Captain Kendrick recognized the establishment of course. It, with its next door neighbor the General Minot place, was for so many years the home of old Captain Sylvanus Seymour. Captain Sylvanus, during his lifetime, was active claimant for the throne of King of Bayport. He was the town's leading Democratic politician, its wealthiest citizen, with possibly one exception--its most lavish entertainer--with the same possible exception--and when the Governor came to the Cape on "Cattle Show Day" he was sure to be a guest at the Seymour place--unless General Ashahel Minot, who was the exception mentioned--had gotten his invitation accepted first. For General Minot was Bayport's leading Whig, as Captain Sylvanus was its leading Democrat, and the rivalry between the two was intense. Nevertheless, they were, in public at least, extremely polite and friendly, and when they did agree--as on matters concerning the village tax rate and the kind of doctrine permitted to be preached in the Orthodox meeting-house--their agreement was absolute and overwhelming. In their day the Captain and the General dominated Bayport by sea and land. But that day had passed. They had both been dead for some years. Captain Seymour died first and his place and property were inherited by his maiden daughter, Miss Lobelia Seymour. Sears Kendrick remembered Lobelia as a dressy, romantic spinster, very much in evidence at the church socials and at meetings of the Shakespeare Reading Society, and who sang a somewhat shrill soprano in the choir. Now, as he looked over the side of Judah Cahoon's truck-wagon and saw the sign hanging beneath the arch above the gate of the Seymour place he began dimly to remember other things, bits of news embodied in letters which his sister, Sarah Macomber, had written him at various times. Lobelia Seymour had--she had done something with the family home, something unusual. What was it? Why, yes.... "Judah," he said, "Lobelia Seymour turned that place into a--a sort of home, didn't she?" Judah twisted on the wagon seat to stare at him. "What are you askin' me that for, Cap'n Sears?" he demanded. "You know more about it than I do, I guess likely. Anyhow, you ought to; you was brought up in Bayport; I wasn't." "Yes, but I've been away from it ten times longer than I've been in it. I'd forgotten all about Lobelia. Seems to me Sarah wrote me somethin' about her, though, and that she had turned her father's place into a home for women."