me! I believe I'm wool-gathering. I clean forgot what I come
for. It is you, Miss Jane, I come to see, not this little curly head
that'll git me ashore yet with her cunnin' ways. They're goin' to build
a new life-saving station down Barnegat way. That Dutch brig that come
ashore last fall in that so'easter and all them men drownded could have
been saved if we'd had somethin' to help 'em with. We did all we could,
but that house of Refuge ain't half rigged and most o' the time ye got
to break the door open to git at what there is if ye're in a hurry,
which you allus is. They ought to have a station with everything 'bout
as it ought to be and a crew on hand all the time; then, when somethin'
comes ashore you're right there on top of it. That one down to Squam is
just what's wanted here."

"Will it be near the new summer hotel?" asked Lucy carelessly, just as
a matter of information, and without raising her eyes from the rings on
her beautiful hands.

"'Bout half a mile from the front porch, ma'am"--he preferred calling
her so--"from what I hear. 'Tain't located exactly yet, but some'er's
along there. I was down with the Gov'ment agent yesterday."

"Who will take charge of it, captain?" inquired Jane, reaching over her
basket in search of her scissors.

"Well, that's what I come up for. They're talkin' about me," and the
captain put his hands behind Ellen's head and cracked his big knuckles
close to her ear, the child laughing with delight as she listened.

The announcement was received with some surprise. Jane, seeing Martha's
inquiring face, as if she wanted to hear, repeated the captain's words
to her in a loud voice. Martha laid down her knitting and looked at the
captain over her spectacles.

"Why, would you take it, captain?" Jane asked in some astonishment,
turning to him again.

"Don't know but I would. Ain't no better job for a man than savin'
lives. I've helped kill a good many; 'bout time now I come 'bout on
another tack. I'm doin' nothin'--haven't been for years. If I could get
the right kind of a crew 'round me--men I could depend on--I think I
could make it go."

"If you couldn't nobody could, captain," said Jane in a positive way.
"Have you picked out your crew?"

"Yes, three or four of 'em. Isaac Polhemus and Tom Morgan--Tom sailed
with me on my last voyage--and maybe Tod."

"Archie's Tod?" asked Jane, replacing her scissors and searching for a
spool of cotton.

"Archie's Tod," repeated the c