Badly painted and sadly cracked pictures of O’Dells, male and female, wonderfully uniformed and gowned, looked out from the low walls.

The deputy sheriff rose to the portraits and the old table silver. His manners were almost too good to be true and his conversation was elegant in tone and matter. He amused Ben O’Dell and McAllister and quite dazzled little Marion Sherwood; but it was impossible to know, by looking at her, whether Mrs. O’Dell was dazzled or amused. Her attitude toward her unexpected guests left nothing to be desired. A bishop and a dean could not have expected more; two old Maliseets at her table would not have received less.

Only Mel Lunt of the whole company did not play the game. He opened his mouth only to eat. He raised his eyes from his plate only to glance swiftly from one painted and sword-girt gentleman on the wall to another and then at the brow and nose of young Ben O’Dell which were the brow and nose of the portraits; and all his thought was that a deputy sheriff was pretty small potatoes after all and that a rural constable was simply nothing and none to a hill.

A little later Mel Lunt’s mare was hitched to the buggy and Mel had the reins in his hands when Mr. Brown paused suddenly with one foot on the step.

“Guess I might’s well take a look at the pirogue,” he said, with his face turned over his shoulder toward Ben and McAllister.

“She’s gone,” replied Ben. “She was taken off our beach one night nearly two weeks ago.”

The deputy sheriff lowered his foot and turned around.

“Taken?” he asked. “Who took her?”

Ben said that he didn’t know and explained that he believed she had been taken, because she would have run aground on the head of the island if she’d simply drifted off.

“That sounds reasonable,” returned Brown. “Heard anything of her being picked up below here?”

“Not a word,” said Ben.

The deputy sheriff climbed to the seat beside the constable then and the pair drove away.

Ben and Jim McAllister returned to the haying and worked in the high fields until after sundown. Little Marion Sherwood went to bed immediately after supper. Uncle Jim went next, yawning, and was soon followed by Ben. The moment Ben sank his head on his pillow he discovered that he wasn’t nearly so sleepy as he had thought. For a few minutes he 

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