Blackstock sat quite still for a time. At last he said gently:
"I felt, all along, I was somehow not good enough for you."
"You're a million miles _too_ good for me," she interrupted again, energetically.
"But," he went on without heeding the protest, "I hoped, somehow, that I might be able to make you happy. An' that's what I want, more'n anything else in the world. All I have is at your feet, Mary, an' I could make' it more in time. But I'm not a big enough man for you. I'm all yours--an' always will be--but I can't make myself no more than I am."
"Yes, you could, Tug Blackstock," she cried. "Real men are scarce, in the great world and everywhere. You could make yourself a master anywhere--if only you would tear yourself loose from here."
He sprang up, and his arms went out as if to seize her. But, with an effort, he checked himself, and dropped them stiffly to his side.
"I'm too old to change my spots, Mary," said he. "I'm stamped for good an' all. I am some good here. I'd be no good there. An' I won't never resk bein' a drag on yer plans."
"You could--you could!" urged Mary almost desperately.
But he turned away, with his lips set hard, not daring to look at her.
"Ef ever ye git tired of it all out there, an' yer own kind calls ye back--as it will, bein' in yer blood--I'll be waitin' for ye, Mary, whatever happens."
He strode off quickly up the shore. The girl stared after, him till he was quite out of sight, then buried her face in the fur of Jim, who had willingly obeyed a sign from his master and remained at her side.
"Oh, my dear, if only you could have dared," she murmured. At last she jumped up, with an air of resolve, and wandered off, apparently aimlessly, into the recesses of the mill, with one hand resting firmly on Jim's collar.
Two days later Mary Farrell left Brine's Rip. She hugged and kissed Woolly Billy very hard before she left, and cried a little with him, pretending to laugh, and she took her three big trunks with her, in the long-bodied express waggon which carried the mails, although she said she would not be gone more than a month at the outside.
Tug Blackstock eyed those three trunks with a sinking heart. His only comfort was that he had in his pocket the key of Mary's little shop, which she had sent to him by Woolly Billy. When the express waggon had rattled and bumped away out of sight there was a general feeling in Brine's Rip that the whole place had gone flat, like stale beer, and the saws did not seem to make as cheerful a shrieking as before, and Black Saunders, expert runner of logs as he was, fell in because he forgot to look where he was going, and knocked his head heavily in falling, and was almost drowned before they could fish him out.