g 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 a man with a heart in him; he's a sneak with a lie in his mouth.
Why don't he come round like any of the others and say where he's goin'
and what he wants to do instead of peepin' round the gate-posts
watchin' for her and sendin' her notes on the sly, and makin' her lie
to me, her old nurse, who's done nothin' but love her? Doctor John
don't treat Miss Jane so--he loves her like a man ought to love a woman
and he ain't got nothin' to hide--and you didn't treat your wife so.
There's something here that tells me"--and she laid her hand on her
bosom--"tells me more'n I dare tell ye. I warn ye now ag'in. Send him
to sea--anywhere, before it is too late. She ain't got no mother; she
won't mind a word I say; Miss Jane is blind as a bat; out with him and
NOW!"

The captain straightened himself up, and with his clenched fist raised
above his head like a hammer about to strike, cried:

"If he harmed the daughter of Morton Cobden I'd kill him!" The words
jumped hot from his throat with a slight hissing sound, his eyes still
aflame.

"Well, then, stop it before it gets too late. I walk the floor nights
and I'm scared to death every hour I live." Then her voice broke.
"Please, captain, please," she added in a piteous tone. "Don't mind me
if I talk wild, my heart is breakin', and I can't hold in no longer,"
and she burst into a paroxysm of tears.

The captain leaned against the sideboard again and looked down upon the
floor as if in deep thought. Martha's tears did not move him. The tears
of few women d