He was not certain that Barzil would even see him; but, he muttered, the
thing had lasted long enough, they were too old for such foolishness; and
the other had come into adverse winds, now, when he should be lying
quietly in a snug harbor.

He had never paid serious attention to the threatened complication two or
three years before, when Gerrit had been seen repeatedly with Kate
Dunsack's irregularly born daughter. He was sorry for the two women. It
was his opinion that the man had been shipped drunk by some boarding
house runner; anyhow, only the second day out Vollar had been lost
overboard from the main-royal yard, and Kate's child born outside the
law. It was hard, he told himself again, walking down Orange Street, past
the Custom House to Derby.

The girl, Nettie Vollar--they had adopted the father's name--was
attractive in a decided French way, with crisp black hair, a pert nose
and dimple, and, why, good heavens, twenty-one or two years old if she
was a week! How time did run. It was nothing extraordinary if Gerrit had
been seen a time or two with her on the street, or even if he had called
at the Dunsacks'. Barzil's and his quarrel didn't extend to all the
members of their families; and as for the Dunsacks being common--that was
nonsense. Barzil was as good as he any day; only where he had prospered,
and moved up into a showy place on the Common, the other had had the
head winds. Through no fault of his own the reputation had fastened on
him of being unlucky in his cargoes: if he carried tea and colonial
exports to, say, Antwerp, they would have been declared contraband while
he was at sea, and seized on the docks; he had been blown, in an
impenetrable fog, ashore on Tierra del Fuego, and, barely making Cape
Pembroke, had been obliged to beach his ship, a total loss. Then there
was Kate's trouble. Barzil was a rigorously moral and religious man and