helped himself to what he needed, and was soon pulling
up the creek. Luckily there was no current against him, for it was
sickening work making the oar-stroke with that hurt in his shoulder.

He could see by the light of the lantern, which he occasionally held
aloft, that the long grass of the tide-marsh was already completely
submerged, the immense flats looking like a sea, with the wind driving
the water before it in long rolls, or catching it up and flirting it
through the air in spray and foam. His only guide to his course was the
scattering line of low willows whose tops still bent and shook above the
flood, indicating the slightly raised banks of the creek, everything
more distant being hidden in the profound darkness which brooded over
and seemed a part of the storm. But even with these landmarks he
wandered a good deal in his reckoning, and an hour or more had elapsed
before his watchful eyes caught the gleam of what might have been a star
reflected in the ocean.

"Thank God!" he whispered, and pulled a little faster toward that spark
of light.

In ten minutes more, he moored his boat to the hitching-post in front of
a tiny cottage, from whose uncurtained window the light of a brisk
wood-fire was shining. As the chain clanked in the ring, the door
opened, and a woman and child looked out.

"Is that you, Eben?" asked the woman, in an eager voice, made husky by
previous weeping. "I certainly feared you were drowned." Then seeing, as
her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, that the figure still
lingering about the boat was not her husband's she shrank back, fearing
the worst.

"I'm sorry I'm not the one you looked for, Mrs. Smiley," answered
Chillis, standing on the bit of portico, with its dripping honeysuckle
vines swinging in the wind; "but I'm better than nobody, I reckon, an'
Smiley will hardly be home to-night. The bay's awful rough, an' ef I
hadn't started over early, I shouldn't have ventured, neither. No, you
needn't look for your husband to-night, ma'am."

"Will you not come in by the fire, Mr. Chillis?" asked the woman,
hesitatingly, seeing that he seemed waiting to be invited.

"Thankee. But I shall spile your floor, ef I do. I'm a perfect sponge,
not fit to come near a lady, nohow. I thought," he added, as he closed
the door and advanced to the hearth, "that I would jest stop an' see ef
I could do anything for you, seein' as I guessed you'd be alone, and
mebbe afeard o' the storm an' the hi