"Who loves, fears. I played the fool; but, Betty, 'twas the fool who won. Pray Heaven Romney meets as kind a fate." "But, Humphrey, what can be keeping him?" "The old refrain; I have heard that question so often I could answer it in my sleep. Thy boy is safe and sound, and will give a good account of his absence, I'll be bound." For all his light treatment of his wife's terrors, Master Huntoon had his own fears for his son's safety, and realized better than she could the many forms of danger and temptations that beset a home-bred youth, setting out to do business or battle with the world. It was with a glad leap of the heart and a curious catch in his throat that he recognized the stalwart figure by the gunwale as the packet drew near the wharf, though a moment later he realized that something must have gone wrong with the ketch. "All's well, Father," cried Romney; which meant, "There's the devil to pay; but I'm alive." Before the ship had made fast her first hawser, the boy was over its side and in his mother's arms, with one hand held fast in his father's, pouring forth a torrent of words so bewildering that his father finally clapped his hand over his son's mouth, saying,-- "Softly, thou headlong stripling, or thou wilt split our ears in the effort to hear, and our heads trying to take all in. Now let me put the questions, and do thou say 'ay' or 'no,' and as little more as the grace of God lets thee hold thy tongue for. Now, thou didst load at St. Mary's?" "Ay, sir." "And cleared in safety?" "Ay." "And stopped at St. Gabriel's Manor?" "Ay." "What for?" "How can I say 'ay' or 'no' to that?" "Then explain more at length; but briefly." "Prithee let that stand. Suffice it to say a man--a friend of mine--was in mortal peril, and his sister and I resolved to save him." "_Sister!_ Ah, I begin to see a light. Is she with you?" "Ay, and I have promised her a welcome from thee and my mother fit to heal her sore heart." "Well, well, we'll come to that later. Now what befell the ketch?" "Why, the fog befell us first, and then Dick Ingle befell us, and then the devil befell us; but here we are in spite of all three; and, Mother, thou _wilt_ be good to her, wilt thou not?" The crisis had come to Elizabeth Huntoon, as it comes to every mother--gradually to some, suddenly to others--when she realizes that her supreme place is gone forever. Henceforth, for her, affection and esteem and a comfortable suite of dowager apartments in her child's heart; but the absolute sway, the power, the _firstness_ at an end. The blood surged back from Mistress Huntoon's face, leaving it gray, and for the first time with the touch of age upon it, so that one could know how she would look as an old woman. "Yes; I will be good. Where is she?" The lips formed the words which sounded cold and formal in her own ears; but she saw with a new pang that her son had no leisure for noting subtle shades of tone or meaning in her voice.