They went on around the end of the headland and walked up the beach toward the port.  Before they reached the path by which they intended to mount to the summit of Wreckers’ Head, they observed another couple going in the same direction, following the edge of the water on the firm strand.  The woman was dressed in such brilliant hues that she could be mistaken for nobody but a resident of Portygee Town.

“That is the daughter of Pareta, who brought up your trunk when you came here, Ida May,” said Tunis carelessly.

“But do you see who the man is?” she said, with some surprise.  “It is your cousin.”

“’Rion?  So it is.  Well,” he added rather scornfully, “no accounting for tastes.  She’s a decent-enough girl, I guess, but we don’t mix much with the Portygees.  Although most of them are all right folks, at that.  But fooling around those girls sometimes starts trouble, as ’Rion ought to know by this time.”

As they climbed the path, Tunis aiding his companion at certain places, the girl, looking down, thought they were being closely watched by the other couple on the beach.  There was nothing in this to disturb her mind; a feeling of confidence had overcome her since her experience with Aunt Lucretia.  Her present environment was so far from the scenes of her old pain and misery that it seemed nothing actually could disturb her again.

The peacefulness of the scene impressed Tunis as well.  When they came up finally upon the brink of the headland they saw a spiral of smoke rising from one of the chimneys of the distant Ball homestead.  The man pointed to it and, smiling down upon her, repeated a verse he had read somewhere which he knew expressed the hope she held: 

     “I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled
        Above the green elms that a cottage was near;
      And I said, ’if there’s peace to be found in the world,
        A heart that was humble might hope for it here.’”

“That is pretty near right, don’t you think, Ida May?”

“It is, indeed!  Oh, it is!” she cried.  “And my heart is humble, Tunis.  I feel that God has been very good to me—­and you,” she added softly.

“I’ve been mighty good to myself,” he responded.  “Ida May, there never was a girl just like you, I guess.  Anyway, I never saw such a one.  I—­I don’t know just how to put it, but I feel that you are the only girl in the world I can ever feel the same toward.”

“Tunis!”

He took her hand, looking so hungrily into her face that she, blushing, if not confused, could not bear his gaze, and the long lashes drooped to veil the violet eyes.

“You understand me, Ida May?” whispered the captain of the Seamew eagerly.  “I don’t know, fixed as I am, that I’ve any right to talk to you like this.  But—­but I can’t wait any longer!”

She allowed her hand to remain in his warm clasp, and now she looked up at him again.