while he talked about
unimportant matters; and at last Mrs. Lunn knocked a large flat book
off the end of the sofa for no other reason than to tell him that it
was one of Captain Witherspoon's old log-books which she had taken
great pleasure in reading. She did not explain that it was asked for
because of other records; her late husband had also been in
command--one voyage--of the ship Mary Susan.

Captain Crowe went grumbling away down the street. "I've seen his
plaguy logs; and what she can find, I don't see. There ain't nothin'
to a page but his figures, and what men were sick, and how the seas
run, an' 'So ends the day.'" It was a terrible indication of rivalry
that the captain felt at liberty to bring his confounded fish to any
door he chose; and his very willingness to depart early and leave the
field might prove him to possess a happy certainty, Captain Crowe was
so jealous that he almost forgot to play his role of lover.

As for Mrs. Lunn herself, she blew out the best lamp at once, so that
it would burn another night, and sat and pondered over her future. "'T
was real awkward to have 'em all call together; but I guess I passed
it off pretty well," she consoled herself, casting an absent-minded
glance at her little blurred mirror with the gilded wheat-sheaf at the
top.

"Everybody's after her; I've got to look sharp," said Captain Asa Shaw
to himself that night. "I guess I'd better give her to understand what
I'm worth."

"Both o' them old sea-dogs is steerin' for the same port as I be. I'll
cut 'em out, if only for the name of it--see if I don't!" Captain
Crowe muttered, as he smoked his evening pipe, puffing away with a
great draught that made the tobacco glow and almost flare.

"I care a world more about poor Maria than anybody else does," said
warm-hearted little Captain Witherspoon, making himself as tall as he
could as he walked his bedroom deck to and fro.

III.

Down behind the old Witherspoon warehouse, built by the captain's
father when the shipping interests of Longport were at their height of
prosperity, there was a pleasant spot where one might sometimes sit in
the cool of the afternoon. There were some decaying sticks of huge oak
timber, stout and short, which served well for benches; the gray,
rain-gnawed wall of the old warehouse, with its overhanging second
story, was at the back; and in front was the wharf, still well
graveled except where tenacious, wiry weeds and thin grass had
s