“Let us see,” he said, “you were to have a salary of twenty dollars a month for this work, and you have been gone practically thirty months. I will see that a check for six hundred dollars is made out to you.” Harry had another thrill of pleasure at this. It was not the money so much, but he felt that to have won Mr. Adams’s approval in this way was worth while. He determined privately that Joe should have half. He had certainly helped him earn it. The next day was one of those rarely perfect days that often come to New England in early September. The warmth of summer still lingers in the air, but there is with it too the glow and exhilaration of autumn. A faint breeze blew in from the west and lifted the August haze till distant objects stood out clear and sharp in outline,—a glorious day. It was quite a bit before ten when Harry called for Maisie, but she was all ready, and chatted demurely of many things as they walked down the well-remembered path to the boat-house. There Griggs, the ancient ferryman, greeted Harry with a whoop, much like that he had raised two years and a half before in answer to his shout for assistance. “W-e-ll, I swanny!” he exclaimed. “But I’m glad to see ye. Allus knew you’d get back somehow. How you have growed, though! Well, well! this is like old times, ain’t it? Ain’t been a day go by but I think how you swum for the young lady here, an’ I pulled you both out. How be ye?” Harry shook hands with Griggs cordially, and noted that the old man had not changed a particle in the time that had passed. “Kept the boat all ready for ye ever since,” said Griggs. “S’pected you’d be along some day and want a sail in her. Here she is.” There she was, indeed, with every line and cleat in place, and Harry felt as if greeting an old friend as he helped Maisie in and hoisted the sail. The little boat glided gently down the river, and out into the wider waters of the bay. As Harry looked about and noted every object in the familiar scene, it seemed to him as if he had hardly been away a day instead of two years and a half, as if the home life only was real, and all the strange things that had happened to him had been but a dream. Yet when he looked at Maisie and found her grown up to the verge of young womanhood, he felt as if he had been away for years and years, and hardly knew the dainty lady who sat on the windward side and trimmed ship as a good sailor should. He was thoughtful and silent until Maisie looked up at him roguishly, and said,— “Well, why don’t you tell me all about it? It must be something very serious that keeps you silent so long. You used to chatter fast enough. Is it an Eskimo young lady?” Harry laughed. “I’ve seen Eskimo young ladies,” he said, “though I wasn’t thinking of them at just that moment. Some of them are quite pretty, too,”—Maisie pouted a bit at this,—“though they don’t dress in what you would call good taste.”