Morning lay over Portsmouth and her great stretches of opaline sea. The little islands, north to the Maine shore, and east to the harbor-buoys, were ablaze with red and yellow bushes to the water-brink; the low-masted gunlows were beating out like a flock of dingy gulls; and from afar, pleasantly, musically, sounded the bugle at the Navy Yard. The Honorable Langdon Openshaw, standing among ruinous warehouses and wharves, built by the Sheafes in the hour of their commercial glory under the second George, looked down upon the clear Piscataqua at full flood, breathing between its day-long, Samson-like tugs at the yet enduring piers. It was a lonely spot; the wind had a way there, sometimes, of waking momentary, half-imagined odors, the ghosts of the cargoes of wines and spices in the prodigal past. His own solitude, the washing tide, the one towering linden yonder, the gambrel roofs and ancient gardens, the felt neighborhood of the dear wild little graveyard where his forbears slept, steeped his heart in overwhelming melancholy. He had already passed a week at the Rockingham. It was a strange date to choose, out of all his free and prosperous life, for a first visit since childhood to the fair old New England borough where he was born. A sort of morbid home-sickness had driven him back now, in his distresses, to her knee. For the Honorable Langdon Openshaw, innocent of the astounding crime with which he was charged, was out on bail.

The accusation was the most inexplicable of things. His chief characteristic had been an endearing gentleness, which brought him the popular favor he cared nothing for. He was the captain citizen of his town; he had held, in turn, every office public esteem could give him; he was president of a wealthy corporation which controlled a bank. It was this treasury which he was said to have rifled, and its cashier whom he was said to have murdered. No living creature was there in all Connecticut but laughed aloud when the report began to spread; but time and circumstantial proof sobered them, and increased the breed of cynics and sceptics the country over. The philanthropist, the good man, the Sunday-school paragon, forsooth, once again exposed in all his gangrened sanctity! Two sickening circumstances, in the dark designs of Providence, pointed at him with deadly finger. One was, that at the time of the robbery, there was an impending crash in his vested finances, since wholly and finally averted by his foresight and skill; the other, that sometime before, in the discharge of duty, he had incurred the enmity of the victim. Was it not possible, during Mr. Openshaw's interval of anxiety, he, that is, any other than he, might have dared retrieve his fortune, and silence the witness of his crime, George Wheeling, found unexpectedly at his desk at midnight over his accounts, and thrown down the stair into the vaults? But there was a more certain and horrible evidence. He had been seen escaping; he had been recognized. The scuffle had roused the occupants of houses near; and these, looking forth by the city lamplight, saw the flying figures, one of them, alas, inconceivably, yet unmistakably, so help us God! the Honorable Langdon Openshaw. Had they not a perfect unanimous knowledge, for many years, of his face, his unique gait, his uncommon stature? Where was there another such odd and definite physical personality? As to the confederates, well, there were reasons, no doubt, why bravos should be hired.

Wearily, wearily, he parted his gaze from the alluring eternity in the river, and strolled a little distance to the warm wall, and sat down in the late September grasses against it, like the broken man he was. He took off his hat, a characteristic dark soft felt such as he always wore, and the air was good upon his brow. His thoughts reverted to old times. He had no kindred except a sister living in Santa Barbara with her family of daughters, and between them there had never been any marked natural affection. The distant cousin of his own whom he had married, had borne him no children, and she was dead: a gentle, negative soul, to whom he confided little of what touched him most. He had formed no intimate companionships. No one save his mother, whom he lost in his boyhood, and whose maiden name he bore, had ever possessed much influence over him. He was a man's man, as the saying is, hitherto of any age he chose, and rich in all resources. But he had strong dormant affections, shamefacedly expended on public orphanages and hospitals, and on the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and he felt rightly that he could have been fatherly, brotherly, even filial, with a son. Ah, if he but had a son! Bulwarked about with modern conveniences, that, his one necessary, he had missed. And here, in strange opprobrium, was the end of his career and of his name. "Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me!" he breathed to himself, feeling, for the first time since his calamity, a profound submission of the soul.

He heard voices in the windless air. He did not rise, for they were not approaching him. He could not help distinguishing the animated words."This is as far as I ought to go. I guess I'll say good-bye."

"They will miss you notta yet. Oh, please do, please do stay! I starve if I am absent. Come, one kissa more."

"No; wait till to-morrow, you great baby. Go away now, and do your best to be good."

"Alla righta; if you give to me one little song."

"Truly?"

"Truly, Anita mia. I desire indeed, this hour, the mandolin. But no matter: sing. All is quiet: see! it can begin."

Then the girl's thin bird-like voice soared alone, not in any expected love-lyric of the seaport streets, but in a Christian folk-song of artless beauty.

"All in the April evening,

April airs were abroad;

The sheep with their little lambs

Passed me by on the road.

"The sheep with their little lambs

Passed me by on the road:

All in the April evening

I thought on the Lamb of God.

"The lambs were weary, and crying

With a weak human cry:

I thought on the Lamb of God

Going meekly to die.

"Up in the blue, blue mountains,

Dewy pastures are sweet,

With rest for the little bodies,

And rest for the little feet.

"But for the Lamb of God,

Up on the hill-top green,

Only a Cross of shame,

Two stark crosses between!

"All in the April evening,

April airs were abroad;

I saw the sheep with their lambs:

I thought on the Lamb of God."[1]

There was a pause after. Then Openshaw sighed. He knew they were in each other's arms, the morning heaven blessing them; but with him it was spiritual darkness, and bitter evenfall. A boat passed below, the oarsmen curious; and the young loiterers on the old wharf stood apart.

"My angel, my sainta!"

"Hush! It is twelve already; I must be off.""Ah, the time is so short! Cruel!"

"Dear, you are nicest when you are good."

"Behold, I am."

At last the farewells and vacancy; and then footsteps making towards the angle of the wall. Mr. Openshaw's stately head, crowned with the abundant glossy black and gray which gave it such distinction in a land of bald pates, arose upon the surprised view of the new-comer. He, on his part, with no question as to a gentleman's supposed midday slumbers, stooped, and offered Mr. Openshaw his hat. The two, confronted, smiled a little; both tall, aquiline, clean-shaven.

"I thank you. Perhaps you would rather have me say, molte grazie. You are an Italian, are you not?"

The other, wonderingly, but with native grace, assented. "I am a Florentine." How he said it! Where did he get that gypsy princeliness, his clear pallor, the nameless magic that takes the heart?

"You speak English fairly."

"I have been in youra country long."

"And I in yours, many years ago." Now Openshaw was dallying, and consciously. What impelled him to open sociabilities with such an one, he did not know. This stripling of another grade reminded him dimly of something, and teased his eye. "What a bearing the fellow has!" he thought again. Having snapped every tie with his own life, he could afford to be interested in that of others. He took pleasure in the diverting accent and idiom, and the abandon with which the loose, rough clothes were worn.

"Florence is the most beautiful of cities. You ought almost to go back." It relieved his heart somehow, the foolish commonplace, as might the colloquy about the weather among aristocrats in the tumbrils of the French Revolution. All time hung a mortal weight upon his hands; nor did the un-Americanized stranger seem to be in a hurry. But now he started a little.

"Go back? Santa Maria! I suffer: I go back so soona that I can!" As he spoke, with the soft round harp-like Tuscan tone which the east wind of New England had not rasped, he glanced around apprehensively. "With money, nexta month, I sail on the sea, and I arrive.""Well, that might be worse," said the elder man, indulgently. "May I ask your name?"

"Ralph Power."

"Ralph Power? That is not an Italian name."

"Sir, I know. My mother, she have the marriage name Potenza. Rodolfo, that is mine. I translate the two, and that is Ralph Power, whicha make it easy for the tongue of many."

Mr. Openshaw had drawn his hand over his eyelids, as if feeling the sting of memory.

"What do you do for a living here?"

"I serva the market. Once I assist to builda boats for the Capitan, but now he work no more; the beautiful Anne, she is his daughter. Ah, signor!" Ingenuously, boyishly, he sighed.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"How many questions I have asked you! I am afraid I have kept you from your duties. Pray go now."

The other bowed, and turned townwards. But Openshaw felt on the instant a sort of loneliness. "Rodolfo!" he exclaimed, "do me the favor to spend this." He slipped a coin into an uninviting hand, partly, as he would have said himself, from natural depravity, partly, from the sheer luxury of his own incognito, and that of giving away to a young man what no young man could inherit. "It may help you out of your trouble. Trouble is very hard to bear, sometimes."

If he were aware of expecting anything in return, from a poor Italian, it was the usual ecstatic thankful benediction of poor Italians in like luck. Once he had lived among them on their own soil; he knew the simple-hearted, engaging, vagabond breed through and through. But this specimen of it flushed and scowled, while trying to seem courteous; and his would-be benefactor was puzzled. As they stood opposite, they were of equal height; for the younger had drawn himself up a good inch.

"I am afraid you are proud. You have picked that up in New England."

Rodolfo answered resentfully: "Sir, I have the blood of New England also, and it is for me the destiny to earn my money, most of all after what I promise to the beautiful Anne."

As he said it, warming thus into his very self, the eyes of Openshaw, watching him, were dazzled, as one may be who crosses an alcove towards a door in plain sight, and finds that seeming door a mirror. A little alarum-bell rang in his brain. He shuddered, for all the forces within him were rallying together: triumph, hate, revenge, deadly delight; things he had not known were possible to him swarmed into his spirit with a clang. He recognized, at a stroke, that this vagrant youth, this common workman, looking at him with no smile now, bore a violent resemblance to himself. He searched for details, lightning-quick, and devouringly. Yes! there were the dark, fine, pendulous hair, the small, close ear, the strong nose and jaw, even the large, slender hand toil had hardly scarred, the back of it smooth and hard as veined marble; how like the Openshaw hand, plain in the old Lely portrait, plainer yet in the Stuarts, on the melancholy walls of his own home! And what followed? The voice, significant, prophetic, of the demon of self-preservation in his ear: "This may be the man who killed George Wheeling. This must be the man. Impeach him; clear yourself!" Openshaw, in his calmer mood, a few moments back, had measured the character before him. Whatever else it was, it was not astute. He foresaw no trouble in worming the secret out of him.

"Very well," he replied, as if Æons on Æons of thought had not passed since he spoke last. "I will take the gold-piece back, on your own condition: I will see that you earn it. Have you business on hand?"

"Oh, no. The venerable butcher, the fever kills him; we bury him, and locka the door for all day." Rodolfo was sullen yet.

"Then, will you kindly go into the square, buy me cheese, pilot bread, two quart bottles of Sauterne, and two glasses, and return by way of Daniels Street? I shall be waiting at the landing. I should like to hire a boat for an hour, and have you row me up river. Will you do so?"

The lad hesitated. Finally, touched, or put upon his mettle by a seeming confidence, he set out, with the greenback in his pocket which Mr. Openshaw had given him. The latter, at this pause in their colloquy, was made aware that he was suffering keenly. He had exceeding self-control; his successes in life had sprung from it. But every mastered nerve in his body, having already undergone so much, and having so much to undergo, was humming like a beehive. He could not stand still. He wandered about, meeting few pedestrians, across Water Street, up Manning Street to Puddle Dock with its liberty pole, and again past the graveyard, lingering wherever he could command a view of the broad glorious anchorage, tragic with the exposed ribs of rotting ships. Into the happier neighborhoods near, he would not penetrate; this one had been happy too, when he was a child. There he saw but visions of greatness gone, of comfort broken, and an hour ago, could have laid his cheek to the old flaggings, and wept. But he had now a terrible just purpose, and for that he must save his strength.

He was at the landing later than Rodolfo, who sat in a white wherry ballasted with his purchases, the oars already in hand. Openshaw rested his cane on the gunwale, and stepped quietly into the stern; they backed out of the cramped spaces, and shot away. The surface of the harbor was dimpling, little by little, with the great hidden swirls of the turning tide; deceptively glassy between its deflected banks, it gleamed like the thin ice which forms in November, and over which boys send pebble after pebble, and laugh to hear them chirruping. But Rodolfo had learned long since how to cajole the fierce Piscataqua; and tacking artfully by St. John's Point, he labored through the end arch of the great bridge, and gained the blue highway beyond. A train thundered overhead. Two women in the footpath, leaning over the rail, stared fixedly at the little boat, and from one sensitive face to the other, and again at their contrasted attire. They were Rodolfo's neighbors, and pleased that he had fallen in with a gentleman.

The cruisers were not back within the hour, nor within three hours. The whole world was to change strangely for them both, meanwhile. The order of what Langdon Openshaw had intended to say and do came to naught, because what happens to happen is lord over the strongest human will. He had prepared his cunning questionings, as if to force his own fate, forgetting that the aggregation of outer circumstance which we call fate is itself an irresistible vortex; the trapper, and not the trapped. Up stream, by Frank's Fort, under a sapphire sky, while as yet little had been said, he found that his watch had run down, and he asked for the correct time. Rodolfo set him right from a cheap timepiece. As he handled it, there appeared, linked to the guard, an artistic bit of bronze, a tiny Renaissance figure, with bow and hound, the blown draperies minutely fair. Openshaw saw it, and the whole universe was not so manifest to him as that small ominous curio within it.

"The Diana! On your soul, where, how, did you get that?" It was familiar to him; he knew it, though he had not seen it for more than a score of years. The rower dropped it back into his breast, definitely."It is mine, and dear to me. My mother who gave it, she is dead."

"Did you say your mother's name was Potenza? Was it Agata Potenza? Agata Boldoni once?"

"Yes."

There was a thronging pause.

"When did she die?"

"It was sixa years ago; I proceed to America."

"Have you brothers and sisters?"

"I have, in Italy, twin brothers, older; their lame-a father, Niccola Potenza, live with them. But he is notta mine."

Quick, loud, sure, the queries and the answers fell, like the hammer-strokes of a coffin in the making.

"Your father was—?"

"How can I know? They tell me he was vera handsome, vera rich, and from this America. Malfattore! He steal away, and I am born after; and she see him not in her life, I see him not in mine."

The crew had apparently hurt the passenger, for the latter heaved against the thwarts.

"Once more. Was your mother ever married to your father?"Rodolfo knit his brows, and set his teeth. "No."

For a long, long time there was no sound but the little singing keel on its joyous flight, and Openshaw's head was hidden in his hands. Rodolfo, of his own vigorous accord, took the way of Dover Bridge, across the noble inland bay, and branched up the shallowing Oyster. There by the bank, in the stiller solitudes, he shipped his oars, and, reaching forth, touched the bowed shoulder, not without compassion.

"Illustrissimo, look up! Tell me." Then did Openshaw begin, steadily, but hardly above his breath, intent the while on the image of his own youth before him, as if from that only he might draw courage to confess.

"I have a dear friend who, when he was no older than you are now, went to Italy. He spent his best years in a delusion, for he thought then he might become a great painter. His character, such as it was and is, turned to the things of good report; he was an orphan, with a competence; but he had had no home, and no moral training. Being something of a recluse, he developed late and slowly. At a time when the storm-clouds in most young men's lives are lifting, his were surcharging themselves, and getting ready to burst. On his thirtieth birthday, in Ferrara, he—"

"In Ferrara, yes!" broke the eager interruption.

"He persuaded another man's wife to run away with him. She was a peasant, very young and innocent, with a sweet pensive Perugino face; she had been his model, up to her marriage with Niccola Potenza."

There was a sharp affirmative breath from the listener.

"Niccola Potenza was a cooper, with good prospects. He was considered quite a match for the girl; but he turned out to be dull, silent, and preoccupied. Little Agata was romantic; and her thoughts ran easily back to my friend. The fault was, assuredly, all his. He thought that he loved her, and so, indeed, he did; although he loved better, alas, the adventure and the rebellion. At any rate, he took her away boldly from her husband and her babes, and set up life in his old studio, in Florence. The cooper, sworn to revenge himself, had nearly hunted my friend down, when on Easter Day he fell from a crowded and festooned inn-balcony, and broke his thigh. Somehow, after that, his fury failed him; and he sank, under his misfortune, into a sort of apathy. Things went wrong also with the lovers. Agata kept only for a while her soft, joyous, docile ways, and then grew restless and wretched, with the canker of a good heart spoiled, which nothing on earth can cure. She would spend hours in the chapel near by, her face covered, thinking and weeping; and then she would go back to her little household tasks, and move about in my friend's sight, her pale penitent face driving him wild more effectually than any audible reproach could have done. Of course he saw what was in her soul: the struggle between her foolish passion for him, and mortal home-sickness for the inner peace which had attended her old honorable life. He, on his part, resented the moral awakening in her, and stamped down both her conscience and his own. Against the voice within which bade him, since he had done her an irretrievable wrong, to take the legal burden of it upon himself, and make her his wife in America, arose his tyrannous social cowardice. He dared not; he had a depraved but intelligent dread of discord and incongruities. And so, as many another man as weak has done, he served his Æsthetic sense, and threw honor to the winds. He was never, I think, wilfully unkind to Agata; his selfishness would seem to me now less diabolic had he tried to estrange her from him. But as soon as their first apprehensive year together had passed, without any talk on the subject, he left her. Before he took his train, that night in May, my friend drew up a paper for poor Agata's maintenance. The sum was small, but much more than she had been accustomed to call her own. I know he had no forewarning of—of his child; he provided for her alone." Mr. Openshaw was speaking with some difficulty. "When were you born?"

"On the feast of San Stefano, the twenty-sixta of December, eighteen hundred sixta-five."Rodolfo had been listening under a strain keener than that of physical deafness. The more nervously overwrought of the two at this particular moment, he was likewise the more restrained. A certain question was hot in his throat. Though he had not understood all of Mr. Openshaw's melancholy monologue, he had apprehended the heart of it only too well. But he said nothing further.

A flock of pioneer blackbirds, in delirious chatter, were gathering overhead for their autumn migration, darkening the narrow sky-space with their circling wings. Openshaw looked up.

"Those birds go from pole to pole to find—what? So did he. His youth was killed in him; and before long, nevertheless, he was cheerful and active again, and courted by the world. He came home to his own honest and normal life, and after a while he married. He had no tidings of Agata, and had actually resolved once to try to find her, when he heard what must have been a false report, that she had died; and he did not doubt it, for he used to see her faithful patient little face in all his dreams. From what I have learned of late, I believe that he is most miserable, and near his own end. He does not deserve to hear of her last days. But if by letting me know, you can punish him through me, do not spare him. I will not, I promise you."

Rodolfo sat in the boat, immovable, the thin leaves of the bowery wild-grape flapping overhead, and flickering him with elfin light and shade. "My mother," he began in a low voice, "did the best: the grace of God was in her. Niccola was sick; the trade was gone, and then was mucha poverty. With me in her amiable arms, she return on the feet to Ferrara, and petition him; and, lo! the good cripple man, he pardon. There us four in one family, we flourish. The American money she could notta help, go among all till all are grown; she die of the fever sixa year ago, with many candles and masses for her soul; and because it is notta fit that my brothers spend on me, I ask Niccola's blessing, and come to America. That is the end."

Openshaw inquired presently, when he could do so: "Had you any education, as a child? Can you read and write, Rodolfo?""No." He sat sheepishly for a moment, then seized his oars.

"How have you prospered over here? Have you been able to save a little? You spoke of wishing to return."

Rodolfo quivered. "It musta be."

"Why so?" There was genuine tenderness in the two words.

"There is nothing of hope for me. I am in a greata fix. I leave, I go; I cannot stay. I have a sin also. Only my beloved, she know how it was I transgress, so thatta perhaps my guilt is not for eternity."

Openshaw laid the tip of his stick upon the rowlock, with authority. "Do not start yet; let the boat drift. You must be hungry with this long exercise. Pray pass me those things near you, and the wine; and while you lunch, I hope you will be as frank with me, Rodolfo, as I have been with you.... I look upon it as a miracle of mercy that at the eleventh hour we have found each other." He knew that the young man's blazing black eyes were full upon him. "I can help you. Only keep nothing back." He filled one of the glasses from the fizzing bottle, and passed it. But it was struck aside, and the cry that followed was so sincere it gave the rudeness dignity.

"Ah! No, no, no. Sir, I touch the spiritual drink no more till I die. I vow to Anita mia, after the terrible night. For see! The evil ones, companions, take me on a burst in a city notta this, Hartaford, and thieve." His voice dropped under the excitement, like a file of infantry under fire. "They thieve a banka; and I watch, in gin so drunk as Bacco; and when the invisible man arise pugnacious, I throttle him, and curse, and rolla him down to the cellar. He moan and expire, so that we go down to thieva more; but the city she hears, there is a sound, then a sound on top of him, and we fly, fly, fly, this streeta, that streeta, till I come back awake to this Portsmouth, and fall on my knee to Anne, and cry tears. Ah, my sainta! she comfort me in charity, and talk to me, and keepa me from the bad; and for penance I go vera dry always, not to be damn. I tell it not to Niccola at home when I go; and I pray to go soon, that the Statesa Prison notta hanga me."Such is the equilibrium between the infinite and folly, that at this juncture, as he recalled afterwards, Mr. Openshaw was eating his cheese. He answered, marvelling at his own composure.

"I read about it in the newspapers. You are in great danger, my poor boy. Now listen. There is a ship sailing for Genoa from New York next Saturday; and on her I wish you to engage your passage. That will give you a week to adjust your little affairs here; and you must, moreover, see your excellent sweetheart, and persuade her to marry you and go with you. Will you do that?"

Rodolfo opened his fine eyes very wide, and then closed them. "Oh, voluptuous as it would be, I cannot. The Capitan he make Anne deny me until I shall have many riches. She is a handmaid of domestic service on Pleasanta Street; but the old one, he is proud for her, and with the mosta reason in all the world. I shall coop with thesea my brothers cooping always in Ferrara, and do my parta with my soul. For bye-and-bye we make a marriage; and then she will be content to live in the sympathetic Italy, where safeness is for me.""But we mean to mend all that, Rodolfo. Your father, whom I know very well, is growing old, and has a great deal of property with no one to share it. The least he can do for you (I am sure he feels that), is to put you out of the reach of want. He will not ruin you, nor throw you into temptations of a kind other than those you have undergone; for you are his son, and as such he must love you. But he will hope to hear by next spring, that you have bought a farm and vineyard, and that your kind kins-people at home, and your wife, sometimes pray for him; yes, and for me. Trust me; we need say no more about it. He will have it all settled by law as soon as he is able, but certainly within a month." He passed his hand over his hair, absently, and resumed. "You will go across the ocean now; and if my friend lives, he may come to you; but he may not live, and he may not come. It is his punishment not so much to lose you, or what you might, after all, be to him, as to recognize that his awful breach of duty has established between you what I may call, perhaps, in the long run, an incompatibility." Poor Openshaw, on the rack of his own candor, groaned aloud.

Once more they were crossing Greenland Bay, and the lone and lovely miles seaward. Rodolfo crept up quietly to his strange benefactor, who was absently gazing far away, so quietly that the wherry moved not a muscle under him.

"It is you," he said. "The 'friend' is a made-up. I know. Padre, si!" He threw his arms about Mr. Openshaw, his old hatred melted away, and lay there on his knees like a little boy, sobbing, sobbing. "It is for nothing at all," he explained with his endearing semblance of good-breeding; "but the gentle goodaness of God. The beautiful Anne,—O you musta see her, and letta yourself be thank in so harmonious the voice of seventeen! she will taka me. Behold, I am so vera, vera happy." Quite overcome, he did not even raise his head when he was spoken to.

"Am I forgiven, Rodolfo? Can you forgive me for your poor mother's sake?"

For answer, the lad covered the hand he held with kisses of southern fervor, and pressed into it the little delicate charm from his watch-string.

At the touch of it, the tyranny of yesterday and to-morrow, and all his suffering present and to come, departed from Openshaw. A divine felicity began now to possess him; he was grateful, he was at peace; whatever his retribution was to be, he embraced it, in spirit, like a bride. In his revery, he seemed to stand before the everlasting tribunal, with inscrutable truth on his lips: "Of this that was mine I was heedless. Because of my heedlessness, Poverty and Ignorance and Inferiority and Exile took him by the hand, and led him to the pit. He is rescued from the worst; he will cling to the highest which he sees, with an elected soul to help him; but what he might have been he can never be. It was I that sowed; let it be mine to reap. The indelible blood that is shed is on my hands, not on his. Visit Thy wrath upon me, for here is it due. With body and soul, will, sense, and understanding, from first to last, in every fibre of my being, I affirm me accountable for this thing." To the tribunal on earth, its magnate of unblemished reputation had no explanation to offer. He foresaw only his arraignment, and the words with which to clinch it: "Gentlemen of the jury, I plead guilty."

Rodolfo spoke first. "I am so glad I guess, I guess from the teara in your eye, that time."

The tears welled up again as the other replied: "There is something else you will never guess, thank God."

"No?"

"No, my boy."

Rodolfo looked up, and smiled, without irrelevant curiosity. He was too content, afloat there.

The Honorable Langdon Openshaw took charge of the tiller, the son to whom he had twice given life still at his feet. With neither oar nor sail the guided boat came home from the upper waters to the port, in the mellowing afternoon, borne on the mighty ebb-tide of the Piscataqua.