“I suppose Mr. Selincourt is very rich,” said Mrs. Burton with a little wistful sigh, as if she thought that riches might detract from his niceness.

“Yes, I expect he is very rich, but he is so thoroughly pleasant, and so free from side, that one is apt to forget all about his riches,” Jervis said, then rose to set a chair for Katherine, and bring her bowl of porridge from the stove, where it was keeping warm for her.

“Is Miss Selincourt nice too, and is she pretty?” asked Mrs. Burton, who to Katherine’s secret disquiet was always asking questions concerning the expected arrivals.

Jervis laughed.  “I have never stopped to consider whether she is pretty, but she is certainly very charming in her manners,” he said, with so much earnestness that Katherine instantly made up her mind that Miss Selincourt was the kind of person she did not care for and did not want to know.

Phil came in from the store at this moment, with a pucker of amusement on his face.

“Stee Jenkin has brought our boat back,” he said.  “Oily Dave paid him half a dollar to come, because he didn’t feel like showing his face up here just yet.”

“Why not?” demanded Jervis Ferrars.

“Stee said the ice at the river mouth didn’t give way until after midnight, when it burst with a roar like cannon.  When Oily Dave got to Seal Cove last night, the water reached to the shingles of his house; so the old fellow rowed across to Stee’s hut and asked to be taken in for the night, because he was flooded out and the Englishman was drowned.”

“But didn’t Stee tell him that Mr. Ferrars was safe here with us?” asked Mrs. Burton.

“Not a bit of it,” replied Phil.  “That would have spoiled sport, don’t you see? because Oily Dave was what Stee called most uncommon resigned, and talked such a lot about going to find the body in the morning, that they just made up their minds to let him go.  He was up by daybreak and went over to look; but when he saw the door broken down he guessed there had been a rescue, and he was just mad because no one had told him anything about it.”

“It was rather too bad to leave him in suspense all night, poor man,” said Mrs. Burton gently.

CHAPTER XII

The First of the Fishing

For a whole week the thaw went merrily on.  One by one the fishing boats left their winter anchorage in the river, and sailed out into the stormy waters of the bay.  By the end of the week Jervis Ferrars had so far recovered the comfortable use of his feet that he could wear boots again and go about like other men.  Directly he was able to do this he went down to Seal Cove every day, where he inspected every boat that was ready to put to sea, overhauled the store shed, and quietly took command, setting Oily Dave on one side with as little ceremony as if that worthy had never been master of the fleet.