crippled with rheumatism. She was also exceedingly cross. Jeannette was fond of Mollie, but she disliked her stepgrandmother very much indeed. Most everybody did.

Jeanne couldn't remember when there hadn't been a heavy, red-headed baby to move from place to place on the old wharf, as she picked flowers, watched pollywogs turn into frogs, or talked to Old Captain. She didn't mind carrying babies, but her father disliked having her do it.

"Don't carry that child, Jeanne," he would say. "It isn't good for your back. Make him walk—he's big enough. If he can't walk, teach him to crawl. The good God knows that he cannot hurt his clothes."

Old Captain and Léon Duval were great friends. At first they had been rivals in business, the Captain with a fish-shop in one end of his freight car, Duval with a fish-shop on the wharf. Before long, however, they went into partnership. A good thing for Duval, who was a poor business man, and not so bad a thing for the Captain.

"What are you captain of?" asked Jeannette, one day, when her old friend was busy repairing a net.

"Well," returned Old Captain, with a twinkle in his fine blue eye, "some folks takes to makin' music, some folks takes to makin' money, some folks takes to makin' trouble; but I just naturally takes to boats. I allus had some kind of a boat. Bein' as how it was my boat, of course I was Captain, wasn't I? So that's how."

"Didn't you ever have any wives?"

"Just one," replied Old Captain, who loved the sound of Jeannette's soft, earnest little voice. "One were enough. Still, I'm not complainin'. If I'd been real pleased with that one, maybe I'd have tried another. I was spared that."

"Supposing a beautiful lady with blue eyes and golden hair should come walking down the dock and ask you to marry her," queried Jeanne. "What then?"

"I hope I'd have sense enough to jump in the lake," chuckled Old Captain.

"Oh then," cried Jeanne, seriously, "I do hope she won't come. I was only thinking how glad you'd be to have her boil potatoes for you so they'd be hot when you got home."

"Most like she'd eat them all herself. An' she might make things hotter than I'd like."

Old Captain's eyes were so blue that strangers looked at them a second time to make certain that they were not two bits of summer sky set in Captain Blossom's good, red face. Once his hair had been bright yellow. The fringe that was left was now mostly white. He was a large man; nearly twice as large, Jeanne thought, as her father. He was good, too. Of course, not twice as good as her good father, because she wouldn't admit that anybody could be better than her beloved "Daddy."

As Captain Blossom said, some people take to music, others to boats. Old Captain, however, took to both; but he had but one song. Its chorus, bawled forth in the captain's big, rather tuneful voice, ran thus:

"We sailors skip aloft to reef the gallant ship,
While the landlubbers lie down below, below, BELOW;
While the landlubbers lie down below."

Jeanne hoped fervently that she was not a landlubber. One day, she asked Old Captain about it.

"What," said he, "when you lives on a dock? No, indeed," he assured her. "You're the kind that allus skips up aloft."

One evening, when the sun was going down behind that portion of the town directly west from the Duval shack; and all the roofs and spires were purple-black against a glowing orange sky, Jeanne seized Sammy and Annie; and, calling Michael to follow, raced up the dock toward the huge old furnace smoke-stack. She was careful never to go very close to that, because Old Captain had warned her that it was unsafe; so she paused with her charges at a point where the dock joined the land.

She loved that particular spot because the dock at that point was wider than at any other place. It had been wider to begin with. Then, tons of cinders had been dumped into the Cinder Pond and into the lake, on either side of the wharf; filling in the corners. This made wide and pleasing curves rather than sharp angles, at the joining place.

"Now, Mike," said she, "you sit down and watch the top of that chimney. And you sit here, Sammy, where you can't fall in. Look up there, Annie. What do you see?"

"Birdses," lisped Annie.

"Gee! Look at the birds!" exclaimed Michael. "Wait till I shy a rock at them."

"No, you don't," replied Jeanne, firmly. "Those are Old Captain's birds. I'll tell him to thrash you if you bother them. He showed them to me last night. Now watch."

Everybody watched. The birds were flying in a wide circle above the top of the old chimney. They had formed themselves into a regular procession. They circled and circled and circled; and all the time more birds arrived to join the procession. They were twittering in a curious, excited way. This lasted for at least ten minutes. Then, suddenly, part of the huge circle seemed to touch the chimney top.

"Why!" gasped Michael, "they look as if they were pouring themselves right into that chimney like—like—"

"Like so much water. Yes, they're really going in. See, they're almost gone. They're putting themselves to bed. They're chimney swallows—they sleep in there. See there!"

Two belated birds, too late to join the procession, scurried out of the darkening sky, and twittering frenziedly, hurled themselves into the mouth of the towering stack.

"They're policemen," said Michael. "They've sent all the others to jail."

"Then what about that one!" asked Jeanne, as a last lone bird, all but shrieking as it scurried through the sky, hurled itself down the chimney.

"That one almost got caught," said Sammy. "See, there's a big bird that was chasing it."

"A night-hawk," said Jeanne. "Old Captain says there's always one late bird and one big hawk to chase it. Now we must hurry back—it'll soon be dark."

As the old wharf, owing to the rotting of the thick planking under the cinders, was full of pitfalls, even by daylight, the children hurried back to their home, chattering about the swallows.

"Will they do it again tomorrow night?" asked Michael.

"Yes, Old Captain says they do it every night all summer long. That's their home. Early in the spring there's only a few; but as the summer goes on, there are more and more."

"Will oo take us to see the birdses some nother nights?" asked Annie.

"Yes, if you're good."

"Does 'em take they's feathers off?"

"Oh, Sammy! Of course they don't."

"Does 'em sing all night?"

"No, they sleep, and that's what you ought to be doing."

CHAPTER IV

WHAT WAS IN AN OLD TRUNK

"Where you been?" demanded Mrs. Shannon, crossly, from the doorway of the shack. "Hurry up and put Sammy and Annie to bed and don't wake Patsy. Your pa wants you to say your lessons, Jeanne. I gotta go up town after yeast. Come along, Mollie, we can go now. Here's Barney with the boat."

Her family tucked into bed, Jeanne slipped into her father's room.

"Here I am," said she. "I'm not a bit sleepy, so you can teach me a lot."

Jeanne seated herself on her father's little old leather trunk—the trunk that was always locked—and patted it with her hands.

"There's my spelling book on the table, Daddy. There's a nice pink clover marking the place."

Her father looked at her for a moment, before reaching for the book. He liked to look at her; it was one of his few pleasures.

A soft clear red glowed in her dark cheeks and her eyes were very bright and very black. She was small and of slender build, but she seemed sufficiently healthy.

"Father, why do I have to speak a different language from Mollie's?" (She had never called her stepmother by any other name, since her fastidious