Huntoon looked anxiously toward the door behind which Peggy was sitting, and he saw with satisfaction that the carousing Captain had promised more than he could perform, for when he started to sing his voice failed him, his arm fell at his side, and the whole man collapsed in a heap beneath the table. "At last," murmured Huntoon, gratefully, "I think he can be trusted to stay where he is till morning," and escaping from the close cabin with its foul-smelling lantern he made his way to the deck. The fog was gone, and the night stainlessly, brilliantly, radiantly clear. The stars twinkled a frosty greeting to him. The deep, dark blue of the sky calmed and soothed him. He took a dozen turns up and down the deck, then he went below, and stretching himself out before the door of Peggy's cabin fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. CHAPTER XVII ROMNEY It was on the afternoon of the day after the collision with _The Lady Betty_ that _The Reformation_ rounded the last headland that shut Romney from the view. The river ran cobalt blue between its brown banks, bare but for the patches of snow that lay here and there in unsunned hollows. The sky arched above far and clear, save where a group of fleecy clouds bunched together like a flock of white sheep on the horizon. The sunlight fell full on the western front of Romney as it stood in stalwart bulk against the black forest behind it, its wings outspread on either side like some wild bird sheltering its young. A stout stockade enclosed house and grounds, and ended on either side of the little wharf running out into the river. In the doorway of the house stood a woman, her hand raised to shelter her eyes as she scanned the river to the southward. Mistress Huntoon was still beautiful, though the radiance of youth was gone. The pencilled eyebrow and the transparent curve of the delicate nostril, the lambent flame in the eyes, yet remained, and, above all, that indefinable attraction which hovers about some women from the cradle to the grave. Just now she shivered a little as though she had been standing and looking long. Then she drew closer about her the cloak of gray paduasoy lined with yellow and held by carved clasps of polished marcasite. "Will he never come?" she murmured. "'Tis nigh a week since he was to have reached home, and I cannot help worrying, for all his father laughs and bids me put away womanish fears and remember that the boy is well-nigh come to man's estate and better able than either of us to look after himself. Ah, what's that beyond the headland? A sail, a sail, Humphrey! Do you hear? a sail in the river! It must be Romney's, though it looks over large for _The Lady Betty_." Her eager words brought her husband to her side, buttoning his doublet close as he shut the door behind him.