"Is this the truth? Are you what she says you are?" he asked.

"Oh, don't, Ira!" gasped his sobbing wife. "She--"

"We've got to learn the straight of it," said the old man sternly.

"If we've been bamboozled, we've got to know it. Now's the time for her to speak."

Sheila was still gazing at him. She nodded, indicating that his question was already answered.

"You--you mean to say you stole--like she says?"

"I was arrested in Hoskin & Marl's. They accused me of stealing.

Yes."

She said no more. She turned, when he did not speak again, and walked slowly to the stairway door. She opened it and went up, closing the door behind her.

It was Ida May who moved first when she was gone. She jumped up once more and started for the stairway.

"I'll tell her what's what!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "The gall of her to come here and say she was me and get my rightful place! I'll put her out with my own hands!"

Somehow--it would be hard to say just how--Cap'n Ira was before her, ere she could arrive at the stairway door.

"Avast!" he said throatily. "Don't take too much upon yourself, young woman. You don't quite own these premises--yet."

"You ain't going to stand for her stayin' here any longer, are you?"

demanded the amazed Ida May.

"Whether or not she stays here is more my business and Prudence's business than it is yours," said the old man. "But there's one thing sure, and you may as well l'arn it first as last: you're not to speak to her nor do anything else to annoy her. Understand?"

"You--you--"

"Heed what I tell ye!" said Cap'n Ira, grim-lipped and with flashing eyes. "You interfere with that girl in any way and it won't be her I'll put out o' the house. I'll put you out--night though it is--and you'll march yourself down to the port and to the Widder Pauling's alone. Understand me?"

There was silence again in the kitchen, save for Prudence's pitiful sobbing.

In Tunis Latham's mind as he came up from the port four days later was visioned no part of the tragedy which had occurred at the Ball homestead during his absence on this last voyage to Boston. He had suffered trouble enough during the trip even to dull the smart of Sheila's renunciation of him before he had left the Head. Indeed, he could scarcely realize even now that she had meant what she said--that she could mean it!

So brief had been their dream of love--only since that recent Sunday when they walked the beaches about the foot of Wreckers' Head--that it seemed to the captain of the _Seamew_ it could not be so soon over. If Sheila really and truly loved him, how could anything part them?

When he considered her wild manner and her trenchant words when last he had seen her, however, his heart sank. He had gained during the few months of their acquaintance a pretty accurate idea of how firm she could be--how unwavering in face of any difficulty. He realized that her obstinacy, when her mind was once settled on a course of action, was not easily overcome. She had declared that they could not be lovers any longer; that the situation which had arisen through the appearance of the real Ida May upon Wreckers' Head had made her decision necessary; and she had refused to consider any other outcome of this dreadful affair.

In his business there was much which would have disturbed Tunis in any event. The negro cook had deserted the _Seamew_ the moment after she touched the Boston wharf. Although the other hands had remained by the schooner until she had just now dropped anchor in the cove below, he was not at all sure that they would sail with him for another voyage.

Why these new men should be more troubled by the silly tattle of the hoodoo than even the Portygees had been was a problem Tunis could not solve. And seamen were so scarce just then in Boston that he had been obliged to risk another voyage without engaging strangers to man the _Seamew_. Besides, being a true Cape Codder, he disliked hiring other than Cape men to work the schooner.

For one thing he could be grateful. Orion Latham had taken his chest ash.o.r.e this very day. And Zebedee Pauling had offered himself in Orion's place on the wharf as Tunis had just now come ash.o.r.e.

He had been glad to take on Zeb in place of his cousin. And from young Pauling he had learned at least one piece of news connected with affairs on Wreckers' Head. Zeb told him that the girl he had brought to the Pauling house had talked with Elder Minnett and that the elder had later taken her up to the Ball house, where she had remained.

There was not much gossip about the matter it seemed. n.o.body seemed to know who the young woman was; nor did Zeb know what was going on at the Ball homestead. It was with this slight information only that Tunis now approached the old place. He saw Cap'n Ira hobbling into the barn, but he saw n.o.body else about.

The day was gray, and a chill wind crept over the brown earth, rustling the dead stalks of the weeds and curling little spirals of dust in the road which rose no more than a foot or two, then fell again, despairingly. In any event the young shipmaster must have felt the oppression of the day and the lingering season. His spirits fell lower, and he came to the Ball place with such a feeling of depression that he hesitated about turning in at the gate at all.

As Cap'n Ira did not at once come out of the barn, the younger man made his way there instead of going first to the kitchen door. He shrank from meeting the real Ida May again. At any rate, he wanted first to get the lay of the land from the old man.

He looked into the dim interior of the place and for a moment did not see Cap'n Ira at all. The ghostly face of the Queen of Sheba appeared at the opening over her manger. Tunis was about to call when he saw the old man straining upon the lower rungs of the ladder to reach the loft to pitch down a bunch of fodder. Queenie whinnied softly.

"h.e.l.lo, Cap'n Ira!" Tunis hailed. "What are you doing that for?" He hastened to cross the barn floor to his aid. "Where's Ida May that she lets you do this?"

"Ida May?" The old man repeated the name with such disgust that Tunis was all but stunned and stopped to eye Cap'n Ira amazedly.

"D'ye think she'd take a step to save me a dozen? Or lift them lily-white hands of hers to keep Prudence from doing all the work she has to do? I swan!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Tunis. "You sound mighty funny, Cap'n Ira. Hasn't Ida May been doing all and sundry for you for months? Is she sick?"

"I--I don't mean _that_ gal," quavered Cap'n Ira. "I mean the real Ida May."

He half tumbled off the ladder into Tunis Latham's arms. He clung to the young man tightly, and, although it was dark in the barn, Tunis could have sworn that there were tears on the old man's cheeks.

"Don't you know we've got the right Ida May with us at last--Prudence's niece that has come here to visit for a while and play lady? Yes, you was fooled; we was bamboozled. That--that other gal, Tunis, is a real bad one, I ain't no doubt. She pulled the wool over your eyes and made a monkey of most everybody, it seems. She--"

"Who are you talking about?" cried Tunis, in his alarm almost shaking the old man.

"I'm telling you the girl you brought down here, thinking she was Ida May Bostwick, turned out to be somebody else. I don't know who.

Anyway, she ain't no relation of Prudence or me. I ain't blaming you none, boy; she told us we musn't blame you, for you didn't know the truth about her, either."

"Cap'n Ira, where is she?" demanded the younger man hoa.r.s.ely.

"She ain't here. She's gone. She left four nights ago--after Ida May had remembered what she'd done in that big store in Boston. Oh, she admitted it--"

"You mean to tell me she's gone? That you don't know where she is?"

almost shouted Tunis.

"Easy, boy! Remember I got some feeling yet in them arms you was squeezing. It ain't our fault she went. She left us in the night--stole out with just a bundle of clothes and things. Left, Prudence says, every enduring thing she'd got since she come here--that we give her."

Tunis groaned.

"Yes, she's gone. And she's left that other dratted girl in her place. I swan, Tunis, I'd just as leave have the figgerhead of the old _Susan Gatskill_ sittin' by our kitchen stove as to have that useless critter about. She ain't no good to Prudence and me--not at all!"

CHAPTER XXIX

ON THE TRAIL

There was but a single idea in Sheila Macklin's mind when she left those three people in the kitchen and mounted to her room. Indeed, there was scarcely left to the sadly distracted girl another sane thought.