“Mercy! what has he done?” cried the girl laughing, for even the sound of Lawford’s name made her glad.

“Seems it’s what he ain’t done.  What’s all this ‘bout your jumpin’ overboard t’other day and savin’ him from drownin’?” and the mariner fairly beamed upon her.

“Oh, uncle, you mustn’t believe everything you hear!”

“No?  But Bet Gallup says ’tis so.  You air a hi-mighty plucky girl, I guess.  I allus have thought so—­and so did Abe.  But I kind of feel as though I’m sort o’ responsible for your safety an’ well-bein’ while you air here, and I can’t countenance no such actions.”

“Now, uncle!”

“Fellers like Ford Tapp air as plenty as horse-briers in a sand lot; but girls like you ain’t made often, I cal’late.  Next time that feller has to be rescued, you let Bet Gallup do it.”

She knew Cap’n Amazon well enough now to see that his roughness was assumed.  His eyes were moist as his gaze rested on her face, and he blew his nose noisily at the end of his speech.

“You take keer o’ yourself, Louise,” he added huskily.  “If anything should happen to you, what—­what would Abe say?”

The depth of his feeling for her—­so plainly and so unexpectedly displayed—­halted Louise in her already formed intention.  She had arisen on this morning, determined to “have it out” with Cap’n Amazon Silt.  On several points she wished to be enlightened—­felt that she had a right to demand an explanation.

For she was quite positive that Cap’n Amazon was not at all what he claimed to be.  His actual personality was as yet a mystery to her; but she was positive on this point:  He was not Captain Amazon Silt, master mariner and rover of the seas.  He was an entirely different person, and Louise desired to know what he meant by this masquerade.

His seamanship, his speech, his masterful manner, were assumed.  And in the matter of his related adventures the girl was confident that they were mere repetitions of what he had read.

Now Louise suddenly remembered how Cap’n Abe had welcomed her here at the old store, and how cheerfully and tenderly this piratical looking substitute for the storekeeper had assumed her care.  No relative or friend could have been kinder to her than Cap’n Amazon.

How could she, then, stand before him and say:  “Cap’n Amazon, you are an impostor.  You have assumed a character that is not your own.  You tell awful stories about adventures that never befell you.  What do you mean by it all?  And, in conclusion and above all, Where is Cap’n Abe?”

This had been Louise’s intention when she came downstairs on this morning.  The nagging of Betty Gallup, the gossip of the other neighbors, the wild suspicions whispered from lip to lip did not influence her so much.  It was what she had herself discovered the evening before in the captain’s “cabin” that urged her on.

Now Cap’n Amazon’s display of tenderness “took all the wind out of her sails,” as Betty Gallup would have said.