Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/101

Rh Cicely's arm and staring in gaping astonishment at his assailant.

"That is my sister," said Alan, very stiff and quiet and suddenly very like his father. "Whatever she has done you are not to touch her. She has ruined my chance of sailing with the Huntress, but at least she has shown me what—what you are, Martin Hallowell."

With his arm about Cicely, Alan went down the pier, while Martin, confounded and silenced, stood staring after them. The two said nothing as they climbed the High Street, although much must have been passing in the boy's mind. As he pushed open their own door and came into the dusky hallway he spoke for the first time.

"Can you wait here by the fire a minute, Cicely? I am going up first to—to tell my father what a fool I have been."

The weeks of winter passed, news came that peace had been signed on Christmas Eve, one after another the ships of war came straggling home. Some had taken prizes, all had been harried by the winter storms—and none brought news of the Huntress. One Carolina vessel that put in for repairs told of picking up a crew adrift in boats and of setting them aboard a ship bound for Chesapeake Bay and the coast of Delaware.

"They were most of them Swedes," the sailors told Alan, "and they were not very willing to talk