band and Annie were very willing to go over to the Kinzers'
with her, and listen to the encouraging talk of Dabney's stout-hearted
and sensible mother.

"O, Mrs. Kinzer, do you think they are in any danger?"

"I hope not. I don't see why they need be, unless they try to return
across the bay against this wind."

"But don't you think they'll try? Do you mean they wont be home
to-night?" exclaimed Mr. Foster, himself.

"I sincerely hope not," said the widow, calmly. "I should hardly feel
like trusting Dabney out in the boat again if he should do so foolish a
thing."

"But where can he stay?"

"At anchor, somewhere, or on the island. Almost anywhere but tacking on
the bay. He'd be really safer out at sea than trying to get home."

"Out at sea!"

There was something dreadful in the very idea of it, and Annie Foster
turned pale enough when she thought of the gay little yacht, and her
brother out on the broad Atlantic in it, with no better crew than Dab
Kinzer and Dick Lee. Samantha and her sisters were hardly as steady
about it as their mother, but they were careful to conceal their
misgivings from their neighbors, which was very kindly, indeed, in the
circumstances.

There was little use in trying to think or talk of anything else besides
the boys, however, with the sound of the "high wind" in the trees out by
the road-side, and a very anxious circle was that, up to the late hour
at which the members of it separated for the night.

But there were other troubled hearts in that vicinity. Old Bill Lee
himself had been out fishing, all day, with very poor luck; but he
forgot all about that when he learned that Dick and his young white
friends had not returned. He even pulled back to the mouth of the inlet,
to see if the gathering darkness would yield him any signs of his boy.
He did not know it; but, while he was gone, Dick's mother, after
discussing her anxieties with some of her dark-skinned neighbors, half
weepingly unlocked her one "clothes-press," and took out the suit which
had been the pride of her absent son. She had never admired them half as
much before, but they seemed to need a red neck-tie to set them off; and
so the gorgeous result of Dick's fishing and trading came out of its
hiding-place, and was arranged on the white coverlet of her own bed with
the rest of his best garments.

"Jus' de t'ing for a handsome young feller like Dick," she muttered to
herself:

"Wot for'd an ole woman like me want to