Before luncheon the next day, Fessenden had begun to acquire some acquaintance with the members of the Sandywood house-party—a particular acquaintance with the celebrated Miss Yarnell. It did not take him long to perceive that Miss Yarnell and he had been provided for each other’s amusement. Harry Cleborne’s fatuous devotion to May Belle Cresap—Fessenden rather disliked the two-part Christian name—and the good-natured cliquishness of the four married people, threw upon him the duty of entertaining the unattached bachelor girl. He took up the burden with extraordinary cheerfulness.

Pinckney Cresap watched his progress, frankly interested. Once, indeed, he took occasion to compliment him.

“You Northerners have some temperament, I see. If only Roland Cary were here, my boy!”

“He would have even more, I suppose,” laughed Fessenden. “Polly told me about him yesterday.”

“Eh? Oh, yes, so she was telling me. Oh, I’m not sure about the temperament—unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to judge.” He chuckled. “But there’s a charm there, that’s certain.” He chuckled again, as if vastly amused at the recollection of some humor of Roland Cary’s. “An eligible parti,” he went on. “The head of the first family of Maryland. Father and mother both dead—brought up by a doting great-uncle.”

“Confound him! I’m quite jealous. Where is he? Doesn’t he dare show himself?”

“Off on some philanthropic scheme, I believe. Roland Cary has notions. But you needn’t be jealous—you’re doing very well with Madge Yarnell.”

Toward noon, as they were all debating whether or not a game of tennis was worth while, a trim-looking sloop rounded a wooded point of the bay shore, and ran down toward the boat-landing.

“I think that’s your yacht, Fessenden,” said Cresap. “If Danton has been keeping her up at the Polocoke River Club, she’d be just about due here now.”

“Let’s all go down and have a look at her.”

A hat or two had to be gotten, and by the time they reached the landing-stage the boat was already tied up. A sunburned man touched his cap to the party.

“Mr. Charles Danton’s Will-o’-the-Wisp,” he said. “I was to deliver her at the Cary place, to Mr. Fessenden.”

“I’m Mr. Fessenden. She looks like a good boat.”

“There ain’t any better of her class from Cape May to Hatteras,” said the boatman. “It’s a pity Mr. Danton’s got the power-boat idea in his head.”

“Yes, he told me that was one of the reasons he’s giving up the Will-o’-the-Wisp. He’s bought a hundred-ton steam-yacht, I believe.”

“That’s right, sir. Well, she’s all right, and I’m to be master of her, so I guess I hadn’t ought to complain, but, after all, a real sailer is better, I think, sir.”

The boat was sloop-rigged, seaworthy rather than fast, and, for her length, very broad of beam and astonishingly roomy. Spars and deck were spick and span in new ash, and her sides glistened with white paint.

“Would you like to go over her?” suggested the boatman. “Here’s the keys to everything, Mr. Fessenden—the rooms, and these are for the lockers and the water-tanks.”

The party clambered aboard and proceeded to explore the little craft. The women exclaimed with surprise and delight.

“Two cabins!” said Mrs. Dick Randall. “One at each end—do you see, Polly? And what’s this cunning cubby-hole between the rooms?”

“That’s the galley, ma’am,” answered the boatman. “The kitchen, you’d call it. Do you see that little oil-stove, there? Big enough to do what’s wanted plenty. Yes’m, she’s as well found as any old-time Baltimore clipper, she is. A cabin aft for the owner, and a fok’s’l room for me. Mr. Danton used to say he had a right to make me comfortable, if he wanted to. You know his queer ways, maybe. We kept the stores in those lockers. She’s got some of ’em aboard yet.”

“I should say so,” declared Polly, who had been rummaging about. “Potted tongue and jams, and a whole ham, and, I declare, here’s the sweetest little coffee-tin full of coffee!”

“Mr. Danton was thinkin’ of takin’ a cruise,” explained the boatman. “And when you bought the Wisp, sir, he telegraphed to turn her over right away, in case you wanted to use her while you was here. Well, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be walkin’ over to the station to catch my train back to Polocoke.” He touched his cap and tramped away up the knoll toward the road.

“Let’s all go for a sail in her,” said May Belle.

At the suggestion, an idea sprang full-grown into Fessenden’s mind.

“Some other time,” he returned. “I’d rather try her out by myself first. I want to see if she has any mean tricks before I risk any life besides my own. If the wind’s right, I may tack about a bit this afternoon.”

He realized that he had explained too elaborately—Miss Yarnell bent an intent look upon him. As he was returning up the pathway at her side—the others a safe distance ahead—she touched his arm.

“Please take me with you when you go sailing this afternoon?”

“Oh, I may not go. If I do, I think you’d better not. You see, the Wisp may be a crank.”

“Nonsense! Besides, I’m a good sailor—swimmer too. I shouldn’t care if we were capsized.”

“I’d care for you.”

“Please take me. I want particularly to go.”

“Really, I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t!”

“I’d rather not, at any rate.”

Again her intent look surprised him. “Not if I bent ‘on bended knee’ to you?”

“Not if you begged me with bitter tears,” he laughed.

“I thought you wouldn’t, before I asked you,” she said broodingly. “I knew it would be of no use.”

“You did? Why do you want so much to go?”

“If I tell you that, will you tell me why you won’t take me?”

“I can’t promise. But what reason can there be except that I don’t care to risk your life in a boat I know nothing about?”

“What solicitude!” she said with sarcasm. “‘Men were deceivers ever.’”

She gave him an enigmatic smile as they took up their tennis rackets.

Beyond an amused wonder at the vagaries of the modern American—or, at any rate, Maryland—girl, this incident made little impression on Fessenden’s mind, occupied as it was with schemes of its own. By the time luncheon had been over an hour or two, however, and it drew on to the time when he might be expected to take out the Will-o’-the-Wisp, he confidently anticipated a renewal of Miss Yarnell’s request.

He was downright disappointed, therefore, when the young woman in question announced that she had a slight headache and thought a nap would do her good. Polly and Mrs. Dick chorused hearty approval, and Pinckney advised a julep.

Thus supported, Miss Yarnell mounted the staircase from the wide hallway, not vouchsafing a single glance at Fessenden, who lingered rather ostentatiously about in his yachting flannels. Although his determination—as whimsical as the girl who had inspired it—to keep his projected visit to White Cottage a secret forbade the presence of Madge Yarnell upon the Wisp, he would willingly have had another trial of wits with her. However, this was denied him.

Mrs. Dick and Polly made perfunctory petitions to accompany him, easily waved aside. Dick Randall himself and Cresap were too lazy even to offer their companionship. May Belle and her follower had taken themselves off an hour before. Thus Fessenden found nothing to hinder his announced plan of trying out the Wisp alone.

“I’m off,” he declared. “By the way, if I’m not back for dinner, don’t worry, and don’t wait dinner for me. The wind may fall and make it a drifting match against time, you know, so don’t think of delaying dinner, if I don’t turn up.”

Once on board the sloop, he cast off, hoisted mainsail and jib, and stood away to the northward.

Although unfamiliar with the dry land of Maryland, Fessenden was not entirely so with its waters. Once or twice he had taken a cruise on the fickle Chesapeake, and he was fairly well acquainted with the character of the sailing and the configuration of the bay.

Moreover, he had given a half-hour’s close study to some of Cresap’s charts that morning. He knew, therefore, that his first long reach on the starboard tack would take him well clear of the land. Thence he planned to come about and sail with the wind to a little cove he had noticed on the map. This cove lay a mile or so above Sandywood, and was concealed therefrom by a heavily-wooded point. He counted upon making a landing there about six o’clock.

It was a delightful day for sailing. The breeze was firm, but not too strong—just brisk enough to ruffle the water with a steady purr under the bow as the sloop slid up into the wind.

In pure enjoyment Fessenden whistled shrilly and sang snatches of song. His trip had enough of mystery about it to arouse all the boy in him. The thought of his evasion of Miss Yarnell’s importunity, too, made him laugh aloud. To be sure, his merriment was a little diminished by his recollection that she had shown no desire to accompany him at the last. Was she merely whimsical, he wondered, or had she acted with a motive?

He hauled the mainsail a trifle tauter, and watched with critical eye the flattening of the canvas. The Wisp fairly sailed herself, and needed little attention. He burst into song:

He stopped. The wind pushed persistently at the flattening sail; the water purred under the bow; the shore was already hazy behind him. These things were as they ought to be, yet he had become conscious that something extraordinary had interrupted his flow of song.

His eyes, sweeping the whole horizon, came back to the sloop, surveyed her slowly from bowsprit to rudder-post, and rested finally on the closed double-doors of the little cabin that faced him across the cockpit.

At that moment a loud knocking shook the latticed doors. Then a mellow voice spoke distinctly:

The doors were flung open, and framed in the hatchway appeared the upper part of the body, the dark hair, the defiant eyes, and the faintly-smiling mouth of the celebrated Miss Madge Yarnell.