"No, no! Oh, Tunis! It can't--"

"No 'can't' in the dictionary," interrupted the captain of the _Seamew_. "You and I are going to have one big talk, Sheila, after I take you up home."

"Up home?" she repeated.

"You are going back to Cap'n Ira's. You know you are. That other girl has beat it for Boston, you say, and there's not a living reason why you shouldn't return to the b.a.l.l.s. Besides, they need you. I could see that with half an eye when I went away the other morning. The old man hobbling around the barn trying to catch an old hen was a sight to make the angels weep."

"Poor, poor Cap'n Ira!" she murmured.

"And poor Aunt Prudence--and poor _me_!" exclaimed Tunis. "What do you think is going to happen to me? If you go away, I shall have to sell all I own in the world and follow you."

"Tunis!" she cried, almost in fear. "You wouldn't."

"I certainly would. I am going to have you, one way or another.

n.o.body else shall get you, Sheila. And you can't go far enough or fast enough to lose me."

"Don't!" she said faintly. "You cannot be in earnest. Do you know what it means if you and I have any a.s.sociation whatsoever? Oh! I thought this was all over--that you would not tear open the wound--"

"I don't mean to hurt you, Sheila," he said softly. But he was smiling. "I have got something to tell you that will, I believe, put an entirely different complexion on your affairs."

"What--what can you mean?" she burst out. "Oh, tell me!"

"I'll tell you a little of it now. Just enough to keep you from thinking I am crazy. The rest I will not tell you save in the b.a.l.l.s'

sitting room before Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue."

"Tunis!" she murmured with clasped hands.

"Yesterday I spent two hours in the manager's office of Hoskin & Marl's. They have been looking for you for more than six months.

Naturally, there was no record of you after you left that--that school when your time was out. They didn't seem to guess you'd have got work in that Seller's place."

"What do you mean? What did they want me for?" gasped the girl.

"Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your pardon. He cried, that manager did. He broke down and cried like a baby--especially after I had told him a few things that had happened to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn't found such good friends in Cap'n Ira and Prudence. That's right. He was all broke up."

The girl stood before him, straight as a reed. She rocked with the pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were glued to the planks. She could not have fallen!

"They--they know--"

"They know they sent to jail the wrong girl. The woman that stole the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote 'em all about it from the sanitarium where the firm sent her. They are sending you papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the p.a.w.nbroker and the store detective, and--and a lot of other folks.

Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated."

She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face, although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him.

"Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here--and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found all this out. And--and I would never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done."

"Huh! Yes. I cal'late that's so, Sheila," he said. "But how about me? Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you?

Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that thought. There is for me, at any rate."

She flashed him a look then that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham's very soul. His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden.

She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct words to Cap'n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis.

But that prevarication, at least, had been for no purpose of self gain.

And so Sheila looked at her lover for just that pa.s.sing moment with all the pa.s.sion which filled her heart for him. Had Tunis not been steering the _Seamew_ through a pretty tortuous channel at just that moment there is no knowing what he would have done--spurred by Sheila's look!

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

A HAVEN OF REST

Wreckers' Head so shelters the cove from the northeast that the schooner could be brought safely in to Luiz Wharf, instead of dropping her anchor in deep water. Half the port, and all of Portygee Town, crowded nearby wharves and streets to welcome Tunis Latham's schooner; for news of her peril and the way in which help had reached the _Seamew_ had come down from the Head as on the wings of the wind itself.

There was one face on the wharf Tunis Latham sought out with grim persistency as the schooner was made fast. He had purposely placed Sheila in Zebedee Pauling's care. Tunis kept, directly under his hand, the broken oar which had helped to make so much of his recent trouble. When the _Seamew_ was safe, her skipper leaped ash.o.r.e. And he carried the broken oar with him.

Orion, grinning and sneering by turns, saw his cousin coming. It must have been preternatural sagacity which caused him to see and recognize the broken oar. Having seen it, he jumped for the head of the wharf.

Tunis leaped away on his cousin's trail. The crowd parted to let them through, and then joined in a streaming, excited tail to their kite of progress. Most of the spectators lived in Portygee Town.

Some of them had been members of the _Seamew's_ deserting crews.

They were afraid of Tunis Latham, but they had little sympathy for Orion.

The skipper caught up with him in the middle of the road and almost opposite the Pareta cottage. Orion had picked up a cobblestone as he reached the street and, finding himself about to be overtaken, he turned and threw the missile at Tunis' head. The latter dodged it and, with a single, savage blow of the oar felled his cousin to the roadway.

"You unmitigated scoundrel!" Tunis roared. "I ought to take your life. Because of you I nearly lost my own to-day--and the lives of two other men and my schooner into the bargain. You villain!"

As Orion tried to scramble up, the skipper of the _Seamew_ made another pa.s.s at him with the oar, and the fellow fell again.

"Don't hit me! Don't hit me again, Tunis! Remember I'm your cousin.

I--I haven't done a thing--true an' honest, I haven't!"

The listeners gathered closer. Tunis Latham's face displayed such rage that the Portygees expected him to continue his attack with the oar. But instead he shook it before their eyes--and Orion's.

"See it?" he demanded of the bystanders. "That's the scurvy trick the dog played me. Found this broken oar in somebody's woodpile, burned the name of the _Marlin B._ into the handle, and foisted it on a fool crew to prove that my schooner was once called by that name. I ought to pound him to death!"

Suddenly a brilliant figure whirled into the midst of the crowd and reached the angry skipper and his victim. Eunez, her black eyes ablaze, her face ruddy with anger, planted herself before Tunis Latham, hands on hips, confronting him boldly. One glance at the prostrate Orion a.s.sured her that, although there was blood upon his face, he was not much hurt. She tossed her head and snapped her fingers under the nose of the captain of the _Seamew_.

"So now, Tunis Latham! It is that you have waked up! Of a gr-r-reat smartness are you, eh?" she cried. "You scorn us all, and tr-r-reat us as you would dogs. Heh! All you shipmasters are alike.

"But _you_--we put the laugh on you, eh? That oar in your hand--ha, ha! Do not lay the blame altogether upon your cousin. _I_ burned those letters into that wood with my curling irons. Fooled by a girl, eh, Tunis Latham? Ah! Learn your lesson, Captain Latham! We Portygee women are not to be scorned by _any_ schooner captain. No!"

She snapped her fingers again in his face and turned away, swaying her hips and tossing her head as she disappeared into her father's cottage. When Tunis looked around for his cousin, he found that that facile young man, taking advantage of the girl's intervention, had slipped away.

A winter hurricane had pounced upon the Cape and torn at it with teeth and claws, as though seeking to dismember it--to wrench the forty-mile curved claw of the Cape from the remainder of Barnstable County.

The driven snow masked everything--earth, houses, trees, and the shivering bushes; it clung to these objects, iced upon them like frosting. No craft ventured out of Big Wreck Cove, least of all the _Seamew_, although she had a cargo in her hold and a complete and satisfied crew in her forecastle.