The skipper gazed at the girl until her eyes met his.

“Was ye workin’ agin me all the time?” he asked, quietly.

“Nay, Denny, but I was workin’ for ye—­all the time,” she whispered.

“Sure she was,” said Mother Nolan, puffing at her pipe.  “Aye—­an’ many’s the time ’twas on me tongue to call her a fool for her trouble, ye was that bewitched an’ bemazed, lad.”

The skipper stared at the floor for a long time, in silence.  At last he said, “Wid the way ye was workin’, Mary, the wonder bes to me what for ye risked the knife in yer neck to save me life from the Frenchman.”

“Denny, ye bes still a fool!” exclaimed Mother Nolan.  “When you bain’t one manner o’ fool ye bes another!  What for? d’ye ask!  Well, what for?”

“Sure, I was only wonderin’,” said the man, glancing shyly and hopefully at the girl in the bed.

* * * * *

Father McQueen reached Chance Along early in June.  He found plenty of work awaiting him, including six masses for the newly-dead, and the building of the church.  The general tone of the harbor impressed him as being strangely subdued.  Even Black Dennis Nolan seemed less vivid and dominant in his bearing; but in spite of this change in him, he refused to put off his wedding even for the glory of being married in the new church.

In spite of a scar on her round, white neck, Mary Nolan was the grandest-looking, sweetest bride that had ever been seen in Chance Along.  Denny thought so, and old Barney Keen said it, and Mother Nolan proved it by admitting that even she herself had not cut such a figure, under similar circumstances, fifty years ago.  And on the morning after the wedding, the skipper and Mary set out on their honeymoon to St. John’s, aboard the fore-and-after, with a freight of salvaged cargo under the hatch instead of thiefed jewels and gold.  Back in the harbor the men unmoored their skiffs for the fishing, even as their fathers had done since the first Nolan and the first Leary spied that coast.  They grumbled a little, as was their nature; but there was no talk of mutiny or treason.  The red tide of greed had ebbed away with the passing of the sense of possession, and the fear of bewitchment had faded away with the departure of the innocent witch.

THE END.

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