The telegram to Michael Kelly of San Francisco brought an answer, but a most unsatisfactory one.  Jedediah Cahoon had not been in the Kelly employ for more than six weeks.  Kelly did not know where he had gone and, apparently, did not care.  Captain Obed then wired and wrote the San Francisco police officials, urging them to trace the lost one.  This they promised to do, but nothing came of it.  The weeks passed and no word from them or from Jedediah himself was received.  His letter had come to prove that, at the time it was written, he was alive; whether or not he was still alive, or where he might be if living, was as great a mystery as ever.  Day after day Thankful watched and waited and hoped, but her waiting was unrewarded, and, though she still hoped, her hope grew steadily fainter; and the self-reproach and the worry greater in proportion.

She and Georgie and Imogene spent Thanksgiving Day alone.  Heman Daniels and Mr. Hammond were invited out and Captain Obed, who had meant to eat his Thanksgiving dinner at the High Cliff House, was called to Boston on business connected with his fish selling, and could not return in time.

Early in December Thankful once more drove to Trumet to call upon Solomon Cobb.  The question of the renewal of the mortgage she felt must remain a question no longer.  But she obtained little satisfaction from her talk with the money-lender.  Mr. Cobb’s first remark concerned the Holliday Kendrick offer to buy the “Cap’n Abner place.”

“Did he mean it, do you think?” he demanded.  “Is he really so sot on buyin’ as folks say he is?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Huh!  And he’s hired his lawyer—­that young cousin of his—­Bailey Kendrick’s son—­to make you sell out to him?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the young feller done about it; anything?”

“No; nothin’ that I know of.”

“Humph!  Sure of that, be ye?  I hear he’s been spendin’ consider’ble time over to Ostable lately, hangin’ round the courthouse, and the probate clerk’s office.  Know what he’s doin’ that for?”

“No, I didn’t know he had.  How did you know it?”

“I knew.  Ain’t much goin’ on that I don’t know; I make it my business to know.  Why don’t you sell out to old Holliday?”

“I don’t want to sell.  My boardin’-house has just got a good start and why should I give it up?  I won’t sell.”

“Oh, you won’t!  Pretty independent for anybody with a mortgage hangin’ over ’em, ain’t ye?”

“Solomon, are you goin’ to renew that mortgage when it comes due?”

Mr. Cobb pulled his whiskers.  “I don’t know’s I am and I don’t know’s I ain’t,” he said.  “This Kendrick business kind of mixes things up.  Might be a good idea for me to foreclose that mortgage and sell the place to him at my own price.  Eh?  What do you think of that?”

“You wouldn’t do it!  You couldn’t be so—­”

“So what?  Business is business and if he’s goin’ to put you out anyhow, I don’t see why I shouldn’t get my share of the pickin’s.”