But as I come round the corner of the house there was
somebody by the back gate, and I heard a girl's voice sayin': 'Oh, no,
no! I can't! I can't!'
"If I hadn't trod on a stick maybe I'd have heard more, but the racket
broke up the party. Barbara come hurrying past me into the house, and
by the light from the back door, I see her face. 'Twas white as a
clam-shell, and she looked frightened to death.
"Thinks I: 'That's funny! It's a providence Eben's coming home so soon.'
"And the next day I saw her again, and she was just as white and
wouldn't look me in the eye. Wednesday, though, I felt better, for the
servants on the Davidson place told me that Allie had gone to Boston on
the morning train to be gone for good, and that they was going to shut
up the house and haul up the launch in a day or so.
"Early that afternoon, as I was coming from my shanty to the bluff on
my way to the shore after dinner, I noticed a steam-yacht at anchor two
mile or so off the bar. She must have come there sence I got in, and I
wondered whose she was. Then I see a dingey with three men aboard rowing
in, and I walked down the beach to meet 'em.
"Sometimes I think there is such things as what old Parson Danvers used
to call 'dispensations.' This was one of 'em. There was a feller in
a uniform cap steering the dingey, and, b'lieve it or not, I'll be
everlastingly keelhauled if he didn't turn out to be Ben Henry, who was
second mate with me on the old Seafoam.
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