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"It's useless to charge supplies to those who have nothing now

with the idea of getting it back from their fishing profits," she

said. "What they earn will just about pay for it, and then there

they are back where they started--with nothing. Better let me pay

for everything until the men get back. Then they will have

something definite ahead to go on."

No one but Adelbert Bysshe, the rector, Bill Boughton, and Elsa

Mallaby herself knew exactly how much she paid out weekly toward

the maintenance of the village. But all knew it to be an enormous

sum (as reckoned on the island), and daily the worship of Hard

Luck Jim's widow grew, until she occupied a place in Freekirk

Head parallel to a patron saint of the Middle Ages.