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The skewers finished, he walked out through the house with her and down the garden-path, carrying the basket as far as the gate. The scent of pine-shavings came with him. Half-way down the path Naomi turned aside and picking a sprig of Boy’s Love, held it up for him to smell. The action was trivial, but as he took the sprig they both laughed, looking in each other’s eyes. Then they kissed; and the staid woman went her way down the road, while the staid man loitered for a moment by the gate and watched her as she went.

Now as he took his eyes away and glanced for an instant in the other direction, he was aware of a man who had just come round the angle of the garden hedge and, standing in the middle of the road, not a dozen yards off, was also staring after his wife.

This stranger was a broad-shouldered fellow in a suit of blue seaman’s cloth, the trousers of which were tucked inside a pair of Wellington boots. His complexion was brown as a nut, and he wore rings in his ears: but the features were British enough. A perplexed, ingratiating and rather silly smile overspread them.

The two men regarded each other for a bit, and then the stranger drew nearer.

“I do believe that was Na’mi,” he said, nodding his head after the woman’s figure, that had not yet passed out of sight.

William Geake opened his eyes wide and answered curtly, “Yes: that’s my wife–Naomi Geake. What then?”

The man scratched his head, contemplating William as he might some illegible sign-post set up at an unusually bothersome cross-road.

“She keeps very han’some, I will say.” His smile grew still more ingratiating.

“Was you wishin’ to speak wi’ her?”

“Well, there! I was an’ yet I wasn’t. ‘Tis terrible puzzlin’. You don’t know me, I dessay.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I be called Abe Bricknell–A-bra-ham Bricknell. I used to be Na’mi’s husband, one time. There now”–with an accent of genuine contrition–“I felt sure ‘twould put you out.”

The tongue grew dry in William Geake’s mouth, and the sunlight died off the road before him. He stared at a blister in the green paint of the garden-gate and began to peel it away slowly with his thumb-nail: then, pulling out his handkerchief, picked away at the paint that had lodged under the nail, very carefully, while he fought for speech.

“I be altered a brave bit,” said Naomi’s first husband, still with his silly smile.

“Come into th’ house,” William managed to say at last; and turning, led the way to the door. On his way he caught himself wondering why the hum of the bees had never sounded so loudly in the garden before: and this was all he could think about till he reached the doorstep. Then he turned.

“Th’ Lord’s ways be past findin’ out,” he said, passing a hand over his eyes.

“That’s so: that’s what I say mysel’,” the other assented cheerfully, as if glad to find their wits jumping together.

“Man!” William rounded on him fiercely. “What’s kept ‘ee, all these years? Aw, man, man! do ‘ee know what you’ve done?”

“I’d a sun-stroke,” said the wanderer, tapping his head and still wearing his deprecatory smile; “a very bad sun-stroke. I sailed in the John S. Hancock. I dessay Na’mi told you about that, eh?”

“Get on wi’ your tale.”

“Pete Hancock was cap’n. The vessel was called after his uncle, you know, an’ the Hancocks had a-bought up most o’ the shares in her. That’s how Pete came to be cap’n. We sailed on a Friday–unlucky, I’ve heard that is. But Pete said them that laid th’ Atlantic cable had started that day an’ broke the spell. Pete had a lot o’ tales, but he made a poor cap’n; no head.”

“Look here,” put in “William with desperate calm,” I don’t want to know about Peter Hancock.”

“There’s not much to know if you did. He made a very poor cap’n, though it don’t become one to say so, now he’s gone. An affectionate man, though, for all his short-comin’s. The last time he brought his vessel home from New Orleans he was in that pore to get back to his wife an’ childer, he ripped along the Gulf Stream and pretty well ribbed the keelson out of her. Thought, I reckon, that since all the shareholders belonged to his family th’ expense wouldn’ be grudged. But I guess it made her tender. That’s how she came to go down so suddent.”