failed to take his customary seat by the
kitchen fire. He rarely said anything by way of talk; he nodded to the
farmer, to his wife, to Sally and, when he chanced to be at home, to her
brother, but he ventured nothing further. There he would sit from half
past seven until nine o'clock, stolid, heavy, impassive, his dull eyes
following now one of the family and now another, but always coming back
again to Sally. It sometimes happened that she had other company--some
of the young men of the neighborhood. The presence of such seemed to
make no difference to Hiram; he bore whatever broad jokes might be
cracked upon him, whatever grins, whatever giggling might follow those
jokes, with the same patient impassiveness. There he would sit, silent,
unresponsive; then, at the first stroke of nine o'clock, he would rise,
shoulder his ungainly person into his overcoat, twist his head into
his three-cornered hat, and with a "Good night, Sally, I be going now,"
would take his departure, shutting the door carefully to behind him.

Never, perhaps, was there a girl in the world had such a lover and such
a courtship as Sally Martin.

V

It was one Thursday evening in the latter part of November, about a week
after Blueskin's appearance off the capes, and while the one subject of
talk was of the pirates being in Indian River inlet. The air was still
and wintry; a sudden cold snap had set in and skims of ice had formed
over puddles in the road; the smoke from the chimneys rose straight in
the quiet air and voices sounded loud, as they do in frosty weather.

Hiram White sat by the dim light of a tallow dip, poring laboriously
over some account books. It was not quite seven o'clock, and he never
started for Billy Martin's before that hour. As he ran his finger slowly
and hesitatingly down the column of figures, he heard the kitchen door
beyond open and shut, the noise of footsteps crossing the floor and the
scraping of a chair dragged forward to the hearth. Then came the sound
of a basket of corncobs being emptied on the smoldering blaze and then
the snapping and crackling of the reanimated fire. Hiram thought nothing
of all this, excepting, in a dim sort of way, that it was Bob, the negro
mill hand, or old black Dinah, the housekeeper, and so went on with his
calculations.

At last he closed the books with a snap and, smoothing down his hair,
arose, took up the candle, and passed out of the room into the kitchen
beyond.

A man was