struck from this upper headland into the background of forest, and in the circling hollow which it formed lay the lonely collection of farmers' and fishers' houses then called Manasquan. A curiously old-time, forgotten village, to belong to the New World: shut in from any world by the ocean on one side, and the interminable pine forests at the other, through which at this time only the charcoal burners had burrowed their way.
The man (a middle-aged Quaker) who had sent the message which had so puzzled the fishermen, was a stranger on this coast: its strange solitariness, theutter silence into which it fell when transient sounds had passed, oppressed and stifled him. He had paced up and down the hard beach all the afternoon,watching with his dull, light-blue eyes the Sutphens seining, and after that, the loading of the schooner. It seemed to him, of all corners of the world, the one totally forgotten and passed by in the race. He wondered if justice ever overtook crime here—if even death remembered to harvest his crop. Something of this he dropped in a half-intelligible way to old Doctor Noanes, who came limping up from his rickety house by the ridge to walk with him, wearing a patronizing air towards him before the fishermen, but secretly a little afraid of the sharper wits of the strange Friend. But he fired at the slur upon the village.
"We're of older build than New York," he said, "but we've kept clean of crime and c'ruption: we've held to the ancient landmarks: there's no families gone in and out from us since colony times. Them nags of mine, now, has no flash strains of blood, but their grandsire carried my grandsire, Peter Noanes, into the fight at Monmouth. I don't ask better than that."
The Friend, who had taken off his broad-brimmed hat, the better to catch the evening air, stroked the gray wisps of hair on either side of his ruddy face, fixing on the dried face of his companion his lack-lustre eyes.
"The men," Noanes said, "ord'narily followed the water;" and he began to sonorously roll out their names—Laddouns, Van Zeldts, Graahs, as though it were the calling of the great Jewish tribes or Scottish clans. His hearer was forced to remind himself that there were not twenty men, all told, among them. A belief was creeping on him that this community was a power in the land, if it did act only through ships' mates and the masters of coast schooners; leather-skinned, hairy-breasted men, who brought back from their voyages but little profit or knowledge beyond their wages, and fresh stories of storms at sea.
"Manasquan men be known as seamen throughout the civilized world," asserted the Doctor, shoving back his wig peremptorily. "Ther's Jim Laddoun; he was hired as mate in an English brig. He's been as far as the Barbary Coast. Them Britishers know a good thing when they see it, and snap it up, quick enough."
"True, true,” deliberately—the attentive gaze never leaving the pupils of the Doctor's eyes. It was a queer trick the stranger had; with a slight crook to one side of his head, it gave him the look of a deaf man, or one absorbed in his companion's words. At any rate, it usually drew out from people a good many more words than they had intended to speak. The old Doctor found it gave a real gusto to their talks: he told his best stories to the stranger—stories that included the histories of the Van Zeldts, Graahs—all of them. (He had silenced his wife when she echoed the village wonder as to who the old, brown-coated fellow was, and what secret business he came to pry into.
"He's a well-bred person—the best bred I've met for years. What should you know of men of the world? Do you think there's nothing at Manasquan which educated people think it worth while to inquire into?")
"Laddoun? Laddoun?" replied the Friend, thoughtfully. "Thee belongs to that stock thyself, Doctor?"
Noanes gave a pleased sniff. "You have a keen memory for genealogies. Yes, my mother was one of them. But there's only two of the name now-the
