y had been, stared down
reproachfully at me through the night. I feebly wiped my weeping eyes
and rolled and laughed the more, and slept at last such a sleep as only
the foolish and blessed of mortality know.

XII

THE MASTER REVELLER

"Notely! You will be leading Fluke to go wrong, Notely. He takes no
interest at home or in the fishing since you and those pleasure-men you
have with you have been keeping open house at the Neck. When he comes
home he has been wild and drinking, and is moody. It is a week since
you have been away from your home and wife with your yacht anchored
here off shore, hunting and cruising, and such times at the old
Garrison place at night--it is the talk!"

Notely laughed and rose. Vesty had been standing looking down at him
earnestly, where he sat in her doorway: she held her baby asleep on one
strong arm, its face against her neck.

Notely turned his own face away a little, jingling the free coin in his
pockets. "Why, I have been making money on my own account, Mrs. Gurdon
Rafe," he cried gayly, "since I opened the quarry. And no man, nor no
woman either, now says to me, Do this or do that, go here or go there.
From all accounts, moreover, my wife and mother are enjoying themselves
extremely well as ever during my absence. As for Fluke Rafe, he is a
good fellow, but he was always wild as a hawk."

"O Notely! if you would only help such men, as you might, instead of
being as wild as a hawk with them!"

"It takes a hawk to catch a hawk, my dear: all the ministers will tell
you that."

"Is that what you are doing it for?"

"Well, no; since you are a Basin, and only truth avails, there has been
hitherto no deep moral design in my merry orgies at the Neck. But
to-night, Vesty, is my grand affair; to be hallowed by the presence of
all the Basins: my feast and ball to them, you know--my oldest and best
friends. And you--why, Vesty," he went on, in another tone, "you
remember we had always a dance a week at the Basin, and you and I led
them off together. Come, then, for the sake of old times and the
feeling of the rest, though you may enjoy it yourself no more."

He spoke with reckless meaning, and his eyes, that had such fatal power
of expression in them, looked deep into hers. She paled; the baby
threw up a sleeping hand against her face.

"There is another thing, Notely," she said. "Gurdon does not like it
that you come here for an hour or more every day to sit and