"

"Want your suitcase, ma'am?" asked Willy.

"Wait. I am not sure. I--I must see if I----. I may not stay.
Wait," she repeated, still staring about the neighborhood.

As a usual thing, she was not a person given to uncertainty, in either
manner or speech. Her somewhat haughty glance, her high-arched nose,
her thin lips, all showed decision and a scorn of other people's
opinions and wishes. But at this moment she was plainly nonplused.

"There--there doesn't seem to be anybody about," she faltered.

"Oh, go right into the store, ma'am. Cap'n Abe's somewheres around.
He always is."

Thus encouraged by the driver the woman stalked up the store steps.
She was not a ponderous woman, but she was tall and carried
considerable flesh. She could carry this well, however, and did. Her
traveling dress and hat were just fashionable enough to be in the mode,
but in no extreme. This well-bred, haughty, but perspiring woman
approached the entrance to Cap'n Abe's store in a spirit of frank
disapproval.

On the threshold she halted with an audible gasp, indicating amazement.
Her glance swept the interior of the store with its strange
conglomeration of goods for sale--on the shelves the rows of glowingly
labeled canned goods, the blue papers of macaroni, the little green
cartons of fishhooks; the clothing hanging in groves, the rows and rows
of red mittens; tiers of kegs of red lead, barrels of flour, boxes of
hardtack; hanks of tarred ground-line, coils of several sizes of
cordage, with a small kedge anchor here and there. It was not so much
a store as it was a warehouse displaying many articles the names and
uses for which the lady did not even know.

The wondrous array of goods in Cap'n Abe's store did not so much
startle the visitor, as the figure that rose from behind the counter,
where he was stooping at some task.

She might be excused her sudden cry, for Cap'n Amazon was an apparition
to shock any nervous person. The bandana he wore seemed, if possible,
redder than usual this morning; his earrings glistened; his long
mustache seemed blacker and glossier than ever. As he leaned
characteristically upon the counter, his sleeves rolled to his elbows,
the throat-latch of his shirt open, he did not give one impression of a
peaceful storekeeper, to say the least.

"Mornin', ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon, not at all embarrassed. "What can
I do for you, ma'am?"

"You--you are not Captain Silt?" the visitor almost wh