“She’s sorry now, cap’n, an’ wants ter come back, ’cause she’s skeered of it all, but she don’t love me no more ’n she did when she lef’ me. When Billy finds she’s gone, he’ll be arter her agin”— “Not if I git my hands on him,” interrupted the captain angrily, dragging the chair to Caleb’s side. “An’ when she begins to hunger for him,” continued Caleb, taking no notice of the outburst, “it’ll be all to do over agin. She won’t be happy without him. I ain’t got nothin’ agin ’er, but I won’t take ’er back. It’ll only make it wus for her in the end.” “Ye ain’t a-goin’ ter chuck that gal out in the road, be ye?” cried Captain Joe, seating himself beside the table, his head thrust forward in Caleb’s face in his earnestness. “What’s she but a chit of a child that don’t know no better?” he burst out. “She ain’t more ’n twenty now, and here’s some on us more ’n twice ’er age and liable to do wus every day. Think of yerself when ye was her age. Do ye remember all the mean things ye done, and the lies ye told? S’pose you’d been chucked out as ye want to do to Betty. It ain’t decent for ye to talk so, Caleb, and I don’t like ye fur it, neither. She’s a good gal, and you know it,” and the captain, in his restlessness, shifted the chair and planted it immediately in front of Caleb, where he could look him straight in the eye. Aunty Bell had told him just what Caleb would say, but he had not believed it possible. “I ain’t said she warn’t, Cap’n Joe. I ain’t blamin’ her, nor never will. I’m blamin’ myself. I ought’er stayed tendin’ light-ship instead’er comin’ ashore and spilin’ ’er life. I was lonely, and the fust one was allus sickly, an’ I thought maybe my time had come then; and it did while she was with me. I’d ruther heared her a-singin’, when I come in here at night, than any music I ever knowed.” His voice broke for a moment. “I done by her all I could, but I begin to see lately she was lonelier here with me than I was 'board ship with nothin’ half the time to talk to but my dog. I didn’t think it was Billy she wanted, but I see it now.” Captain Joe rose from his chair and began pacing the room. His onslaughts broke against Caleb’s indomitable will with as little effect as did the waves about his own feet the day he set the derricks. [Illustration: “What’s she but a chit of a child that don’t know no better”]