“Them things,” said Zeb Kendrick, sagely, “are all right for ponds or rivers or cricks where there ain't no tide nor sea runnin'. Float anywheres where there's a heavy dew, they say they will. But no darter of mine should go out past the flats in one of 'em if I had the say. It's too big a risk.” “Yup; well, Zeb, you ain't got the say, I cal'late,” observed Thoph Newcomb. “And it takes more'n say to get a skiff like that one. They tell me the metal work aboard her is silver-plated--silver or gold, I ain't sure which. Wonder the old man didn't make it solid gold while he was about it. He'd do anything for that girl if she asked him to. And she sartin does handle it like a bird! She went by my dory t'other mornin' and I swan to man if she and the canoe together wan't a sight for sore eyes. I set and watched her for twenty minutes.” “Um--ye-es,” grunted Zeb. “And then you charged the twenty minutes in against the day's work quahaugin' you was supposed to be doin' for me, I suppose.” “You can take out the ten cents when you pay me--if you ever do,” said Newcomb, gallantly. “'Twas wuth more'n that just to look at her.” The time had been when I should have agreed with Thoph. Sitting in the canoe, bare-headed, her hair tossing in the breeze, and her rounded arms swinging the light paddle, she was a sight for sore eyes, doubtless. But it was not my eyes which were sore, just then. I watched her for a moment and then bent over my engine. I did not look up again until the canoe had disappeared beyond the Colton wharf. I did not tell Mother that I had sold the land. I intended to do so; each morning I rose with my mind made up to tell her, and always I put off the telling until some other time. I knew, of course, that she should be told; that I ought to tell her rather than to have her learn the news from others as she certainly would at almost any moment, but I knew, too, that even to her I could not disclose my reason for selling. I must keep George's secret as he had kept mine and take the consequences with a close mouth and as much of my old indifference to public opinion as I could muster. But I realized, only too well, that the indifference which had once been real was now only pretense. I have said very little about George Taylor's gratitude to me, nor his appreciation of what I had done for him. The poor fellow would have talked of nothing else if I had let him. “You've saved my good name and my life, Ros,” he said, over and over again, “and not only my life, but what is a mighty sight more worth saving, Nellie's happiness. I don't know how you did it; I believe yet that there is something behind all this, that you're keeping something from me. I can't see how, considering all you've said to me about your not being well-off, you got that money so quick. But I know you don't want me to talk about it.” “I don't, George,” I said. “All I ask of you is just to forget the whole thing.”