“Good fishin’, Niece Louise?  Bring home a mess?”

“Yes, indeed,” she told him.  “The baskets are outside.  Let Amiel bring them around to the back.”

“Aye, aye!” returned the captain briskly.  “Tautog?  We’ll have ’em for supper,” and let her pass as though nothing extraordinary had occurred.

But to Louise’s troubled mind the bursting of the old chest was like the explosion of a bomb in Cap’n Abe’s store.

What was the meaning of it all?  Why had the chest been filled with bricks and useless garments?  And by whom?

If by Cap’n Abe, what was his object in doing such a perfectly incomprehensible thing?  He had deliberately, it seemed, shipped a quite useless chest to Boston with no expectation of calling for it at the express office.  Then, where had he gone?

Cap’n Joab’s query was the one uppermost in Louise Grayling’s thought.  All these incomprehensible things seemed to lead to that most important question.  Had Cap’n Abe gone to sea, or had he not?  If not, what had become of him?

And how much more regarding his brother’s disappearance did Cap’n Amazon know than the neighbors or herself?  In her room Louise sat and faced the problem.  She deliberated upon each incident connected with Cap’n Abe’s departure as she knew them.

From almost the first moment of her arrival at the store on the Shell Road, the storekeeper had announced the expected arrival of Cap’n Amazon and his own departure for a sea voyage if his brother would undertake the conduct of the store.

The incidents of the night of Cap’n Amazon’s coming and of Cap’n Abe’s departure seemed reasonable enough.  Here had arisen the opportunity long desired by the Shell Road storekeeper.  His brother would remain to look out for his business while he could go seafaring.  Cap’n Amazon knew just the craft for the storekeeper to sail in, clearing from the port of Boston within a few hours.

There was not much margin of time for Cap’n Abe to make his preparations.  Perry Baker was at hand with Louise’s trunks, and the storekeeper had sent off his chest, supposedly filled with an outfit for use at sea.  Just what he had intended to do with useless clothing and a hod of bricks it was impossible to understand.

Cap’n Abe had come to her bedroom door to bid Louise good-bye, and she had seen him depart in the fog just at dawn.  Yet nobody had observed him at the railroad station and he had not called for the chest at the Boston express office.

The chest!  That was the apex of the mystery.  Never in this world had Cap’n Abe intended to take the chest with him to sea—­or wherever else he had it in his mind to go.

Nor was the chest intended to be returned to the store until Cap’n Abe himself came back from his mysterious journey.  The fact that Perry Baker had shipped it in his own name instead of that of the owner had brought about this unexpected incident.