Elsa Mallaby had always been like that to him. Even when she married
"Hard-Luck" Jim Mallaby she had always seemed to regard Code Schofield
as the one man in Freekirk Head. But Jim, being too busy with his
strange affairs, had not noticed.

Jim it was who, after twenty years of horrible poverty and ill-luck,
had caught the largest halibut ever taken off the Banks and made
thousands of dollars exhibiting it alive. And it was this same Jim
who, for the remaining ten years of his life, turned to gold
everything he touched.

Mallaby House was his real monument, for here, on the great green hill
that overlooked the harbor, he had erected a mansion that made his
name famous up and down the Bay of Fundy. And here, seven years ago,
he had brought Elsa Fuller as his bride--Elsa Fuller who was the belle
of Freekirk Head, and had been to Boston to boarding-school.

It was to Mallaby House that Code Schofield had come to dinner this
night. He had not wanted to come and had only agreed when she bribed
him with a promise of something very important she might reveal.

The revelation was hardly a pleasure. Nothing had been a pleasure to
him since that day six months ago when his old schooner, dismasted and
leaking in a gale, had foundered near the Wolves, two sharp-toothed
islands near Grande Mignon. Four islanders had been lost that day, and
he alone had lived through the surf.

"What else did old Jed Martin say, Elsa?" he asked suddenly.

She knitted her brows and stared into the fire. Why would he always go
back to that?

"He said that the _May Schofield_ should have been able to live out
that gale easily if she had been handled right, old as she was. She
_was_ pretty old, wasn't she?"

"Fifty years. She was twenty when dad got her--he sailed her
twenty-eight and I had her for two."

"You got a good deal of insurance out of her, didn't you, Code?"

"Ten thousand dollars--her full value."

"And you bought the _Charming Lass_ with that, didn't you?"

"Yes--that and two thousand that dad had saved. Why?"

"Old Jed Martin said something about that, too."

Schofield's face paled slightly and his mouth closed tightly,
exhibiting the salience of his jaw.

"So that's it, eh? Thinks I ran her under for the insurance--the old
barnacle. Is that around the island, too?"

"I guess it must be, or I shouldn't have heard about it. You didn't,
of course, did you, Code?"

"I hardly expected you would ask that, Elsa. Why, I lov