And the girl herself--the last thing that Dick dreamed was that she was beginning to establish an intimacy with him. It could hardly have been otherwise. Reuben Cowder had a profound sense of obligation to the young man. For the first time in many years he had had a confidant. Not indeed since his wife died had Reuben Cowder talked freely to any living being. He told this to his daughter. "He is a man," he said, "that you open your heart to. I don't know why it is, but I knew that I could go to him and say what I could say to no other man in Sabinsport, however long I had known him. You get something from him--I don't know what it is. I suppose it's sympathy and understanding. It is not what he says, but it's a very real thing, and everybody gets it, everybody in Sabinsport. When he dropped down there among us at the time of the accident at the 'Emma,' it was to him that all those poor souls turned, not to us. Jake Mulligan feels just as I do about it, and so does Tom Sabins, and so does Nikola and so does John Starrett, and even the Rev. Mr. Pepper. He's a man--a man that seems to touch everybody. I suppose he is what you call human--I don't know, but I do know that Sabinsport is a vastly better place to live in because of Dick Ingraham. Why, Nancy," he said, "I could never have found you in the world if it had not been for him. I would not have had the courage. My tongue would have been tied in my search. I don't know but that's the greatest thing that Dick Ingraham has done for me--he has loosened my tongue. Nobody ever did that before for me but your mother." And so, day after day, as they sat on their terrace overlooking the blue Mediterranean, the man would talk of Sabinsport and of Dick Ingraham, and his daughter realized that he was seeing the world through new eyes--his town, his business, his future; and her heart grew big with thankfulness to the man that had helped work this transformation, and more and more eagerly did she look forward to the time when she should see him, when she should know him and could thank him.