“I ain’t a-carin’ what Caleb says. I’ll stop that leak when I git to 't.” He held his breath for a moment and clutched the porcelain button with his big fingers, trying to screw it into his collar, as if it had been a nut on a bolt. “Here, catch hold o’ this button; it’s so plaguy tight. No,—I don’t want no toothbrush, nor nothin’. I wouldn’t ’er come home at all, but I was so gormed up, an’ she’s along with them Leroy folks Mr. Sanford knows. My—my”—he continued, forcing his great arms through the tight sleeves of his Sunday coat with a humping motion of his back, and starting toward the door. “Jes’ to think o’ Betty wanderin’ ’bout them streets at night!” “Why, ye ain’t got no cravat on, Cap’n Joe!” called Aunty Bell, running after him, tie in hand, to the porch. “Here, give it to me!” he cried, snatching it and cramming it into his pocket. “I’ll fix it on the train.” In another moment he was halfway down the plank walk, waving his hand, shouting back over his shoulder, “Send word to Cap’n Bob to load them other big stone an’ git ’em to the Ledge to-day; the wind’s goin’ to haul to the south’ard. I’ll be back ’bout eight o’clock to-night.” Aunty Bell looked after his hurrying figure until the trees shut it from view; then, gasping with excitement, angry with herself for having asked so little, she reëntered the kitchen and again dropped into a chair. Betty’s flight had been a sore blow to the bustling little wife. She had been the last to believe that Betty had really deserted Caleb for Lacey, even after Captain Joe had told her how the mate of the Greenport boat had seen them board the New York train together. As for the captain, he had gone about his work with his mind filled with varying emotions: sympathy for Caleb, sorrow and mortification over Betty’s fall, and bitter, intense, dangerous hatred of Lacey. These were each in turn, as they assailed her, consumed by a never ending hunger to get the child home again, that she might begin the undoing of her fatal step. To him she was still the little girl he used to meet on the road, with her hair in a tangle about her head, her books under her arm. As he had never fully realized, even when she married Caleb, that anything had increased her responsibilities, or that she could be anything but the child she looked,—so he could not now escape the conviction that somehow or other “she’d been hoodooed,” as he expressed it, and that when she came to herself her very soul would cry out in bitter agony. Every day since her flight he had been early and late at the telegraph office, and had directed Bert Simmons, the letter-carrier on the shore road, to hunt him up wherever he might be,—on the dock or aboard his boat,—should a letter come bearing his name. The telegram, therefore, was not a surprise. That Sanford should have found her was what he could not understand.