fection, and
then lashed his horse savagely and disappeared in the direction of
the barn.

"I read once about a skelington at a feast that rattled his dry bones
every time folks there started in to enjoy themselves," said the
Cap'n, after he watched the scowling Colonel out of sight. "For the
last two weeks, Louada Murilla, it don't seem as if I've smacked you
or you've smacked me but when I've jibed my head I've seen that ga'nt
brother-in-law o' mine standing off to one side sourer'n a home-made
cucumber pickle."

"It's aggravatin' for you, I know it is," she faltered. "But I've
been thinkin' that perhaps he'd get more reconciled as the time goes
on."

"Reconciled?" snapped the Cap'n, a little of the pepper in his nature
coming to the surface. "If it was any one but you little woman, that
talked about me as though I was death or an amputated leg in this
family, I'd get hot under the collar. But I tell ye, we ain't got
many years left to love each other in. We started pritty late. We
can't afford to waste any time. And we can't afford to have the edge
taken off by that Chinese image standin' around and makin' faces.
I've been thinkin' of tellin' him so. But the trouble is with me that
when I git to arguin' with a man I'm apt to forgit that I ain't on
shipboard and talkin' to a tar-heel."

He surveyed his brown fists with a certain apprehensiveness, as
though they were dangerous parties over whom he had no control.

"I should dretfully hate to have anything come up between you and
Gideon, Cap'n," she faltered, a frightened look in her brown eyes.
"It wouldn't settle anything to have trouble. But you've been about
so much and seen human nature so much that it seems as though you
could handle him different than with--with--"

"Poundin' him, eh?" Smiles broke over the skipper's face. "See how
I'm softened, little woman!" he cried. "Time was when I would have
chased a man that made faces at me as he done just now, and I'd have
pegged him into the ground. But love has done a lot for me in makin'
me decent. If I keep on, I'll forgit I've got two fists--and that's
something for a shipmaster to say, now, I'll tell ye! A man has got
to git into love himself to know how it feels."

Sudden reflection illuminated his face.

"Ain't old pickalilly--that brother of yourn--ever been in love?"
he asked.

"Why--why," she stammered, "he's been in--well, sometimes now I
think perhaps it ain't love, knowin' what I do now--but he