It was one of Cap'n Aaron Sproul's mentally mild, mellow, and benign days, when his heart seemed to expand like a flower in the comforts of his latter-life domestic bliss. Never had home seemed so good--never the little flush on Louada Murilla's cheeks so attractive in his eyes as they dwelt fondly on her. In the night he had heard the sleet clattering against the pane and the snow slishing across the clapboards, and he had turned on his pillow with a little grunt of thankfulness. "There's things about dry land and the people on it that ain't so full of plums as a sailor's duff ought to be," he mused, "but--" And then he dozed off, listening to the wind. In the morning, just for a taste of rough weather, he had put on his slicker and sea-boots and shovelled the slush off the front walk. Then he sat down with stockinged feet held in the radiance of an open Franklin stove, and mused over some old log-books that he liked to thumb occasionally for the sake of adding new comfort to a fit of shore contentment. This day he was taking especial interest in the log-books, for he was again collaborating with Louada Murilla in that spasmodic literary effort that she had termed: FROM SHORE TO SHORE LINES FROM A MARINER'S ADVENTURES _The Life Story of the Gallant Captain Aaron Sproul_ _Written by His Affectionate Wife_ "You can put down what's true," he said, continuing a topic that they had been pursuing, "that boxin' the compass and knowin' a jib down-haul from a pound of saleratus ain't all there is to a master mariner's business, not by a blamed sight. Them passuls of cat's meat that they call sailormen in these days has to be handled,--well, the superintendent of a Sunday-school wouldn't be fit for the job, unless he had a little special trainin'." Louada Murilla, the point of her pencil at her lips, caught a vindictive gleam in his eyes. "But it seems awful cruel, some of the things that you--you--I suppose you had to do 'em, Aaron! And yet when you stop and think that they've got immortal souls to save--" "They don't carry any such duffle to sea in their dunnage-bags," snapped the skipper. "Moral suasion on them would be about like tryin' to whittle through a turkle's shell with a hummin'-bird's pin-feather. My rule most generally was to find one soft spot on 'em somewhere that a marlin-spike would hurt, and then hit that spot hard and often. That's the only way I ever got somewhere with a cargo and got back ag'in the same year." "I suppose it has to be," sighed his wife, making a note. "It's like killing little calves for veal, and all such things that make the fond heart ache." The Cap'n was "leaving" the grimy pages of a log-book. He paused over certain entries, and his face darkened. There was no more vindictiveness in his expression. It was regret and a sort of vague worry. "What is it, Aaron?" asked his wife, with wistful apprehensiveness. "Northin'," he growled.