His seamanship, his speech, his masterful manner, were assumed. And in the matter of his related adventures the girl was confident that they were mere repetitions of what he had read. Now Louise suddenly remembered how Cap'n Abe had welcomed her here at the old store, and how cheerfully and tenderly this piratical looking substitute for the storekeeper had assumed her care. No relative or friend could have been kinder to her than Cap'n Amazon. How could she, then, stand before him and say: "Cap'n Amazon, you are an impostor. You have assumed a character that is not your own. You tell awful stories about adventures that never befell you. What do you mean by it all? And, in conclusion and above all, _Where is Cap'n Abe_?" This had been Louise's intention when she came downstairs on this morning. The nagging of Betty Gallup, the gossip of the other neighbors, the wild suspicions whispered from lip to lip did not influence her so much. It was what she had herself discovered the evening before in the captain's "cabin" that urged her on. Now Cap'n Amazon's display of tenderness "took all the wind out of her sails," as Betty Gallup would have said. Louise watched him stirring about the living-room, chirruping to old Jerry and thrusting his finger into the cage for the bird to hop upon it, and finally shuffling off into the store. She hesitatingly followed him. She desired to speak, but could not easily do so. And now Cap'n Joab Beecher was before her. Amiel Perdue had been uptown and brought down the early mail, of which the most important piece was always the Boston morning paper. Cap'n Joab had helped himself to this and was already unfolding it. "What's in the _Globe_ paper, Joab?" asked Cap'n Amazon. "You millionaires 'round here git more time to read it than ever _I_ do, I vum!" "It don't cost you nothin' to have us read it," said Cap'n Joab easily. "The news is all here arter we git through." "Uh-huh! I s'pose so. I'd ought to thank ye, I don't dispute, for keepin' the paper from feelin' lonesome. "I dunno why Abe takes it, anyway, 'cept to foller the sailin's and arrivals at the port o' Boston--'nless he finds more time to read than ever I do. I ain't ever been so busy in my life as I be in this store--'nless it was when I shipped a menagerie for a feller at a Dutch Guinea port and his monkeys broke out o' their cages when we was two days at sea and they tried to run the ship. "That was some v'y'ge, as the feller said," continued Cap'n Amazon, getting well under way as he lit his after-breakfast pipe. "Them monkeys kep' all the crew on the jump and the afterguard scurcely got a meal in peace, I was----" "Belay there!" advised Cap'n Joab, with disgust. "Save that yarn for the dog watch. What was it ye said that craft was named Cap'n Abe sailed in?"