“Come here!” said Ben, in the voice of a man who had “kept company” with a girl for three years. In Windover, the respectable young people do not flirt or intrigue; breach of troth is almost unknown among them. To walk with a girl on Sunday afternoon, and to kiss her Sunday evening, is to marry her, as a matter of course. Ben Trawl spoke in the imperious tone of the seafaring people who call a wife “my woman,” and who lie on the lounge in the kitchen while she brings the water from the well. “You come here, Jane, and sit on the sofy alongside of me! I’ve got a word or so to say to you.” Jane Granite came. She was frightened. She sat down beside her lover, and timidly surrendered the work-worn little hand which he seized and crushed with cruel violence within his own. “Mr. Granite wasn’t never wholly satisfied about Ben,” Mrs. Granite was saying to the minister as they splashed through the muddy slush. “His father’s Trawl the liquor dealer, down to Angel Alley, opposite our place, a little below. But Jane says Ben don’t touch it; and he don’t. I don’t know’s I’ve any call to come between her and Ben. He’s a stiddy fellow, and able to support her,--and he’s that fond of Jane”-- “He seems to be,” said Bayard musingly. His thoughts were not with Mrs. Granite. He hardly knew what she had said. He was not used to this petty, parish atmosphere. It came hard to him. He underestimated the value of these wearisome trifles, in the large work performed by little people. Nothing in the world seemed to him of less importance than the natural history of Ben Trawl. “The wind is east,” he said abstractedly, “and there’s a very heavy sea on.” He cast at the harbor and the sky the anxious look habitual with the people of Windover; the stranger had already acquired it. He had not been a month in the fishing-town before he noticed that the women all spoke of their natural foe as “the terrible sea.” The hall which the new people had leased for their services and entertainments had long borne the grim name of Seraph’s Rest; having been, in fact, for years, a sailors’ dance-hall of the darkest dye. “Give us,” Bayard had said, “the worst spot in the worst street of this town. We will make it the best, or we will own ourselves defeated in our work.” In such streets, and in such places, news has wings. There is no spot in Windover where rumor is run down so soon as in Angel Alley. Bayard had talked perhaps half an hour, when he perceived by the restlessness in his crowded and attentive audience that something had happened. He read on for a moment:-- “_‘Are you dying for him?’ she whispered. ‘And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.’_” Then, with the perfect ease which he always sought to cultivate in that place between speaker and hearer, “What is the matter?” he asked in a conversational tone. “Sir,” said an old captain, rising, “there’s a vessel gone ashore off Ragged Rock.” Bayard swept his book and manuscript off the desk.