hich
was the step to the kitchen door, she turned to say:

"You didn't swim yesterday."

"No--o. I--I was busy."

"I see."

She paused, as if expecting him to say something further on the subject.
He was silent. Her manner changed.

"Good morning," she said, coldly, and walked off. The assistant watched
her as she descended the path to the cove, but she did not once look
back. Brown threw himself into a chair. He had never hated anyone as
thoroughly as he hated himself at the moment.

"What a cheerful liar she must think I am," he reflected. "She caught me
in that fool yarn about meeting her brother here last summer; and now,
after deliberately promising to teach her that stroke, I don't go near
her. What a miserable liar she must think I am! And I guess I am. By
George, I can't be such a cad. I've got to make good somehow. I must
give her ONE lesson. I must."

The tide served for bathing about three that afternoon. At ten minutes
before that hour the substitute assistant keeper of Eastboro Twin-Lights
tiptoed silently to the bedroom of his superior and peeped in. Seth was
snoring peacefully. Brown stealthily withdrew. At three, precisely, he
emerged from the boathouse on the wharf, clad in his bathing suit.

Fifteen minutes after three, Seth Atkins, in his stocking feet and with
suspicion in his eye, crept along the path to the edge of the bluff.
Crouching behind a convenient sand dune he raised his head and peered
over it.

Below him was the cove, its pleasant waters a smooth, deep blue,
streaked and bordered with pale green. But the water itself did not
interest Seth. In that water was his helper, John Brown, of nowhere in
particular, John Brown, the hater of females, busily engaged in teaching
a young woman to swim.

Atkins watched this animated picture for some minutes. Then, carefully
crawling back up to the path until he was well out of possible sight
from the cove, he rose to his feet, raised both hands, and shook their
clenched fists above his head.

"The liar!" grated Mr. Atkins, between his teeth. "The traitor! The
young blackguard! After tellin' me that he . . . And after my doin'
everything for him that . . . Oh, by Judas, wait! only wait till he
comes back! I'LL l'arn him! I'LL show him! Oh, by jiminy crimps!"

He strode toward the doorway of the kitchen. There he stopped short.
A woman was seated in the kitchen rocker; a stout woman, with her back
toward him. The room, in contrast to the b