He dropped his voice and came nearer.
"I will tell you this—though I should not," he said. "There's some one to join at the last minute, who will get into a boat waiting at the wharf in the dark, some one you love, miss, who ought to be stopping ashore with the rest of us. You should find some way to keep him back."
"Oh, if I only could!" she cried.
"There's only you can do it," he answered. "Hallowell blood can only be ruled by Hallowell blood, as we say on Hallowell ships. Well, I'll be going on again. I had climbed the path, there, to take one more look at the harbor, where you can see it between the hills. Maybe your father will find a place for me when his vessels go to sea for trade again, and I'll never forget him nor you, Miss Cicely. Do you remember how you and your brother once hid under the wharf, and called out from that echoing place as though you were lost souls out of the sea? There was one honest old sailorman that nearly lost his wits for terror, since we seafaring folk have no love for ghosts. Mark my words, there will no good come to the Huntress from setting sail of a Friday. For that alone I would stay ashore though there's other things to hold me, too."
He strode away down the snowy road, leaving Cicely, smiling at first at the recollection of that game that had so frightened him when she and her brother had played at ghosts, then grave in a moment when she thought how soon that brother was to be gone. On Friday, the day after to-morrow, he would sail unless she could stop him. But how could she?
The next day she made the desperate effort of appealing to her father, but quite in vain. Reuben Hallowell would not believe either that the Huntress would sail or that his son would go with her.
"And if Alan wishes to cut himself off from his own people forever, let him," he said finally, unable to endure the thought that any one should dare to defy his will. Friday came, the shadows of Friday night stole through the big house, yet nothing had been done.
Cicely sat by the fire in her chintz-hung bedroom, leaning back against the flowered cushion of the big armchair, gazing into the flames. In the next room she could hear vague sounds of Alan's preparations, feet going to and fro, a door opening and closing, a pair of heavy boots dropped upon the floor. The night was dark outside, with a blustering wind and occasional flurries of snow that struck sharply against the window.
It was ten o'clock. The sounds had ceased as though Alan had finished making ready and was waiting, perhaps sitting silent in the dark, perhaps lying down for an hour or two of sleep before the fateful hour of the high tide. Cicely heard her father, below, barring the door, putting out the candles, making ready for a night that would surely bring him no sleep. Presently he passed her door, glanced inside, and came in to stand for a minute beside her fire. How worn he had grown to look just within the space of this last week! He said scarcely a word; it was as though his unhappiness merely craved company and shrank from the knowledge of what the night might bring.
At last he said, "You should be in bed. Good night, my dear."