Mallaby House was his real monument, for here, on the great green hill that overlooked the harbor, he had erected a mansion that made his name famous up and down the Bay of Fundy. And here, seven years ago, he had brought Elsa Fuller as his bride––Elsa Fuller who was the belle of Freekirk Head, and had been to Boston to boarding-school.
It was to Mallaby House that Code Schofield had come to dinner this night. He had not wanted to come and had only agreed when she bribed him with a promise of something very important she might reveal.
The revelation was hardly a pleasure. Nothing had been a pleasure to him since that day six months ago when his old schooner, dismasted and leaking in a gale, had foundered near the Wolves, two sharp-toothed islands near Grande Mignon. Four islanders had been lost that day, and he alone had lived through the surf.
“What else did old Jed Martin say, Elsa?” he asked suddenly.
She knitted her brows and stared into the fire. Why would he always go back to that?
“He said that the May Schofield should have been able to live out that gale easily if she had been handled right, old as she was. She was pretty old, wasn’t she?”
“Fifty years. She was twenty when dad got 6 her––he sailed her twenty-eight and I had her for two.”
“You got a good deal of insurance out of her, didn’t you, Code?”
“Ten thousand dollars––her full value.”