“For your trouble in the matter I'll let you collect the interest for yourself at six per cent. Oh, Deacon Rowley, all you need to do is hand over the money, and say you prefer not to talk about it. You're a smart business man; you'll know what to say without speaking a falsehood. You'll break my heart if you refuse. Think! You're only helping me to help my own father. He has foolish notions about this. You can say you'll let them have it for a year, and you'll get three hundred dollars interest for your trouble.” “I don't believe they'll ever make enough to pay the interest--much less the principal.” “Give them five thousand dollars and draw a year's interest for yourself out of my interest that has accrued.” “Say, how old be you?” “I'll be twenty-two in June.” Deacon Rowley looked at her calculatingly, fingering his nose. “Being of age, you ought to know better, but being of age, you can do what you want to with your own. Do you promise never to let on to anybody about this?” “I do promise, solemnly.” “Then you sign some papers when I get 'em drawn up, and I'll hand 'em the money; but look-a-here, if I go chasing 'em with five thousand dollars, I'll have 'em suspecting that I'm crazy, or something worse. It ain't like Rufus Rowley to do a thing of this sort with his money.” “I know it,” she confessed, softening her frank agreement with an ingenuous smile. “But Captain Mayo is coming to you to-morrow morning on business about the schooner, and you can put the matter to him in some way. Oh, I know you're so keen and smart you can do it without his suspecting a thing.” “I don't know whether you're complimenting me or sassing me, miss. But I'll see it through, somehow.” She signed the papers giving him power of attorney, left her bank-book with him, and went away into the night, her face radiant. She threw a happy kiss at the dim anchor light which marked the location of the _Ethel and May_ in the harbor. “I am helping you get the girl you love,” she said, aloud. She went on toward the widow's cottage. Her head was erect, but there were tears on her cheeks. XXIX ~ THE TOILERS OF OLD RAZEE Hurrah! Hurrah! for Yankee wit. Hurrah! Hurrah! for Cape Ann grit. It's pluck and dash that's sure to win--“The _Horton's_ in! The _Horton's_ in!” --Old Locality. Polly Candage, covering her emotions with that mask of demureness which nature lends to the weaker sex for their protection, received a tumultuous Mayo next morning in the parlor of the cottage. “I don't know how it has happened. I don't understand it,” he exploded. “I didn't suppose anybody could blast money out of his pocket with dynamite--your father said it couldn't be done. But Deacon Rowley has loaned us five thousand dollars. Here's his check on the Limeport First National. Only charges six per cent. I'm so weak it was all I could do to walk up here.”