An exasperating man; did he think himself above everybody ashore, as if he were still the master of a vessel? Be hornswoggled if _we’d_ go out of our way again to speak to such an uncivil devil. He could take his money and his pindling boy and his sick wife--she always appeared to be just convalescing--and shut himself up in his expensive house and be hanged to him. Why, Cap’n John Hawkins!--and then the oldtimers would go off into reminiscences all wool, a yard wide and the afternoon long, sitting about the stove in the store and postoffice in winter or in back-tilted chairs on the store porch in summer. When Captain Vanton came in for his mail there was a momentary silence, faces were carefully averted, and tobacco juice was sprinkled on the floor. Buel Vanton never noticed the idlers. He never noticed anybody. Therefore Mermaid was stricken almost mute with astonishment one day when, answering a peremptory rap at the door, not the side front door, but the frontest front door leading into the small hall that gave into the front parlour, she opened it to find the bulky form of Captain Vanton standing before her. As usual he did not look at her, but merely asked in a loud, hard voice if this had been John Hawkins’s house. Mermaid affirmed it; he then asked if her mother were in. “Miss Smiley is in. She is not my mother. I just live with her,” the girl replied. Captain Vanton made no response, but as he continued to stand there she added, “I will call her.” She did not invite him to enter, and as she went in search of Keturah Smiley she murmured to herself, “Rude old man! She can ask him in, I won’t!” Keturah Smiley, summoned, confronted the visitor and asked abruptly, “You wish to see me?” Captain Vanton did not indicate whether he did or not. His eyes dropped for the merest instant and he replied: “I was told this was John Hawkins’s house.” “It was in his lifetime,” said Keturah, shortly. “He was my uncle,” she added. “Mother’s sister’s husband.” Captain Vanton made no reply. He said, as if it were relevant: “I commanded the _China Castle_ after he left her. Some time after,” he added. “Did he ever speak of a man named King?” And now he looked Keturah Smiley straight in the eyes. Keturah gave his stare back. “King?” she rasped. “I can’t say he did, and I can’t say he didn’t. What King?” “First officer, Boston to Shanghai, third voyage,” answered Buel Vanton in his hard, uninflected tones. “Triced up by the thumbs and flogged before the crew by Captain Hawkins’s orders. First officer, too! Insulted Mrs. Hawkins.” Keturah Smiley’s face settled into its severest lines. “You’re likely mistaken,” she said with a bite in her words. “Captain Hawkins would never have flogged a man for that: he’d have killed him!”