had seldom spoken to or of his
daughter, Lucretia. She must have led a very lonely and repressed
life while she was a little girl. Medford Latham did not go to sea,
for he had business that kept him on shore.

Medford Latham lived long enough to see Randall grow up, walk his
own quarter-deck, and marry a maiden from the port who promised to
be able to fulfill his hopes of a flourishing houseful of children.
She bore Tunis while young Captain Randall Latham was away, and he
came back in time to christen the boy with the name of the most
colorful city he had touched on the trip, not an uncommon practice
of seagoing fathers on the Cape. But Mrs. Randall Latham, watching
her husband's ship bear off to seaward in the face of a keen gale,
caught a severe cold, and when Captain Randall returned the next
time he came not to a cradle in the great living room of the big,
brown house, but to an already-sodden grave in the family plot on
the west side of the saucerlike valley.

Lucretia Latham had grown to be a tall, large-boned, silent, and
quick-stepping woman--a woman of understanding and infinite
tenderness, although this tenderness was exhibited in deeds, not
words.

The big, quiet-faced woman, who had never had a lover and on whom no
man had ever looked with admiration, seemed to the casual observer
cold and uncompromising. She might speak to the dog, call the fowls
to their meals, but she never otherwise spoke unless she was forced
to. When he was little, Tunis had found in her arms and against her
breast a refuge from all hurt and fear, but it was a wordless
comfort Aunt Lucretia gave him.

When he walked over from the cove that afternoon, after seeing the
anchor of the _Seamew_ over-side for the first time in this
roadstead, Tunis found his Aunt Lucretia much as usual. She watched
him approach from the side porch, a warm smile of greeting on her
rather gaunt face. He knew that she must have watched the _Seamew_
skim by, making for the channel into the cove; for he had written
her when to expect him. But she would say nothing about it unless he
forced the gates of her silence by some direct question which
demanded more than a "yes" or a "no."

Lucretia folded him in her arms, however, and patted his broad
shoulder with little love pats as he put his arms about her. Her
kiss for him was as warm on his lips as a girl's. They understood
each other pretty well, these two; for Tunis had caught something of
her muteness,