excitable. Well, I suppose I shall be just so, at his age. Here!" The
captain caught up a stool and set it near the bulwark for her. "There!
You make yourself comfortable wherever you like. You're at home, you
know." He was off again in a moment. Lydia cast her eye over at the
tug. On the deck, near the pilot-house, stood the young man who had
stopped the afternoon before, while she sat at the warehouse door,
and asked her grandfather if she were not ill. At his feet was a
substantial valise, and over his arm hung a shawl. He was smoking,
and seated near him, on another valise, was his companion of the day
before, also smoking. In the instant that Lydia caught sight of them,
she perceived that they both recognized her and exchanged, as it were,
a start of surprise. But they remained as before, except that he who
was seated drew out a fresh cigarette, and without looking up reached
to the other for a light. They were both men of good height, and they
looked fresh and strong, with something very alert in their slight
movements,--sudden turns of the head and brisk nods, which were
not nervously quick. Lydia wondered at their presence there in an
ignorance which could not even conjecture. She knew too little to know
that they could not have any destination on the tug, and that they
would not be making a pleasure-excursion at that hour in the morning.
Their having their valises with them deepened the mystery, which was
not solved till the tug's engines fell silent, and at an unnoticed
order a space in the bulwark not far from Lydia was opened and steps
were let down the side of the ship. Then the young men, who had
remained, to all appearance, perfectly unconcerned, caught up their
valises and climbed to the deck of the Aroostook. They did not give
her more than a glance out of the corners of their eyes, but the
surprise of their coming on board was so great a shock that she did
not observe that the tug, casting loose from the ship, was describing
a curt and foamy semicircle for her return to the city, and that the