Page:The house without a key, by Earl Derr Biggins (1925).djvu/11

 terslip should look at. But they envied them just the same—or maybe for that very reason.” She nodded. “A sort of gypsy strain. It’s what sent your father over here to set up as a whaler, and got you born so far from home. You know you don’t belong here, Amos. You should be living in Milton or Roxbury, carrying a little green bag and popping into a Boston office every morning.”

“I’ve often thought it,” he admitted. “And who knows—I might have made something of my life—”

They had come to a barbed-wire fence, an unaccustomed barrier on that friendly shore. It extended well down on to the beach; a wave rushed up and lapped the final post, then receded.

Miss Minerva smiled. “Well, this is where Amos leaves off and Dan begins,” she said. “I’ll watch my chance and run around the end. Lucky you couldn’t build it so it moved with the tide.”

“You’ll find your luggage in your room at Dan’s, I guess,” Amos told her. “Remember what I said about—” He broke off suddenly. A stocky, white-clad man had appeared in the garden beyond the barrier, and was moving rapidly toward them. Amos Winterslip stood rigid for a moment, an angry light flaming in his usually dull eyes. “Good-by,” he said, and turned.

“Amos!” cried Miss Minerva sharply. He moved on, and she followed. “Amos, what nonsense! How long has it been since you spoke to Dan?”

He paused under an algaroba tree. “Thirty-one years,” he said. “Thirty-one years the tenth of last August.”

“That’s long enough,” she told him. “Now, come around that foolish fence of yours, and hold out your hand to him.”