t to the old Squire. Squire Hall read the letter, shaking
his head the while. "Too much risk, Hiram!" said he. "Mr Shippin
wouldn't have asked you to go into this venture if he could have got
anybody else to do so. My advice is that you let it alone. I reckon
you've come to me for advice?" Hiram shook his head. "Ye haven't? What
have ye come for, then?"

"Seven hundred pounds," said Hiram.

"Seven hundred pounds!" said Squire Hall. "I haven't got seven hundred
pounds to lend you, Hiram."

"Five hundred been left to Levi--I got hundred--raise hundred more on
mortgage," said Hiram.

"Tut, tut, Hiram," said Squire Hall, "that'll never do in the world.
Suppose Levi West should come back again, what then? I'm responsible
for that money. If you wanted to borrow it now for any reasonable
venture, you should have it and welcome, but for such a wildcat
scheme--"

"Levi never come back," said Hiram--"nine years gone--Levi's dead."

"Mebby he is," said Squire Hall, "but we don't know that."

"I'll give bond for security," said Hiram.

Squire Hall thought for a while in silence. "Very well, Hiram," said
he by and by, "if you'll do that. Your father left the money, and I
don't see that it's right for me to stay his son from using it. But
if it is lost, Hiram, and if Levi should come back, it will go well to
ruin ye."

So Hiram White invested seven hundred pounds in the Jamaica venture
and every farthing of it was burned by Blueskin, off Currituck Sound.

IV

Sally Martin was said to be the prettiest girl in Lewes Hundred, and
when the rumor began to leak out that Hiram White was courting her the
whole community took it as a monstrous joke. It was the common thing
to greet Hiram himself with, "Hey, Hiram; how's Sally?" Hiram never
made answer to such salutation, but went his way as heavily, as
impassively, as dully as ever.

The joke was true. Twice a week, rain or shine, Hiram White never
failed to scrape his feet upon Billy Martin's doorstep. Twice a week,
on Sundays and Thursdays, he never failed to take his customary seat
by the kitchen fire. He rarely said anything by way of talk; he nodded
to the farmer, to his wife, to Sally and, when he chanced to be at
home, to her brother, but he ventured nothing further. There he would
sit from half past seven until nine o'clock, stolid, heavy, impassive,
his dull eyes following now one of the family and now another, but
always coming back again to Sally. It sometimes hap