Major’s done been hyar ’mos’ ebery day you been gone, sab,” said Sam, when he had drawn out Sanford’s chair and announced luncheon as served. " How is it, sah, — am I to mix a cocktail ebery time he comes ? An’ dat box oh yo’ big cigars am putty nigh gone ; ain’t no more ’n fo’r ’r five ’r ’em lef’.” The major, Sam forgot to mention, was only partly to blame for these two shrinkages in Sanford’s stores.

“ What does he come so often for, Sam ? ” asked Sanford, laughing.

“ Dat’s mor’ ’an I know, sah, ’cept he so anxious to git you back, he says, He come twice a day to see if you ’re yere. Co’se dere ain’t nuffin cooked, an’ so he don’t git nuffin to eat; but golly ! he’s powerful on jewlips. I done tole him yesterday you would n’t be back till to-morrow night. Dat whiskey’s all gin out; he saw der empty bottle hisse’f; he ain’t been yere agin to-day,” with a chuckle.

“ Always give the major whatever he wants, Sam,” said Sanford. “By the bye, a few gentlemen will be here to supper to-morrow night. Remind me in the morning to make a list of what you will want,” dipping the long slices of cucumber into the salt.

The morning came : the list was made out, and a very toothsome and cooling list it was, — a frozen melon tapped and filled with a pint of Pommery sec, by way of beginning. The evening came: the hanging lanterns and silver lamps were lighted, all the trays and small tables with their pipes and smokables were brought out, a music-stand was opened and set up near a convenient shaded candle, and the lid of the piano was lifted and propped up rabbit-trap fashion.

With the early - rising moon came Smearly in white flannels and flaming tie, just from his studio, where he had been at work on a ceiling for a millionaire’s salon; and Jack in correct evening dress; and Curran from his office, in a business suit; and the major in a nondescript combination of yellow nankeen and black bombazine, that made him an admirable model for a poster in two tints. He was still full of his experiences at the warehouse hospital after the accident to the Screamer. Every visitor at his downtown office had listened to them by the hour. To-night, however, the major had a new audience, and a new audience always added fuel to the fire of his eloquence.

When the subject of the work at the Ledge came up, and the sympathy of everybody was expressed to Sanford over the calamity to the Screamer, the major broke out: —

“ You ought to have gone with us, my dear Jack.” (To have been the only eye-witness at the front, except Sanford himself, gave the major great scope.) “ Giants, suh, — every man of ’em ; a race, suh, that would do credit to the Vikings; bifurcated walruses, suh; amphibious titans, that can work as well in water as out of it. No wonder our dear Henry ” (this term of affection was not unusual with the major) “ accomplishes such wonders. I can readily understand why you never see such fellows anywhere else : they dive under water when the season closes,” he continued, laughing, and, leaning over Curran’s shoulder, helped himself to one of the cigars Sam was just bringing in. His little trip to Keyport as acting escort to Mrs. Leroy had not only opened his eyes to a class of working men of whose existence he had never dreamed, but it had also furnished him with a new and inexhaustible topic of conversation.

“ And the major outdid himself, that day, in nursing them,” interrupted Sanford. “ You would have been surprised, Jack, to see him take hold. When I turned in for the night, he was giving one of the derrickmen a sponge bath.”

“ Learned it in the army,” said Curran, with a sly look at Smearly. Both of them knew the origin of the major’s military title.

The major’s chin was upturned in the air ; his head was wreathed in smoke, the match, still aflame, held aloft with outstretched hand. He always lighted his cigars in this lordly way.

“ Many years ago, gentlemen,” the major replied, distending his chest, throwing away the match, and accepting the compliment in perfect good faith ; " but these are things one never forgets.”The major had never seen the inside of a camp hospital in his life.

The guests now distributed themselves, each after the manner of his likes: Curran full length on a divan, the afternoon paper in his hand ; Jack on the floor, his back to the wall, a cushion behind his head ; Smearly in an armchair; and the major bolt upright on a camp-stool near a table which held a select collection of drinkables, presided over by a bottle of seltzer in a silver holder. Sam moved about like a restless shadow, obedient to the slightest lifting of Sanford’s eyebrows, when a glass needed filling or a pipe replenishing.

At ten o’clock, lugging in his great ’cello, came Bock, — a short, round, oily Dane, with a red face that beamed with good humor, and puffy hands that wrinkled in pleats when he was using his bow. A man with a perpetually moist forehead, across which was pasted a lock of black hair. A greasy man, if you please, with a threadbare coat spattered with spots, baggy black trousers, and a four-button brown holland vest, never clean. A man with a collar so much ashamed of the condition of its companion shirt-front that it barely showed its face over a black stock that was held together by a spring. A man with the kindly, loyal nature of a St. Bernard dog, who loved all his kind, spoke six languages, wrote for the Encyclopædia, and made a ’cello sing like an angel.

To Sanford this man’s heart was dearer than his genius.

“ Why, Bock, old man, we did n’t expect you till eleven.”

“ Yes, I know, Henri, but ze first wiolin, he take my place. Zey will not know ze difference.” One fat hand was held up deprecatingly, the fingers outspread. “ Everybody fan and drink ze beer. Ah, Meester Hardy, I have hear ze news; so you will leave ze brotherhood. And I hear,” lowering his voice and laying his other fat hand affectionately on Jack’s, “ zat she ees most lofely. Ah, it ees ze best zing,” his voice rising again. “ When ve get old and ugly like old Bock, and so heels over head wiz all sorts of big zings to build like Mr. Sanford, or like poor Smearly paint, paint, all ze time paint, it ees too late to zink of ze settle down. Ees it not so, you man Curran over zere, wiz your newspaper over your head ? ” This time his voice was flung straight at the recumbent editor as a climax to his breezy salutation.

“ Yes, you 're right, Bock; you 're ugly enough to crowd a dime museum, but I ’ll forgive you everything if you ’ll put some life into your strings. I heard your orchestra the other night, and the first and second violins ruined the overture. What the devil do you keep a lot of” —

“What ees ze matter wiz ze overture, Meester Ole Bull ? ” said Bock, pitching his voice in a high key, squeezing down on the divan beside Curran, and pinching his arm.

“ Everything was the matter. The brass drowned the strings, and Reynier might have had hair-oil on his bow for all the sound you heard. Then the tempo was a beat too slow.”

“ Henri Sanford, do you hear zis crazy man zat does not know one zing, and lie flat on his back and talk such nonsense ? Ze wiolin, Meester Musical Editor Curran, must be pianissimo, — only ze leetle, ze ve’y leetle, you hear. Ze aria is carried by ze reeds.”

“ Carried by your grandmother ! ” said Curran, springing from the divan. “ Here, Sam, put a light on the piano. Now listen, you pagan,” running his fingers over the keys. “ Beethoven would get out of his grave if he could hear you murder his music. The three bars are so,” touching the keys, “not so!” And thus the argument went on.

Out on the balcony, Smearly and Quigley, the marine painter, who had just come in, were talking about the row at the Academy over the rejection of Morley’s picture, while the major was in full swing with Hardy, Sanford, and some of the later arrivals, including old Professor Max Shutters, the biologist, who had been so impressively introduced by Curran to the distinguished Pocomokian that the professor had at once mistaken the major for a brother scientist.

“ And you say, Professor Slocomb,” said the savant, his hand forming a sounding-board behind his ear, “ that the terrapin, now practically extinct, was really plentiful in your day ? ”

“ My learned suh, I have gone down to the edge of my lawn, overlooking the salt-marsh, and seen ’em crawling around like potato bugs. The niggahs couldn’t walk the shore at night without trampling on ’em. This craze of yo’r millionaire epicures for one of the commonest shell-fish we have is ” —

“Amphibia,” said the professor, as if he had recognized a mere slip of the tongue. “ I presume you are referring to the Malaclemmys palustris, — the diamond-back species.”

“ You are right, suh,” said the major. “ Iliad forgotten the classification for the moment,” with an air of being perfectly at home on the subject. “ The craze for the palustris, my dear suh, is one of the unaccountable signs of the times ; it is the beginning of the fall of our institutions, suh. We cannot forget the dishes of peacock tongues in the old Roman days, — a thousand peacocks at a eou’se, suh.”

The major would have continued down through Gibbon and Macaulay if Curran had not shouted out, “ Keep still, every soul of you! Bock is going to give us the Serenade.”

The men crowded about the piano. Despite bis frowziness, everybody who knew Bock liked him; those who heard him play loved him. There was a pathos, a tender sympathetic quality in his touch, that one never forgot: it always seemed as if, somehow, ready tears lingered under his bow. “ With a tone like Bock’s ” was the highest compliment one could pay a musician.

Bock had uncovered the 'cello and was holding it between his knees, one of his fat hands resting lightly on the strings. As Curran, with a foot on the pedal of the piano, passed his hand rapidly over the keys, Bock’s head sank to the level of his shoulders, his straggling hair fell over his coat collar, his raised fingers balanced for a moment the short bow, and then Schubert’s masterpiece poured out its heart.

A profound hush, broken only by the music, fell on the room. The old professor leaned forward, both hands cupped behind his ears. Sanford and Jack smoked on, their eyes half closed, and even the major withheld his hand from the well-appointed tray and looked into his empty glass.

At a time when the spell was deepest and the listeners held their breath, the perfect harmony was broken by a discordant ring at the outer door. Curran turned his head angrily, and Sanford looked at Sam, who glided to the door with a catlike tread, opening it without a sound, and closing it gently behind him. The symphony continued, the music rising in interest, and the listeners forgot the threatened interruption.

Then the door opened again, and Sam, making a wide detour, bent over Sanford and whispered in his ear. Sanford started, as if annoyed, arose from his seat, and again the knob was noiselessly turned and the door as noiselessly closed, shutting him into the corridor.

Seated in a chair under the old swinging lantern was a woman wrapped in a long cloak. Her face was buried in her hands.

“ Do you wish to see me, madam ? ” he asked, crossing to where she sat, wondering at the visit at such an hour, and from a stranger too.

The woman turned her head towards him without raising her eyelids.

“ And you don’t know me any more, Mr. Sanford ? I’m Betty West.”

“You here ! ” said Sanford, looking in astonishment at the half-crouching figure before him.

“ I had to come, sir. The druggist at the corner told me where you lived. I was a-waitin’ outside in the street below, hopin’ to see you come in. Then I heard the music and knew you were home.” The voice shook with every word. The young dimpled face was drawn and pale, the pretty curly hair in disorder about her forehead. She had the air of one who had been hunted and had just found shelter.

“ Does Lacey know you are here ? ” said Sanford, a dim suspicion rising in his mind. It was Caleb’s face of agony that came before bim.

Betty shivered slightly, as if the name had hurt her. “No, sir. I left him two nights ago. I got away while he was asleep. All I want now is a place for to-night, and then perhaps to-morrow I can get work.”

“ And you have no money ? ”

Betty shook her head. “ I had a little of my own, hut it’s all gone, and I ’m so tired, and — the city frightens me so — when the night comes.” The head dropped lower, the sobs choking her. After a little she went on, drying her eyes with her handkerchief, rolled tight in one hand, and resting her cheek on the bent fingers: “ I did n’t know nobody but you, Mr. Sanford. I can pay it back.”The voice was scarcely audible.

Sanford stood looking down upon her bowed head. The tired eyelids were half closed, the tears glistening in the light of the overhanging lamp, the shadows of her black curls flecking her face. The cloak hung loosely about her, the curve of her pretty shoulders outlined in its folds. Then she lifted her head, and, looking Sanford in the eyes for the first time, said in a broken, halting voice. “ Did you — did you — see — Caleb — Mr. Sanford ? ”

Sanford nodded slowly in answer. He was trying to make up his mind what he should do with a woman who had broken the heart of a man like Caleb. Through the closed door could be heard the strains of Bock’s ’cello, the notes vibrating plaintively.

“ Betty,” he said, leaning over her, “ how could you do it ? ”

The girl covered her face with her hands and shrank within her cloak. Sanford went on, his sense of Caleb’s wrongs overpowering him : “ What could Lacey do for you ? If you could once see Caleb’s face you would never forgive yourself. No woman has a right to leave a man who was as good to her as your husband was to you. And now what has it all come to ? You’ve ruined yourself, and broken his heart.”

The girl trembled and bent her head, cowering under the pitiless words ; then, in a half-dazed way, she rose from her seat, and, without looking at Sanford, said in a tired, hopeless voice, as if every word brought a pain, “ I think I ’ll go, Mr. Sanford.”

She drew her cloak about her and turned to the door. Sanford watched her silently. The pathos of the shrinking girlish figure overcame him. He began to wonder if there were something under it all that even Captain Joe did not know of. Then he remembered the tones of compassion in Mrs. Leroy’s voice when her heart had gone out to this girl the morning before, as she said to him, “ Poor child, her misery only begins now; it is a poor place outside for a tired foot.”

For an instant he stood irresolute. “ Wait a moment,” he said at last.

Betty stood still, without raising her head.

Sanford paused in deep thought, with averted eyes.

“ Betty,” he said in a softened voice, “ you can’t go out like this alone. I’ll take you, child, where you will be safe for the night.”

F. Hopkinson Smith.

(To be continued.)