The Pentle place had been closed up and the servants were gone; but Mrs. Pentle's car was still waiting at the gate, and Mrs. Pentle herself--old John Ferguson, on his way to the lookout, could see Mrs. Pentle perched up on her flat rock and looking out on Gloucester harbor and the sea. There was a fishing-schooner sailing out. John put his glasses on her and was entering her in his book when he heard some one's step on the ladder leading to his tower, and then the hatch sliding back. It was Mrs. Pentle. "I've heard of your book, John. May I look at it?" "Surely, ma'am, surely." He passed it to her. "For seventeen years now I've been keeping it--the account o' the fishing-vessels sailin' out o' Gloucester, ma'am. A column for the day o' departure, one for the name o' the vessel, one for the master, and one for the day she comes back home." She was turning the pages. "So many never come back home, do they?" "Nacherally--they bein' fishermen, ma'am." "Ah-h, here's the year!" She ran her finger down the page. "And here!" and read: "'_Valorous_--sailed December seventeenth--and never returned.'" "I mind her, ma'am, with the proud name--George's handlin'." "I know. My father was one of her crew.... But here"--she stopped in her turning of the pages--"isn't this the entry of one they've just given up for lost?" "That's her, ma'am--the _Conqueror_. It's queer what bad luck goes with those proud names, ma'am. Peter Crudden was master of her." "Peter Crudden! I played with Peter Crudden when we were children together. And he's lost?" "When they print the names o' the crew in the Gloucester papers, it's a hundred to one they're gone, ma'am. A married sister o' Peter's is a neighbor o' my married daughter's up in Boston, and they're cryin' their heart out a'ready, she writes me--Peter's sister an' her children." Mrs. Pentle closed the book. "We live such sheltered lives here ashore, most of us, don't we, John? And we complain at the smallest little discomfort--many of us, I mean. And those brave men sail out to the dangerous waters in their little boats, where the best of it is hardship and death comes so often. It must be born in me--I just can't help feeling different toward those fishermen from what I do toward the men I meet in my business in the city." She left; and, watching her swing down the ladder, John Ferguson was thinking that for a woman of her build--full-bosomed and no slimling--she was cert'nly light on her feet, and wondering why a young and good-looking widow as she was--dang good-looking--why more o' those wealthy young men she must know hadn't hooked her afore that. "Must be," mused John, "none of 'em's used the right bait." John turned, just naturally to have another look out to sea, and--"Well, you old gadabout!" muttered John and hurried to point his glasses at what he saw wabbling in. "Dang me if she c'n be!" cried John. "Dang me, but she is!"