“'What—what do you mean?' he says. 'Ain't you goin' to take me off?'
“'I was,' says I, 'but I've changed my plans. And, Mr. Allie Vander-what's-your-name Davidson, there's other things—low-down, mean things—planned for this night that ain't going to come off, either. Understand that, do you?'
“He understood, I guess. He didn't answer at all. Only gurgled, like he'd swallered something the wrong way.
“Then the beautiful tit for tat of the whole business come to me, and I couldn't help rubbing it in a little. 'As a sartin acquaintance of mine once said to me,' I says, 'you look a good deal handsomer up there than you do in a boat.'
“'You—you—etcetery and so forth, continued in our next!' says he, or words to that effect.
“'That's all right,' says I, putting on the power. 'You've got no kick coming. I allow you to—er—ornament my weir-pole, and 'tain't every dude I'd let do that.'
“And I went away and, as the Fifth Reader used to say, 'let him alone in his glory.'
“I went back to the launch, pulled up her anchor and took her in tow. I towed her in to her pier, made her fast and then left her for a while. When I come back the little cabin-door was open and the girl's jacket was gone.
“Then I walked up the path to the Saunders house and it done me good to see a light in Barbara's window. I set on the steps of that house until morning keeping watch. And in the morning the yacht was gone and the weir-pole was vacant, and Cap'n Eben Saunders come on the first train.
“So's that's all there is of it. Allie hasn't come back to Bayport sence, and the last I heard he'd married that Newport girl; she has my sympathy, if that's any comfort to her.