That compact, as Miles stood waiting before the library fire, seemed reward enough, not only for their lesser troubles of last night, but for whatever might come, of greater. The words, the clasp of hands, the whole twilight scene, still occupied his thoughts so busily that when the latch clicked and Tony entered, he had formed no plan for the expected interview.

“Morning,” called the sailor. Fresh and hearty as though he had slept all night, he wore somehow a thoughtful aspect; and his first movement was toward the window, where he paused to study the chessmen. They stood as Richard Bissant had left them, but now, touched by winter sunshine, formed a little plot of brightness, thick-set, like white and scarlet hyacinths.

“He’d have won that time.” Tony shook his head, musing. “Yes, if—A losing game we play, though, in this world, isn’t it?” Again he shook his head, adding inconsequently, “One point, Miles: be happy while you’re young.”

His left side brushed a corner of the bookshelf. He winced, and nursed his arm, which moved clumsily.

“Lame there,” he explained, without turning. “I stumbled last night, and hit her a clip.”

“On our friend’s knife?” suggested Miles.

Tony whipped about with a droll face of consternation.“That fool been blabbing already?” he cried. “He can’t be out of bed yet!”

Miles laughed.

“Come, Tony,” he said quietly. “We must have a talk. We should have had, long before.”

“You beat me!” Although Tony chuckled and flung himself into the armchair carelessly, the light in his large gray eyes twinkled hard and wary. “I’m sharp in a way, but you big, long, quiet chaps—Humph! What is it? Carry on!”

Miles came readily to the point.

“I was on the island last night,” he began, “saw all your squabble there, and looked into your chest afterward. So I’ll own up to eavesdropping, if you will to smuggling.”

The sailor gave a short laugh, either scornful or temporizing.“What?” he asked, as though rather amused than offended. “Smuggling what?”

“It doesn’t matter,” answered Miles. “That’s your affair. I don’t know, and don’t want to. If it’s to go on—” He faltered, but spoke warmly, remembering the quarrel and Tony’s outburst of generous anger. “One thing certain. If it’s to go on—I like you better than ever, Tony, but—you can’t keep this house for headquarters.”

In high good humor, Tony rapped out an oath and hammered the arm of his chair.

“You’re the sort,” he laughed, his teeth flashing white, his eyes brimming with jovial admiration. “Might have known how you’d take it. By the Lord, there’s no tattle-tale blood in you! You’ll do, buster! Chuck me out, but stay friends. That the idea? Right you are! And devilish sorry I’ll be to go.”By one of his sudden changes, his face, without darkening, fell entirely serious.

“Do you know, I never saw before—” He pointed his pipe-stem up at the sombre canvas above the mantel. “The old Commander there—he looks ready to reef, steer, crack a man’s head, or fire a broadside. Good old days, those. Never saw before you looked so much alike. But you must take more on the mother’s side.”

“Maybe,” replied Miles, wondering.

Tony studied them by turns,—the bold, severe face of Hardy’s captain in the picture, the living face below.

“Head o’ the family,” he said at last. “Must be damned odd. All my life, now—If I hadn’t run loose—Strict ideas, strict ideas! Well, what’s the odds? I was only going to say, Miles, you’ve grown up. This last week—that’s it: you’ve grown up.” He rose, with an air of dejection. “You’re right, too, old chap. I understand. I must clear out.”

“We’ll miss you, Tony,” Miles began.

“Ye-es?” drawled the wanderer absently. Forcing a doubtful smile, he surveyed the room. “The time I’ve laid up here—Talk of eye-openers! What a rum thing it is, after all—a home!”

After this it was Miles who proposed delay, and Tony who would not listen.

“No,” he repeated. “You struck it, first time. Quit the game or move out. That’s all fair and square. If I didn’t stand to win or lose—a good slice, too—why, I’d say quit. No! Finish! Come on, old boy, help lug my box downstairs!”

And with the box in the stern of his boat, he shoved off from shore that very afternoon. He had shipped oars, and stretched forward his powerful arms for the first stroke, when suddenly he tossed back a startling farewell.

“I’ll come see you, Miles,” he laughed. “Better not return it, though. Abe might not understand; and the drunken blighter gives me trouble enough already.”

“What!” called Miles, with a strange misgiving. “You mean—You’re not going to Kilmarnock?”

“Kilmarnock!” retorted Florio. “And have that fat fool Quinn talk me inside out to the whole village? No fear—You needn’t look so glum, though. Alward’s won’t be bad, for a poor exile. Why, there’s a girl there that—” He grinned, wagged his head with a most rascally whistle, squared his great shoulders, and then, favoring the wounded fore-arm, rowed out to swing against the current.

“Cheer up, Commander!” he shouted from the distance. “Don’t forget, we stay friends!”

Gloomily enough, however, the young master of the shore returned alone among his hummocks, and climbed his glittering winter field. “I’ve made a mess of it,” he thought miserably. They were now two in the house who had been four. Yet as numbers are not presences, the life within had abated, not merely by half, or more than half, but by an immeasurable void. Nor did the greater loss include the smaller; for in like disproportion Miles missed his friend the adventurer, at once, and afterward, more searchingly than he expected. Smuggling he could regard with all the tolerance of a borderer; so that as vacant days followed lengthening toward spring, he came sometimes to feel that he had banished a live companion for a dead scruple. In the contrary mood—and this was no less dismal—he saw plainly what a dangerous spirit he had quartered on his best ally.

His promise to her, meantime, went by default; till on a snowbound morning of more than usual loneliness, he set aside Tony’s wish, buckled on his snowshoes, rounded the headland to Alward’s, and knocked at her door. Little good, however, came of this expedition. Abram, scowling, blocked his entrance. He caught a glimpse into a small room, bare, but surprisingly neat, from the unseen corner of which came a familiar voice, saying, with the comfortable inflection of a man thoroughly at home, “You know, Anna, a girl like you—”The very voice that Tony could use for making friends; and now, heard only, unqualified by look or gesture, it somehow rang not so true. Instantly, however, it broke off.

“What’s up?” called Tony, and heaved through the doorway.

“Oh, it’s you!” he said coldly. “Hold on, I’ll come with you.”

They went back together along the shore, plodding side by side, but talking at random, with constraint; and when they parted at the upper tower, it was on vague though evident terms of division.

“I’ll do all the neighboring.” Tony spoke sulkily as a boy. “Thought I asked you not to come?”

After this ripple of incident, the winter days once more fell stagnant, or at the best, moved on sluggish and imperceptible. Rain came at last, however, and thaws, and warm sea fogs devouring the snow more silently than either, and more swiftly. Then one by one, like spies of Nature stealing into the land, followed the slow and potent changes, yearly forgotten, yearly striking to the core of remembrance and delight. Hushing sounds of water rose from the gullies on still mornings; brown knolls, from day to day, heaved and widened; the ice moved out to sea, a white and broken flotilla, while the river cleared again to shining blue; snow forsook the hills, forsook the shore, and clung raggedly under the cedars in thick, worn plates of ice. Then, too, the earliest fly woke buzzing in the southern window, and at noon the house, with door swung wide, stood open to all the reviving sounds and nameless stirrings of the valley. Now and again, a stray cow gamboled ridiculously down the field, her bell clanking, her shoulder bearing a leathern scar where, all winter long, she had chafed her stanchion. And over the graves, the birch grew blurred above the hill.

In all this time the outcast made no attempt at his “neighboring;” and Miles, without understanding, accepted their alienation. Even pride, however, could not keep him from being lonely,—more than ever lonely, in these mild days and nights of spring. He wandered by himself, framing and rejecting plans, no less discontented with the present than sorely puzzled by the future.

One afternoon, when he had taken these perplexities for another airing, he fell as it were into an April daydream by the river, leaning both elbows on the quarter-deck rail. Along the verge, and scattered among the rotten planks, peeped the russet tops of young fiddle-head ferns, which to his brooding eyes seemed almost visibly to uncurl, as a kitten’s paws uncurl, intense with drowsy and voluptuous life. Pale blades of grass were tenderly thrusting upward from edges of the warm rocks. And yet a damp scent of last year’s leaves, that perished slowly in the hollows, sternly and wholesomely reminded him how the world cherishes to destroy, and destroys to cherish infinitely. Solemnity closed down upon him, while still a kind of beatific spell ran through his veins. For a long time, and for no cause, he recalled only the winter night when they had leaned together on the rail, watching.

By strong effort, at last, he denied this memory, repulsed this longing, and cleared the decks of his mind.

“I must go away.” He fell back on the promise doggedly. And the thought was like lead in his shoes, that once would have winged them. “As quick as summer comes, and Ella can tend lamps, I’m off. That’s the plain course—”

Voices were coming, at the first sound of which he sprang upright. Through the evergreen wall pierced the quick utterance of Tony, angrily imploring.

“Treat me this way, like dirt?” he was urging. “And all because a fellow likes you, and tells you so? Honestly, I mean it, Anna. And what right have I given you to think—”

“Right!” The girl’s voice also trembled, but as though with helpless fury. “What right have you to hunt and drive me like—like—Oh! And I was coming here just to be rid of you!”“You can’t, my dear,” said the other, cajoling. “You can’t, and that’s a fact. Come now—”

A cry echoed among the evergreens as in an empty room.

“Go back, I hate the sight of you! Go back and let me alone! I wish I was a man, to kill you!”

Miles had sprung to the path among the firs. It widened before him into a little alley of green shadows, where the girl stood facing Tony, her hand raised to strike. As Miles broke through upon them, she wheeled with the same look, the same cry, as when he had rowed out to her in the fog. The sailor fell back. The malignant flush that darkened his face was new and ugly; and yet in his eyes a conflicting change, still more new and lighted with a saving honesty, continued to blaze. If his anger were black as smoke, through it flickered some higher emotion.

“Hiding in the bushes?” he sneered. “You seem fond of that.”

Miles found himself unexpectedly at high tension.

“It’s my own shore!” he cried, choking. “You be off!”

He had run in close. They seemed on the point of clinching, when the girl darted between them, and with a swiftness that had the effect of strength, caught Miles by the arm, and flung Tony staggering backwards.

“For shame!” she cried. “Like a pair of wild savages! I’m ashamed of you both!” From under the high arched brows, her eyes sent out a dangerous light. She turned but the one shaft at Tony. “You go!”

He stood his ground, and retorted bitterly:“Oh, I see. There is something between you.”

“No!” She dropped the arm that she had clung to. And at the word or the movement, Miles understood, with a strange triumph, his late repulse from Alward’s Cove. “No, there’s nothing. But there’s one thing, Captain Florio. This man’s real, and I believe him clear through. And the way I believe you is just skin-deep, and the rest all hollow!”

Tony made a little plausible gesture of submission, as foreign as it was graceful.

“Short and sweet, that is,” he answered. “Not true, all the same. I’m honest my own way, if I don’t parade it like a God’s miracle. I meant all I said, Anna; it’s a pity you can’t take it so.”

He turned away, a jaunty penitent, swung his wide shoulders edgewise into the gap, and disappeared among the firs. The whisking of the boughs died into silence; and next moment the girl’s courage had fallen slack.

“Oh, what shall I do?” she whispered, as if alone. Her face she held averted; but Miles could see her head shaken like a daffodil on the stalk, and feel the hand tremble which had caught his arm again. “Where can I go? And it’s in the same house with me—They’re always there.”

“Anna,” he ventured; and as her hand dropped suddenly, “Haven’t I as good a right to call you so? Come, we’re old friends. Tell us.”

She would not turn.

“It’s—oh, it’s nothing!”

“If it should be anything?” he persisted. “If you—won’t you come tell me then?”She looked up and away in a flash; but he had caught the lustre of brimming eyes.

“There’s nobody else I could—”

“Oh!” he cried in a whirl. “To hear you say that—”

Footsteps crossed the quarter-deck, and scuffed in the path behind them.

“Hello! Ex-scuse me!” called a hearty though nasal voice. Like an aged Puck out of the bushes, Hab the teamster peered shiftily into their cover. The girl was away like a fawn.

The teamster’s head remained as though he were imbedded in the evergreens. Wagging it, he broke into batrachian song:—

“Didn’t think it of ye, Mile,” he added mournfully, then winked. “Ella stated you was down here. But she don’t figger what was up, and bless ye, I’ll never give it away.” He looked behind him, called “Here he is, Mr. Furfey,” and entered the lane.

A stranger followed him.

“Here, Mile,” continued Habakkuk, with a flourish. “This feller’s the gentleman I drove all the ways down here to interduce, name of Furfey.”

It was a brisk, insignificant person who stepped forward, a smirking little man, half shabby and half prosperous, plainly an American, but not of the countryside. His interruption had thrown Miles into a passion of disappointment; yet even a more fortunate arrival might not have helped the man. His hand was too moist and loose, his pale face too shrewdly wrinkled, and his smile, like the cold stare of his bulbous blue eyes, too calculating; even his trite compliments seemed a piece of insinuation. Altogether, Miles disliked him on sight, as one dislikes a grub or an earwig.

They returned together to the deck, where Old-Hab left them to confer. For some time the stranger made little use of his chance, but though all too ready and familiar, chattered and questioned trivially, with a studied inconsequence.

“Come,” Miles broke in at last impatiently. “I don’t see yet. Please tell me what I can do for you.”

The man became very confidential.

“I’ll be frank with you,” he promised glibly. “We’ll come square to it. Ain’t that right? I may have dealin’s with a man over here, likely—man named Florio. Now, you’re so high spoke of all round, I store by your opinion. See? So I come to you, like this, and says,—between us, mind,—what d’ ye think about him?”

Miles considered. From the first mention, he vaguely saw trouble ahead for Tony; then, not at all vaguely, saw how that trouble might at least send Tony packing. The sooner the happier; toward just such a riddance his wishes ran like fire. To speak the mere truth, to aid the law: and in the same thought he stood confounded at his own baseness. The loyalty might all be on one side, yet—

“Better see Florio yourself,” he answered. “You can judge. He lives up in the next cove.”The stranger argued long, and surrendered reluctantly.

“Well,” he sighed, “I s’pose that’s right, if you’re so stubborn to it. I’ll go see him.”

He slouched away, and plunged among the bushes. Miles, climbing toward the house, paused halfway on the slope, to look down thoughtfully at the shore. Seldom had he encountered so many persons there in one day; never so many problems. Life, like the fiddle-heads, seemed to unfold into complexities. The river sparkled through chinks in the grove, and dazzled broadly across a distant gap, where the path swung bare to the headland. It was the one pass to Alward’s. But the stranger did not darken it, either going or coming.

“He’ll wait down there,” thought Miles, “then come lying back, and say he can’t find Tony. Spying! And I couldn’t tell him!”

He could not, the fact was adamant—not even to save the hostage in the other camp.