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“It’s a good place for reading, sonny, isn’t it?” he inquired, more genially than he had spoken to a child for years. In fact, having no children of his own, he so seldom spoke to a child that his voice and manner when he did so were generally awkward and rusty.

The boy nodded a quick little nod. Somehow, Turner had expected that nod and the glimmer of a smile that accompanied it.

“What book are you reading?” he asked.

The boy held it out; it was an old Robinson Crusoe, that classic of boyhood.

“It’s splendid,” he said. “Billy Martin lent it to me and I have to finish it today because Ned Josephs is to have it next and he’s in a hurry for it.”

“It’s a good while since I read Robinson Crusoe,” said Turner reflectively. “But when I did it was on this very shore a little further along below the Miller place. There was a Martin and a Josephs in the partnership then too–the fathers, I dare say, of Billy and Ned. What is your name, my boy?”

“Paul Jameson, sir.”

The name was a shock to Turner. This boy a Jameson–Neil Jameson’s son? Why, yes, he had Neil’s mouth. Strange he had nothing else in common with the black-browed, black-haired Jamesons. What business had a Jameson with those blue eyes and silvery-golden curls? It was flagrant forgery on Nature’s part to fashion such things and label them Jameson by a mouth.

Hated Neil Jameson’s son! Robert Turner’s face grew so grey and hard that the boy involuntarily glanced upward to see if a cloud had crossed the sun.

“Your father was Neil Jameson, I suppose?” Turner said abruptly.

Paul nodded. “Yes, but he is dead. He has been dead for eight years. I don’t remember him.”

“Have you any brothers or sisters?”

“I have a little sister a year younger than I am. The other four are dead. They died long ago. I’m the only boy Mother had. Oh, I do so wish I was bigger and older! If I was I could do something to save the place–I’m sure I could. It is breaking Mother’s heart to have to leave it.”

“So she has to leave it, has she?” said Turner grimly, with the old hatred stirring in his heart.

“Yes. There is a mortgage on it and we’re to be sold out very soon–so the lawyers told us. Mother has tried so hard to make the farm pay but she couldn’t. I could if I was bigger–I know I could. If they would only wait a few years! But there is no use hoping for that. Mother cries all the time about it. She has lived at the Cove farm for over thirty years and she says she can’t live away from it now. Elsie–that’s my sister–and I do all we can to cheer her up, but we can’t do much. Oh, if I was only a man!”

The lad shut his lips together–how much his mouth was like his father’s–and looked out seaward with troubled blue eyes. Turner smiled another grim smile. Oh, Neil Jameson, your old score was being paid now!

Yet something embittered the sweetness of revenge. That boy’s face–he could not hate it as he had accustomed himself to hate the memory of Neil Jameson and all connected with him.

“What was your mother’s name before she married your father?” he demanded abruptly.

“Lisbeth Miller,” answered the boy, still frowning seaward over his secret thoughts.

Turner started again. Lisbeth Miller! He might have known it. What woman in all the world save Lisbeth Miller could have given her son those eyes and curls? So Lisbeth had married Neil Jameson–little Lisbeth Miller, his schoolboy sweetheart. He had forgotten her–or thought he had; certainly he had not thought of her for years. But the memory of her came back now with a rush.

Little Lisbeth–pretty little Lisbeth–merry little Lisbeth! How clearly he remembered her! The old Miller place had adjoined his uncle’s farm. Lisbeth and he had played together from babyhood. How he had worshipped her! When they were six years old they had solemnly promised to marry each other when they grew up, and Lisbeth had let him kiss her as earnest of their compact, made under a bloom-white apple tree in the Miller orchard. Yet she would always blush furiously and deny it ever afterwards; it made her angry to be reminded of it.