“Trust Cap’n Ira,” agreed the young man.  “And what other girl could have done what you did, Sheila?  Hear what Cap’n John Dunn says?  You ought to be a sailor’s daughter. I can tell him you are going to be a sailor’s wife.”

“No, no!  Oh, Tunis!  It can’t—­”

“No ‘can’t’ in the dictionary,” interrupted the captain of the Seamew.  “You and I are going to have one big talk, Sheila, after I take you up home.”

“Up home?” she repeated.

“You are going back to Cap’n Ira’s.  You know you are.  That other girl has beat it for Boston, you say, and there’s not a living reason why you shouldn’t return to the Balls.  Besides, they need you.  I could see that with half an eye when I went away the other morning.  The old man hobbling around the barn trying to catch an old hen was a sight to make the angels weep.”

“Poor, poor Cap’n Ira!” she murmured.

“And poor Aunt Prudence—­and poor me!” exclaimed Tunis.  “What do you think is going to happen to me?  If you go away, I shall have to sell all I own in the world and follow you.”

“Tunis!” she cried, almost in fear.  “You wouldn’t.”

“I certainly would.  I am going to have you, one way or another.  Nobody else shall get you, Sheila.  And you can’t go far enough or fast enough to lose me.”

“Don’t!” she said faintly.  “You cannot be in earnest.  Do you know what it means if you and I have any association whatsoever?  Oh!  I thought this was all over—­that you would not tear open the wound—­”

“I don’t mean to hurt you, Sheila,” he said softly.  But he was smiling.  “I have got something to tell you that will, I believe, put an entirely different complexion on your affairs.”

“What—­what can you mean?” she burst out.  “Oh, tell me!”

“I’ll tell you a little of it now.  Just enough to keep you from thinking I am crazy.  The rest I will not tell you save in the Balls’ sitting room before Cap’n Ira and Aunt Prue.”

“Tunis!” she murmured with clasped hands.

“Yesterday I spent two hours in the manager’s office of Hoskin & Marl’s.  They have been looking for you for more than six months.  Naturally, there was no record of you after you left that—­that school when your time was out.  They didn’t seem to guess you’d have got work in that Seller’s place.”

“What do you mean?  What did they want me for?” gasped the girl.

“Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your pardon.  He cried, that manager did.  He broke down and cried like a baby—­especially after I had told him a few things that had happened to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn’t found such good friends in Cap’n Ira and Prudence.  That’s right.  He was all broke up.”

The girl stood before him, straight as a reed.  She rocked with the pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were glued to the planks.  She could not have fallen!