will change your opinion of me."

"Well, I don't know. I don't know. What you did say," he observed in
that same reflective, gentle tone, "didn't seem to change our
opinion much. Not mine and Prudence's."

"Cap'n Ball!"

"No," he went on, wagging his head. "You committing such a fault as
you say you was accused of, and you coming down here as you did,
through a trick--somehow those facts, if they be facts, don't seem
to have much effect on our opinion. Me and the old woman feel that
somehow--we don't know how--what you told us that night and what you
done for us before that night don't fit together nohow."

She stared at him without understanding. He cleared his throat and
mopped his brow again with the big silk handkerchief.

"No, gal, we can't understand how anybody as good and loving as you
have been to us can be at heart as bad as--as other folks might try
to make out. Fact is, we know you can't be bad."

"What--what do you mean, Cap'n Ball?" she asked faintly.

"I swan! I tell ye what I'm getting at," burst out the old man. "We
want you to come back. Prudence, she wants you to come back. I swan!
I want you to come back. Why, even that dratted Queen of Sheby needs
you, Ida May--or, whatever your name is! We've got to have you!"

"Prudence can't scurcely get around the house. And that niece of
hers sits there like a stick or a stun, not willin' to scurce lift
her hand to help. Thank the Lord _she's_ goin' home to-day. Her
visit's come to an end. She don't like it down here. She says we're
all a set of--er--hicks, I believe she calls us.

"Howsomever, we're all high and dry on the reefs, gal, and it seems
likely you're the only one can get us off. You ain't got to go away
from here, if you don't want to. I've made it pretty average plain
to that Bostwick gal that no matter what happens, she's got no
expectations as far as Prudence and me are concerned. It was money
and nothing but money she was after. Her being Prudence's niece in
kind of a far-fetched way don't make it our duty--not even our
Christian duty, as Elder Minnett calls it--to keep a gal in the
house that we don't want, nor yet die at her convenience and leave
her our money. And so I'll tell the elder if he undertakes to put
his spoon in the dish again."

Sheila was listening to words that she had never expected to hear
from the old captain. Could this be true? Were Cap'n Ira and
Prudence, in spite of what they knew about her--what she had tol