“When I get to talkin’ about Hall and Company I could talk for a month of Sundays.  Them was great days—­yes, sir, great days for South Harniss and the fish business.  Why I’ve seen, of a Saturday mornin’ in the mackerel season, as many as forty men ashore right here in town with money in their pockets and their hats on onesided, lookin’ for fun or trouble just as happened along.  And Cap’n Marcellus and his partners was looked up to and respected; not much more’n boys they wan’t, but they was big-bugs, I tell you, and they wore beaver hats to church on Sunday, every man jack of ’em.  Fur’s that goes, I wore one, too, and you might not think it, but ‘twas becomin’ to me if I do say it.  Yes, sir-ee!  ’Twas a kind of curl-up brim one, that hat was, and—­”

“Never mind the hat now, Isaiah,” interrupted Mary.  “Tell me about Mr. Farmer.”

Isaiah looked offended.  “I am tellin’ you, ain’t I?” he demanded.  “Ain’t I tellin’ you fast as I can?”

“Perhaps you are.  We won’t argue about it.  Go on.”

“Well—­well, where was I?  You’ve put me clear off my course.”

“You were just going to tell me what Mr. Farmer did.”

“What he did!  What didn’t he do, you’d better say!  The blackguard! 
He smashed the firm flat, that’s what he done!  And he run off with
Marcellus’s sister.”

“Marcellus’s sister!  My stepfather’s sister!  I didn’t know he ever had a sister.  Are you sure he had?”

“Am I sure!  What kind of talk’s that?  Course I’m sure!  She was younger than Marcellus and pretty—­say, she was pretty!  Yes, the outside of her figurehead was mighty hard to beat, everybody said so; but the inside was kind of—­well, kind of rattly, as you might say.  She’d laugh and talk and go on and Ed Farmer he’d hang over the desk there in the office and look at her.  Just look—­and look—­and look.  How many times I’ve seen ’em that way!  It got so that folks begun to talk a little mite.  Marcellus didn’t, of course; he idolized that girl, worshiped her like a vain thing, so’s to speak.  And Cap’n Shad, course he wouldn’t talk because he’s always down on tattle-tales and liars, but I’ve always thought he was a little mite suspicious and troubled.  As for poor Zoeth—­well, it’s always his kind that are the last to suspect.  And Zoeth was as innocent then as he is now.  And as good, too.

“And then one day it come out, come down on us like the mainmast goin’ by the board.  No, come to think of it, it didn’t come all to once that way.  Part of it did, but the rest didn’t.  The rest kind of leaked out along slow, gettin’ a little mite worse every day.  I can see it just as plain as if ‘twas yesterday—­Marcellus and Shadrach in the office goin’ over the books and addin’ up on pieces of paper, and it gettin’ worse and worse all the time.  And the whole town a-talkin’!  And poor Zoeth lyin’ in his bedroom there to home, out of his mind and ravin’ distracted and beggin’ and pleadin’ with his partners not to chase ’em, to let ’em go free for her sake.  And the doctor a-comin’!  And—­”