* * * * *

A winter hurricane had pounced upon the Cape and torn at it with teeth and claws, as though seeking to dismember it—­to wrench the forty-mile curved claw of the Cape from the remainder of Barnstable County.

The driven snow masked everything—­earth, houses, trees, and the shivering bushes; it clung to these objects, iced upon them like frosting.  No craft ventured out of Big Wreck Cove, least of all the Seamew, although she had a cargo in her hold and a complete and satisfied crew in her forecastle.

Tunis Latham was speaking of the latter fact to Aunt Lucretia in the warm and homelike kitchen of Latham’s Folly.

“Zeb is a good fellow.  He has got together a bunch of hands that aren’t afraid of ghosts or bogies.  You couldn’t make those Portygees or some of the other hands we had see the ridiculousness of their fear of the Seamew—­bless her!  But with this bunch Zeb has got together I wouldn’t fear to sail around the Horn.”

His aunt looked startled at the suggestion and shook her head.

“I know you wouldn’t want I should go for such a long voyage, Aunt Lucretia,” he replied.  “And I don’t want to myself.  But I couldn’t be content here if I didn’t see the prospect bright before me of getting Ida—­I mean, of getting Sheila.”

His aunt looked at him again not unkindly, but said not a word.

“I’ve told you all about it, Aunt Lucretia,” the skipper of the Seamew pursued.  “Everything.  If Sheila did wrong to come down here as she did, I did a greater wrong in encouraging her to come and in tempting her with the chance of escaping from the mess she was in.  And she’s paid—­we’ve both paid—­for our folly.

“As for folks talking, if that Bostwick girl wants to keep her job with Hoskin & Marl’s she’ll keep her mouth shut about Sheila.  She understands that.  And Hoskin & Marl—­everybody, in fact that was connected with that awful thing that happened to Sheila—­have done all in their power to make amends.”

For the first time his aunt’s lips opened.

“The poor child!” she said.

“I want more than your sympathy for Sheila, auntie,” he urged earnestly.  “I want your approval of what Sheila and I mean to do—­in time.  Of course, I must be better established first and be making money enough to support a—­a family.  And Sheila would not think of leaving the old people up there.  They need her so sorely.”

“But you may as well know, first as last, Aunt Lucretia, that I mean to marry Sheila.  I know it was wrong in me to try to palm her off on you as somebody she wasn’t—­to try to fool you—­”

“You did not fool me, Tunis; not for a moment,” she told him softly.

He stared at her in amazement.

“No,” went on his usually inarticulate aunt.  “The moment I first looked into her face I knew she was not Sarah Honey’s daughter.  That baby’s eyes were brown when Sarah brought her here years ago; and no brown eyes could change to such a beautiful violet-blue as—­as Sheila’s.  I knew you and she were trying to deceive me, but I could not help loving the dear girl from my first sight of her.”