* * * * * Now, the solitary steamer that calls at Pemaquid makes her single trip in the morning; the overland route to the distant railway station is so hilly and rough as to be almost impossible to the few aged horses in the village; hence there are difficulties in the way of anybody who is resolved to take his departure from Pemaquid immediately after lunch. “It’s too bad,” drawled old Ben, in sympathetic reply to Stephen’s eager inquiries, “but, you see, down East here nobody ain’t ever in a hurry. We hev all the time they is. In the West, of course, I know it’s different. I suppose, naow, in N’ York you have a train every hour in the day, don’t you?” Stephen stood helpless. To remain another day in Pemaquid, after what had happened, was to him an impossibility; and yet how to escape? His eye fell on a small fishing schooner at the end of the wharf, the only boat of seagoing size that the place boasted. Her sails were hoisted and two men were working at her anchor. A sudden idea came to Stephen. “Couldn’t I hire that boat,” he said, “to sail me over to Boothbay Harbor?” Old Ben began to laugh. “Couldn’t you hire a whale?” he said. “That boat, she’s the _Twin Sisters_, and she belongs to my brother-in-law, Jabez Hooper, and he’s sot in his ways, like the old monument over there. This is the day he’s goin’ swordfishin’ in her; and now he’s p’inted her nose for ’Tit Menan, it would take more money than you could find in six pots o’ gold to git him to p’int her to the west’ard for you instead.” Stephen grasped eagerly at the idea. A few more weeks away from his work--what did it matter now, after all, in the emptiness of the dog days? “Swordfishing? Just the thing! Do you think he’d take me with him?” “_As_ a passenger?” asked the cautious Ben. “A passenger? Certainly. I’ll pay him anything in reason.” To this proposition the old longshoreman gave a grudging and indifferent assent; then gleefully pushed out in a dory to arrange terms with his relative and wrangle about the amount of commission which his own enterprise was to receive; while Stephen went back to the hotel to pack up a few necessaries for the trip and arrange with the landlady for the storage of his luggage till his return. A hurried inquiry brought forth the information that Martin had gone out sailing, together with most of the others. “Miss May, she’s gone, too,” remarked the woman, with the faint and flickering ghost of a smile. “They’ll all be _real_ sorry to find you turn up missin’ when they come back, I’m sure of that.”