Sheila of Big Wreck Cove | Page 7

young captain of the Seamew positively no good! She did not come out
again, although he stood there for fully an hour. At the end of that time
he strolled up an alley and discovered that there was a side door to the
restaurant for the use of employees, and he judged that the girl, seeing
him lingering in front, had gone out by this way. It made him flush to
his ears when he thought of it. Of course, he had been rude.
Marching up the winding road by the Ball homestead, Tunis Latham
revisioned this adventure--and the violet-eyed girl. Well, he probably
would never see her again. And in any case she was not the sort of girl
that he would ever take home to Aunt Lucretia. He was headed toward
home now, to the old brown house in the saucer-like valley some
distance beyond Cap'n Ira's.
As he came within hail of the old homestead in which the Balls had

been born and had died--if they were not lost at sea--for many
generations, the captain of the Seamew became suddenly aware that
something was particularly wrong there. He heard somebody shouting.
Was it for help? He hastened his stride.
Quite unexpectedly the hobbling figure of Cap'n Ira appeared in the
open barn door. He saw Tunis. He waved his cane in one hand and
beckoned wildly with the other. Then he disappeared.
The young captain vaulted the fence and ran across the ill-tended
garden adjoining the Balls' side yard. Again he heard Cap'n Ira's hail.
"Come on in here, Tunis!"
"What's the matter, Cap'n Ira?"
"That dratted Queen of Sheby! I knowed she'd be the death of one of us
some day. I swan! Tunis Latham, come here! I can't get her out, and
you know derned well Prudence can't stand on her head that a way
without strangling. Lend us a hand, boy. This is something awful!
Something awful!"
Tunis Latham, much disturbed by the old man's words and excited
manner, pushed into the dimly lit interior of the barn.
CHAPTER III
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
The barn was a roomy place, as well built as the Ball house itself, and
quite as old. The wagon floor had a wide door, front and rear. The
stables were on either side of this floor and the mows were above. In
one mow was a small quantity of hay and some corn fodder, but the
upper reaches were filled only with a brown dusk.
The pale face of a gray mare was visible at the opening over one of the
mangers. She was the sole recognized occupant of the stable. In a dark
corner Tunis Latham saw a huge grain box, for once the Ball farm had

supported several span of oxen and a considerable dairy herd, its cover
raised and its maw gaping wide. There was something moving there in
the murk, something fluttering.
"Come here, boy!" gasped Cap'n Ira, hurrying across the barn door.
"I'm so crippled I can't git her up, and she's dove clean to the lower
hold, tryin' to scrape out a capful o' oats for that dratted Queen of
Sheby."
"Aunt Prue!" shouted Tunis, reverting to the title he had addressed her
by in his boyhood. "It's never her?"
A muffled voice stammered:
"Get me out! Get me out!"
"Heave hard, Tunis! All together now!" gasped Cap'n Ira, as the
younger man reached over the old woman's struggling heels and seized
her around the waist.
"Up she comes!" continued the excited old man, as though he were
bossing a capstan crew starting one of the Susan Gatskill's anchors.
Tunis Latham set Prudence Ball on her feet, but the old woman was
forced to lean against the stalwart young man for a minute. She
addressed her husband in some heat.
"Goodness gracious gallop! Why don't you sing a chantey over me, I
want to know? You'd think I was a bale of jute being snaked out of a
ship's hold. Good land!"
"There, there, Prudence!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "You're safe, after all!
It--it was something awful!"
"I cal'late it was," rejoined the old woman rather bitterly. "And I didn't
get them oats, after all."
"I'll 'tend to all that, Aunt Prue," said Tunis.

"If it hadn't been for that dratted Queen of Sheby"--Cap'n Ira glared
malevolently at the rather surprised-looking countenance of the gray
mare in her box--"you wouldn't have got into that jam."
"If it hadn't been for you taking that dose of snuff when I was expecting
nothing of the kind, I wouldn't have dove into that feed box, Ira, and
you know it very well."
"I swan!" admitted her husband in a feeble voice. "I forgot again, didn't
I?"
"I don't know as you forgot, but I know you mighty near sneezed your