“Ben,” Mrs. Seymour asked next morning at the breakfast table, “did you bring home the cheese yesterday when you came back from the village?”

“Yes, mother,” Ben answered. “I left it with the other packages on the bench outside the kitchen door.”

“You are sure that you didn’t leave it in the store?” Mrs. Seymour was not questioning Ben’s statement, for she, too, was quite certain that the cheese had been accounted for when Ben had dropped all his marketing on the seat by the door and checked each purchase by the list she had given him.

“I know I brought it with me,” repeated Ben. “This chil’ loves cheese too well to let himself forget anything as important as that. Didn’t you find it out there?”

Mrs. Seymour shook her head without answering.

“Probably it dropped behind the bench, or perhaps it is in the buckboard,” Mr. Seymour suggested. He knew that his wife must be thinking of Fred Bailey’s warning against leaving any food outside the door. This was the first time that the advice had been overlooked.

Followed by Ann, he went out to look for the missing cheese. There might be remnants left to indicate what had happened to it. But there was not a trace to be found anywhere. He and Ann looked at each other incredulously. As they stood there, not yet quite ready to put their questions into words, they saw Mr. Bailey running toward them from the back field, holding something in his outstretched hand. He was waving frantically to them in most unusual excitement. As he came closer Ann could see that what he carried was a package wrapped in torn paper.

Ben, standing in the kitchen doorway, recognized this bundle and hailed Mr. Bailey. “Hey!” he called. “Where did you find our cheese?”

“So it be yours,” Fred gasped as he stopped before them, very short of breath. “I thought it would be, but I wanted to make sure of it.”

Ann saw that the man was pale beneath his tan and the laughter had fled from his blue eyes. Whatever he might have to say now could have no joke hidden behind it.

“I left that cheese out on the bench and forgot it,” Ben explained.

“I warned you folks not to leave food lyin’ around outdoors; I told you that you mustn’t leave anything that would tempt spirits to come from the sea and pester us,” said Mr. Bailey. “I don’t know as we shall ever be free from them again,” he added despairingly.

“I never heard that spirits were especially fond of cheese,” commented Mr. Seymour. “Where did you find it, Fred?” he asked quietly.

“Up by the stone wall in the back field,” Mr. Bailey half whispered, staring at the package that he was holding. “Mr. Seymour, Mrs. Seymour, marm, something terrible must have been going on this past night.”

Ann was tremendously impressed by his attitude; he was so tense and earnest. Never had she seen any grown person so moved and anxious. She looked at Ben and saw that he shared her own feeling, while Helen’s face was white with excitement.

But the assurance of Mr. Seymour’s calm reply steadied the children and they turned with relief to watch him while he spoke. “Why are you so sure it was taken during the night? Why not in the afternoon? Much more likely then, I think, for if it had been lying on this bench all the afternoon and evening somebody would have noticed it and taken it into the pantry.”

Just then Jo came across from the barnyard and stood beside his father, listening. Ann could tell from his drawn face and wide eyes that he was as seriously upset as was Mr. Bailey.

“I’ll admit that I’m puzzled,” said Mr. Seymour, “though your theory, Bailey, is perfect nonsense. Who in the name of reason would have carried off a great chunk of cheese?”

“Not one of your hens, I suppose?” asked Mrs. Seymour.

At that the children laughed, even Jo; the cheese was nearly as big as a hen. The Seymours all liked cheese, plain and in rarebits, and as they went to the village for groceries only twice a week Mrs. Seymour had ordered what might have seemed an overgenerous supply.

“What have you missed at other times?” asked Mr. Seymour.

“Milk, first of all,” Fred answered. “I put a pail down in the yard and turned my back on it a minute to go into the house and when I looked at it again it was lowered a couple of inches. Next time, they tipped a pail over and spilled the whole of it. And then they took a piece of meat—walked off with Jo’s and my Sunday dinner.”

“Who could have done it?” exclaimed Mrs. Seymour, and Ann felt a shiver of excitement running down her spinal cord; her thought flashed back to that shushing noise on the wreck.

“Who done it?” echoed Mr. Bailey. “That grinnin’ sea demon on the prow o’ that ship is who done it.”

“Rubbish, Fred!” Mr. Seymour came out with his flat denial. But he looked very grave. “I don’t like to believe there is a sneak thief in the neighborhood; in fact, I can’t believe it.” And even gentle Mrs. Seymour was indignant. Her eyes shone with sympathy as she said, “And these things are too unkind for any one to have done them with the idea that he was playing a practical joke. Your Sunday dinner! How mean!”

“Practical jokes? Sneak thieves?” Mr. Bailey repeated scornfully. “I told you what’s been troubling everything around here. It’s that devil figurehead.”

“Bailey! I never would have thought you capable of such superstition. It comes from living alone so much, I suppose, and being so close to the sea and the sky. Are you going to be frightened by the mischief of some bold rascal of a woodchuck or stray dog? Put the cheese on the kitchen table, Ben. Before we throw it away I want to examine it and see whether there are marks of fingers or claws and teeth, to try to get some clue to who or what has been handling it.”

“Who or what about says the whole of it,” said Mr. Bailey as he turned away to go back to his farm work.

Ann thought that he looked very tired and anxious. Why had that ship ever come to his shore to worry him? She wished more than ever that she could do something to solve the mystery; she hoped still to accomplish what she had promised herself to do, but she was so slow about it!

“What are you going to do, Jo?” Ben called after him. “Goin’ down to the beach to get a load of small pebbles and sand—want to come?”

“Yes, of course I do,” answered Ben, forgetting that half of his time lately had been given to painting.

“And I’m coming, too,” called Ann. “Bring three shovels, Ben.”

“Haven’t but two,” Jo called back, laughing. “You can drive.”

So down to the beach they went, joggling over the ruts and rocks in the two-wheeled cart as sensible Jerry plodded steadily along regardless of the bumping cart behind his heels.

A great change had come over Ben during these weeks at Pine Ledge. Instead of the boy who had hardly known whether or not to help carry the bags at the station that first day, he now took his place beside Jo and shoveled with him, tossing the shovelfuls of beach sand into the high cart and keeping pace with Jo. This pleased Ben very much, for though he could not lift as heavy a load it was only because he was younger and shorter than Jo; proportionally he was doing exactly the same amount of work. He did not say anything about it, but Ann noticed, and so did Jo,

“Pretty good work,” he said approvingly. “You’re getting up a fine muscle.”

In the afternoon great thunderheads of clouds began to climb up toward the sun and blacken the sky. The Seymours were up in a field watching Mr. Bailey and Jo as they laid a platform of cement in the milk house for which the beach gravel had been carried that morning. Already squalls were sweeping in from the sea in dark and menacing blots, and to the Baileys this did not promise to be merely a passing thundershower but an all-night deluge.

“See the gulls coming in,” said Jo. “They are beginning to notice the storm, just like I said they would, even before the blow begins.”

Ben and Ann looked to where Jo was pointing, and sure enough, a scattering of gulls showed white as they clustered about the mouth of the river, rising up on spread wings and crying spasmodically with a plaintive note that sounded almost human.

“They will ride with the wind that way until they get fed up,” Jo explained, “and then shift back to the shelter of the swamp pond.” He looked at the clouds with a speculative eye. “Along about sunset they should be taking to the pond. We’ll watch carefully and see how they act, for that will show us, very likely, how heavy the wind will blow before morning.”

To Ann and Ben the sky looked as though the storm would break in a few minutes, for the clouds were black and massed, with a white misty foam along their edges. But Jo’s prophecy was right. The clouds hung steadfastly just over the top of the pine forest, as though fixed in that one spot, moiling and running in layers over themselves but not advancing. The Seymours kept glancing at the sky, for it made the afternoon seem very strange and threatening.

But Mr. Bailey’s thoughts could not have been on the approaching storm, for suddenly he looked up at Ann, who was standing near by, watching him as he smoothed the cement with gentle unhurried strokes of his trowel.

“I’ve been thinkin’ about what your father said this mornin’, kinder turnin’ it over in my mind. And I don’t know but what he’s right about that cheese; he was talkin’ to me after dinner an’ he says—an’ he showed ’em to me—that there’s marks of dog teeth on the cheese. But there ain’t any stray dog around here; there couldn’t be, without Jo or me catchin’ sight of it now and then. Maybe it’s a wolf. They’ve been known to come down from the backwoods, now and again. But that old sea demon, I don’t like him at all. Ain’t got no use for him. We would all be better off without him.”

“I don’t like him,” Ann agreed most readily. “But what can you ever do to get rid of him before the wreck breaks up?”

“I’ve made up my mind to fix him,” Fred answered grimly. “I’ll chop him off the boat and burn him up on the beach.”

“Oh!” Ann danced gayly in anticipation. “Won’t that be fun! We’ll have a bonfire and bake potatoes in it. And that will be the end of the old grinning demon.” “And we’ll roast some of our own corn,” Ben chimed in. “Don’t you suppose, Jo, that we could find a few ears that would be ripe enough?”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” Jo answered. “Lobsters are mighty good cooked in the open, too. After the rocks get hot you put the lobsters under a pile of wet seaweed and steam them. We’d do it to-night only the storm would open right on top of us.”

Mr. Bailey squinted up at the western sky. The clouds were weaving in and out above the tops of the pines. The dropping sun had now tinged their white edges with a line of yellow fire. The squalls out at sea had melted together into one great blot of dark shadow relieved here and there by a bit of foam that showed startlingly white against the somber blackness.

“You two had better skite for the house now,” he said. “Jo and I will hurry and finish this work before the rain comes, and get the critters under cover. The thunder makes them run the pasture.”

“The critters” were Jerry, the horse, waiting with the empty cart, and Maude, the cow, feeding placidly in the pasture near by although she had more than once looked up at the sky as though she understood what was coming.

“Let us take Maude and Jerry,” begged Ann. “We’ll get them into the shed.”

“All right,” Mr. Bailey consented. “Only get a move on you. After this long dry spell the storm will be some blow, and don’t you forgit it.”

Ben chose to bring in Maude, for he loved the slow-moving gentle creature with her soft brown eyes that always seemed so interested in him every time he appeared.

Ann’s job was Jerry. He was as eager as she to get within the four walls of his shelter. He went briskly down the cart path and into the barnyard and stopped on the spot where the cart belonged, all without the need of much guiding from Ann. It was there that Ann’s trouble began. She didn’t know how to unharness him. She could not discover which of the big buckles distributed about the harness would free him. Even after she had unfastened the traces, as she had seen Jo do, Jerry still stayed firmly fixed between the shafts. He turned his head and looked at her with patient wonder as if he wanted to know why he was being kept there.

Ben, coming in with Maude walking sedately before him, proved to be of little help. “Jerry sticks there because he is so fat,” he suggested. “See, the shafts bulge out over his sides. We’ll have to pull him out.”

But though Ben held the shafts while Ann pulled at Jerry’s head they had no better success. Whenever Jerry moved forward an inch the cart came, too.

Ann knew how Mr. Bailey would laugh if he and Jo reached the barnyard and found that she had been beaten by a buckle. Besides, she had promised to get Jerry under cover, and into his stall he should go if it were a possible thing; she was determined to get him there. She would unbuckle every strap in his harness until she came to the ones that held him to the cart. So she and Ben began with those nearest, and some of them were so stiff that they couldn’t have been unfastened since the harness was bought, goodness knew how many years ago.

At last Jerry was free. He seemed to know when the right buckle came undone. He stepped forward and looked at Ann and Ben with an expression of mild disgust, then he braced himself and had one fine shake, the harness showering down in dozens of little straps. Again he looked at the children, as if to say, “Now see what you have done!”

Without waiting he stalked away to his stall.

Ann and Ben began to pick up the miscellaneous bits of harness as fast as they could, but Jo came and caught them before they had quite finished. He laughed until he was weak as he watched them on their hands and knees picking up the little pieces. Even Jerry turned around in his corner and stared with astonished eyes.

“I’ll give you a good lesson to-morrow,” said Jo, “show you how to put a set of harness together. The big buckle under his forelegs and the two straps on the sides wrapped about the shafts were all that you should have opened.”

“I didn’t know there were so many straps in the world!” exclaimed Ben. “And look at Jerry over there. He is laughing at us, too.”

“We don’t get many city hicks out here, do we, Jerry?” Jo took a sly nudge as he rubbed the soft nose of the old horse, and Jerry opened his mouth in a wide bored yawn. “That’s the way to treat ’em,” said Jo. “Yawn again, a bigger one this time.”

The Seymours rushed through their supper, for they were eager to see the first real storm of the season beat against the cliffs. Fred had promised that there would be gorgeous sights, to-night and all day to-morrow, and they did not wish to miss a bit more than necessary.

Mr. Seymour was eager to see the color of sea and sky and rocks and the struggle of the wind against the water. Ben found the curling, twisting sea fascinating to watch as the wind closed down beyond the pond rocks. The gale seemed to have shut them into a wide semicircle, for the tops of the tallest pines far against the sunset were swaying and bending gently, while the house and the meadow still stood in the first soft yellow twilight where not a breath of air moved. It was early yet, for the Seymours had fallen into country ways and it was hardly six o’clock.

Jo joined the group as they stood watching the sea. He touched Ann lightly on the shoulder. “Come over here if you want to see the gulls now,” he said, and Ann went with him to the corner on the kitchen side of the house.

Ben followed, for he wished to see the birds. Anything that had movement interested him enormously, the flight of the gulls as well as the sweeping onward of the crested waves.

“How strangely the gulls act!” said Ann.

Dozens of the great gray birds were poised over the spot where the children knew that the swamp pond lay circled with great pines. Their wings were outstretched as they rode the still air and they were calling in a confused jumble of high-pitched chuckling cries.

“They ought to light.” Jo’s face was puzzled. “Strange the way they hang up there. Usually it looks as if they dropped straight down, out of sight.”

“Why do they come inland?” asked Ben. “To get out of the wind?”

“Partly. But they know, same as I do, that the storm will blow the fish up the river to seek quiet water.”

“I don’t believe that they mean to settle on the pond to-night,” Ann ventured after a while.

“Strange,” said Jo again. “It would almost seem as though something down there on the pond was keeping them off, but gulls don’t fret about muskrats. I never have heard of a bobcat around these parts, but it looks suspicious to see them act in that jumpy way.” “Perhaps it’s the same animal that took our cheese,” suggested Ann.

“Perhaps,” agreed Jo. He dropped his eyes from the poised birds and ran them thoughtfully along the fringe of the woods where the trees cut sharply into the growing twilight. Suddenly he caught hold of Ben’s arm.

“Look! See there!”

“What?” Ben asked. “I don’t see anything. What do you mean?”

“Right there alongside of that big pine. Don’t you see the smoke? Some one has lighted that fire again. It must be just where we found the embers.”

As he spoke he began to run down over the meadow in the direction of the spot from which the smoke rose. Ben and Ann could see it plainly, now that their attention had been called to it, a thin wisp of smoke curling above the top of one of the tallest pines.

“Come on,” said Ann. “I’m going, too.”

“Sure,” said Ben, and they started to run after Jo.

“Where are you going?” called Mr. Seymour. “The rain will be here soon.”

“Jo thinks there is a fire down in the swamp,” Ben answered, “and we are going to help him put it out.”

“Well, don’t stay too long. Remember that the rain will be of more use than you are.” “I want to go with them,” said Helen. “Mayn’t I, father?”

“Take care of her, Ann,” cautioned Mr. Seymour.

And then the three Seymours ran down the hill to where Jo was waiting for them in the shadow of the woods, for he had turned to see whether they were following. He was standing in a spot that was hidden from the entrance to the path into the woods.

Vaguely Ann wished that Helen had not come; she was such a little girl.