But when they were alone again in their little cottage, and Zephas' honest eyes--with no trace of evil knowledge or suspicion in their homely, neutral lightness--were looking into hers with his usual simple trustfulness, Mrs. Bunker trembled, whimpered, and--I grieve to say--basely funked her boasted confession. But here the Deity which protects feminine weakness intervened with the usual miracle. As he gazed at his wife's troubled face, an apologetic cloud came over his rugged but open brow, and a smile of awkward deprecating embarrassment suffused his eyes. “I declare to goodness, Mollie, but I must tell you suthin, although I guess I didn't kalkilate to say a word about it. But, darn it all, I can't keep it in. No! Lookin' inter that innercent face o' yourn”--pressing her flushing cheeks between his cool brown hands--“and gazing inter them two truthful eyes”--they blinked at this moment with a divine modesty--“and thinkin' of what you've just did for your kentry--like them revolutionary women o' '76--I feel like a darned swab of a traitor myself. Well! what I want ter tell you is this: Ye know, or ye've heard me tell o' that Mrs. Fairfax, as left her husband for that fire-eatin' Marion, and stuck to him through thick and thin, and stood watch and watch with him in this howlin' Southern rumpus they're kickin' up all along the coast, as if she was a man herself. Well, jes as I hauled up at the wharf at 'Frisco, she comes aboard. “'You're Cap Bunker?' she says. “'That's me, ma'am,' I says.