in the rear. Land and house had been bought with whale oil. Their
little income, derived from the rent of three barren and stony
farms and amounting to not more than sixty dollars a month,
represented a capitalisation of whale oil. Even the old grey
church whither they went twice of a Sunday, was whale oil too, and
had been built in bygone days by the sturdy captains who now lay
all around it under slabs of stone. There amongst them was
Florence's father and her grandfather and her great-grandfather,
together with the Macys and the Coffins and the Cabotts with whom
they had sailed and quarrelled and loved and intermarried in the
years now gone. The wide world had not been too wide for them to
sail it round and reap the harvests of far-off seas; but in death
they lay side by side, their voyages done, their bones mingling in
the New England earth.

Frank Rignold too was a son of Bridgeport, and the sea which ran
in that blood for generations bade him in manhood to rise and
follow it. He had gone into the engine-room, and at thirty was the
chief engineer of a cargo boat running to South American ports. He
was a fine-looking man with earnest grey eyes; a reader, a
student, an observer; self-taught in Spanish, Latin, and French; a
grave, quiet gentlemanly man, whose rare smile seemed to light his
whole face, and who in his voyages South had caught something of
Spanish grace and courtliness. He returned as regularly to
Bridgeport as his ship did to New York; and when he stepped off
the train his eager steps took him first to the Fenacres' house,
his hands never empty of some little present for his sweetheart.

On the occasion of our story his step was more buoyant than ever
and his heart beat high with hope, for she had cried the last time