“I ain’t a-goin’ a step, Aunty Bell. I ain’t sleepy a bit. There ain’t nobody to change these cloths but me. Caleb knows how to get along,” she answered, her eyes watching the quick, labored breathing of the injured man. The mention of Caleb’s name brought her back to herself. Since the moment when she had left her cottage, the night before, and in all her varying moods since, she had not once thought of her husband. At the sound of the explosion she had run out of her house bareheaded, and had kept on down the road, overtaking Mrs. Bell and the neighbors. She had not stopped even to lock her door. She only knew that the men were hurt, and that she had seen Captain Joe and the others working on the sloop’s deck but an hour before. She still saw Lacey’s ghastly face as the lantern’s light fell upon it, and his limp body carried on the barrow plank and laid outside the warehouse door, and could still hear the crash of Captain Joe’s iron bar when he forced off the lock. She would not leave the sufferer, now that he had crawled back to life and needed her,—not, at least, until he was out of all danger. When Captain Joe passed a few minutes later with a cup of coffee for one of the sufferers, she was still by Lacey’s side, fanning gently. He seemed to be asleep. “Now, little gal,” the captain called out, “you git along home. You done fust-rate, an’ the men won’t forgit ye for it. Caleb’ll be mighty proud when I tell ’im how you stood by las’ night when they all piled in on top o’ me. You run ’long now after Aunty Bell, an’ git some sleep. I’m goin’ ’board the sloop to see how badly she’s hurted.” Betty only shook her head. Then she rested her face against Captain Joe’s strong arm and said, “No, please don’t, Captain Joe. I can’t go now.” She was still there, the fan moving noiselessly, when Mrs. Leroy, her maid, and Major Slocomb entered the hospital. The major had escorted Mrs. Leroy from New York, greatly to Sanford’s surprise, and greatly to Mrs. Leroy’s visible annoyance. All her protests the night before had only confirmed him in his determination to meet her at the train in the morning. “Did you suppose, my dear suh,” he said, in answer to Sanford’s astonished look, as he handed that dainty woman from the train on its arrival at Keyport, “that I would permit a lady to come off alone into a God-forsaken country like this, that raises nothin’ but rocks and scrub pines?” Mrs. Leroy seemed stunned when she saw the four cots upon which the men lay. She advanced a step toward Lacey’s bed, and then, as she caught sight of the bandages and the ghastly face upon the blood-stained pillow, she stopped short and grasped Sanford’s arm, and said in a tremulous whisper, “Oh, Henry, is that his poor wife sitting by him?” “No; that’s the wife of Caleb West, the master diver. That’s Lacey lying there. He looks to be worse hurt than he is, Kate,” anxious to make the case as light as possible.