arms upon the bleaching deck, as if he would embrace the ship.

When the storms beat upon it in the night, he sometimes made his way forward and stood upon the forecastle fronting the gale, and as the wind swept over him and the ship quivered and shook and vibrated under the tempestuous attack, he fancied that he felt the deck heave as it might under the motion of the uptossed wave.

He dreamed that the ship quivered in the long rush of the salt seas. Then the rain beat upon him unheeded. Wrapped in his great-coat in winter, he even disdained the driving snow, and as he stood by the weather cathead, from which no anchor had ever depended, and peered out into the whirling darkness, he seemed to hear the roar of a breaker ahead!

The ship was his own, his property. The loss of a single plank, the giving way of a single bolt, was like the loss of a part of himself. With it he lived, with it he would die. Alone he passed his nights in the hollow of that echo of the past. Sometimes he felt half mad in the rotting vessel; yet nothing could have separated him from the ship.

The little children of the adjacent village feared him, although he had never harmed any of them, and was as gentle as a mother in his infrequent dealings with them all; but he was so silent, so grave, so grim, so weird in some way, that they instinctively avoided him. Their light laughter was stifled, their childish play was quieted when Captain Barry—so they called him—passed by. He never noticed it, or, if he did, he gave no sign. Indeed, his heart was so wrapped up in a few things that he marked nothing else.

The old admiral, whom he watched over and cared for with the fidelity of a dog,—nay, I should say of a sailor,—was the earliest object of his affections. To look after him was a duty which had become the habit of his life. He cherished him in his heart along with the ship. When the others had gone to their rest, he often climbed up on the quarter-deck, if the night were still, and sat late in the evening staring at the lights in the house on the hill until they went out, musing in his quaint way on the situation. When the days were calm he thought first of the admiral, in stormy times first of the ship. But above both ship and captain in his secret heart there was another who completed the strange quartet on Ship House Point,—a woman.

Above duty and habit there is always a woman.

CHAPTER III

The Woman and the Man who Loved Her

The wife of the admiral, to whom he had brought the flags of the two British ships on that memorable cruise, had long since departed this life. Her daughter, too, who had married somewhat late in life, had died in giving birth to a girl, and this little maiden, Emily Sanford by name, in default of other haven or nearer relationship, had been brought, when still an infant in arms, to the white house on the hill, to be taken care of by the old admiral. In the hearts of both the old men she divided affection with the ship.

With the assistance of one of the admiral's distant connections, a faithful old woman, also passed to the enjoyment of her reward long since, Emily Sanford had been carried through the troubles and trials incident to early childhood. At first she had gone with other little children to the quaint red school-house in the village. She had been a regular attendant until she had exhausted its limited capacity for imparting knowledge. After that the admiral, a man of keen intelligence, of world-wide observation, and of a deeply reflective habit of mind, had completed her education himself, upon such old-fashioned lines as his experience suggested. She had been an apt pupil indeed, and the results reflected great credit upon his sound, if somewhat unusual, methods of training, or would have reflected had there been any one to see.

In all her life Emily Sanford had never been away from her grandfather for a single day; she had actually never left that little town, and, except in school-time, she had not often left the Point. Although just out of her teens, she was not old enough to have become discontented—not yet. She was as childlike, as innocent, as unworldly and unsophisticated a maiden as ever lived,—and beautiful as well. It was Prospero and Miranda translated to the present. The old admiral adored his granddaughter. If the ship was his Nemesis, Emily was his fortune.

As for Barry the sailor,—and it were injustice to the brave old seaman to think of him as Caliban,—he worshipped the ground the girl walked on. He was in love with her. A rude old man of fifty in love with a girl of twenty; a girl immeasurably above him in birth, station, education—in everything! It was surprising! Had any one known it, however, it would not have seemed grotesque,—only pitiful. Barry himself did not know it. He was too humble and too ignorant for self-examination, for subtle analysis. He loved, and he did not comprehend the meaning of the word! Even the wisest fail to solve the mysteries of the heart.

Although the veteran seaman was too ignorant of love rightly to characterize his passion, it was nevertheless a true one. It was not the feeling of a father, nor of a companion, nor yet that of a servant, though it partook in some measure of all three. That was an evidence of the genuineness of his feeling. Nothing noble, no feeling that is high, self-sacrificing, devoted, is foreign to love that is true, and love is the most comprehensive of the passions—it is a complete obsession. Captain Barry would have given his soul for Emily Sanford's happiness, and rejoiced in the bestowal.

He cherished no hopes, held no aspirations, dreamed no dreams concerning any future relationship. He was just possessed with an inexplicable feeling for her. A feeling that expected nothing, that asked nothing, that hoped for nothing but the steady happiness of being near her. To be in sight, in sound, in touch, that was all, that was enough. The sea in calmer mood gives no suggestion of potential storms. Barry's love was the acme of self-abnegation. If he had ever reached the covetous point he would have realized that she was not for him. He never did.

He loved her with a love beside which even his devotion to the old admiral, the passionate affection he bore for the old ship, were trifles. The girl had grown into his heart. Many a time he had carried her about in his arms when she was a baby. He had played with her as a child; she could always call a smile to his lips; he had cared for her as a young girl, he had served her as a woman.

He, too, had been happy to contribute to her education as he had been able. There was a full-rigged model of the Susquehanna in her room in the white house. He had made it for her. It was a perfect replica, complete, finished in every detail; so the ship might have looked if she had ever been put in commission. Emily knew every rope, every sheet, line, and brace upon it. She could knot and splice, box the compass, and every sailor's weather rhyme was familiar to her. She could handle a sail-boat as well as he, and with her strong young arms pulled a beautiful man-o'-war stroke. He had taught her all these things. When study hours were over and play-time began, the two together had explored the coast-line for miles in every direction.

So far as possible he had gratified every wish that she expressed. If a flower grew upon the face of an inaccessible cliff and she looked at it with a carelessly covetous glance, he got it for her, even at the risk of his life. He followed her about, when she permitted, as a great Newfoundland dog might have done, and was ever ready at her beck and call. His feeling towards her was of so exalted a character that he never ventured upon the slightest familiarity; he would have recoiled from such an idea; yet had there been any to mark, they might have seen him fondle the hem of her dress, lay his bronzed cheek upon her footprint in the sands, when he could do so without her knowing it.