The day after Frances’ adventure on the hilltop found both Jane and Frances stiff in their shoulder muscles. Aside from that, there were no ill effects from their long and heavy lift. The man they had rescued was more than hospitably received by Mr. Wing and had been urged to make the boat his home until he was able to go down the sea ladder unassisted. Breck had set his leg with sure skill and the patient had eaten a hearty breakfast and declared that he was in no pain at all.

After breakfast, the little party had gathered around him to hear his story. Out of consideration of his weariness the night before, they had unanimously refrained from questioning him. However, Frances had kept Jane awake well into the night with surmises of her find’s looks and personality.

“What do you suppose he would look like, Jane, with a clean face and a shave and his hair combed and decent clothes?” she had asked. “He has such a lot of red hair that I bet he is cross as the dickens.”

“Child,” said Jane with the superior wisdom of one who has lived for twenty-one years with a wifeless father and a motherless brother, “all men are cross when they are sick. He is probably quite nice.”

Consequently the strange man’s discoverer was delightfully surprised when she came down from on deck to hear his story and found him nicely shaven, with his red hair, which she immediately decided was auburn, brushed till it shone and his dirty white ducks replaced by a gay bathrobe of Jack’s.

“I would like to make it awfully interesting,” he began with a grin, “I feel that the two girls who carried my hundred and eighty pounds down that hill should have the reward of having saved a movie hero or the lost heir—anyone, in fact, except just plain Tim Reynolds, who is doing nothing more romantic than spending the summer with his family at Nantucket Island. That is I am supposed to be—the fact is I am proud possessor of a thirty-foot sailboat and, as the result of that, I had the misfortune, or the fortune rather,” this with a friendly little nod at Frances, “to sail into Old Harbor and climb up that hill and break my leg.”

“We are glad you did,” announced Mabel genially and then as everybody laughed at her she added, “Of course, I don’t mean I am glad he broke his leg, you all are so silly. Mr. Reynolds, you know I meant that we are glad you are on board the ‘Boojum,’ don’t you?”

Tim Reynolds nodded reassuringly and begged them not to call him “Mister.”

“You must let us take you to Nantucket, Tim,” said Mr. Wing.

“I couldn’t think of it, sir, you have been far too good already.”

“But we are going to Nantucket anyway. All of us want to see ’Sconset,” put in Frances.

“There is nothing I would like better, if you are really going there and I won’t be too much of a care. And, now that I have accepted, don’t you suppose it would be a good idea to get a message to my fond parents to the effect that their son is still inhaling and exhaling at regular intervals?”

Ellen said in her quiet way, “I have just been looking at the chart and Vinal Haven is only a short distance from here. Why can’t Mabel and Charlie and Jack and I take the tender and go to Vinal Haven and send a telegram to the fond parents? I know that they have laid a cable to Nantucket from Martha’s Vineyard. We could be back in time for lunch.”

“Isn’t that a good idea?” asked Jack proudly.

“It is if you four can remember what you are going for,” teased his sister. “Mr. Wing, will it leave you too stranded if I get Breck to row me over to Hurricane Island in the dinghy? I am wild to know why there are so many deserted houses there. So far, I haven’t seen a sign of life.”

“Would you mind very much rowing round the island I stumbled over and see if my boat is still there? I put over the two anchors; she ought to hold,” Tim said to Breck.

“And what are you going to do about getting her home?” Frances asked Tim, coming over to sit on the companion steps as the others went above.

“We’ve decided enough for one day. Let’s worry about that tomorrow. Why don’t you tell me how you and Jane happen to be such quick thinkers and how you happened to have enough grit to get me down that long hill?”

There was a great noise and bustle on deck, as was always the case when Mabel was about to do anything. Soon the sound of the tender’s motor was heard and its wash licked against the “Boojum’s” sleek black sides. Jane peered down the hatch with intent to ask Frances to come along with Breck and herself, but on seeing the pleasant conversation that was beginning, she decided not to interrupt it.

“Let’s go over to Hurricane Island first and come back by the island of adventure to see if Tim Reynolds’ boat is there,” suggested Breck, as he pulled the dinghy along with sure strokes.

Watching him, Jane thought how very well he did whatever he set his hand to do. This was their first moment alone since the startling disclosure Breck had made about himself the day before. Not that it had come as a very great surprise to Jane, because she had always felt that he was some one other than a deck hand and she might have known that he would have been among the first to offer himself to serve humanity.

As he rowed, he watched her and, seeing her thoughtful expression, suddenly asked her, “Jane, what are you wondering about?”

“About Breck,” she said frankly.

“What do you want to know about him?” he asked, smiling at her utter frankness.

“Whatever he wants to tell me.”

“That is a large order, because do you know, Jane, I want to tell you everything good or bad that has ever happened to me. I’ve wanted to tell you several things for some time, but I felt that I had no right to burden you with my affairs.”

“Breck, you know I’ve wanted to know about you but felt that I had no right to pry into those same affairs. Do you remember that night at Gloucester, when you got those two telegrams? I saw you frown at one and grin at the other. It was all I could do to keep from asking what had happened, ’specially about the one you didn’t seem to like,” she confessed.

“The one I liked was from a friend of mine in New York. I left a lot of stories with him and asked him to get the stuff decently copied and send some of them around to different magazines for me. The telegram told me that the Saturday Evening Post had accepted a story and wanted to see more. That tickled me mightily, because it is the first luck I have had with a big magazine. The other was from my sister, assuring me that my father was as mad at me as ever.”

“I wondered why you didn’t write, Breck, you are always so keenly interested in people’s actions and reactions. I am awfully glad the Post took the story. Will you tell me why your father is mad at you, too?”

“To begin with, we have always disagreed from the time he sent me to a norfolk-jacket-and-buster-brown-collar-country-school-for-rich-little-boys and I wanted to wear a jersey and go to a public school in town. Not that I didn’t love the country, because the part of my life I remember with most pleasure is the summers I spent on my uncle’s ranch in the west.” Breck’s sunburned face took on the sad look that was so distress............