r delay on that first
cargo, the debt had been amply paid. Yet he saw that no such sense of
obligation had influenced her. To her this extra work had been a duty:
he was behind-hand with the wall, and anxious; she would help him out.
As to the weather, she reveled in it. The dash of the spray and the
driving rain only added to her enjoyment. The clatter of rattling
buckets and the rhythmic movement of the shovelers keeping time to her
orders made a music as dear to her as that of the steady tramp of men
and the sound of arms to a division commander.

Owing to the continued bad weather and the difficulty of shipping small
quantities of fuel, the pumping-engines ran out of coal, and a complaint
from Babcock's office brought the agent of the coal company to the
sea-wall. In times like these Babcock rarely left his work. Once let the
Old Man of the Sea, as he knew, get his finger in between the cracks of
a coffer-dam, and he would smash the whole into wreckage.

"I was on my way to see Tom Grogan," said the agent. "I heard you were
here, so I stopped to tell you about the coal. There will be a load down
in the morning. I am Mr. Crane, of Crane & Co., coal-dealers."

"You know Mrs. Grogan, then?" asked Babcock, after the delay in the
delivery of the coal had been explained. He had been waiting for
some such opportunity to discover more about his stevedore. He never
discussed personalities with his men.

"Well, I should say so--known her for years. Best woman on top of Staten
Island. Does she work for you?"

"Yes, and has for some years; but I must confess I never knew Grogan was
a woman until I found her on the dock a few weeks ago, handling a cargo.
She works like a machine. How long has she been a widow?"

"Well, come to think of it, I don't know that she is a widow. There's
some mystery about the old man, but I never knew what. But that don't
count; she's good enough as she is, and a hustler, too."

Crane was something of a hustler himself--one of those busy Americans
who opens his daily life with an office-key and closes it with a letter
for the late mail. He was a restless, wiry, black-eyed little man,
never still for a moment, and perpetually in chase of another eluding
dollar,--which half the time he caught.

Then, laying his hand on Babcock's arm: "And she's square as a brick,
too. Sometimes when a chunker captain, waiting to unload, shoves a few
tons aboard a sneak-boat at night, Tom will spot him every time