Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/124

114 rest I've got to say needn't scare you. I've never been back to Maine," he resumed. "I've followed the sea ever since—steady for eight years now, round about the Pacific mostly—South Sea trading schooner for the last five years. The sea isn't what you'd call a refining life, like the city; nor educating, like college, but a fellow can keep clean and decent on it, if he's a mind; and as for me—I've no fancy nor never had for mixing up in the mire of every foreign port I touched, like some chaps. I preferred just to stick close to my boat. Of course I've had my knocks, and got my scars, and they aren't pretty, but they're all on the outside. You've a right to know that. Oh, I want you to feel certain," he broke out earnestly, "that even though I am capable of murder—I want you to feel certain, Miss Rebecca Jerome," he spoke her name reverently, "that you and my mother are the only women in my life."

His voice trembled a little, and he leaned and scooped up a bit of gravel in his hand, as if to cover up by the casual act the fervor of his feelings. He sifted it from palm to palm as he proceeded.

"When the 'Louise' struck Boston two months or so ago," he went on, explanatory, "I knew she'd be laid up a long spell for repairs. We had a bad time coming north after we'd rounded the Cape. So I decided to put up here in a kind of gentleman's place. I always did like clean white sheets," he put in. "Poor as our shack was up there on the edge of the woods, and mean as my mother felt, she saw to it I always had my clean sheet and pillow-case every Saturday night, 'well as the city-folks up at the Camp. Well, I'd often heard of these Young Men's Christian Clubs.