“That’s just it!” cried Cap’n Abe, shaking his head till the tarpaulin fell off and he forgot to pick it up.  “That’s just it.  He come back of his own self.  I didn’t try to ketch him.  When it grew on toward sundown an’ the air got kinder chill, I didn’t hear Jerry singin’ no more.  I’d seen him, off’n on, flittin’ ’bout the yard all day.  When I come in here to light the hangin’-lamp cal’latin’ to make supper, I looked over there at the window.  I’d shut it.  There was Jerry on the window sill, humped all up like an old woman with the tisic.”

“The poor thing!” was Lou’s sympathetic cry.

“Yes,” said Cap’n Abe, nodding.  “He warn’t no more fit to be let loose than nothin’ ’tall.  And I wonder if I be,” added the storekeeper.  “I’ve been caged quite a spell how.

“But now tell me, Niece Louise,” he added with latent curiosity, “how did you find your way here?”

“Father says—­’Daddy-professor,’ you know is what I call him.  He says if we had not always been traveling when I was not at school, I should have known you long ago.  He thinks very highly of my mother’s people.”

“I wanter know!”

“He says you are the ’salt of the earth’—­that is his very expression.”

“Yes.  We’re pretty average salt, I guess,” admitted Cap’n Abe.  “I never seen your father but once or twice.  You see, Louise, your mother was a lot younger’n me an’ Am’zon.”

“Who?”

“Cap’n Am’zon.  Oh! I ain’t the only uncle you got,” he said, watching her narrowly.  “Cap’n Am’zon Silt——­”

“Have I another relative?  How jolly!” exclaimed Louise, clasping her hands.

“Ye-as.  Ain’t it?  Jest,” Cap’n Abe said.  “Ahem! your father never spoke of Cap’n Am’zon?”.

“I don’t believe daddy-prof even knew there was such a person.”

“Mebbe not.  Mebbe not,” Cap’n Abe agreed hastily.  “And not to be wondered at.  You see, Am’zon went to sea when he was only jest a boy.”

“Did he?”

“Yep.  Ran away from home—­like most boys done in them days, for their mothers warn’t partial to the sea—­and shipped aboard the whaler South Sea Belle.  He tied his socks an’ shirt an’ a book o’ navigation he owned, up in a handkerchief, and slipped out over the shed roof one night, and away he went.”  Cap’n Abe told the girl this with that far-away look on his face that usually heralded one of his tales about Cap’n Amazon.

“I can remember it clear ’nough.  He walked all the way to New Bedford.  We lived at Rocky Head over against Bayport.  Twas quite a step to Bedford.  The South Sea Belle was havin’ hard time makin’ up her crew.  She warn’t a new ship.  Am’zon was twelve year old an’ looked fifteen.  An’ he was fifteen ’fore he got back from that v’y’ge.  Mebbe I’ll tell ye ’bout it some time—­or Cap’n Am’zon will.  He’s been a deep-bottom sailor from that day to this.”