hing in that faint and elfin twilight; but it drew his
eye and aroused his curiosity as no natural shadow of any familiar rock
could have done. He dragged a skiff from under one of the stages and
launched it into the quiet harbor and with a single oar over the stern
sculled out toward the black object on the steel-gray tide. It proved
to be a fine bully, empty and with the frozen painter hanging over the
bow and trailing alongside.

"So this bes how he come to Chance Along--an' not man enough to moor his
boat safe!" exclaimed the skipper.

The bully was as empty as on the day it had been built, save for one oar
lying across the thwarts. Not even a spar and sail were aboard her. The
man must be an absolute fool to set out along a dangerous coast, in a
bad time of year, single-handed and without grub or gear, reflected the
skipper. The thought that such a bungler as this stranger should be
preferred to himself, intensified his pangs of humiliation. No girl who
understood such things--no girl of that coast--would treat him so, he
reflected, bitterly. He pulled the dripping painter aboard the skiff,
made it fast around a thwart and towed the bully ashore.

Mary Kavanagh had been astir as early as the skipper himself. She had
gone first to the store. Peering through a window, she had made out the
stranger's form on the floor, bulkily blanketed. From the store, she
hastened to the skipper's house, saw his footprints pointing toward the
land-wash, and stood with her hand on the latch until a skiff slid out
into her line of vision from behind the drying-stages. She knew that the
skipper was on his way to investigate the derelict bully. She opened the
door then, entered quietly and went to Mother Nolan's room. The old
woman was sitting up in bed with her night-cap a-tilt over one ear.

"Saints alive, Mary, what mischief bes afoot now?" asked Mother Nolan.

Mary drew close to the bed-side and leaned over to her confederate.

"The captain bes safe in the store, all rolled up in blankets," she
whispered, "an'--an' I larned something last night that means as how we
kin get 'em both away before long, wid luck. An' I played a trick on the
skipper--so don't ye bes worryin' when he tells ye as how he's found the
captain's boat. Give the word to the lass to keep her heart up. Sure,
we'll be gettin' the two o' them safe out o' the harbor yet."

"An' where bes Denny now? How'd ye get into the house?" asked the old
woman.

"He bes o