“Lots.” She nodded, grave and threatening. “Lots the matter. I be’n a foolish, cross-eyed old woman: that’s the first. Set up for a smart contriver, and ’ain’t the brains o’ Larrabee’s calf. Oh, meddlin’ with people! It’s dangerous, I tell ye, Miles, it’s dangerous! Ye mean well, all along, and stir things round so clever (ye think), and then some mornin’ wake up to see you’ve upsot all--hurrah’s nest, everything on top, an’ nothin’ to hand!” She made a clumsy, derisive gesture, and spoke on, hurriedly, a tinge of red rising in her cheeks. “Funny I’d use that sailor-talk I learnt from him. But there! Might’s well say it: he was in my mind.” She looked away from Miles, and down upon the river, where the topsails of a schooner, slate gray, glided above the fir-points. “When ain’t he there? Though I guess you never heard me talk o’ him before. Ben Constantine, that was--Seems no more’n last week I see his tops’ls go down same as hers now. And I never--I ain’t ever spoke of it sence. That’s how I know. And that’s how I say it’s dangerous.” Her eyes returned to him wearily, and yet with such depth and fire as he had not known they could contain. “What did I promise?” she cried, in reproach. “What else did I promise your gran’father, that last day, but jest to take his place and see you steered the course? And look at me, how I let all slide, so long--because you and me and Anna has lived happy here! ’Tain’t a world to be happy in, but to git ahead. And the Lord forgive me for sayin’ that, if it should be a lie!” He could only stare at her, astounded by this flame from ashes, this grief, perplexity, and passionate conviction. “So you must go. When I see that light to your eyes this mornin’, and on your face--Oh, I know it still, these many years--Come, go, before she ’pears to be somethin’ dropped down out the skies right beside ye! But anyhow, ’fore that poor child thinks the same o’ you. If ye don’t, what’s ahead for her? Oh, it takes me to know what!” Miles held up a restraining hand. “Too late, Ella,” he declared soberly. “She seems that already, and--I told her.” The woman dropped her arms as in defeat. “Be good to us all!” she groaned. “It’s my fault.” “I couldn’t help it,” he began weakly. “Help it!” she snapped, with an instant change of temper. “I should hope not! Help human natur’? Who are you, to talk that way? Gunpowder’s gunpowder: it goes bang in the best settin’-room or out in the street. But this time ’twas my fault.” “No,” said a voice behind them, “it was mine.” They turned like conspirators taken in the fact, and with a mixed dismay; for the girl stood by the kitchen table, not only tranquil as a judge, but white as a victim. Her bearing was unchanged, her voice level; she had never seemed more beautiful, more necessary; and yet the very friendship in her eyes struck him like a blow.