"I didn't say much. I knocked him down," confessed Helmford. "Whew!" whistled the captain, his eyes snapping with excitement "I'd like to have seen you do that. And I bet Pearly would too!" "She did." "She was there an' saw the fracas?" "It wasn't a fracas," explained Helmford, rather shamefaced. "He tried to hit me with a club, and I got at him first. That's all." "And Pearly saw it? With her own eyes? How'd she act?" demanded the eager captain. "She--she cried. Of course she was frightened," the young man said, somewhat puzzled by the other's questions. "'Hem! She didn't throw herself on Tom an' cry 'cause you'd fetched him a wallop?" "Certainly not!" exclaimed Helmford somewhat angrily. "Looks, then," observed Cap'n Jonah shrewdly, "as though she wasn't much int'rested in Tom. Dunno how she could be. I reckon you air no rival of his'n----" "If you please, Cap'n Hand," interrupted Helmford gruffly, "we will not discuss the matter at all. Miss Pearl is not for me. She should marry a man of equal fortune." He turned abruptly, and instead of entering the store as had been his intention, he stormed along the road and up the easy ascent toward Tapp Point and the exposed sand cliff beyond which, at that moment, 'Liphalet Truitt was searching for Sue Ambrose. Cap'n Jonah allowed the young man to go without further speech; but he watched him out of sight in the driving snow, shaking his head thoughtfully. "Whatever!" he muttered. "Dern the fortune, anyway! Looks as though 'twas a boomerang. If them phony sheers sarves to keep them two young folks apart, then I have made a mess, and no mistake!" He was only half an hour or so behind Tom in reaching the house. But that half hour had served to change the atmosphere of the Petty household from that of cheerful complacency to one of fierce and eager antagonism to Cap'n Jonah. Tom had brought into the kitchen something worse than the snow that stuck to his boots, although his mother had first of all begun to scold about that. "What's got into you, Tom Petty? Don't you know enough to stomp your boots in the porch? One would think you was born and brought up in a barn," fretted Sarah. "If you air goin' to be a rich man some day, you better l'arn how to behave nice." "Rich!" exploded her son, finally getting his breath. "Who's goin' to make me rich, I want to know?" "Your Uncle Jonah," said Sarah placidly. "If you manage to behave yourself." "Uncle Jonah! That consarned old cheat?" bawled Tom, so angry that he all but choked. "What is the matter with you, Tom?" demanded his father, laying down his paper. "What's bitin' of you now, I want to know?" "That dod-rotted old cheat!" began Tom again, when his mother interrupted him with: "Now, Tom Petty! I won't hear you use sech language about your uncle. What mess have you managed to stir up?"