lame my skin, Mollie, ef that proud woman didn't break down
and CRY like a baby. Now, Mollie, what got ME in all this, was that them
Chivalry folks--ez was always jawin' about their 'Southern dames' and
their 'Ladye fairs,' and always runnin' that kind of bilge water outer
their scuppers whenever they careened over on a fair wind--was jes the
kind to throw off on a woman when they didn't want her, and I kinder
thought I'd like HER to see the difference betwixt the latitude o'
Charleston and Cape Cod. So I told her I didn't want the jewelry and
dimons she offered me, but if she would come down to the wharf, after
dark, I'd smuggle her aboard, and I'd allow to the men that she was YOUR
AUNTIE ez I was givin' a free passage to! Lord! dear! think o' me takin'
the name o' Mollie Bunker's aunt in vain for that sort o' woman! Think
o' me," continued Captain Bunker with a tentative chuckle, "sort o'
pretendin' to hand yo'r auntie to Kernel Marion for--for his lady love!
I don't wonder ye's half frighted and half laffin'," he added, as his
wife uttered a hysterical cry; "it WAS awful! But it worked, and I got
her off, and wot's more I got her shipped to Mazatlan, where she'll join
Marion, and the two are goin' back to Virginy, where I guess they won't
trouble Californy again. Ye know now, deary," he went on, speaking with
difficulty through Mrs. Bunker's clinging arms and fast dripping tears,
"why I didn't heave to to say 'good-by.' But it's all over now--I've
made a clean breast of it, Mollie--and don't you cry!"

But it was NOT all over. For a moment later Captain Bunker began to
fumble in his waistcoat pocket with the one hand that was not clasping
his wife's waist. "One thing more, Mollie; when I left her and refused
to take any of her dimons, she put a queer sort o' ring into my hand,
and told me with a kind o' mischievious, bedevilin' smile, that I
must keep it to remember her by. Here it is--why, Mollie lass! are you
crazy?"

She had snatched it from his fingers and was running swiftly from the
cottage out into the tempestuous night. He followed closely, until
she reached the edge of the rocks. And only then, in the struggling,
fast-flying moonlight, she raised a passionate hand, and threw it far
into the sea!

As he led her back to the cottage she said she was jealous, and honest
Captain Bunker, with his arm around her, felt himself the happiest man
in the world!

*****

From that day the flag flew regularly over t