hange ideas. Even here in America affairs seem to follow me. Will
you content yourself till evening? There are horses in the stable and
liquors in the cellar. Choose all or either, Henry. Personally, I find
them both amusing."

He stood motionless, however, even when his dark cloak was adjusted to
his shoulders, as though some matters were disturbing him; and then he
tapped his sword hilt with a precise, even motion of his fingers.

"Brutus," he said slowly, "I shall take my pistols also."

"Your pistols!" I echoed. "You have forgotten you are back in America."

He half turned toward me, and favored me with a serene, incurious glance.

"On the contrary," he said, "I am just beginning to remember."

And so without further words he left me. I followed him through our rear
doorway, out over the crumbling bricks of our terrace, which had been
built to overlook the river, and watched him walk slowly and thoughtfully
down the path with its border of elm trees, to his warehouses, where a
half dozen men had already started work.

The river was dark blue under a cloudless sky. The sunlight was playing
in restless sparkles where the wind ruffled the water's surface. Out near
the channel I could see the _Eclipse_ riding at anchor, her decks
littered with bales and gear, and the _Sun Maid_ and the _Sea Tern_, trim
and neat, and down deep in the water as though ready to put to sea. At
the head of our wharf were bales and boxes stacked in the odd confusion
that comes of a hasty discharge of cargo.

On the terrace where I was standing I could see the other wharves along
the waterfront, and the church spires and roofs of the town reared among
the trees that lined the busy streets. Toward the sand dunes the marshes
stretched away in russet gold into the autumn haze. The woods across the
river were bright patches of reds and yellows, pleasant and inviting in
the sunlight.

But I saw it all with only half an eye. I was still thinking of the dark
hall behind me, and the cold, unwelcome stillness of the shuttered rooms.
I could understand his depression, now that he had come back to it. But
there was something else.... I was still thinking of it when I looked at
the _Eclipse_ again. It would have been hard to find a craft of more
delicate, graceful lines. They often said he had a flair for ships and
women. A shifting current, some freak of the wind and tide, was making
her twist and pull at her anchor, and for a moment the sun struc