“Don't—you must go.”

And so he went, leaving her to gaze after him with a high color.


CHAPTER III—AT THE HOUSE ON STILTS

DICK and Henry did not go directly back, and it was mid-afternoon when they reached the pier. As they walked down the incline from the road, Dick's eyes strayed toward the house on stilts. The Captain lay with nose in the sand, and beside her, evidently just back from a sail, stood Annie with two of the students who came on bright days to rent Captain Fargo's boats. They were having a jolly time,—he could hear Annie laughing at some sally from the taller student,—and they had no eye for the two sailors on the pier. Once, as they walked out, Dick's hand went up to his hat; but he was mistaken, she had not seen him. And so he watched her until the lumber piles, on the broad outer end of the pier, shut off the view; and Henry watched him.

Dick hardly heard what his cousin said when they parted. He leaped down to the deck of the Merry Anne, and plunged moodily into the box of an after cabin. His men, excepting Pink Harper, who was somewhere up forward devouring a novel, were on shore; so that there was no one to observe him standing there by the little window gazing shoreward. Finally, after much chatting and lingering, the two students sauntered away. Annie turned back to make her boat fast; and Dick, in no cheerful frame of mind, came hurrying shoreward.