LITMIR.BIZ

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lay open-eyed upon the couch while unbidden thoughts raced through his brain.

      The very fact of his sleeping on the plush couch was enough to bring to his mind the memory of one whom he had irretrievably lost on this memorable night. Was she not at this moment under his own roof, miserable and nearly destitute? He knew that, as long as he might live, his humble room up-stairs would never be the same again.

      It had been made a place sweet and full of wonder by the very fact that she was in it. Never again, he knew, could he enter it without its being faintly fragrant of her who, all his life, he had considered the divinest created thing on earth. By her presence she had sanctified it and made of it a shrine for his meditative and wakeful hours.

      Ever since they had gone to school together, hand in hand, the names of Nellie Tanner and Code Schofield had been linked in the mouths of Grande Mignon busybodies. Living all their lives two doors away, they had grown up in that careless intimacy of constant association that is unconscious of its own power until such intimacy is removed.

      To-night the shock had come.

      It was not that Code had taken for granted that Nellie would marry him. Never in his life had he told her that he loved her. It is not the habit of men who rove the seas to keep those they love constantly supplied with literature or confectionery, or to waste too many words in the language of devotion.

      He admitted frankly to himself that he had always hoped to marry her when he had acquired the quarter interest in Bill Boughton’s fishstand that had been promised him, but he had not told her so, nor did he know that she would accept him. The idea had been one to be thought of only at times of quietness and confidence in his future such as come to every man.

      But he had not reckoned on Nat Burns. He had not realized quite to what an extent Burns had made progress. He recalled, now that it was brought forcibly home to him, that Nat had been constantly at the Tanners’ for the last four or five months. But Code had thought nothing of this, for Nat had paid similar court at times to others of the girls of Freekirk Head. He was, in fact, considered the village beau.

      And Nellie herself had told him nothing. There had been a modest shyness about her in their relations that had kept him at an exasperating and piquant distance.

      Well, everything was over now, he told himself. He could take his defeat since Nellie did not care for him.

      Then he suddenly recalled Burns’s actions and manner of speaking during the harrowing moments of the fire.

      “I wonder if Nat really loves her?” he asked himself. “And if not, why did he become engaged?”

      CHAPTER V

      STARTLING NEWS

      The home-coming of Captain Bijonah Tanner and his wife did not provide the thrill looked for by the more morbid inhabitants of Freekirk Head. In the excitement of the fire all hands had forgotten that cable communication between Mignon and the mainland was unbroken.

      The operator, in the pursuance of his duty, had sent word of the fire to Eastport, and then concocted some cable despatches for Boston and Portland papers that left nothing to be desired from the viewpoint of sensationalism. In his zeal for filling space and eking out his slender income, the operator left nothing standing on Grande Mignon except the eternal rocks and the lighthouse.

      It was such an account that Bijonah Tanner fed upon that morning in the tiny cabin of the Rosan, and half an hour after he had read it he was under way. Special mention had been made of Code Schofield’s rescue of little Bige, with a sentence added that the Tanner place had been wiped out.

      With their minds filled with desperate scenes of cataclysm and ruin, the Tanners raced the complaining Rosan around Flag Point six hours later, only to fall upon one another and dance for joy at the sight of the village nestling as of yore against the green mountains and gleaming white in the descending sun.

      An acrid smell and a smudge of smoke told of what had really been, and a black heap of ruins where the familiar house had stood for so long confirmed their fears for their own property; but to see the village content and smiling, except for a poor building or two, was joy enough to overbalance the personal loss.

      So those who expected a tearful and emotional home-coming were disappointed.

      Code met the dory that rowed ashore after Bijonah had made fast to his mooring in the little cove that was the roadstead for the fishing fleet. He had half expected to share the duty with Nat Burns since the recent change in his relations to the Tanners, but Burns did not put in an appearance, although it was three o’clock in the afternoon.

      Bijonah shook hands with him, and Ma Tanner kissed him, the latter ceremony being a baptism of happy tears that all were safe and alive. Bijonah cleared his voice and pulled hard at his beard.

      “Understand you’re quite a hero, Code,” he ventured bluffly, careful to conceal any emotion, but resolved to give the occasion its due.

      “Oh, rot, captain!” said Code equally bluffly, and the ceremony was over.

      But not so with Ma Tanner. She wept and laughed over the preserver of her offspring, and called him so many exalting names that he was glad to turn her over to Nellie and his mother at the Schofield gate.

      Hot and flushed with the notoriety she had given him along the main road, he retired to the corner shop and drank wonderful cold ginger-beer out of a white stone jug until his temperature had returned to normal.

      But later he returned to the house, and found the Tanners about to depart. The widow Sprague, near the Odd Fellows’ Hall, who lived, as she expressed it, “all deserted and alone,” had agreed to take the family into her rambling cottage. Luke Fraser had brought his truck-cart up alongside the rescued Tanner belongings, and they were already half loaded.

      “Can you come down to the widdy’s to-night, Code?” asked Bijonah. “I’ve got somethin’ to tell ye that ought to int’rest ye consid’able.”

      “Yes, I’ll be there about eight,” was the reply as Schofield joined in loading the truck.

      He found the captain that night smoking a pipe on the low front porch of the Widow Sprague’s cottage, evidently very much at home. Bijonah motioned him to a chair and proffered a cigar with a slightly self-conscious air. Inside the house, Code could hear the sound of people moving about and the voice of a woman singing low, as though to a child. He told himself without question that this was Nellie getting the kiddies to sleep.

      “A feller hears queer things over in St. John’s sometimes,” announced Bijonah suddenly, sucking at his pipe.

      “Yes.”

      “An’ this time I heard somethin’ about you.”

      “Me? I don’t know three people in St. John’s.”

      “Guess I met one of the three, then.”

      “Where? How? Who was it?”

      Bijonah Tanner coughed and shifted uneasily in his chair.

      “Wal,” he said, “I was takin’ a little turn along the water-front, just a leetle turn, as the wife will tell you, when I dropped into a–er–that is–a rum-shop and heard three men at the table next to mine talking about you.”

      Schofield smiled broadly in the darkness. Bijonah’s little turns along the water-front of St. John’s or any other port had been the subject for much prayer and supplication in the hearts of many devout persons thoroughly interested in their neighbor’s welfare. And of late years Ma Tanner had been making trips with him to supply stimulus to his conscience.

      “What were they talking about?” So far from being suspicious, Code was merely idly curious of the gossip about him.

      “My boy,” said Tanner, suddenly grave, “I was the best friend your father had for forty years, and I’m goin’ to try and be as good a friend to his son. But you mustn’t mind what I tell ye.”

      “I won’t, captain. Go ahead,” said Code, his interest awakening.

      “Wal, them men was talkin’ about the loss of the old May Schofield,

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