Before he could reply she caught a glimpse of his face.

“What is it?” she asked.  “What is the matter?  Is anybody sick?  Is your father—­”

“No, he’s all right.  That is, he’s as well as he has been lately, though that isn’t sayin’ much.”

“Is Grace—­”

“No, she’s all right, too, I guess.  Been sort of quiet and sorrowful for the last few weeks—­or I’ve seemed to notice that she has—­but I cal’late it’s nothin’ serious.  I wouldn’t wonder if the same thing that’s troublin’ her is what ails me.”

“But what is it?  Why don’t you tell me?”

“I’m goin’ to tell you, Keziah.  That’s what I come here for.  I—­”

“Sit down, can’t you?  Don’t stand up there like a lighthouse, shuttin’ out the whole broadside of the room.  You are the biggest thing!”

Captain Hammond selected the most substantial chair in the apartment and sat down upon it.  He looked at his friend and shook his head.

“No use, Keziah,” he said.  “If I was as deep down in the blues as the bottom of the Whale Deep, a look at that face of yours would pull me to the top again.  You’re a good woman!”

“Thanks!  When I have spare time on my hands I’ll practice tryin’ to believe that.  But what is the trouble, Nat?  Out with it.”

“Well, Keziah, it’s trouble enough.  Dad and I have had a fallin’ out.”

Mrs. Coffin’s mouth and eyes opened.

“What?” she cried, in utter astonishment.

“Yes.  It’s true.  We had what was next door to a real quarrel after dinner to-day.  It would have been a real one if I hadn’t walked off and left him.  He’s as set as the rock of Gibraltar, and—­”

“And your foundations ain’t given to slippin’ much.  Nat Hammond, I’m surprised at you!  What was it all about?  Religion?”

“No, not a sliver of religion in it.  If ’twas that, I could dodge, or haul down my colors, if I had to.  But it’s somethin’ worse, enough sight worse.  Somethin’ I can’t do—­even for dad—­and won’t either.  Keziah, he’s dead set on my marryin’ Grace.  Says if I don’t he’ll know that I don’t really care a tin nickel for him, or for his wishes, or what becomes of the girl after he’s gone.”

“Nat!”

“It’s a fact.  You see, dad realizes, better’n I thought he did, that his health is pretty shaky and that he is likely to founder ’most any time.  He says that don’t worry him; if he knew Grace and I were provided for he’d slip his cable with a clean manifest.  But the dream of his life, he says, has been that we should marry.  And he wants to see it done.”

Keziah was silent for a moment.  Then she said slowly: 

“And Grace herself?  How does she feel about it?  Has he spoken to her?”

“I don’t know.  I guess likely he has.  Perhaps that’s why she’s been so sort of mournful lately.  But never mind whether he has or not; I won’t do it and I told him so.  He got red hot in a jiffy.  I was ungrateful and stubborn and all sorts of things.  And I, bein’ a Hammond, with some of the Hammond balkiness in me, I set my foot down as hard as his.  And we had it until—­until—­well, until I saw him stagger and tremble so that I actually got scared and feared he was goin’ to keel over where he stood.