His faith in Betty’s coming to herself had never been shaken for an instant. If it had, it would all have been restored the morning she met him at Mrs. Leroy’s, and, throwing her arms about him, clung to him like a frightened kitten. His love for the girl was so great that he had seen but one side of the question. Her ingratitude, her selfishness in ignoring the disgrace and misery she would bring this man who had been everything to her, had held no place in the captain’s mind. To him the case was a plain one. She was young and foolish, and had committed a fault; she was sorry and repentant; she had run away from her sin; she had come back to the one she had wronged, and she wanted to be forgiven. That was his steadfast point of view, and this was his creed: “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.” That Caleb did not view the question in the same way at first astonished, then irritated him. If she had broken the Master’s command again, he would perhaps have let her go her way,—for what was innately bad he hated,—but not now, when she had awakened to a sense of her sin. He continued to pace up and down Caleb’s kitchen, his hands behind his broad back, his horny, stubby fingers twisting nervously together. Caleb sat still in his chair, the lamplight streaming over his face. In all the discussion his voice had been one low monotone. It seemed but a phonographic echo of his once clear tones. The captain resumed his seat with a half-baffled, weary air. “Caleb,” he said,—there was a softness now in the tones of his voice that made the diver raise his head,—“you and me hev knowed each other off 'n’ on for nigh on to twenty years. We’ve had it thick and nasty, and we’ve had as clear weather as ever a man sailed in. You’ve tried to do square 'tween man and man, and so far’s I know, ye have, and I don’t believe ye’re goin’ to turn crooked now. From the time this child used to come down to the dock, when I fust come to work here, and talk to me 'tween school hours, and Aunty Bell would take her in to dinner, down to the time she got hoodooed by that smooth face and lyin’ tongue,—damn him! I’ll spile t’other side for him, some day, wus than the Screamer did,—from that time, I say, this ’ere little gal ain’t been nothin’ but a bird fillin’ everything full of singin’ from the time she got up till she went to bed agin. I ask ye now, man to man, if that ain’t so?” Caleb nodded his head.