“That’s enough!” ordered Miles coldly. “You came near being a home-made one.” He turned on the men, sharp and bitter. “You fellows come to!” he said, and speaking on, with a few domineering words found himself their master. “That’s right,” growled one. “Talkin’ sense, Mr. Bissant,” another nodded; “told ’em that, myself.” Old Quinn, with a sheepish, absent grin of innocence, smuggled the cartridge from his gun. Their little tumult was over, save in fireside history. And Miles had known his first moment of command. As he turned, however, his thoughts were of something quite different and distant. He saw that black dot move down aslant the shining channel, lose all apparent energy in the distance, and, dead as a bit of driftwood, float past the foot of the island. But in imagination, clearer than a spyglass, he pictured Tony swimming on, the sharp catch of his breath, the labor of his great muscles against the tide, and wondered, as the dark mote lessened on the water, what thoughts it might confine. Only plans, perhaps, for his own unruly future; the sailor, consistent to the last, had played upon them all; now he would but change the scene and the persons. And still--“If things had been different,” thought Miles, “if we’d started in together, somehow--” The head drifted out of the paler surfaces, blurred into the dark, jagged margin of the further shore, entered the inverted evergreen forest, and, crossing the white streak where a birch trunk gleamed on the mirror, was lost in safety. And with it, Miles felt some piece of his old self departing. When he turned away, at last, he found the men dispersing along the shore toward Alward’s, and saw, through a gap in the firs, Anna and the teamster climbing the distant field slowly, with now and then a pause or gesture, like people in earnest talk. He was hardly at the foot of the hill, when they had reached the house and gone indoors. He followed, wondering why they had not waited. From between the hackmatacks he could hear three voices contending, then two, and as his foot grated on the doorstep, none. In the kitchen Ella and the teamster met him with a guilty silence, while overhead a light step came and went, and as if with a lighter spirit, the girl hummed little intervals of song. When these sounds returned downstairs, Ella faced about with an air that was almost gay. “Now,” she cried, “for breakfast!” All four sat down by the sunny window. From the outset, Miles found the meal bewildering. Plainly his companions had shared some secret. They glanced and laughed inconsequently; they talked of Tony and the escape, with a curious exhilaration, and more curious gaps of silence; they gave to this meagre breakfast a sense of banqueting, but banqueting under the edge of some unusual event, soon to fall. The girl’s eyes, her every word and movement, were as lamps and music to a feast. And Habakkuk, dipping and swerving his weather-vane countenance, was flushed with her praises like a minstrel.