It is not always the end of a tale when the two most familiar figures in it come to their wedding day; the business of living happily ever after is a more complicated matter than that. The work that those two are to do together must be safely launched before we can turn aside from them, knowing, more or less, how the rest of their story is to be told. Clotilde and Gerald Radpath had chosen to go their way together, but, even for some time after they were married, they stood hesitating a little, not quite sure as to which way the appointed road was to lead.

As many people said at first, it was a pleasant thing that the name of Radpath had come back to the great house on the hill. It was like to stay there also, through another generation at least, they would add, since, a year and a half later, there was a new member of the household, a sunny-hearted, sturdy young gentleman who romped and rolled upon the grass in the garden. It was a delight, besides, to see the big house finished at last, to see smooth panelling replace the rough boards, and plaster walls stand where bare timbers had been left. For the proper completing of Stephen Sheffield’s house, Gerald had used a large part of the little fortune he had brought with him from England, realised from the sale of his small estate. There were also outlying lands to be looked to, where the fields must be turned once more into their old round of cultivation. Stephen Sheffield’s fortune, much confused and diminished on account of the war and of his great generosity, must be finally set in order, a task that was no small or easy one. In such occupations two years had passed away and still the great question as to just which highroad of life they were to take had not yet been settled.

They were walking in the garden one warm bright afternoon, Gerald carrying his little son, whose name as any one might guess, was Stephen. Clotilde, with her basket and garden shears, was gathering the last of the October-blooming flowers. Their talk had been of many and quite unimportant things, but for a little while they had been silent as they went, all three together, down the grassy path.

“Gerald,” said Clotilde at last, “there has been for days something hanging heavy on your mind. Are you not nearly ready to tell me of it?”

Smiling at the ease with which she read his thoughts, Gerald answered:

“I am ready to speak of it now and was that moment searching for the words with which to begin. It is not an easy thing to say.”

They sat down together on the bench and Gerald set young Stephen on the grass where he could roll and tumble to his heart’s content.

“If you know my thoughts so well, Clotilde,” he said, “you must have long seen that there is something wrong with my position here in Hopewell.”

“I have known that something troubled you,” she replied, “but I had not realised that there was aught amiss in regard to our neighbours.”

Yet, even as she spoke, she remembered with dismay the odd, aloof manners of many of the townspeople toward Gerald. She recollected the distant courtesy toward both of them, of good souls who had always before received her with such simple friendliness. The people of Hopewell were old-fashioned in their ways, they clung to many a forgotten custom and form of speech unused by the rest of the world, and with this had kept the open-hearted frankness of an earlier and simpler life. Try as they might, thoughts could not be hidden and feelings concealed. And, as she thought the matter over, it seemed plainer and plainer to Clotilde as it had long been clear to Gerald, that their neighbours looked at him askance and did not seem to trust him.

“It is this,” Gerald went on to explain, “a thing that at first I did not see myself. The people of this town like me not and wish that I were away. When we meet their eyes seem to say to me, ‘Gerald Radpath, you bear Master Simon’s name but are you of his kind? You, who fought against us in the war and have come back now that all the struggle is over, is your purpose good or bad?’”

“Yes,” assented Clotilde, with no attempt at argument. “Yes, I have seen that too. But I had thought that time would sweep it all away when they have learned to know you better.”

“The feelings of your hard-headed Puritan folk alter not so easily with time,” he returned. “No, I must show them that I care for the welfare of this country as much as they, and I have thought of a possible way. You know that Roger Bardwell said that the wealth of New England was to come from her traffic with the world rather than from her farms, you know that he proved his words and established a prosperous trade with England, France and Spain. Now all of that has been swept away by these years of war and it will take long labour to build it up again. But in that upbuilding I mean to have a share.”

Clotilde did not speak quite yet; she knew that there was more to come.

“I can buy and refit one of the privateer vessels that have survived the war,” he went on. “The Mistress Margeret is lying in the harbour now and can easily be made ready for a journey overseas with what money I have left to spend on ship and cargo. And in her I will make the first long voyage myself. My father was a ship’s captain, I sailed with him when I was a lad and he taught me much, so that I might command a ship of my own some day.”

He did not say what pain it would be to leave her for so long, she did not whisper of how her heart stood still at the thought of his going. Each one realised what the other felt, yet each knew that this was the only way and that here was Gerald’s task in life.

“Where will you go?” she asked at last, and waited breathless for the reply that did not come at once.

“The sailors,” he said, “have a name for the path that they steer, marked out by the sun and stars across the trackless sea. They call it the sea road and to them, in time, it becomes as familiar as the housewife’s way to market. And I am of a mind, Clotilde, to break out a new sea road, and a far one, a way that our sailors have never gone before.”

“To Italy?” she asked, her eyes wide with anxiety.

He shook his head.

“To Africa?” No again.

“To—to—”

“To China,” he said at last.

He sat with his hands clasped between his knees and his eyes fixed upon the grass at his feet as though he could not bear to look at the terror and distress in her face.

“Do you not see that I must go?” he pleaded. But still she did not answer.

To China! To that vague unknown land that the old story books and maps called Cathay. Had he said to the moon, it could not have seemed a more dangerous and impossible journey. It was almost exactly two hundred years since Gerald’s ancestor, Robin Radpath, had set sail with Queen Elizabeth’s message to the Chinese Emperor and had never come back. Since that time the land had grown to be only a little less strange; few were the travellers whose tales of adventures there had ever reached America. No ship from New England had gone so far; one or two, indeed, had attempted the voyage and had never been heard of again.

Many were the kinds of goods, spices and ivory, coffee, tea and silk that came from that inaccessible country and from the equally mysterious East Indies, but they came by way of Constantinople, Venice or Portugal, and were transferred to English or American vessels. But to go direct, to have the little, newly-independent country of America hold out a hand to grasp at the trade that had never been attempted save by lands whose commerce was hundreds of years old! What a great idea it was, she thought, and in spite of herself thrilled with pride. How would the people of Hopewell regard Gerald then—after he had undertaken such a venture and carried it to a successful end.

“Yes,” she said finally and with no remonstrance, “yes, I do see it. I know that you must go.”

The Mistress Margeret was refitted from stem to stern that winter and the cargo in bales and boxes laid away within her hold. When the early Spring came, she lifted anchor, hoisted sail and swept out of Hopewell harbour, her prow turned to the far horizon and the other side of the world. She sailed short handed, for, bold as were the sailors of Hopewell, many of them hung back from such a venture. There were vague but terrible tales of what might happen to ships beyond the Cape of Good Hope, tales of furious hurricanes, of reefs and shoals in vast uncharted seas, and even of sea monsters.

“Let one ship go there and come back safe,” they said. “Let us hear that only ordinary storms and ordinary dangers will assail us on such a voyage and that by the Southern stars we can steer as straight a course as by our good Dipper and North Star. Then we will set sail with a right good will!”

So the voyage began with only a few bold-hearted seamen on board and with Gerald Radpath standing at the ship’s stern, watching, as far as he could see, the brave little figure on the hillside that waved good-bye as long as loving eyes could span that ever widening distance.

“We will not make his going hard, Stephen, by showing him our tears,” said Clotilde, at last, as she took up her boy in her arms and made her way with slow, dragging steps back to the house.

Would she ever, she wondered, stand there to watch come in the ship that now seemed sailing away for all time?

Almost from the moment that the Mistress Margeret sank below the horizon, Clotilde could see that the feeling toward Gerald was beginning to change.

“Your good husband, madam, Heaven send that he come back safe!” were words that she used to hear often as she went about the town.

“My grandfather began his fortunes as cabin boy to good Master Roger Bardwell,” said one of the housewives to her, “and I hope my son will sail some day with Master Radpath.”

And one old sailor, who had begged hard to go with Gerald but had been reluctantly left behind on account of his age and feebleness, said the best thing of all.

“I told ’em, mistress, many a time, that the lad had Simon Radpath’s blood in him and a good spirit of his own besides, and I said he would show it yet. Now the blind ones are beginning to see.”

There was but a single person who did not seem to have a higher regard for Gerald now that he was gone. This was Agnes Twitchell, whose bridegroom husband had shipped as mate on the Mistress Margeret.

“We were but three months married,” she cried to Clotilde, who had come to see her, but who was not allowed to enter her cottage door. “Your husband took my man from me and they will never come back. You were a wicked woman to let him do so; why did you not keep him safe at home?”

“Were you able to keep your husband when he thought that he must go?” Clotilde asked, and Agnes shook her head. “Then why think............