Joseph's eyes lingered on the familiar scene without seeing it. Even when the factor shook his knobbed cane in the captain's face, and the latter dancing with rage brandished 'cutlass, Joseph's attention was not caught. The disputed cargo was not Waccamaw rice, and that was not his factor. Joseph, in fact, was engaged in an uncomfortable attempt at self-analysis. For he was vexed with Theo, vexed with her for leaving him, vexed with her determination to name the baby Aaron Burr Alston, when he had confidently expected that it would be Joseph, or perhaps William. Vexed at her indifference to the shocking fact that his son had not yet been baptized. There was no time, she argued, and the ceremony could very well be deferred to the fall, when it could be performed in the parish church on the Waccamaw; nor did this concession soften the fact that she held the rites of the Church very lightly. 'Agnostic, free-thinker,' whispered the horrified Alstons, and Joseph had not been able to refute them convincingly.

'Joseph, please, don't be angry now,' pleaded Theo, seeing that his face remained black and that he showed no disposition to speak. 'You know that it is only for our health's sake, mine and the baby's, that I leave you.'

Her soft voice touched him as it always did. He turned slowly and looked down at her. Under the brim of her gray satin bonnet her small face smiled beseechingly. She had regained all her beauty, and her magnificent eyes under the curly auburn bangs on her white forehead shone bright and dark as dewberries. Except for the fullness of her bosom and an indefinable maternal bloom, she might have been thirteen and the baby on her lap an oversized china doll.

Joseph's stocky body relaxed; and he sat down beside her on the hatch. She moved the baby so that his head rested partly on his father's lap, and she leaned against Joseph's shoulder.

For a moment they were quiet, oblivious to the barefooted sailors who padded past them on the narrow deck. Aaron had gone aft and stood near the helm talking with Captain Tombs.

'You look pale, Joseph,' she said at last anxiously. 'You will be careful of your health, won't you? If you must go into town, do not do so before or after the middle of the day. I have somewhere heard that persons are less apt to catch infectious disorders at that time than any other, because sunshine acts to dissipate the noxious vapors. And pray smoke all the time you remain in the city; it creates an atmosphere and prevents impure air from reaching you.'

'I will be prudent,' said Joseph, smiling.

'I can scarcely yet realize that we are to be so long separated. The month of October appears to me a century off,' she added sadly.