Late in the afternoon the two young people started back for the Ball house, taking a roundabout way.  They did not even follow the patrol path, well defined along the brink of Wreckers’ Head as far as the beach.  Instead, they went down by the wagon track to the beach itself, intending to follow the edge of the sea and the channel around to a path that led up the face of the bluff to the Ball homestead.  It was a walk the girl had never taken.

The reaction she experienced after having successfully met and become acquainted with Aunt Lucretia put Sheila in high spirits.  Tunis had never seen her in quite this mood.  Although she was always cheerful and not a little gay about the Ball homestead, she suddenly achieved a spirit of sportiveness which surprised the captain of the Seamew.  But he wholly liked and approved of this new mood.

She had made herself a new fall frock and a pretty, close-fitting hat—­something entirely different, as he had noticed, from the styles displayed by the other girls of Big Wreck Cove.  And he was observant enough to see that this outfit was more like what the girls in Boston wore.

She ran ahead to pick up a shell or pebble that gleamed at the water’s edge from a long way off.  She escaped a wetting from the surf by a scant margin, and laughed delightedly at the chance she took.  Back against the foot of the bluff certain brilliant flowers grew—­fall blossoms that equaled any in Prudence Ball’s garden—­and the girl gathered these and arranged them in an attractive bouquet with a regard for color that delighted her companion.

They came, finally, in sight of a cabin back under the bank on the far side of the little cove, where once Tunis had reaped clams while Cap’n Ira and the Queen of Sheba made their unfortunate slide down the face of the bluff.  The sea was so low now that Tunis could aid the girl across the mouth of the tiny inlet on the sand bar which defended it from the sea.  There was but one channel over which she need leap with his help.

The cabin captivated Sheila, especially when she learned it was no longer occupied.  It had a tight tin roof and a cement-pipe chimney with a cap to keep the rain out.  The window sashes had been carried away and the door hung by a single hinge.  However, the one-roomed cabin was otherwise tight and dry.

“Sometimes fishing parties from the port come around here and camp for a day or two,” explained Tunis.  “But Hosea Westcott used to live here altogether.  Even in the winter.  He caught his own fish and split and dried them; he dug clams and picked beach plums and sold them in town, or swapped them for what he needed.  Sometimes the neighbors gave him a day’s work.”

“An old and lonely man, Tunis?” the girl murmured.

“That is what he was.  All his immediate family was gone.  So, when he fell ill one winter and one of the coast guards found him here almost starved and helpless, they took him away to the poor farm.”