This was Tunis Latham’s mother, the girl who had seemed so promising an addition to the family in the opinion of Medway Latham, the builder of “Latham’s Folly.”  The rather blowzy prettiness of Captain Randall Latham’s young wife had been translated into real beauty in her son; for Tunis had got his physique and open, bold physiognomy from his mother.

The girl lying in an upper berth, a close cap tied over her neatly braided hair, parted the cretonne curtains to look at these ornaments hung about the cabin.  She realized that the photograph, so strangely contrasting with the prints of some of the world’s masterpieces, was a sort of shrine to Tunis Latham.  He revered the mother whom he had told the girl he could not remember of ever having seen.  His love and admiration for that unknown mother had helped make the captain of the Seamew what he was.

He was a good man, a safe man for any girl to trust.  And yet he was lending himself to a species of masquerade which, if ever it became known, would bring upon his head both derision and scorn.  He risked this contumely cheerfully and with a reckless disregard for what might arise through the plans they had made while sitting beside each other on that bench on Boston Common.

He would not admit the point of his own risk.  He would not consider it when they had talked, only the night before, on the deck of the schooner.  He scouted every possibility of any harm coming to him through their attempt to replace the girl in a firm niche in society and give the Cap’n Ira Balls what they needed of companionship and care.

The girl sat up in the berth and let her bare legs dangle a moment before dropping to the rug.  In her bare feet she padded to the photograph of Captain Randall Latham’s young wife.

The girl stood before the old photograph, her hands clasped, her gaze raised to the pictured face, as a votary might stand before the Madonna.  There were tears in the girl’s violet eyes.  At that moment she was uplifted, carried out of herself by the wealth of feeling in her heart.  Her lips moved.

“I promise,” she said softly, “I promise you that I will never do anything that will hurt him.  I promise you that I will never let him do anything that may harm him.  He has given me my chance.  I promise before you and God that he shall not be sorry, ever, that he has raised me out of the dust.”

She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to the glass which covered the photograph.

The wind held fair, a quartering offshore blow, and the schooner, having discharged her cargo, just past noon spread her upper sails, caught a gentle breeze of old Boreas, and shot out of the harbor and so to the southward with a following wind which brought her to the mouth of Big Wreck Cove long before nightfall.

Upon the bluff of Wreckers’ Head was to be dimly seen the sprawling Ball homestead.  Tunis pointed it out to the passenger.