“Ain’t nobody sick, is there, Martha?”

“No, but there will be.  Are ye alone?”

“Yes.”

“Then shut that door behind ye and sit down. 
I’ve got something to say.”

The grizzled, weather-beaten man who had made twenty voyages around Cape Horn, and who was known as a man of few words, and those always of command, closed the door upon them, drew down the shade on the sunny side of the room and faced her.  He saw now that something of more than usual importance absorbed her.

“Now, what is it?” he asked.  His manner had by this time regained something of the dictatorial tone he always showed those beneath him in authority.

“It’s about Bart.  You’ve got to send him away.”  She had not moved from her position in the middle of the room.

The captain changed color and his voice lost its sharpness.

“Bart!  What’s he done now?”

“He sneaks off with our Lucy every chance he gets.  They were on the beach yesterday hidin’ behind the House o’ Refuge with their heads together.  She had on Miss Jane’s red cloak, and Ann Gossaway thought it was Miss Jane, and I let it go at that.”

The captain looked at Martha incredulously for a moment, and then broke into a loud laugh as the absurdity of the whole thing burst upon him.  Then dropping back a step, he stood leaning against the old-fashioned sideboard, his elbows behind him, his large frame thrust toward her.

“Well, what if they were—­ain’t she pretty enough?” he burst out.  “I told her she’d have ‘em all crazy, and I hear Bart ain’t done nothin’ but follow in her wake since he seen her launched.”

Martha stepped closer to the captain and held her fist in his face.

“He’s got to stop it.  Do ye hear me?” she shouted.  “If he don’t there’ll be trouble, for you and him and everybody.  It’s me that’s crazy, not him.”

“Stop it!” roared the captain, straightening up, the glasses on the sideboard ringing with his sudden lurch.  “My boy keep away from the daughter of Morton Cobden, who was the best friend I ever had and to whom I owe more than any man who ever lived!  And this is what you traipsed up here to tell me, is it, you mollycoddle?”

Again Martha edged nearer; her body bent forward, her eyes searching his—­so close that she could have touched his face with her knuckles.

“Hold your tongue and stop talkin’ foolishness,” she blazed out, the courage of a tigress fighting for her young in her eyes, the same bold ring in her voice.  “I tell ye, Captain Holt, it’s got to stop short off, and now!  I know men; have known ’em to my misery.  I know when they’re honest and I know when they ain’t, and so do you, if you would open your eyes.  Bart don’t mean no good to my bairn.  I see it in his face.  I see it in the way he touches her hand and ties on her bonnet.  I’ve watched him ever since the first night he laid eyes on her.  He ain’t