“Oh, she’ll change her mind!” said Cap’n Ira, wagging his head.

“Do you think so?  Not so easy.  You’d ought to know by this time how firm Ida May can be.”

“The Lord help Tunis then,” said Cap’n Ira emphatically.  “But his loss is our gain.  Ain’t no two ways about that.”

Sheila’s secret thoughts were not calculated to calm her soul.  Her determination braced her body as well as her mind to go about her daily tasks with her usual thoroughness, but she could not confront the old people with even a ghost of her usual smile.  So she kept out of their way as much as possible and communed alone with her bitter thoughts.

The uncertainty of what Ida May was doing and saying down there in Big Wreck Cove was not all that agitated Sheila.  Her conscience, so long lulled by her peaceful existence here with the two old people, was now continually censuring her.

Sin brings its own secret punishment, though the sinner may hide the effects of the punishment for a long time.  But Sheila could not now conceal the effect of the mental pain and the remorse she suffered.

Of one thing she might be sure.  The neighbors had not as yet heard about the real Ida May or heard her story.  Otherwise some of the women living on the Head would have been in to hear the particulars from Prudence.

But that afternoon the throaty chug of Elder Minnett’s little car—­it had created almost a scandal in Big Wreck Cove when he bought it—­was heard mounting the road to the Head.

“I swan!” commented Cap’n Ira, who sat at the sunny sitting-room window, for it was a cold day.  “Here comes that tin wagon of the elder’s.  But he’s alone.  Get on your best bib and tucker, Prudence, for there ain’t any doubt but what he’s headin’ in this way.”

“Oh, dear me!” fluttered his wife.  “I wonder what he’s going to say.  Make the tea strong, Ida May.  The elder likes it so it’ll about bear up an egg.  And open a jar of that quince jam.  I wish we had fresh biscuits, although them you made for dinner were light as feathers.”

“I’ll make some now.  There’s a hot oven,” replied the girl.

“No, no,” interposed Cap’n Ira firmly.  “I want you should sit in here with us and hear all the elder’s got to say.”

“Perhaps, Uncle Ira, he will want to talk to you and Aunt Prue privately.”

“There won’t be no private talk about you, Ida May,” snorted the captain, his keen eyes sparkling.  “Not much!  If he’s got anything to say to your aunt and me, he’s got to say it in your hearing.”

The elder was a tall and bony man with a stiff brush of gray beard and bushy hair to match, which seemed as uncompromising as his doctrinal discourses in the pulpit.  He was an old-fashioned preacher, but not wholly an old-fashioned thinker.

Sheila had thought, on the few occasions when she had met him away from his pulpit, that there was an undercurrent of humanity in him quite equal to that in Cap’n Ira Ball, but his personal appearance and rather gruff manner made it difficult for one to be sure of the measure of his tenderness.