For a quarter of an hour Thomas Medbury had been standing at the east window of his mother's parlor, gazing out across his neighbor's yard with an eager intentness that betrayed a surprising absorption in a landscape without striking features and wholly lacking in any human interest. The low-studded room in which he stood was closely shut and darkened, having about it the musty smell peculiar to old houses. There were sea-fans before the fireplace, flanked on each side by polished conch-shells. On the wall hung an oil-painting of the brig North Star, with all sail set, and at her foretruck a white burgee, with her name in red letters, standing straight out in half a gale of wind. Family portraits in oval gilt frames were ranged with mathematical precision along the remaining wall-spaces, and on the mantelpiece stood a curious collection of objects brought from far lands—carved ivories and strange ware from China, peculiar shells, a Japanese short sword, and a South Pacific war-club. No one would have needed to be told that it was the home of a sailor.

Indeed, a keen observer might have guessed it from the young man himself. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and bronzed to the color of overripe wheat. His eyes had the steady, far-seeing look of the seaman, but were not yet marked about by the crow's-feet that the glare of the sun on the sea brings early in life. It was, moreover, a strong face, straightforward and pleasant, and irradiated by an almost boyish eagerness.

Suddenly he leaned forward with quickened interest as the door of his neighbor's house opened, and there stepped forth a short, stout man of sixty, who stood a moment for a last word and then hurried down the boxwood-lined path. He, too, was clearly a sailor: he walked with his feet far apart, like a man so habituated to the rolling deck that it seemed a waste of time and energy to alter his gait on the rare occasions when he trod the firm ground. Medbury perceived that his face wore a look of placid satisfaction, and with the tightening of the lines of his own to an unspoken resolution, he hurried through the house and across the yard, and, vaulting the low dividing fence, approached his neighbor's back door.

He lifted the latch without knocking, and at once came face to face with a wet-eyed young woman standing at a table and listlessly cutting out sugar-cookies with a tin mold. A child of four, leaning against her, reached eagerly for the cutter, and a boy of ten sat near the stove, softly crying.

"Annie," said Medbury, abruptly, "where's Bob? I want to see him."

"He's up-stairs, packing. He's going out with Cap'n Joel March," said the young woman, tragically. The boy by the stove broke into a wail, and she turned sharply toward him.

"Do stop it, Bobbie!" she exclaimed. Then she walked toward the door to call her husband.

She returned at once, her husband, tall, brown, and wiry, walking behind her with the subdued step of a culprit who feels that by stepping softly, smiling unobtrusively, and gainsaying no man, he may escape, through his humility, what he deserves for his misconduct. His good-natured face lighted up at sight of Medbury."Bob," said Medbury, without other prelude than a nod, "I want you to do me a favor: don't go out this trip with Cap'n Joel."

The other smiled uncertainly and seated himself.

"Why, that's a funny thing to ask, Tom," he said wonderingly. "Annie's been at me, of course; but I don't see what odds it makes to you. It's a good berth, and it don't seem right to let the chance go by. Besides, I've promised the old man. I can't back out now."

"But he promised me he'd stay home a spell," broke in his wife. "He thinks that's nothing. He's just got home, after being away eleven months. Why, baby didn't know him!"

Under the concentrated gaze of her elders, the child contemplated her father as a blinking puppy might have looked at an object that, from being unfamiliar and terrifying, had gradually become an accepted but still unexplained phenomenon. But presently she turned to Medbury.

"Him gived me a pen-n-y," she said, with a serene gravity that seemed to concern itself with the fact as a historical statement rather than as a personal gratification.

Medbury seized her and tossed her, giggling, in his arms.

"He did, did he?" he exclaimed. "Well, he doesn't deserve to have another if he can't stay home and get acquainted with you." He seated himself, and, with the child snuggling against him, turned to her father again.

"It's a shame, Bob, after promising Annie. Mother says she hasn't talked about anything for six months except your coming home for a while. She said you were going to paint the house and fix things up, and she's been running around asking everybody about the best kind of paint, and planning where to set out shrubs and make flower-beds, and dig up a little garden for the children. And now you run off at the first chance!"

"Why, I don't see why you take it so to heart, Tom," said Bob, smiling, but a little grieved. He felt they ought to feel that he did it only for the best.

"Well, I'll tell you why: I want to go myself. I asked Cap'n Joel to take me, but he wouldn't hear to it. Now, if he can't get anybody else, he's bound to let me go in the end."

Bob looked at him in amazement.

"Why, you're going to have the new bark! What do you care for—" Then all at once his face broke into a comprehending grin. "Oh, I see," he added. He sat for a moment smiling down at the floor. "All right, Tom," he said, looking up at last. "I'll do it. I wouldn't for anybody else. I really didn't want to go, but I felt I ought to. But what I'm going to say to the old man—" He looked at them with a troubled face.

"Nothing," replied Medbury, promptly. He turned to the boy, who was listening eagerly, the new hope of keeping his father at home brightening his tear-stained cheeks. "Bobbie, go over and tell my mother you want my fish-lines; then run up to Cap'n March's and tell him your father can't go, after all. And hurry right back; your father's going to take you fishing."

The boy went out of the door and over the fence with a wild whoop of unrestrained joy. Medbury caught up a hat and put it on his friend's head.

"You'll find my boat under Simeon's shop; everything's in her," he told him. "We'll send Bobbie right down. And hurry; the tide's right for fishing now. You want to get right off." He laughed boyishly. Then he gently pushed Bob toward the door and watched him going down the street.

"Well, that's done," he said to Annie, and stepped outside, with his hand still holding the latch. Suddenly he looked back. "Annie," he said, "tell Bob I want him to go out with me as mate when the bark's finished. Of course that's six months away; but tell him to keep it in mind." With that he hurriedly closed the door.

The boy returned, and followed his father, and five minutes later Captain March turned in at the gate. His face was no longer placid, but wore a look of annoyance. Medbury, watching him, saw him go away a moment later, hurrying toward the harbor, taking shorter steps than usual, and biting his bearded under lip in his perplexity.

"Seems kind o' mean to bother the old fellow," Medbury said to himself, looking troubled. He shook the feeling off as he added: "I guess it's for his good. Now he'll look up Davis; he's the only man he can get."

As he passed out of his gate, Annie called to him from her doorway. She was smiling.

"I wish you good luck, Tom."

"Thank you, Annie," he replied. "Don't tell about this."

She shook her head and laughed.

"Not till it comes out all right," she promised.

John Davis was sitting in the shipyard watching the carpenters setting up a stern-post for a new vessel, and there the captain found him. Medbury, watching them, saw them go away together; but at the corner of the Shore Road and Main street they separated.

Half-way up High street, Medbury caught up with Davis.

"You're walking fast, John," he said.

"Just shipped with Cap'n Joel," Davis replied, not slacking his gait, but rather increasing it, as befitted a little man, sensitive as to his size, when walking with a long-legged companion.

"That's what I wanted to see you about," Medbury told him. "You're not going." He smiled, but he glanced uneasily at Davis out of the corners of his eyes.

Davis stopped and looked at him. He was a middle-aged man with a red beard and an uncertain temper, and now he stared at Medbury with flushing face. Then he broke into a laugh.

"I ain't, eh?" he demanded good-naturedly. "I'd like to know why not."

Medbury smiled and laid his hand on the other's shoulder.

"Because I want to go myself, John," he replied. "I've got to go."

Davis stared at him with dropping jaw.

"You!"

"That's what I said," Medbury replied.For a moment Davis stood grinning uncertainly; then he looked up.

"Where's the joke?" he asked. "Blamed if I see it."

"It's no joke," said Medbury, patiently. "I've got to go. I can't tell why—just now; but some day I may."

Davis gazed up and down the street with an abstracted air; but all at once he drew himself together and exclaimed:

"Well, I'll be—" He broke off suddenly, and, turning sharply, began to walk back to the village.

"Where are you going?" asked Medbury, still standing in the road.

Over his shoulder Davis answered laconically:

"To tell the ol' man I can't go." He did not stop.

"It's mighty good of you, John," Medbury called humbly. "I'll make it up to you somehow—see if I don't.""Make it up!" cried Davis, stopping in the road. "I don't want nothin' made up. You made it up, years ago, when you got me out of that affair in Para. You didn't ask no questions that night; nor when you run across our bar in that no'theaster to fish up my boy when his boat capsized. I don't know what you're up to, and I don't care. It's all right." He waved his hand lightly, as if to dismiss all obligations, and departed in search of Captain March.

But half a dozen steps away, Medbury heard him laugh, and turned to see him standing in the road, looking back.

"Just this minute saw what you was aimin' at," he called to Medbury. "Well, good luck to you!" And, grinning to himself, he went his way.

"Now," thought Medbury, "if Cap'n March'll only keep his eyes open for the rest of the day, I guess he's not going to miss seeing me. I shall be near, but not too near. Only I wish I knew of something to hurry him up before too many people laugh and wish me luck."

Fate, in the hands of a woman, was to do that for him.

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