Keturah reflected, her severe eyes looking at and through the man. She could question him freely whether he saw the drift of her questions or not. She had a moderate contempt for Horace Hollaby, as she had for most men, a contempt based on her dealings with them in which she invariably came out best. The justice had one virtue, however, that Keturah considered rare in males. There were things he heard, things he knew, and things he guessed, about which he never talked. On certain matters she had never been able to bully a word out of him. And whatever she told him would be kept in the back of his head. “My brother,” she said, her face almost expressionless, “has, or had, a wife and child. Are they presumed to be legally dead?” Judge Hollaby told her they were not. “In any case, my sister-in-law could not come into any of the property?” “No.” “Could an adopted child of my brother inherit the property?” “I should say not; I should want to look at the exact wording of your aunt’s will.” “You needn’t,” said Miss Smiley, rising with abruptness. “For if my brother ever adopts a child I shall give away or throw away every cent of that money!” She moved with decision toward the door. With her hand on the knob she turned and said brutally: “Keep your mouth shut!” The door came to after her with a business-like bang. X In winter the Great South Bay is sometimes frozen over, and then it can be crossed very swiftly on a scooter, a better vehicle than the Hudson River iceboat because it will go from ice into water and back again on to ice without a spill. It is also more easily handled and travels faster. But there are days and sometimes weeks when the bay is impassable even for a scooter, which is merely a tiny boat with a pair of runners, after all. Thaw and freeze, freeze and thaw; a bay full of big, floating masses of ice, or so ridged and hillocked that nothing but an airplane will take you over it. And there were no airplanes when Mermaid, all wrapped and mittened, looked out upon the bay that winter of her eighth year. There was a telephone linking the Coast Guard stations on the beach with one at Quogue on the Island itself, but direct communication with the ordinary system there was none. On one side of the living room of the Quogue Station was the beach phone, on the opposite wall was a “local and long distance.” Members of the Quogue crew, called up on either wire, obligingly relayed messages along the other. In this manner it was made known to Cap’n Smiley one February morning that his sister wished to see him. The keeper was privately astounded. So far as a hasty recollection served him, his sister had never before asked to see him about anything. The bay could not be crossed and he sent her word to that effect, thinking that she might disclose her purpose. Her reply, toned down by the drawl of Surfman No. 3, Quogue Station, was merely for him to visit her as soon as possible and to bring the little girl.