To say that he was puzzled would be putting it mildly. Mr. Stagg felt as though he were in a dream as he followed Miss Amanda indoors. And he expected an awakening at any moment.

"My father has gone into town, Mr. Stagg," explained Miss Amanda, leading the way through the hall, or "entry," into the kitchen.

The cheerful little kitchen, full of light and warmth, was very attractive to Mr. Stagg. He had not been in it for a long time. The big rocking-chair by the window, in which Miss Amanda's mother had for several years before her death spent her waking hours, was now occupied by the sailor. His head was still swathed in bandages, but his grey eyes were keen, and he nodded briskly to the storekeeper.

"This is the little girl's uncle, Benjamin," Miss Amanda said quietly.

"He will be interested in what you have already told me about the loss of the _Dunraven_. Will you please repeat it all?"

"The _Dunraven_?" gasped Mr. Stagg, sitting down without being asked.

"Hannah--"

"There is no hope, of course," Amanda Parlow spoke up quickly, "that your sister, Mr. Stagg, and her husband were not lost. But having found out that Benjamin was on that steamer with them, I thought you should know. I have warned him to be careful how he speaks before Carolyn May.

You may wish to hear the story at first hand."

"Thank you," choked Joseph Stagg. He wanted to say more, but could not.

Benjamin Hardy's watery eyes blinked, and he blew his nose.

"Aye, aye, mate!" he rumbled, "hard lines-for a fact. I give my tes-ti-mony 'fore the consul when we was landed-so did all that was left of us from the _Dunraven_. Me bein' an unlettered man, they didn't run me very clos't. I can't add much more to it.

"As I say, that purser's boat your sister and her sickly husband was in had jest as good a chance as we had. We nigh b.u.mped into each other soon after the _Dunraven_ sunk. So, then, we pulled off aways from each other. Then the fog rolled up from the African sh.o.r.e-a heap o' fog, mate. It sponged out the lamp in the purser's boat. We never seen no more of 'em-nor heard no more."

He went on with other particulars, but all, so Mr. Stagg thought, futile and pointless. He knew the steamship, _Dunraven_, had sunk; and what mattered it whether Hannah and her husband had gone down with her or gone down with the purser's boat a few hours later? In his agony of spirit, he said something like this-and rather brusquely-to the old seaman.

"Aye, aye," admitted Benjamin Hardy. "'Twould seem so to a landsman. But there is many a wonder of the sea that landsmen don't know about, sir."

"Tell Mr. Stagg about the fog and the current, Benjamin," urged Miss Amanda.

Joseph Stagg looked across the room at Miss Amanda, but he listened to the sailor. Benjamin Hardy had plainly thought much about the incidents surrounding the loss of the _Dunraven_. Perhaps, as time pa.s.sed, and he saw those incidents in better perspective, his wondering about them had evolved theories. Whether these theories were to be accepted without suspicion was another matter.

Joseph Stagg was not a credulous man. Indeed, he was, in a business sense, suspicious. Mr. Parlow had said that Joe Stagg bit every quarter he took in over his counter to find out whether it was lead or silver!

The hardware dealer listened now to the sailor's rather wandering tale with more patience than interest. Indeed, it was as much out of politeness to Miss Amanda as anything that kept him from interrupting.

"It was the current confused us. The purser had a sea anchor out," said Benjamin Hardy. "Something like a drag, mister. Kept his boat from driftin'. And that's how us in the first officer's boat come nigh smashin' into him. There's a strong set of the current towards the African coast in them parts.

"Well, sir, after the two boats come so nigh smashin' into each other, the purser must have slipped his drag. Anyway, the fog come up thick from the south and hid their lights from us. We never heard no cry, nor nothin'. Then, after day-break, the French battleships that had stood by picked us up, but we couldn't find the purser's boat.

"The fog still lay as thick as a blanket to the so'th'ard-how thick and how far we didn't know. And the Frenchman, I reckon, was afraid it might hide more of the enemy, and she was crippled. No, sir, if the purser's boat had drifted off that way-and the set of the tide was that way, I know-we couldn't have seen nor heard her if she was more'n a mile off."

"And were Hannah-were my sister and her husband in that boat?" queried Mr. Stagg thoughtfully.

"I am sure, by the details Benjamin has given me," said Miss Amanda softly, "that your sister and Mr. Cameron were two of its pa.s.sengers."

"Well, it's a long time ago, now," said the hardware dealer. "Surely, if they had been picked up or had reached the coast of Africa, we would have heard about it."

"It would seem so," the woman agreed gently.

"You never know what may happen at sea, mister, till it happens,"

Benjamin Hardy declared. "What became of that boat--"

He seemed to stick to that idea. But the possibility of the small boat's having escaped seemed utterly preposterous to Mr. Stagg. He arose to depart.

"Of course, you won't say anything to the child to disturb her mind," he said. "Poor little thing! It's hard enough for her as it is."

"I'll keep my jaws clamped shut like a clam, mister," declared the sailor.

Miss Amanda followed the hardware dealer to the outer door. She hesitated to speak, yet Mr. Stagg's unhappy face won an observation from her.

"Oh, don't you suppose there is _any_ chance of their being alive?" she whispered.

"After all these months?" groaned Mr. Stagg. "The old fellow may tell the truth, as far as he's gone, and as far as he knows; but if they were alive we'd have heard about it before now. That African coast isn't a desert-nor yet a wilderness-nowadays. Those Arabs have been pretty well tamed, I reckon. No, we'd have heard long before this."

"I'm sorry," said Miss Amanda simply.

"Thank-thank you," murmured Joseph Stagg before she closed the door.

He went on to town, his mind strangely disturbed. It was not his sister's fate that filled his heart and brain, but thoughts of Miss Amanda.

She had deliberately broken the silence of years! Of course, it might be attributed to her interest in Carolyn May only, yet the hardware dealer wondered.

He could not get interested in the big ledger that afternoon. Old Jimmy, the cat, leaped upon his desk, purring, and walked right across the fair page of the book, making an awful smudge where the ink was not dry, and Joseph Stagg merely said: "Scat, Jimmy!" and paid no further attention.

Out through the office window he stared, and out of the transom above the front door. He could see a blue patch of sky, across which now and then a grey-white cloud floated. In those floating clouds Mr. Stagg began to read a future which had little to do with the dull prospect of the hardware store itself.

"_Look up!_"

The thought came to him while his countenance was a-smile. His reverie had surely inspired a pleasanter feeling within and a happier expression without. Carolyn May's reiterated phrase rather startled Joseph Stagg.

"Why, the child's right," he murmured. "It's looking up makes a man dream of happiness. But-it's only a dream, I reckon. Only a dream."

His immediate thoughts did not fall into the old groove, however. Not at once. When he went home to supper that evening he boldly stared at the Parlow house, on the watch for something. There were lights in the kitchen and the dining-room. And was that a figure moving cautiously behind the lace curtains at the front-room window?

CHAPTER XVIII-SOMETHING CAROLYN MAY WISHES TO KNOW

Carolyn May's heart was filled with trouble. She had, ere this, proved herself to be a deeply thoughtful child, and the grown people about her did not suspect how much she was disturbed by a new subject of thought.

This was the result of her first talk with the old sailor. Not from him, nor from anybody else, did Carolyn May get any direct information that the sailor had been aboard the _Dunraven_ on her fatal voyage. But his story awoke in the child's breast doubts and longings, uncertainties and desires that had lain dormant for many weeks.

"I do wish, Princey," she told her mongrel friend, her single really close confidant, "that my papa and mamma were like the folks buried there behind the church," and she sighed.

"I'd know just where they were, then. That part of 'em that's dead, I mean. But now we don't know much about it, do we?

"Being lost at sea is such a dreadful unsatisfactory way of having your folks dead."