oeth
up on deck doin' the fishers' hornpipe in a couple of weeks."

But it was soon plain to everyone, the Captain included, that many times
two weeks must elapse before Mr. Hamilton would be able to appear on
deck again, to say nothing of dancing hornpipes. For days he lay in
partial coma, rallying occasionally and speaking at rare intervals but
evidently never fully aware of where he was and what had happened.

"He will recover, I think," said the doctor, "but it will be a slow
job."

Mary did not again refer to the letter regarding which Isaiah's memory
was so befogged. In fact, she forgot it entirely. So also did Captain
Shad. For both the worry of Zoeth's illness and the care of the store
were sufficient to drive trifles from their minds.

And for Mary there was another trouble, one which she must keep to
herself. Three weeks had elapsed since Crawford's letter, that telling
of his two fateful interviews with his father, and still no word had
come from him. Mary could not understand his silence. In vain she called
her philosophy to her rescue, striving to think that after all it was
best if she never heard from him again, best that a love affair which
could never end happily were ended at once, best that he should come to
see the question as his father saw it--best for him, that is, for
his future would then be one of ease and happiness. All this she
thought--and then found herself wondering why he had not written,
imagining all sorts of direful happenings and feeling herself
responsible.

CHAPTER XXIII

One evening, about a week after Mr. Hamilton's sudden seizure, Mary was
in her room alone. She had again reread Crawford's latest letter and was
sitting there trying to imagine the scene as he had described it. She
was trying to picture Edwin Smith, the man who--as his son had so often
told her--indulged that son's every whim, was kindness and parental love
personified, and yet had raved and stormed like a madman because the boy
wished to marry her, Mary Lathrop.

She rose, opened the drawer of her bureau, and took out the photograph
of Mr. Smith, the one which showed him without his beard, the one taken
since his illness. Crawford had written that this photograph, too, had
been taken on the sly.

"Dad's prejudice against photos is as keen as ever," he wrote. "He would
slaughter me on the spot if he knew I had snapped him."

The face in the picture was not that of the savage, unrelenting
parent