A tug was coming puffing and panting along, a little thing, dirty and reeling in a reckless way over the water, with three men in it, all of them, by the light of their lantern, gripping pipes between their teeth.
"Hullo!" shouted Lawrence, leaning forward. "Fifty dollars if you'll take two passengers up to Boston to-night."
"Hey?"
Steam was shut off, and the two crafts came alongside each other. Lawrence repeated his offer.
"Why, there's a woman!" was the response. "We can't take no woman; no 'commydations, no nothin'."
He replaced his pipe in his mouth and then said, "I don't s'pose she could stand it."
"I sha'n't mind," said Prudence, quickly. "Rodney, we'll go aboard."
As she rose, a little black shape, forlorn and draggled, came fluttering from somewhere in the rowboat and alighted on the girl's shoulder. Her first impulse was to push the crow from its resting-place, but she restrained that impulse, and the bird maintained its position when she stepped into the tug, for she assumed that the master of it would take them to Boston.
So in ten minutes from the time they had been picked up the two were steaming towards the city. One of the men had brought forward an old coat, which he offered to Lawrence, suggesting that he "wrap it around his wife."
Prudence appeared not to hear the words, but she drew the garment closely about her and tried not to shiver. Lawrence sat near her; he put his arm about her and held her to him. Often he turned and looked down at her face, upon which the lamp shone. At those moments he told himself that he could not live without her; that he had been insane to think he could do so.