Louise watched him stirring about the living-room, chirruping to old Jerry and thrusting his finger into the cage for the bird to hop upon it, and finally shuffling off into the store.  She hesitatingly followed him.  She desired to speak, but could not easily do so.  And now Cap’n Joab Beecher was before her.

Amiel Perdue had been uptown and brought down the early mail, of which the most important piece was always the Boston morning paper.  Cap’n Joab had helped himself to this and was already unfolding it.

“What’s in the Globe paper, Joab?” asked Cap’n Amazon.  “You millionaires ’round here git more time to read it than ever I do, I vum!”

“It don’t cost you nothin’ to have us read it,” said Cap’n Joab easily.  “The news is all here arter we git through.”

“Uh-huh!  I s’pose so.  I’d ought to thank ye, I don’t dispute, for keepin’ the paper from feelin’ lonesome.

“I dunno why Abe takes it, anyway, ’cept to foller the sailin’s and arrivals at the port o’ Boston—­’nless he finds more time to read than ever I do.  I ain’t ever been so busy in my life as I be in this store—­’nless it was when I shipped a menagerie for a feller at a Dutch Guinea port and his monkeys broke out o’ their cages when we was two days at sea and they tried to run the ship.

“That was some v’y’ge, as the feller said,” continued Cap’n Amazon, getting well under way as he lit his after-breakfast pipe.  “Them monkeys kep’ all the crew on the jump and the afterguard scurcely got a meal in peace, I was——­”

“Belay there!” advised Cap’n Joab, with disgust.  “Save that yarn for the dog watch.  What was it ye said that craft was named Cap’n Abe sailed in?”

Cap’n Amazon stopped in his story-telling and was silent for an instant.  Louise, who had stood at the inner doorway listening, turned to go, when she heard the substitute storekeeper finally say: 

“Curlew, out o’ Boston.”

The name caught the girl’s instant attention and she felt suddenly apprehensive.

“Here’s news o’ her,” Cap’n Joab said in a hushed voice.  “And it ain’t good news, Cap’n Silt.”

“What d’ye mean?” asked the latter.

“Report from Fayal.  A Portugee fisherman’s picked up and brought in a boat with ‘Curlew’ painted on her stern, and he saw spars and wreckage driftin’ near the empty boat.  There’s been a hurricane out there.  It—­it looks bad, Cap’n Silt.”

Before the latter could speak again Louise was at his side and had seized his tattooed arm.

“Uncle Amazon!” she gasped.  “Not the Curlew?  Didn’t I tell you before?  That is the schooner daddy-prof’s party sailed upon.  Can there be two Curlews?”

“My soul and body!” exclaimed Cap’n Joab.

It was Cap’n Amazon who kept his head.

“Not likely to be two craft of the same name and register—­no, my dear,” he said, patting her hand.  “But don’t take this so much to heart.  It’s only rumor.  A dozen things might have happened to set that boat adrift.  Ain’t that so, Cap’n Joab?”