Down the bank, along with a small avalanche of sand and gravel, plunged little John-Ed and his freckled face appeared at the doorway. "By the great jib boom!" he cried. "What you doing here? Playing castaway?" "Yes, John-Ed," said Sheila. "That is it exactly. I am a castaway." He stared at her. She could not take this boy into her confidence. But already little John-Ed was a henchman of hers, in spite of the fact that Sheila often had made him work. "I am going to stay here for a while," she told him. "But I would rather nobody but you knew about it." "By the great jib boom!" exploded the boy for a second time. "Not even Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prudence?" "Not even them," sighed the girl. "I bet it's because you don't want to stay there while that other girl is visitin' them. Ain't that it? She's a snippy thing!" "You must not say so to anybody," urged Sheila. "It will not be wrong for you to say nothing about my being here to your father and mother. Do you understand?" "I can keep a secret, all right," he assured her proudly. "I believe you can. And do you think you could get off to go down to the store for me this evening?" "Going down anyway for mom," he assured her. Sheila had a dollar and a little change besides. She had already planned just what the dollar would buy in the way of necessaries. There were cooking utensils in the cabin sufficient for her modest needs. She gave little John-Ed the dollar and her list and warned him to hide her purchases safely until the next morning and bring them to her on his way to school. "What you going to eat to-night?" he asked her bluntly. "I dug some clams at low water and caught a big horseshoe crab." "Cousin Phineas brought us more squeteague than we can eat. Mom told me to cut one up for the hens. I'll bring it down to you in a little. It's a fresh one." In spite of her refusal, he did this, and brought along, too, a box of sweet crackers which he had bought and hidden away in his bedroom closet in preparation for some time when he might wake up in the night and feel that he was on the verge of famine. "Though I never did wake up in the night that I can remember, 'cept that time I had the toothache," he observed. And in this way Sheila began her hermit life in the fisherman's cabin. But Sheila was not without a practical design as to her future. In her determination to accept no further aid from the Balls she had crippled her finances. Back in the inland town where she had spent her girlhood, and where Dr. Macklin had served the community so long, there were those who, in disapproving Sheila's venture into the city, at least had a sense of justice. Some of these critical friends whom the young woman had shrunk from appealing to heretofore, still owed for Dr. Macklin's services; and Sheila felt that in this present tragic emergency she must attempt the collection of these old debts.