There was a step in the store.  Her room overlooked by two windows the roof of the front porch and she could hear what went on below plainly.  The step was lighter than Cap’n Abe’s.  The bolts of the two-leaved door rattled and it was set wide; she heard the iron wedges kicked under each to hold it open.  Then a smell of pipe smoke was wafted to her nostrils.

A footstep on the Shell Road announced the approach of somebody from The Beaches.  Louise yawned again and was on the point of creeping into bed once more when she descried the figure coming through the fog.  She saw only the boots and legs of the person at first; but the fog was fast separating into wreaths which the rising breeze hurried away, and the girl at the window soon saw the full figure of the approaching man—­and recognized him.

At almost the same moment Lawford Tapp raised his eyes and saw her; and his heart immediately beat the call to arms.  Louise Grayling’s morning face, framed by the sash and sill of her bedroom window, was quite the sweetest picture he had ever seen.

It was only for a moment he saw her, her bare and rounded forearm on the sill, the frilly negligee so loosened that he could see the column of her throat.  Her gray eyes looked straight into his—­then she was gone.

“Actress, or not,” muttered the son of the Salt Water Taffy King, “there’s nothing artificial about her.  And she’s Cap’n Abe’s niece.  Well!”

He saw the figure on the porch, smoking, and hailed it: 

“Hey, Cap’n Abe!  Those fishhooks you sold me last evening aren’t what I wanted—­and there’s the Merry Andrew waiting out there for me now.  I want——­”

The figure in the armchair turned its head.  It was not Cap’n Abe at all!

“Mornin’, young feller,” said the stranger cordially.  “You’ll have to explain a leetle about them hooks.  I ain’t had a chance to overhaul much of Abe’s cargo yet.  I don’t even know where he stows his small tackle.  Do you?”

Fully a minute did Lawford Tapp keep him waiting for an answer while he stared at the stranger.  He was not a big man, but he somehow gave the impression of muscular power.  He was dressed in shabby clothing—­shirt, dungaree trousers, and canvas shoes such as sailors work and go aloft in.  The pipe he smoked was Cap’n Abe’s—­Lawford recognized it.

There was not, however, another thing about this man to remind one of the old storekeeper.  This stranger was burned to a rich mahogany hue.  Not alone his shaven face, but his bared forearms and his chest where the shirt was left unbuttoned seemed stained by the tropical sun.  Under jet-black brows the eyes that gazed upon Lawford Tapp seemed dark.

His sweeping mustache was black; and such hair as was visible showed none of the iron gray of advancing age in it.  He wore gold rings in his ears and to cap his piratical-looking figure was a red bandana worn turbanwise upon his head.