In his turn he remembered the man who had
tried to keep wild foxes on Meteor.
The harbor was calm, wondrous calm, with that blackness in the water
which always precedes the _rigor mortis_ of winter itself. All calm, all
in order--not a ship of all those ships displaying riding lights to
transgress the harbor lines he had decreed. How, then, should his own
house not be in order?
But this was just what he had thought when Caddie Sills first darted the
affliction of love into his bosom. Somewhere beyond the harbor mouth
were the whispers of the tide's unrest, never to be quite shut out. Let
him turn his back on that prospect as he would, the Old Roke would
scandalize him still.
A man overtaken by deadly sickness, he resolved upon any sacrifice to
effect a cure. On the morrow he presented himself at the jeweler's and
asked to be shown the necklace.
"It is sold at last," said the jeweler, going through the motions of
washing his hands.
"Sold? Who to?"
"To Peter Loud," said the jeweler.
Jethro Rackby pressed the glass case hard with his finger ends. What
should Deep-water Peter be doing with a string of pearls? He must go at
once. Yet he must not return empty-handed. He bought a small pendant,
saw it folded into its case, and dropped the case into his pocket.
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