“Oh, she is all right,” said he briskly; “she has been used to taking care of herself almost ever since she was born.  And by the way, Miss Port, did you know that Mr. Easterfield is at his home?”

Miss Port was not pleased with the sudden change in the conversation, and she remembered, too, that in other days it had been the captain’s habit to call her Maria.

“I did not know he had a home,” she answered.  “I thought it was her’n.  But since you’ve mentioned it, I might as well say that it was about him I came to see you.  I heard that he came to town yesterday, and that her carriage met him at the station, and drove him out to her house.  I hoped he had stopped a minute as he drove through your toll-gate, and that you might have had a word with him, or at least a good look at him.  Mercy me!” she suddenly ejaculated, as a look of genuine disappointment spread over her face; “I forgot.  The coachman would have paid the toll as he went to town, and there was no need of stoppin’ as they went back.  I might have saved myself this trip.”

The captain laughed.  “It stands to reason that it might have been that way,” he said, “but it wasn’t.  He stopped, and I talked to him for about five minutes.”

The face of Miss Port now grew radiant, and she pulled her chair nearer to Captain Asher.  “Tell me,” said she, “is he really anybody?”

“He is a good deal of a body,” answered the captain.  “I should say he is pretty nearly six feet high, and of considerable bigness.”

“Well!” exclaimed Miss Port, “I’d thought he was a little dried-up sort of a mummy man that you might hang up on a nail and be sure you’d find him when you got back.  Did he talk?”

“Oh, yes,” said the captain, “he talked a good deal.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“He did not tell me anything, but he asked a lot of questions.”

“What about?” said Miss Port quickly.

“Everything.  Fishing, gunning, crops, weather, people.”

“Well, well!” she exclaimed.  “And don’t you suppose his wife could have told him all that, and she’s been livin’ here—­this is the second summer.  Did he say how long he’s goin’ to stay?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t ask him?”

“I told you he asked the questions,” replied the captain.

“Well, I wish I’d been here,” Miss Port remarked fervently.  “I’d got something out of him.”

“No doubt of that,” thought the captain, but he did not say so.

“If he expects to pass himself off as just a common man,” continued Miss Port, “that’s goin’ to spend the rest of his summer here with his family, he can’t do it.  He’s first got to explain why he never came near that young woman and her two babies for the whole of last summer, and, so far as I’ve heard, he was never mentioned by her.  I think, Captain Asher, that for the sake of the neighborhood, if you don’t care about such things yourself, you might have made use of this opportunity.  As far as I know, you’re the only person in or about Glenford that’s spoke to him.”