ere clumps of pines and cedars. Nature
had done all she could in wringing out whatever green and lusty life was
left in rocks and sand to make the place home-like and cheerful. Beside
the trees, there was a patch of kitchen-garden back of the house, a
grape-vine or two on the walls, trailing moss hanging to its eaves,--the
delicate web-like moss that grows along this coast out of dead wood;
even the beach rocks glowed into colors,--dark browns, purples, and
reds.

But for all these it needed summer and sunshine. On this, the day before
Christmas, the house and the land about it were smothered in a cold
mist: only the shivering sea beyond had voice or motion.

"It's a dull, uncanny place, Mrs. Jacobus," said Lufflin, anxiously. "It
looks like a prison to me to-day. What if we've made a mistake?"

"We have made no mistake," calmly.

"Indoors," he persisted, "the house is cheerful enough. But it's a rough
coast, and the oyster-dredgers and wrackers hint that the house be n't
above highest water-mark. They're a wild pack, them wrackers. I doubt
it's a gloomy home I've picked for M. Jacobus, after all his"--

Something in her face silenced him.

"You did right, Uncle George," she answered, cheerfully.

But the pleasant eyes he had liked so much last night he noticed were
turned to the sea now with a hard look, new to him, begotten both of
great pain and obstinate endurance.

"Of course you know, Charlotte,--of course. God knows I want to do
what's for the best."

He hesitated, then went on briskly, taking courage.

"See now, Lotty, I'm an old fellow. I've walked you to sleep many's the
night, being your father's chum, and living in his house till the day of
his death. I'd like you to know I'm a true friend. If so be as you're in
trouble, you must tell me. If this house is a sort of hiding, as I've
thought once or twice, speak the word, and there's nobody shall get
below Barnegat, to disturb it, or"--

Mrs. Jacobus faced him suddenly,--the nerves in her body seeming to
stiffen, her half-shut eyes fixed on his. The Captain's quailed.

"You mean Jerome?" in a low voice.

He did not answer. She waited a moment, and then turned again to the
window,--holding forcibly down whatever resistance his touch had roused
in her.

"You mean well," she said, quietly, after a pause. "But you do not know
my husband. I was a fool to expect that; yet I did expect
it,"--remembering bitterly how, when she brought her husband here,