l be many months of
fighting and prize-taking still. He thinks a great fellow of sixteen
like me should have been a ship's officer long ago, and I think so,
too. What a good fellow Cousin Martin is!"

Alan admired his elder cousin greatly, Cicely well knew, and he had,
indeed, a touch of the same excitable, headstrong nature. She could
well understand how Martin Hallowell had dazzled the boy with tales of
what he would see and do. Had there been such a plan in her cousin's
mind when he first uttered his threat against her father? Or had it
only flashed upon him as he met Alan running up the stairs, eager,
vigorous, and ready for any adventure?

"It is all arranged," declared Alan, "except just to tell my father."

"No, no," she cried wildly, but he did not even listen.

"I will go in and speak to him now," he said. She could not even cry
out as the door closed behind him.

Alan had his father's stern and steady pride, but there were
differences of temperament that led to frequent clashes of will
between them. Reuben Hallowell loved both his motherless children, but
he understood his son less well than his daughter. What would be the
result of that interview, Cicely wondered, sitting quaking beside the
candle that burned so lonely in the gloom. Would her father know how
to be firm and patient, how to undo the harm that Martin Hallowell had
wrought? It seemed, as she sat there, shivering, that she could not
endure the suspense.

She had not long to wait. The door banged open and Alan stood for a
moment on the threshold.

"My father forbids my sailing on the _Huntress_. I have told him I
should go in spite of him," he said.

He walked away along the corridor and down the stone steps, his feet
quicker and lighter than Martin Hallowell's but his footsteps
sounding, in some vague, terrible way, like his cousin's as he strode
out and down the stairs.

Her father came in a moment later.

"You should have been at home long since this, my child," was all he
said, and they went out together, without further talk of the matter,
into the sharp air of the snowy night.

At the corner of the steep, narrow street, Cicely caught sight of
Martin Hallowell talking to a man whom she recognized as an old
seaman who had sailed for years upon the Hallowell ships. Something
Martin had said must have angered the sailor, for he was talking
loudly, regardless of who might hear.

"No," the old man was saying, "there's not every one