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one
Laurel knew, and the latter was always entranced by the servant's
religious exclamations, doubts and audible prayers. She was saying
something now about pits, gauds and vanities; and she ended a short
profession of faith with an amen so loud and sudden that Laurel,
although she was waiting for it, jumped.
It was past seven, the air was so sweet with lilacs that they seemed to
be blooming in her room, and the sunlight died slowly from still space.
By leaning out of her window she could see over the Square. The
lamplighter was moving along its wooden fence, leaving faint
twinkling yellow lights, and there were little gleams from the windows
on Bath Street beyond.
The gayety of her morning mood was replaced by a dim kind of
wondering, her thoughts became uncertain like the objects in the
quivering light outside. The palest possible star shone in the yellow sky;
she had to look hard or it was lost. Janet, stirring in the next room,
seemed so far away that she might not hear her, Laurel, no matter how
loudly she called. "Janet!" she cried, prompted by unreasoning dread.
"You needn't to yell," Janet complained, at the door. But already Laurel
was oblivious of her: she had seen a familiar figure slowly crossing
Washington Square --her grandfather coming home from Captain
Dunsack's.
Gracious, how poky he was; she was glad that she wasn't dragging
along at his side. He seemed bigger and rounder than usual. She heard
the tap of his cane as he left the Common for Pleasant Street; then his
feet moved and stopped, moved and stopped, up the steps of their
house.

She was sorry now that she hadn't known what an outport was, and
determined to ask him to-morrow. She liked his stories, that Camilla
disdained, about crews and Hong Kong and the stormy Cape. The
thought of Cape Horn brought back the memory of her Uncle Gerrit,
absent in the ship Nautilus. Her mental pictures of him were not
clear--he was almost always at sea--but she remembered his eyes,
which were very confusing to encounter, and his hair parted and
carelessly brushing the bottoms of his ears.
Laurel recalled hearing that Gerrit was his father's favorite, and she
suddenly understood something of the unhappiness that weighed upon
the old man. She hoped desperately that Janet or Camilla wouldn't
come in and laugh at her for crying. In bed she saw that the room was
rapidly filling with dusk. Only yesterday she would have told herself
that the dragon in the teakwood chair was stirring; but now Laurel
could see that it never moved. She rocked like the little boats that
crossed the harbor or came in from the ships anchored beyond the
wharves, and settled into a sleep like a great placid sea flooding the
world of her home and the lamplighter and her grandfather sorrowing
for Uncle Gerrit.

II
When Jeremy Ammidon sent his granddaughter home alone, and turned
toward Captain Dunsack's, on Hardy Street, he stopped for a moment to
approve the diminishing sturdy figure. All William's children, though
they were girls, were remarkably handsome, with glowing red cheeks
and clear eyes, tumbling masses of hair and a generous vigor of body.
He sighed at Laurel's superabundant youth, and moved carefully
forward; he was very heavy, and his progress was uncertain. His
thoughts were divided between the present and the past--Barzil
Dunsack, aged and ill and unfortunate, and the happening long ago that
had resulted in a separation of years after a close youthful
companionship.
It had occurred while Barzil was master of the brig Luna, owned by

Billy Gray, and he, Jeremy, was first mate. In the exactness with which
he recalled every detail of his life in ships he remembered that at the
time they were off Bourbon Island, about a hundred and ten miles
southwest of the lie de France. The Luna was close hauled, and, while
Barzil was giving an order at the wheel, she fetched a bad lee lurch and
sent him in a heap across the deck, striking his head against the bumkin
bitts. He had got up dazed but not apparently seriously injured; and
after his head had been swabbed and bound by the steward he returned
to the poop. There, however, his conduct had been so peculiar--among
other things sending down the watch to put on Sunday rig against a
possible hail by the Lord--that, after a long consultation with Mr.
Patterson, the second mate and the boatswain, and a brief
announcement to the crew, he, Jeremy Ammidon, had taken command
in their interest and that of the owner.
Barzil had made difficulties: Mr. Patterson struck up a leveled pistol in
the master's hand just as it exploded. They had confined him, in charge