But Jane was as proud and stubborn as he. Where her husband was not welcome she would not go. And a little later she had gone on the longest of all journeys. Speranza did not notify her parents except to send a clipped newspaper account of her death and burial, which arrived a week after the latter had taken place. The news prostrated Olive, who was ill for a month. Captain Zelotes bore it, as he had borne the other great shock, with outward calm and quiet. Yet a year afterward he suddenly announced his determination of giving up the sea and his prosperous and growing shipping business and of spending the rest of his days on the Cape. Olive was delighted, of course. Riches--that is, more than a comfortable competency--had no temptations for her. The old house, home of three generations of Snows, was painted, repaired and, to some extent, modernized. For another year Captain Zelotes “loafed,” as he called it, although others might have considered his activities about the place anything but that. At the end of that year he surprised every one by buying from the heirs of the estate the business equipment of the late Eben Raymond, hardware dealer and lumber merchant of South Harniss, said equipment comprising an office, a store and lumber yards near the railway station. “Got to have somethin' to keep me from gettin' barnacled,” declared Captain Lote. “There's enough old hulks rottin' at their moorin's down here as 'tis. I don't know anything about lumber and half as much about hardware, but I cal'late I can learn.” As an aid in the learning process he retained as bookkeeper Laban Keeler, who had acted in that capacity for the former proprietor. The years slipped away, a dozen of them, as smoothly and lazily as South Harniss years have always slipped. Captain Zelotes was past sixty now, but as vigorous as when forty, stubborn as ever, fond of using quarter-deck methods on shore and especially in town-meeting, and very often in trouble in consequence. He was a member of the Board of Selectmen and was in the habit of characterizing those whose opinions differed from his as “narrow-minded.” They retorted by accusing him of being “pig-headed.” There was some truth on both sides. His detest of foreigners had not abated in the least.