Cap'N Dan's Daughter by Joseph C. Lincoln — Read

Captain Dan was seated in his old chair, at his old desk, behind the counter of the Metropolitan Store. His pipe, the worn, charred briar that he had left in the drawer of that very desk when he started for the railway station and Scarford, was in his mouth. Over the counter, beyond the showcases and the tables with their piles of oilskins, mittens, sou'westers, and sweaters, through the panes of the big front windows, he could see the road, the main street of Trumet. The road was muddy, and the mud had frozen. Beyond the road, between the shops and houses on the opposite side, he saw the bare brown hills, the pond where the city people found waterlilies in the summer -- the pond was now a glare of ice -- the sand dunes, the beach, the closed and shuttered hotel and cottages, and, beyond these, the cold gray and white of the wintry sea rolling beneath a gloomy sky. To the average person the view would have been desolation itself. To Captain Dan it was a section of Paradise. It was the picture which had been in his mind for months. And here it was in reality, unchanged, unspoiled, a part of home, his home. And he, at last, was at home again.

They had been in Trumet a week, the captain and Serena and Gertrude. Azuba had been there two days longer, having been sent on ahead of the family to open the house and get it ready. Laban remained behind as caretaker of the Scarford mansion. His term of service in that capacity was not likely to be a long one, for the real estate dealer was in active negotiation with his client, and the dealer's latest report stated that the said client was considering hiring the house, furnished, for a few months and, in the event of his liking it as well as he expected, would then, in all probability, buy.