“Get out wid ye, ye great hulkin’ fool!” she exclaimed.  “Oh, I seed ye a-clawin’ at her little hand.  An’ now ye’ve set her to weepin’, ye great lump!  Bain’t there a drop o’ wits in yer head?  Don’t ye know yer place, Denny Nolan, ye ignorant fisherman, a-pawin’ at the likes o’ her?”

The skipper felt shame at sight of Flora’s tears and anger at his grandmother’s humiliating words.  There was a bitter edge to her voice that was new to him, and her lean old fingers pinched into his flesh like fingers of iron.

“Sure, I bes mad,” he said. “‘Twas only a trick, anyhow—­an’ I did no harm.  There bain’t naught for ye to be cryin’ about.”

He strode from the room, with old Mother Nolan still clinging to his elbow.  When they reached the kitchen she loosed her clutch on his elbow.

“Denny Nolan, ye bes a fool!” she exclaimed.  “Saints presarve us, Denny, what would ye be doin’ wid a sprite the like o’ her, wid a heart all full entirely o’ gold an’ diamonds an’ queens an’ kings?—­an’ girls in this very harbor, ye great ninney, wid red woman hearts in their breasts!”

The skipper stared at her for a second, muttered an oath, crushed his fur cap on his head and went out into the gray twilight, slamming the door behind him.  He blundered his way up the path at the back of the harbor and held on, blindly, to the westward.

“Sure, now she’ll be frighted o’ me all the time,” he muttered.  “I was a fool to fright her so!  Maybe now she’ll never be marryin’ wid me at all.  The divil was into me!  Aye, the divil himself!”

He came presently to a group of his men working in a belt of timber, and this encounter brought him back to affairs of the common day.  Grabbing an axe from young Peter Leary, he set to with a fury of effort and unheeding skill that brought the slim spruces flapping to earth.  Men had to jump to save themselves from being crushed.  The white chips flew in the gray twilight; and Bill Brennen wondered what imp’s claw had marked the skipper under the eyes and crisscrossed his temper.

The weather continued cold, cloudless and windless throughout the next three days.  During that time the skipper made no effort to see Flora, but was abroad from sun-up to sun-down with the men, cutting out timber for the little church as if his life depended on it.  No sight or sound of Dick Lynch came back to the harbor.  This gave Bill Brennen an argument in favor of loyalty to the skipper.  He preached it to the men, and it made a great impression on their simple though dangerous natures.

“There was Foxey Jack Quinn,” he said.  “Jack hated the skipper like we hates sea-water in our rum.  Didn’t he try to kill him—­t’row him over the cliff—­an’ didn’t the skipper put the comather on to him?  An’ then he tips and busts into the skipper’s house, wid the intention o’ t’iefing the money—­an’ where bes Foxey Jack Quinn this minute?  The saints only knows!—­or maybe the divil could tell