Thus reasoned Robert Morton as in the peace of that June evening he casually shuffled the cards of fate, little suspecting that already a factor in his destiny stronger than any of his arguments was soon to make its influence felt and transform Wilton into a magnet so powerful that against its spell he would be helpless as a child.

He was aroused from his meditations by the voice of Willie.

"Didn't you hear a little bell?" demanded the inventor. "A sort of tinklin' noise?"

"I thought I did."

"It's the box comin' from Jan's," explained he. "Can you kitch a sight of it?"

"I see it now."

Rising, the old man tugged at the string, urging the reluctant messenger through the tangle of roses.

"By his writin' a note, I figger he ain't comin' over," he remarked, as the object drew nearer. "I wonder what's stuck in his crop! Mebbe Mis' Eldridge won't let him out. She's something of a Tartar--Arabella is. Jan has to walk the plank, I can tell you."

By this time the cigar box swaying on the taut twine was within easy reach. Willie raised its cover and took from its interior a crumpled fragment of paper.

"Humph! He's mighty savin'!" he commented as he turned the missive over. "He's writ on the other side of my letter. Let's see what he has to say:

"'Can't come. Busy.'

"Well, did you ever!" gasped he, blankly. "_Busy_! Good Lord! Jan's never been known to be busy in all his life. He don't even know the feelin'. If Janoah Eldridge is busy, all I've got to say is, the world's goin' to be swallered up by another deluge."

"Maybe, as you suggested, Mrs. Eldridge--"

"Oh, if it had been Mis' Eldridge, he wouldn't 'a' took the trouble to send no such message as that," broke in Willie. "He'd simply 'a' writ _Arabella_; there wouldn't 'a' been need fur more. No, sir!

Somethin's stepped on Jan's shadder, an' to-morrow I'll have to go straight over there an' find out what it is."

CHAPTER V

AN APPARITION

The next morning, after loitering uneasily about the workshop a sufficiently long time for Janoah Eldridge to make his appearance and finding that his crony did not make his appearance, Willie reluctantly took his worn visor cap down from the peg and drew it over his brows, with the remark:

"Looks like Jan ain't headed this way to-day, either." He cast a troubled glance through the dusty, multi-paned window of the shed.

"Much as I'm longin' to go ahead with this model, Bob, before I go farther I've simply got to step over to the Eldridges an' straighten him out. There's no help fur it."

"All right. Go ahead, Sir," rea.s.suringly returned Bob. "I'll work while you're gone. Things won't be at a complete standstill."

"I know that," Willie replied with a pleasant smile. "'Tain't that that's frettin' me. It's just that I don't relish the notion of shovin' my job onto your shoulders. 'Tain't as if you'd come to Wilton to spend your time workin'. Celestina hinted last evenin' she was afraid you bid fair to get but mighty little rest out of your vacation.

'Twas unlucky, she thought, that you hove into port just when I happened to be kitched with a bigger idee than common."

"Nonsense!" Bob protested heartily. "Don't you and Aunt Tiny give yourselves any uneasiness about me. I'm happy. I enjoy fussing round the shop with you, Mr. Spence. I'd far rather you took me into what you're doing than left me out. Besides, I don't intend to work every minute while I'm here. Some fine day I mean to steal off by myself and explore Wilton. I may even take a day's fishing."

"That's right, youngster, that's right!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Willie. "That's the proper spirit. If you'll just feel free to pull out when you please it will take a load off my mind, an' I shall turn to tinkerin'

with a clear conscience."

"I will, I promise you."

"Then that's settled," sighed the inventor with relief. "I must say you're about the best feller ever was to come a-visitin', Bob. You ain't a mite of trouble to anybody."

With eyes still fastened on the bench with its chaos of tools, the old man moved unwillingly toward the door; but on the threshold he paused.

"I'll be back quick's I can," he called. "Likely I'll bring Jan in tow. I'd full as lief not tell him what we're doin' 'til next week if I had my choice; still, things bein' as they are, mebbe it's as well not to shut him out any longer. He gets miffed easy an' I wouldn't have his feelin's hurt fur a pot of lobsters."

With a gentle smile he waved his hand and was gone.

Left alone in the long, low-studded room, Bob rolled up his sleeves and to a brisk whistle began to plane down some pieces of thin board.

The bench at which he worked stood opposite a broad window from which, framed in a wreath of grapevine, he could see the bay and the shelving dunes beyond it. A catboat, with sails close-hauled, was making her way out of the channel, a wake of snowy foam churning behind her in the blue water. Through the door of the shed swept a breeze that rustled the shavings on the floor and blended the fragrance of newly cut wood with the warm perfume of sweet fern from the adjoining meadow.

For all its untidiness and confusion, its litter of boards, tools and battered paint pots, the shop was unquestionably one of the most homey corners of the Spence cottage. Its rough, unsheathed walls, mellowed to a dull buff tone, were here and there adorned with prints culled by Willie from magazines and newspapers. Likenesses of Lincoln and Roosevelt flanked the windows with an American flag above them, and a series of battleships and army scenes beneath. The inventor's taste, however, had not run entirely to patriotic subjects, for scattered along the walls, where shelves sagged with their burden of oilcans, putty, nails and fishing tackle, were a variety of nautical reproductions in color--a prize yacht heeling in the wind; a reach of rough sea whose giant combers swirled about a wreck; glimpses of marsh and dune typical of the land of the Cape dweller.

An air-tight stove, the solitary defence against cold and storm, stood in the corner, and before its rusty hearth a rickety chair and an overturned soap box were suggestively placed. But perhaps what told an observer more about Willie Spence than did anything else was a bunch of rarely beautiful sabbatia blooming in a pickle bottle and a wee black kitten who disported herself unmolested among the tools cluttering the deeply scarred workbench.

She was a mischievous kitten, a spoiled kitten; one who vented her caprice on everything that had motion. Did a curl of shavings drop to the ground, instantly Jezebel was at hand to catch it up in her diminutive paws; toss it from her; steal up and fall upon it again; and dragging it between her feet, roll over and over with it in a mad orgy of delight. A shadow, a string, a flicker of metal was the signal for a frolic. Let one's mood be austere as a monk's, with a single twist of her absurdly tiny body this small creature shattered its gravity to atoms. There was no such thing as dignity in Jezebel's presence.

Already three times Bob Morton had lifted the mite off the table and three times back she had come, leaping in the path of his gleaming plane as if its metallic whir and glimmering reflections were designed solely for her amus.e.m.e.nt. In spite of his annoyance the man had laughed and now, stooping, he caught up the tormentor and held her aloft.

"You minx!" he cried, shaking the sprite gently. "What do you think I am here for--to play with you?"

The kitten blinked at him out of her round blue eyes.

"You'll be getting your fur mittens cut off the next thing you know,"

went on Bob severely. "Scamper out of here!"

He set the little creature on the floor, aimed her toward the doorway and gave her a stimulating push.

With a coquettish leap headlong into the sunshine darted Jezebel, only to come suddenly into collision with a stranger who had crossed the gra.s.s and was at that instant about to enter the workshop.

The newcomer was a girl, tall and slender, with l.u.s.trous ma.s.ses of dark hair that swept her cheek in wind-tossed ringlets. She had a complexion vivid with health, an undignified little nose and a mouth whose short upper lip lent to her face a half childish, half pouting expression. But it was in her eyes that one forgot all else,--eyes large, brown, and softly deep, with a quality that held the glance compellingly. Her gown of thin pink material dampened by the sea air clung to her figure in folds that accentuated her lithe youthfulness, and as she stumbled over the kitten in full flight she broke into a delicious laugh that showed two rows of pretty, white teeth and lured from hiding an alluring dimple.

"You ridiculous little thing!" she exclaimed, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the fleeing culprit before she could make her escape and placing her in the warm curve of her neck. "Do you know you almost tripped me up? Where are your manners?"

Jezebel merely stared. So did Robert Morton.

The girl and the kitten were too disconcerting a spectacle. By herself Jezebel was tantalizing enough; but in combination with the creature who stood laughing on the threshold, the sight was so bewildering that it not only overwhelmed but intoxicated.

It was evident the visitor was unconscious of his presence, for instead of addressing him, she continued to toy with the wisp of animation snuggled against her cheek.

"I do believe, Willie," she observed, without glancing up, "that Jezebel grows more fascinating every time I see her."

Bob did not answer. He was in no mood to discuss Jezebel. If he thought of her at all it was to contrast her inky fur with the white throat against which she nestled and speculate as to whether she sensed what a thrice-blessed kitten she was. It did flash through his mind as he stood there that the two possessed a bewitching, irresistible something in common, a something he was at a loss to characterize. It did not matter, however, for he could not have defined even the simplest thing at the moment, and this attribute of the kitten's and the girl's was very complex.

Perhaps it was the silence that at last caused the visitor to raise her eyes and look at him inquiringly. Then he saw a tremor of surprise sweep over her, and a wave of crimson surge into her face.