persons--Captain Cy, Bos'n, and Phoebe. Miss Dawes had "come early," at the captain's urgent appeal. Now she was sitting in the rocker, at one side of the stove, gazing dreamily at the ruddy light behind the isinglass panes. She looked quietly, blissfully contented and happy. At her feet, on the braided mat, sat Bos'n, playing with Lonesome, who purred lazily. The little girl was happy, too, for was not her beloved Uncle Cyrus at home again, with all danger of their separation ended forevermore?

As for Captain Cy himself, the radiant expression was still on his face, brighter than ever. He looked across at Phoebe, who smiled back at him. Then he glanced down at Bos'n. And all at once he realized that this was the fulfillment of his dream. Here was his "picture"; the sitting room was now as he had always loved to think of it--as it used to be. He was in his father's chair, Phoebe in the one his mother used to occupy, and between them--just where he had sat so often when a boy--the child. The Cy Whittaker place had again, and at last, come into its own.

He drew a long breath, and looked about the room; at the stove, the lamp, the old, familiar furniture, at his grandfather's portrait over the mantel. Then, in a flash of memory, his father's words came back to him, and he said, laughing aloud from pure happiness:

"Bos'n, run down cellar and get me a pitcher of cider, won't you?-- there's a good feller."