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Dialstone Lane [complete]

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Title: Dialstone Lane [complete]

Author: W. W. Jacobs

Illustrator: Will Owen


        
Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #11976]
                Most recently updated: May 4, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11976

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIALSTONE LANE [COMPLETE] ***


                            *DIALSTONE LANE*

                                  _By_

                              W. W. JACOBS


                                  1911

                                  ————




CONTENTS


    ILLUSTRATIONS
    CHAPTER I
    CHAPTER II
    CHAPTER III
    CHAPTER IV
    CHAPTER V
    CHAPTER VI
    CHAPTER VII
    CHAPTER VIII
    CHAPTER IX
    CHAPTER X
    CHAPTER XI
    CHAPTER XII
    CHAPTER XIII
    CHAPTER XIV
    CHAPTER XV
    CHAPTER XVI
    CHAPTER XVII
    CHAPTER XVIII
    CHAPTER XIX
    CHAPTER XX
    CHAPTER XXI
    CHAPTER XXII
    CHAPTER XXIII

                                  ————




ILLUSTRATIONS


    “Prudence.”

    “Old-fashioned Matrons Clustered Round to Watch Him Cleaning the
    Doorstep.”

    “He Took Mr. Chalk in a Firm Grasp and Lowered Him.”

    “Sometimes the Captain Took Him to Palm-studded Islands In The
    Southern Seas.”

    “‘How Could You Have Found Them Again?’ Inquired Mr. Chalk, With
    the Air of One Propounding a Poser.”

    “A Small Boy Treading the Same Road.”

    “He Ransacked an Old Lumber-room.”

    “Selina Vickers.”

    “He Pops in and out of My Office Like a Figure on A
    Cuckoo-clock.”

    “The Others Drew Near and Inspected It.”

    “All She Says is She’s Not Afraid of You, Nor Six Like You.”

    “He Waylaid Him on Several Occasions to Inquire Into The
    Progress he Was Making.”

    “‘Done With It?’ Repeated the Girl, in a Startled Voice.”

    “Mr. Chalk Entered, Leading Mr. Stobell.”

    “He Moved It out Bodily and Looked Behind And Beneath It.”

    “She Stood Face to Face With the Stern Realities Of Life.”

    “He Made out a Girl’s Head Surmounted by A Large Hat.”

    “He Passed his Cup up for More Coffee.”

    “‘This is a New Client of Mine,’ Said Tredgold.”

    “Mr. Tredgold Prepared to Draw up the Required Agreement.”

    “‘Fine Day, Gentlemen,’ Said the Stranger, As he Raised His
    Glass.”

    “His Three Patrons, With a Hopeless Attempt to Appear
    Unconcerned, Were Coming Down the Road.”

    “Captain Brisket Waving Farewells from the Quay As They
    Embarked.”

    “Mr. Vickers Had Been for a Stroll With Mr. William Russell.”

    “‘Why, You Must Have Been Stinting Me for Years,’ Continued Mr.
    Vickers.”

    “They Were Anxious for Particulars.”

    “Mr. Vickers Rose and Stood Regarding the Ignoble Creature With
    Profound Contempt.”

    “He Became Intent on a Derelict Punt.”

    “Aided by Mr. Tredgold and a Peal of Thunder, She Managed To
    Clamber Over.”

    “She Threw Herself Thoughtlessly Into That Famous Old
    Chippendale Chair.”

    “Instructed Their Retainers to Make Untruthful Statements As to
    Their Whereabouts.”

    “You Said to My Husband: ‘the Fair Emily is Yours.’”

    “The Captain Walked Home Deep in Thought.”

    “Mrs. Stobell.”

    “‘It Wouldn’t Be Nice to Be Buried at Sea,’ Remarked Mr. Chalk.”

    “He Pointed to a Thin, Dismal-looking Man.”

    “There’s More in This Than Meets the Eye.”

    “Purchasing Firearms, With Which he Practised in The Garden.”

    “Mrs. Chalk Stood by a Pile of Luggage, Discoursing to An
    Admiring Circle of Friends.”

    “A Slight Nautical Roll.”

    “‘Is It Mutiny?’ he Faltered.”

    “She Enacted, to the Great Admiration of a Small Crowd, The Part
    of a Human Semaphore.”

    “‘Mr. Tredgold!’ Said a Sharp Voice from Above.”

    “‘I Never Want to Hear Another Word About That Treasure As Long
    As I Live.’”

    “He Aimed Hastily at a Face Which Appeared There.”

    “‘It’s Pointing Towards Me,’ Said the Mate.”

    “He Felt Less Heroic Next Morning.”

    “The Captain and Mr. Duckett Discussed With Great Earnestness
    the Nature of The Secret.”

    “‘I Found ’im Inside the Horse and Groom,’ he Said.”

    “Selina Was Standing in Front of Mr. Tasker In the Manner Of a
    Small Hen Defending an Overgrown Chicken.”

    “‘I Was Going to Ask Him To Give Me a Cup of Tea,’ He Said.”

    “The ‘Fair Emily’”

    “He Led the Reluctant Man As Far from The Helmsman As Possible
    and Whispered the Information.”

    “Mr. Duckett Took the Helm.”

    “The ‘Fair Emily’ Had Disappeared.”

    “Mr. Chalk, With the Air of an Old Campaigner, Made A Small Fire
    and Prepared Breakfast.”

    “Her Friend Gazed Long and Mournfully at a Large Photograph of
    Mr. Stobell.”

    “Miss Vickers Stood Wiping Her Hands on Her Coarse Apron.”

    “Selina Gives Twopence on Account.”

    “I Told Him That You Would Like to Hear It.”

    “Half Binchester Had Congregated to Welcome Their
    Fellow-townsmen.”

    “‘Halloa! What Do You Want?’ he Inquired.”

    “‘It’ll Be All Right,’ Said Brisket, Puffing at His Cigar.”

    “Then Tredgold, With his Back to the Others, Caught His Eye and
    Frowned Significantly.”

    “They Stared Solemnly up Dialstone Lane.”




CHAPTER I


Mr. Edward Tredgold sat in the private office of Tredgold and Son, land
and estate agents, gazing through the prim wire blinds at the peaceful
High Street of Binchester. Tredgold senior, who believed in work for the
young, had left early. Tredgold junior, glad at an opportunity of
sharing his father’s views, had passed most of the work on to a clerk
who had arrived in the world exactly three weeks after himself.

“Binchester gets duller and duller,” said Mr. Tredgold to himself,
wearily. “Two skittish octogenarians, one gloomy baby, one gloomier
nursemaid, and three dogs in the last five minutes. If it wasn’t for the
dogs—Halloa!”

He put down his pen and, rising, looked over the top of the blind at a
girl who was glancing from side to side of the road as though in search
of an address.

“A visitor,” continued Mr. Tredgold, critically. “Girls like that only
visit Binchester, and then take the first train back, never to return.”

The girl turned at that moment and, encountering the forehead and eyes,
gazed at them until they sank slowly behind the protection of the blind.

“She’s coming here,” said Mr. Tredgold, watching through the wire.
“Wants to see our time-table, I expect.”

He sat down at the table again, and taking up his pen took some papers
from a pigeon-hole and eyed them with severe thoughtfulness.

“A lady to see you, sir,” said a clerk, opening the door.

Mr. Tredgold rose and placed a chair.

“I have called for the key of the cottage in Dialstone Lane,” said the
girl, still standing. “My uncle, Captain Bowers, has not arrived yet,
and I am told that you are the landlord.”

Mr. Tredgold bowed. “The next train is due at six,” he observed, with a
glance at the time-table hanging on the wall; “I expect he’ll come by
that. He was here on Monday seeing the last of the furniture in. Are you
Miss Drewitt?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “If you’ll kindly give me the key, I can go in and
wait for him.”

Mr. Tredgold took it from a drawer. “If you will allow me, I will go
down with you,” he said, slowly; “the lock is rather awkward for anybody
who doesn’t understand it.”

The girl murmured something about not troubling him.

“It’s no trouble,” said Mr. Tredgold, taking up his hat. “It is our duty
to do all we can for the comfort of our tenants. That lock—”

He held the door open and followed her into the street, pointing out
various objects of interest as they went along.

“I’m afraid you’ll find Binchester very quiet,” he remarked.

“I like quiet,” said his companion.

Mr. Tredgold glanced at her shrewdly, and, pausing only at the jubilee
horse-trough to point out beauties which might easily escape any but a
trained observation, walked on in silence until they reached their
destination.

Except in the matter of window-blinds, Dialstone Lane had not changed
for generations, and Mr. Tredgold noted with pleasure the interest of
his companion as she gazed at the crumbling roofs, the red-brick
doorsteps, and the tiny lattice windows of the cottages. At the last
house, a cottage larger than the rest, one side of which bordered the
old churchyard, Mr. Tredgold paused and, inserting his key in the lock,
turned it with thoughtless ease.

“The lock seems all right; I need not have bothered you,” said Miss
Drewitt, regarding him gravely.

“Ah, it seems easy,” said Mr. Tredgold, shaking his head, “but it wants
knack.”

The girl closed the door smartly, and, turning the key, opened it again
without any difficulty. To satisfy herself—on more points than one—she
repeated the performance.

“You’ve _got_ the knack,” said Mr. Tredgold, meeting her gaze with
great calmness. “It’s extraordinary what a lot of character there is in
locks; they let some people open them without any trouble, while others
may fumble at them till they’re tired.”

The girl pushed the door open and stood just inside the room.

“Thank you,” she said, and gave him a little bow of dismissal.

A vein of obstinacy in Mr. Tredgold’s disposition, which its owner
mistook for firmness, asserted itself. It was plain that the girl had
estimated his services at their true value and was quite willing to
apprise him of the fact. He tried the lock again, and with more
bitterness than the occasion seemed to warrant said that somebody had
been oiling it.

“I promised Captain Bowers to come in this afternoon and see that a few
odd things had been done,” he added. “May I come in now?”

The girl withdrew into the room, and, seating herself in a large
arm-chair by the fireplace, watched his inspection of door-knobs and
window-fastenings with an air of grave amusement, which he found
somewhat trying.

“Captain Bowers had the walls panelled and these lockers made to make
the room look as much like a ship’s cabin as possible,” he said, pausing
in his labours. “He was quite pleased to find the staircase opening out
of the room—he calls it the companion-ladder. And he calls the kitchen
the pantry, which led to a lot of confusion with the workmen. Did he
tell you of the crow’s-nest in the garden?”

“No,” said the girl.

“It’s a fine piece of work,” said Mr. Tredgold.

He opened the door leading into the kitchen and stepped out into the
garden. Miss Drewitt, after a moment’s hesitation, followed, and after
one delighted glance at the trim old garden gazed curiously at a mast
with a barrel fixed near the top, which stood at the end.

“There’s a fine view from up there,” said Mr. Tredgold. “With the
captain’s glass one can see the sea distinctly. I spent nearly all last
Friday afternoon up there, keeping an eye on things. Do you like the
garden? Do you think these old creepers ought to be torn down from the
house?”

“Certainly not,” said Miss Drewitt, with emphasis.

“Just what I said,” remarked Mr. Tredgold. “Captain Bowers wanted to
have them pulled down, but I dissuaded him. I advised him to consult
you first.”

“I don’t suppose he really intended to,” said the girl.

“He did,” said the other, grimly; “said they were untidy. How do you
like the way the house is furnished?”

The girl gazed at him for a few moments before replying. “I like it very
much,” she said, coldly.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Tredgold, with an air of relief. “You see, I
advised the captain what to buy. I went with him to Tollminster and
helped him choose. Your room gave me the most anxiety, I think.”

“_My_ room?” said the girl, starting.

“It’s a dream in the best shades of pink and green,” said Mr. Tredgold,
modestly. “Pink on the walls, and carpets and hangings green; three or
four bits of old furniture—the captain objected, but I stood firm; and
for pictures I had two or three little things out of an art journal
framed.”

“Is furnishing part of your business?” inquired the girl, eyeing him in
bewilderment.

“Business?” said the other. “Oh, no. I did it for amusement. I chose and
the captain paid. It was a delightful experience. The sordid question of
price was waived; for once expense was nothing to me. I wish you’d just
step up to your room and see how you like it. It’s the one over the
kitchen.”

Miss Drewitt hesitated, and then curiosity, combined with a cheerful
idea of probably being able to disapprove of the lauded decorations,
took her indoors and upstairs. In a few minutes she came down again.

“I suppose it’s all right,” she said, ungraciously, “but I don’t
understand why you should have selected it.”

“I had to,” said Mr. Tredgold, confidentially. “I happened to go to
Tollminster the same day as the captain and went into a shop with him.
If you could only see the things he wanted to buy, you would
understand.”

The girl was silent.

“The paper the captain selected for your room,” continued Mr. Tredgold,
severely, “was decorated with branches of an unknown flowering shrub, on
the top twig of which a humming-bird sat eating a dragonfly. A rough
calculation showed me that every time you opened your eyes in the
morning you would see fifty-seven humming-birds—all made in the same
pattern—eating fifty-seven ditto dragon-flies. The captain said it was
cheerful.”

“I have no doubt that my uncle’s selection would have satisfied me,”
said Miss Drewitt, coldly.

“The curtains he fancied were red, with small yellow tigers crouching
all over them,” pursued Mr. Tredgold. “The captain seemed fond of
animals.”

“I think that you were rather—venturesome,” said the girl. “Suppose that
I had not liked the things you selected?”

Mr. Tredgold deliberated. “I felt sure that you would like them,” he
said, at last. “It was a hard struggle not to keep some of the things
for myself. I’ve had my eye on those two Chippendale chairs for years.
They belonged to an old woman in Mint Street, but she always refused to
part with them. I shouldn’t have got them, only one of them let her down
the other day.”

“Let her down?” repeated Miss Drewitt, sharply. “Do you mean one of the
chairs in my bedroom?”

Mr. Tredgold nodded. “Gave her rather a nasty fall,” he said. “I struck
while the iron was hot, and went and made her an offer while she was
still laid up from the effects of it. It’s the one standing against the
wall; the other’s all right, with proper care.”

Miss Drewitt, after a somewhat long interval, thanked him.

“You must have been very useful to my uncle,” she said, slowly. “I feel
sure that he would never have bought chairs like those of his own
accord.”

“He has been at sea all his life,” said Mr. Tredgold, in extenuation.
“You haven’t seen him for a long time, have you?”

“Ten years,” was the reply.

“He is delightful company,” said Mr. Tredgold. “His life has been one
long series of adventures in every quarter of the globe. His stock of
yarns is like the widow’s cruse. And here he comes,” he added, as a
dilapidated fly drew up at the house and an elderly man, with a red,
weatherbeaten face, partly hidden in a cloud of grey beard, stepped out
and stood in the doorway, regarding the girl with something almost akin
to embarrassment.

“It’s not—not Prudence?” he said at length, holding out his hand and
staring at her.

“Yes, uncle,” said the girl.

They shook hands, and Captain Bowers, reaching up for a cage containing
a parrot, which had been noisily entreating the cabman for a kiss all
the way from the station, handed that flustered person his fare and
entered the house again.

“Glad to see you, my lad,” he said, shaking hands with Mr. Tredgold and
glancing covertly at his niece. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,”
he added, turning to the latter.

“No,” said Miss Drewitt, regarding him with a puzzled air.

“I missed the train,” said the captain. “We must try and manage better
next time. I—I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

“Thank you,” said the girl.

“You—you are very like your poor mother,” said the captain.

“I hope so,” said Prudence.

She stole up to the captain and, after a moment’s hesitation, kissed his
cheek. The next moment she was caught up and crushed in the arms of a
powerful and affectionate bear.

“Blest if I hardly knew how to take you at first,” said the captain,
his red face shining with gratification. “Little girls are one thing,
but when they grow up into”—he held her away and looked at her
proudly—“into handsome and dignified-looking young women, a man doesn’t
quite know where he is.” He took her in his arms again and, kissing her
forehead, winked delightedly in the direction of Mr. Tredgold, who was
affecting to look out of the window.

“My man’ll be in soon,” he said, releasing the girl, “and then we’ll see
about some tea. He met me at the station and I sent him straight off for
things to eat.”

“Your man?” said Miss Drewitt.

“Yes; I thought a man would be easier to manage than a girl,” said the
captain, knowingly. “You can be freer with ’em in the matter of
language, and then there’s no followers or anything of that kind. I got
him to sign articles ship-shape and proper. Mr. Tredgold recommended
him.”

“No, no,” said that gentleman, hastily.

“I asked you before he signed on with me,” said the captain, pointing a
stumpy forefinger at him. “I made a point of it, and you told me that
you had never heard anything against him.”

“I don’t call that a recommendation,” said Mr. Tredgold.

“It’s good enough in these days,” retorted the captain, gloomily. “A man
that has got a character like that is hard to find.”

“He might be artful and keep his faults to himself,” suggested Tredgold.

“So long as he does that, it’s all right,” said Captain Bowers. “I can’t
find fault if there’s no faults to find fault with. The best steward I
ever had, I found out afterwards, had escaped from gaol. He never wanted
to go ashore, and when the ship was in port almost lived in his pantry.”

“I never heard of Tasker having been in gaol,” said Mr. Tredgold.
“Anyhow, I’m certain that he never broke out of one; he’s far too
stupid.”

As he paid this tribute the young man referred to entered laden with
parcels, and, gazing awkwardly at the company, passed through the room
on tiptoe and began to busy himself in the pantry. Mr. Tredgold,
refusing the captain’s invitation to stay for a cup of tea, took his
departure.

“Very nice youngster that,” said the captain, looking after him. “A
little bit light-hearted in his ways, perhaps, but none the worse for
that.”

He sat down and looked round at his possessions. “The first real home
I’ve had for nearly fifty years,” he said, with great content. “I hope
you’ll be as happy here as I intend to be. It sha’n’t be my fault if
you’re not.”

Mr. Tredgold walked home deep in thought, and by the time he had arrived
there had come to the conclusion that if Miss Drewitt favoured her
mother, that lady must have been singularly unlike Captain Bowers in
features.




CHAPTER II


In less than a week Captain Bowers had settled down comfortably in his
new command. A set of rules and regulations by which Mr. Joseph Tasker
was to order his life was framed and hung in the pantry. He studied it
with care, and, anxious that there should be no possible chance of a
misunderstanding, questioned the spelling in three instances. The
captain’s explanation that he had spelt those words in the American
style was an untruthful reflection upon a great and friendly nation.

Dialstone Lane was at first disposed to look askance at Mr. Tasker.
Old-fashioned matrons clustered round to watch him cleaning the
doorstep, and, surprised at its whiteness, withdrew discomfited. Rumour
had it that he liked work, and scandal said that he had wept because he
was not allowed to do the washing.

The captain attributed this satisfactory condition of affairs to the
rules and regulations, though a slight indiscretion on the part of Mr.
Tasker, necessitating the unframing of the document to add to the
latter, caused him a little annoyance.

The first intimation he had of it was a loud knocking at the front door
as he sat dozing one afternoon in his easy-chair. In response to his
startled cry of “Come in!” the door opened and a small man, in a state
of considerable agitation, burst into the room and confronted him.

“My name is Chalk,” he said, breathlessly.

“A friend of Mr. Tredgold’s?” said the captain. “I’ve heard of you,
sir.”

The visitor paid no heed.

“My wife wishes to know whether she has got to dress in the dark every
afternoon for the rest of her life,” he said, in fierce but trembling
tones.

“Got to dress in the dark?” repeated the astonished captain.

“With the blind down,” explained the other.

Captain Bowers looked him up and down. He saw a man of about fifty
nervously fingering the little bits of fluffy red whisker which grew at
the sides of his face, and trying to still the agitation of his
tremulous mouth.

“How would you like it yourself?” demanded the visitor, whose manner
was gradually becoming milder and milder. “How would _you_ like a
telescope a yard long pointing—”

He broke off abruptly as the captain, with a smothered oath, dashed out
of his chair into the garden and stood shaking his fist at the
crow’s-nest at the bottom.

“Joseph!” he bawled.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Tasker, removing the telescope described by Mr.
Chalk from his eye, and leaning over.

“What are you doing with that spy-glass?” demanded his master, beckoning
to the visitor, who had drawn near. “How dare you stare in at people’s
windows?”

“I wasn’t, sir,” replied Mr. Tasker, in an injured voice. “I wouldn’t
think o’ such a thing—I couldn’t, not if I tried.”

“You’d got it pointed straight at my bedroom window,” cried Mr. Chalk,
as he accompanied the captain down the garden. “And it ain’t the first
time.”

“I wasn’t, sir,” said the steward, addressing his master. “I was
watching the martins under the eaves.”

“You’d got it pointed at my window,” persisted the visitor.

“That’s where the nests are,” said Mr. Tasker, “but I wasn’t looking in
at the window. Besides, I noticed you always pulled the blind down when
you saw me looking, so I thought it didn’t matter.”

“We can’t do anything without being followed about by that telescope,”
said Mr. Chalk, turning to the captain. “My wife had our house built
where it is on purpose, so that we shouldn’t be overlooked. We didn’t
bargain for a thing like that sprouting up in a back-garden.”

“I’m very sorry,” said the captain. “I wish you’d told me of it before.
If I catch you up there again,” he cried, shaking his fist at Mr.
Tasker, “you’ll remember it. Come down!”

Mr. Tasker, placing the glass under his arm, came slowly and reluctantly
down the ratlines.

“I wasn’t looking in at the window, Mr. Chalk,” he said, earnestly. “I
was watching the birds. O’ course, I couldn’t help seeing in a bit, but
I always shifted the spy-glass at once if there was anything that I
thought I oughtn’t—”

“That’ll do,” broke in the captain, hastily. “Go in and get the tea
ready. If I so much as see you looking at that glass again we part, my
lad, mind that.”

“I don’t suppose he meant any harm,” said the mollified Mr. Chalk, after
the crestfallen Joseph had gone into the house. “I hope I haven’t been
and said too much, but my wife insisted on me coming round and speaking
about it.”

“You did quite right,” said the captain, “and I thank you for coming. I
told him he might go up there occasionally, but I particularly warned
him against giving any annoyance to the neighbours.”

“I suppose,” said Mr. Chalk, gazing at the erection with interest—“I
suppose there’s a good view from up there? It’s like having a ship in
the garden, and it seems to remind you of the North Pole, and whales,
and Northern Lights.”

Five minutes later Mr. Tasker, peering through the pantry window, was
surprised to see Mr. Chalk ascending with infinite caution to the
crow’s-nest. His high hat was jammed firmly over his brows and the
telescope was gripped tightly under his right arm. The journey was
evidently regarded as one of extreme peril by the climber; but he held
on gallantly and, arrived at the top, turned a tremulous telescope on to
the horizon.

Mr. Tasker took a deep breath and resumed his labours. He set the table,
and when the water boiled made the tea, and went down the garden to
announce the fact. Mr. Chalk was still up aloft, and even at that height
the pallor of his face was clearly discernible. It was evident to the
couple below that the terrors of the descent were too much for him, but
that he was too proud to say so.

“Nice view up there,” called the captain.

“B—b—beautiful,” cried Mr. Chalk, with an attempt at enthusiasm.

The captain paced up and down impatiently; his tea was getting cold, but
the forlorn figure aloft made no sign. The captain waited a little
longer, and then, laying hold of the shrouds, slowly mounted until his
head was above the platform.

“Shall I take the glass for you?” he inquired.

Mr. Chalk, clutching the edge of the cask, leaned over and handed it
down.

“My—my foot’s gone to sleep,” he stammered.

“Ho! Well, you must be careful how you get down,” said the captain,
climbing on to the platform. “Now, gently.”

He put the telescope back into the cask, and, beckoning Mr. Tasker to
ascend, took Mr. Chalk in a firm grasp and lowered him until he was
able to reach Mr. Tasker’s face with his foot. After that the descent
was easy, and Mr. Chalk, reaching ground once more, spent two or three
minutes in slapping and rubbing, and other remedies prescribed for
sleepy feet.

“There’s few gentlemen that would have come down at all with their foot
asleep,” remarked Mr. Tasker, pocketing a shilling, when the captain’s
back was turned.

Mr. Chalk, still pale and shaking somewhat, smiled feebly and followed
the captain into the house. The latter offered a cup of tea, which the
visitor, after a faint protest, accepted, and taking a seat at the table
gazed in undisguised admiration at the nautical appearance of the room.

“I could fancy myself aboard ship,” he declared.

“Are you fond of the sea?” inquired the captain.

“I love it,” said Mr. Chalk, fervently. “It was always my idea from a
boy to go to sea, but somehow I didn’t. I went into my father’s business
instead, but I never liked it. Some people are fond of a stay-at-home
life, but I always had a hankering after adventures.”

The captain shook his head. “Ha!” he said, impressively.

“You’ve had a few in your time,” said Mr. Chalk, looking at him,
grudgingly; “Edward Tredgold was telling me so.”

“Man and boy, I was at sea forty-nine years,” remarked the captain.
“Naturally things happened in that time; it would have been odd if they
hadn’t. It’s all in a lifetime.”

“Some lifetimes,” said Mr. Chalk, gloomily. “I’m fifty-one next year,
and the only thing I ever had happen to me was seeing a man stop a
runaway horse and cart.”

He shook his head solemnly over his monotonous career, and, gazing at a
war-club from Samoa which hung over the fireplace, put a few leading
questions to the captain concerning the manner in which it came into his
possession. When Prudence came in half an hour later he was still
sitting there, listening with rapt attention to his host’s tales of
distant seas.

It was the first of many visits. Sometimes he brought Mr. Tredgold and
sometimes Mr. Tredgold brought him. The terrors of the crow’s-nest
vanished before his persevering attacks, and perched there with the
captain’s glass he swept the landscape with the air of an explorer
surveying a strange and hostile country.

It was a fitting prelude to the captain’s tales afterwards, and Mr.
Chalk, with the stem of his long pipe withdrawn from his open mouth,
would sit enthralled as his host narrated picturesque incidents of
hairbreadth escapes, or, drawing his chair to the table, made rough maps
for his listener’s clearer understanding. Sometimes the captain took him
to palm-studded islands in the Southern Seas; sometimes to the ancient
worlds of China and Japan. He became an expert in nautical terms. He
walked in knots, and even ordered a new carpet in fathoms—after the
shop-keeper had demonstrated, by means of his little boy’s arithmetic
book, the difference between that measurement and a furlong.

“I’ll have a voyage before I’m much older,” he remarked one afternoon,
as he sat in the captain’s sitting-room. “Since I retired from business
time hangs very heavy sometimes. I’ve got a fancy for a small yacht, but
I suppose I couldn’t go a long voyage in a small one?”

“Smaller the better,” said Edward Tredgold, who was sitting by the
window watching Miss Drewitt sewing.

Mr. Chalk took his pipe from his mouth and eyed him inquiringly.

“Less to lose,” explained Mr. Tredgold, with a scarcely perceptible
glance at the captain. “Look at the dangers you’d be dragging your craft
into, Chalk; there would be no satisfying you with a quiet cruise in the
Mediterranean.”

“I shouldn’t run into unnecessary danger,” said Mr. Chalk, seriously.
“I’m a married man, and there’s my wife to think of. What would become
of her if anything happened to me?”

“Why, you’ve got plenty of money to leave, haven’t you?” inquired Mr.
Tredgold.

“I was thinking of her losing _me_,” replied Mr. Chalk, with a touch of
acerbity.

“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” said the other. “Yes, to be sure.”

“Captain Bowers was telling me the other day of a woman who wore widow’s
weeds for thirty-five years,” said Mr. Chalk, impressively. “And all the
time her husband was married again and got a big family in Australia.
There’s nothing in the world so faithful as a woman’s heart.”

“Well, if you’re lost on a cruise, I shall know where to look for you,”
said Mr. Tredgold. “But I don’t think the captain ought to put such
ideas into your head.”

Mr. Chalk looked bewildered. Then he scratched his left whisker with the
stem of his churchwarden pipe and looked severely over at Mr. Tredgold.

“I don’t think you ought to talk that way before ladies,” he said,
primly. “Of course, I know you’re only in joke, but there’s some people
can’t see jokes as quick as others and they might get a wrong idea of
you.”

“What part did you think of going to for your cruise?” interposed
Captain Bowers.

“There’s nothing settled yet,” said Mr. Chalk; “it’s just an idea,
that’s all. I was talking to your father the other day,” he added,
turning to Mr. Tredgold; “just sounding him, so to speak.”

“You take him,” said that dutiful son, briskly. “It would do him a world
of good; me, too.”

“He said he couldn’t afford either the time or the money,” said Mr.
Chalk. “The thing to do would be to combine business with pleasure—to
take a yacht and find a sunken galleon loaded with gold pieces. I’ve
heard of such things being done.”

“I’ve heard of it,” said the captain, nodding.

“Bottom of the ocean must be paved with them in places,” said Mr.
Tredgold, rising, and following Miss Drewitt, who had gone into the
garden to plant seeds.

Mr. Chalk refilled his pipe and, accepting a match from the captain,
smoked slowly. His gaze was fixed on the window, but instead of
Dialstone Lane he saw tumbling blue seas and islets far away.

“That’s something you’ve never come across, I suppose, Captain Bowers?”
he remarked at last.

“No,” said the other.

Mr. Chalk, with a vain attempt to conceal his disappointment, smoked on
for some time in silence. The blue seas disappeared, and he saw instead
the brass knocker of the house opposite.

“Nor any other kind of craft with treasure aboard, I suppose?” he
suggested, at last.

The captain put his hands on his knees and stared at the floor. “No,” he
said, slowly, “I can’t call to mind any craft; but it’s odd that you
should have got on this subject with me.”

Mr. Chalk laid his pipe carefully on the table.

“Why?” he inquired.

“Well,” said the captain, with a short laugh, “it _is_ odd, that’s all.”

Mr. Chalk fidgeted with the stem of his pipe. “You know of sunken
treasure somewhere?” he said, eagerly.

The captain smiled and shook his head; the other watched him narrowly.

“You know of some treasure?” he said, with conviction.

“Not what you could call sunken,” said the captain, driven to bay.

Mr. Chalk’s pale-blue eyes opened to their fullest extent. “Ingots?” he
queried.

The other shook his head. “It’s a secret,” he remarked; “we won’t talk
about it.”

“Yes, of course, naturally, I don’t expect you to tell me where it is,”
said Mr. Chalk, “but I thought it might be interesting to hear about,
that’s all.”

“It’s buried,” said the captain, after a long pause. “I don’t know that
there’s any harm in telling you that; buried in a small island in the
South Pacific.”

“Have you seen it?” inquired Mr. Chalk.

“I buried it,” rejoined the other.

Mr. Chalk sank back in his chair and regarded him with awestruck
attention; Captain Bowers, slowly ramming home a charge of tobacco with
his thumb, smiled quietly.

“Buried it,” he repeated, musingly, “with the blade of an oar for a
spade. It was a long job, but it’s six foot down and the dead man it
belonged to atop of it.”

The pipe fell from the listener’s fingers and smashed unheeded on the
floor.

“You ought to make a book of it,” he said at last.

The captain shook his head. “I haven’t got the gift of story-telling,”
he said, simply. “Besides, you can understand I don’t want it noised
about. People might bother me.”

He leaned back in his chair and bunched his beard in his hand; the
other, watching him closely, saw that his thoughts were busy with some
scene in his stirring past.

“Not a friend of yours, I hope?” said Mr. Chalk, at last.

“Who?” inquired the captain, starting from his reverie.

“The dead man atop of the treasure,” replied the other.

“No,” said the captain, briefly.

“Is it worth much?” asked Mr. Chalk.

“Roughly speaking, about half a million,” responded the captain, calmly.

Mr. Chalk rose and walked up and down the room. His eyes were bright and
his face pinker than usual.

“Why don’t you get it?” he demanded, at last, pausing in front of his
host.

“Why, it ain’t mine,” said the captain, staring. “D’ye think I’m a
thief?”

Mr. Chalk stared in his turn. “But who does it belong to, then?” he
inquired.

“I don’t know,” replied the captain. “All I know is, it isn’t mine, and
that’s enough for me. Whether it was rightly come by I don’t know. There
it is, and there it’ll stay till the crack of doom.”

“Don’t you know any of his relations or friends?” persisted the other.

“I know nothing of him except his name,” said the captain, “and I doubt
if even that was his right one. Don Silvio he called himself—a Spaniard.
It’s over ten years ago since it happened. My ship had been bought by a
firm in Sydney, and while I was waiting out there I went for a little
run on a schooner among the islands. This Don Silvio was aboard of her
as a passenger. She went to pieces in a gale, and we were the only two
saved. The others were washed overboard, but we got ashore in the boat,
and I thought from the trouble he was taking over his bag that the
danger had turned his brain.”

“Ah!” said the keenly interested Mr. Chalk.

“He was a sick man aboard ship,” continued the captain, “and I soon saw
that he hadn’t saved his life for long. He saw it, too, and before he
died he made me promise that the bag should be buried with him and never
disturbed. After I’d promised, he opened the bag and showed me what was
in it. It was full of precious stones—diamonds, rubies, and the like;
some of them as large as birds’ eggs. I can see him now, propped up
against the boat and playing with them in the sunlight. They blazed like
stars. Half a million he put them at, or more.”

“What good could they be to him when he was dead?” inquired the
listener.

Captain Bowers shook his head. “That was his business, not mine,” he
replied. “It was nothing to do with me. When he died I dug a grave for
him, as I told you, with a bit of a broken oar, and laid him and the bag
together. A month afterwards I was taken off by a passing schooner and
landed safe at Sydney.”

Mr. Chalk stopped, and mechanically picking up the pieces of his pipe
placed them on the table.

“Suppose that you had heard afterwards that the things had been stolen?”
he remarked.

“If I had, then I should have given information, I think,” said the
other. “It all depends.”

“Ah! but how could you have found them again?” inquired Mr. Chalk, with
the air of one propounding a poser.

“With my map,” said the captain, slowly. “Before I left I made a map of
the island and got its position from the schooner that picked me up; but
I never heard a word from that day to this.”

“Could you find them now?” said Mr. Chalk.

“Why not?” said the captain, with a short laugh. “The island hasn’t run
away.”

He rose as he spoke and, tossing the fragments of his visitor’s pipe
into the fireplace, invited him to take a turn in the garden. Mr. Chalk,
after a feeble attempt to discuss the matter further, reluctantly
obeyed.




CHAPTER III


Mr. Chalk, with his mind full of the story he had just heard, walked
homewards like a man in a dream. The air was fragrant with spring and
the scent of lilac revived memories almost forgotten. It took him back
forty years, and showed him a small boy treading the same road, passing
the same houses. Nothing had changed so much as the small boy himself;
nothing had been so unlike the life he had pictured as the life he had
led. Even the blamelessness of the latter yielded no comfort; it
savoured of a lack of spirit.

His mind was still busy with the past when he reached home. Mrs. Chalk,
a woman of imposing appearance, who was sitting by the window at
needlework, looked up sharply at his entrance. Before she spoke he had a
dim idea that she was excited about something.

“I’ve got her,” she said, triumphantly.

“Oh!” said Mr. Chalk.

“She didn’t want to come at first,” said Mrs. Chalk; “she’d half
promised to go to Mrs. Morris. Mrs. Morris had heard of her through
Harris, the grocer, and he only knew she was out of a place by accident.
He—”

Her words fell on deaf ears. Mr. Chalk, gazing through the window, heard
without comprehending a long account of the capture of a new housemaid,
which, slightly altered as to name and place, would have passed muster
as an exciting contest between a skilful angler and a particularly sulky
salmon. Mrs. Chalk, noticing his inattention at last, pulled up sharply.

“You’re not listening!” she cried.

“Yes, I am; go on, my dear,” said Mr. Chalk.

“What did I say she left her last place for, then?” demanded the lady.

Mr. Chalk started. He had been conscious of his wife’s voice, and that
was all. “You said you were not surprised at her leaving,” he replied,
slowly; “the only wonder to you was that a decent girl should have
stayed there so long.”

Mrs. Chalk started and bit her lip. “Yes,” she said, slowly. “Ye-es. Go
on; anything else?”

“You said the house wanted cleaning from top to bottom,” said the
painstaking Mr. Chalk.

“Go on,” said his wife, in a smothered voice. “What else did I say?”

“Said you pitied the husband,” continued Mr. Chalk, thoughtfully.

Mrs. Chalk rose suddenly and stood over him. Mr. Chalk tried desperately
to collect his faculties.

“How dare you?” she gasped. “I’ve never said such things in my life.
Never. And I said that she left because Mr. Wilson, her master, was dead
and the family had gone to London. I’ve never been near the house; so
how could I say such things?”

Mr. Chalk remained silent.

“What made you _think_ of such things?” persisted Mrs. Chalk.

Mr. Chalk shook his head; no satisfactory reply was possible. “My
thoughts were far away,” he said, at last.

His wife bridled and said, “Oh, indeed!” Mr. Chalk’s mother, dead some
ten years before, had taken a strange pride—possibly as a protest
against her only son’s appearance—in hinting darkly at a stormy and
chequered past. Pressed for details she became more mysterious still,
and, saying that “she knew what she knew,” declined to be deprived of
the knowledge under any consideration. She also informed her
daughter-in-law that “what the eye don’t see the heart don’t grieve,”
and that it was better to “let bygones be bygones,” usually winding up
with the advice to the younger woman to keep her eye on Mr. Chalk
without letting him see it.

“Peckham Rye is a long way off, certainly,” added the indignant Mrs.
Chalk, after a pause. “It’s a pity you haven’t got something better to
think of, at your time of life, too.”

Mr. Chalk flushed. Peckham Rye was one of the nuisances bequeathed by
his mother.

“I was thinking of the sea,” he said, loftily.

Mrs. Chalk pounced. “Oh, Yarmouth,” she said, with withering scorn.

Mr. Chalk flushed deeper than before. “I wasn’t thinking of such
things,” he declared.

“What things?” said his wife, swiftly.

“The—the things you’re alluding to,” said the harassed Mr. Chalk.

“Ah!” said his wife, with a toss of her head. “Why you should get red in
the face and confused when I say Peckham Rye and Yarmouth are a long way
off is best known to yourself. It’s very funny that the moment either of
these places is mentioned you get uncomfortable. People might read a
geography-book out loud in my presence and it wouldn’t affect me.”

She swept out of the room, and Mr. Chalk’s thoughts, excited by the
magic word geography, went back to the island again. The half-forgotten
dreams of his youth appeared to be materializing. Sleepy Binchester
ended for him at Dialstone Lane, and once inside the captain’s room the
enchanted world beyond the seas was spread before his eager gaze. The
captain, amused at first at his enthusiasm, began to get weary of the
subject of the island, and so far the visitor had begged in vain for a
glimpse of the map.

His enthusiasm became contagious. Prudence, entering one evening in the
middle of a conversation, heard sufficient to induce her to ask for
more, and the captain, not without some reluctance and several
promptings from Mr. Chalk when he showed signs of omitting vital points,
related the story. Edward Tredgold heard it, and, judging by the
frequency of his visits, was almost as interested as Mr. Chalk.

“I can’t see that there could be any harm in just looking at the map,”
said Mr. Chalk, one evening. “You could keep your thumb on any part you
wanted to.”

“Then we should know where to dig,” urged Mr. Tredgold. “Properly
managed there ought to be a fortune in your innocence, Chalk.”

Mr. Chalk eyed him fixedly. “Seeing that the latitude and longitude and
all the directions are written on the _back_,” he observed, with cold
dignity, “I don’t see the force of your remarks.”

“Well, in that case, why not show it to Mr. Chalk, uncle?” said
Prudence, charitably.

Captain Bowers began to show signs of annoyance. “Well, my dear,” he
began, slowly.

“Then Miss Drewitt could see it too,” said Mr. Tredgold, blandly.

Miss Drewitt reddened with indignation. “I could see it any time I
wished,” she said, sharply.

“Well, wish now,” entreated Mr. Tredgold. “As a matter of fact, I’m
dying with curiosity myself. Bring it out and make it crackle, captain;
it’s a bank-note for half a million.”

The captain shook his head and a slight frown marred his usually amiable
features. He got up and, turning his back on them, filled his pipe from
a jar on the mantelpiece.

“You never will see it, Chalk,” said Edward Tredgold, in tones of much
conviction. “I’ll bet you two to one in golden sovereigns that you’ll
sink into your honoured family vault with your justifiable curiosity
still unsatisfied. And I shouldn’t wonder if your perturbed spirit walks
the captain’s bedroom afterwards.”

Miss Drewitt looked up and eyed the speaker with scornful comprehension.
“Take the bet, Mr. Chalk,” she said, slowly.

Mr. Chalk turned in hopeful amaze; then he leaned over and shook hands
solemnly with Mr. Tredgold. “I’ll take the bet,” he said.

“Uncle will show it to you to please me,” announced Prudence, in a clear
voice. “Won’t you, uncle?”

The captain turned and took the matches from the table. “Certainly, my
dear, if I can find it,” he said, in a hesitating fashion. “But I’m
afraid I’ve mislaid it. I haven’t seen it since I unpacked.”

“_Mislaid it!_” ejaculated the startled Mr. Chalk. “_Good heavens!_
Suppose somebody should find it? What about your word to Don Silvio
then?”

“I’ve got it somewhere,” said the captain, brusquely; “I’ll have a hunt
for it. All the same, I don’t know that it’s quite fair to interfere in
a bet.”

Miss Drewitt waved the objection away, remarking that people who made
bets must risk losing their money.

“I’ll begin to save up,” said Mr. Tredgold, with a lightness which was
not lost upon Miss Drewitt. “The captain has got to find it before you
can see it, Chalk.”

Mr. Chalk, with a satisfied smile, said that when the captain promised a
thing it was as good as done.

For the next few days he waited patiently, and, ransacking an old
lumber-room, divided his time pretty equally between a volume of
“Captain Cook’s Voyages” that he found there and “Famous Shipwrecks.” By
this means and the exercise of great self-control he ceased from
troubling Dialstone Lane for a week. Even then it was Edward Tredgold
who took him there. The latter was in high spirits, and in explanation
informed the company, with a cheerful smile, that he had saved five and
ninepence, and was forming habits which bade fair to make him a rich man
in time.

“Don’t you be in too much of a hurry to find that map, captain,” he
said.

“It’s found,” said Miss Drewitt, with a little note of triumph in her
voice.

“Found it this morning,” said Captain Bowers. He crossed over to an oak
bureau which stood in the corner by the fireplace, and taking a paper
from a pigeon-hole slowly unfolded it and spread it on the table before
the delighted Mr. Chalk. Miss Drewitt and Edward Tredgold advanced to
the table and eyed it curiously.

The map, which was drawn in lead-pencil, was on a piece of ruled paper,
yellow with age and cracked in the folds. The island was in shape a
rough oval, the coast-line being broken by small bays and headlands. Mr.
Chalk eyed it with all the fervour usually bestowed on a holy relic,
and, breathlessly reading off such terms as “Cape Silvio,” “Bowers Bay,”
and “Mount Lonesome,” gazed with breathless interest at the discoverer.

“And is that the grave?” he inquired, in a trembling voice, pointing to
a mark in the north-east corner.

The captain removed it with his finger-nail. “No,” he said, briefly.
“For full details see the other side.”

For one moment Mr. Chalk hoped; then his face fell as Captain Bowers,
displaying for a fraction of a second the writing on the other side,
took up the map and, replacing it in the bureau, turned the key in the
lock and with a low laugh resumed his seat. Miss Drewitt, glancing over
at Edward Tredgold, saw that he looked very thoughtful.

“You’ve lost your bet,” she said, pointedly.

“I know,” was the reply.

His gaiety had vanished and he looked so dejected that Miss Drewitt was
reminded of the ruined gambler in a celebrated picture. She tried to
quiet her conscience by hoping that it would be a lesson to him. As she
watched, Mr. Tredgold dived into his left trouser-pocket and counted out
some coins, mostly brown. To these he added a few small pieces of silver
gleaned from his waistcoat, and then after a few seconds’ moody thought
found a few more in the other trouser-pocket.

“Eleven and tenpence,” he said, mechanically.

“Any time,” said Mr. Chalk, regarding him with awkward surprise. “Any
time.”

“Give him an I O U,” said Captain Bowers, fidgeting.

“Yes, any time,” repeated Mr. Chalk; “I’m in no hurry.”

“No; I’d sooner pay now and get it over,” said the other, still fumbling
in his pockets. “As Miss Drewitt says, people who make bets must be
prepared to lose; I thought I had more than this.”

There was an embarrassing silence, during which Miss Drewitt, who had
turned very red, felt strangely uncomfortable. She felt more
uncomfortable still when Mr. Tredgold, discovering a bank-note and a
little collection of gold coins in another pocket, artlessly expressed
his joy at the discovery. The simple-minded captain and Mr. Chalk both
experienced a sense of relief; Miss Drewitt sat and simmered in helpless
indignation.

“You’re careless in money matters, my lad,” said the captain,
reprovingly.

“I couldn’t understand him making all that fuss over a couple o’
pounds,” said Mr. Chalk, looking round. “He’s very free, as a rule; too
free.”

Mr. Tredgold, sitting grave and silent, made no reply to these charges,
and the girl was the only one to notice a faint twitching at the corners
of his mouth. She saw it distinctly, despite the fact that her clear,
grey eyes were fixed dreamily on a spot some distance above his head.

She sat in her room upstairs after the visitors had gone, thinking it
over. The light was fading fast, and as she sat at the open window the
remembrance of Mr. Tredgold’s conduct helped to mar one of the most
perfect evenings she had ever known.

Downstairs the captain was also thinking. Dialstone Lane was in shadow,
and already one or two lamps were lit behind drawn blinds. A little
chatter of voices at the end of the lane floated in at the open window,
mellowed by distance. His pipe was out, and he rose to search in the
gloom for a match, when another murmur of voices reached his ears from
the kitchen. He stood still and listened intently. To put matters beyond
all doubt, the shrill laugh of a girl was plainly audible. The captain’s
face hardened, and, crossing to the fireplace, he rang the bell.

“Yessir,” said Joseph, as he appeared and closed the door carefully
behind him.

“What are you talking to yourself in that absurd manner for?” inquired
the captain with great dignity.

“Me, sir?” said Mr. Tasker, feebly.

“Yes, you,” repeated the captain, noticing with surprise that the door
was slowly opening.

Mr. Tasker gazed at him in a troubled fashion, but made no reply.

“I won’t have it,” said the captain, sternly, with a side glance at the
door. “If you want to talk to yourself go outside and do it. I never
heard such a laugh. What did you do it for? It was like an old woman
with a bad cold.”

He smiled grimly in the darkness, and then started slightly as a cough,
a hostile, challenging cough, sounded from the kitchen. Before he could
speak the cough ceased and a thin voice broke carelessly into song.

“+What!+” roared the captain, in well-feigned astonishment. “Do you
mean to tell me you’ve got somebody in my pantry? Go and get me those
rules and regulations.”

Mr. Tasker backed out, and the captain smiled again as he heard a
whispered discussion. Then a voice clear and distinct took command.
“I’ll take ’em in myself, I tell you,” it said. “I’ll rules and
regulations him.”

The smile faded from the captain’s face, and he gazed in perplexity at
the door as a strange young woman bounced into the room.

“Here’s your rules and regulations,” said the intruder, in a somewhat
shrewish voice. “You’d better light the lamp if you want to see ’em;
though the spelling ain’t so noticeable in the dark.”

The impressiveness of the captain’s gaze was wasted in the darkness. For
a moment he hesitated, and then, with the dignity of a man whose
spelling has nothing to conceal, struck a match and lit the lamp. The
lamp lighted, he lowered the blind, and then seating himself by the
window turned with a majestic air to a thin slip of a girl with
tow-coloured hair, who stood by the door.

“Who are you?” he demanded, gruffly.

“My name’s Vickers,” said the young lady. “Selina Vickers. I heard all
what you’ve been saying to my Joseph, but, thank goodness, I can take my
own part. I don’t want nobody to fight my battles for me. If you’ve got
anything to say about my voice you can say it to my face.”

Captain Bowers sat back and regarded her with impressive dignity. Miss
Vickers met his gaze calmly and, with a pair of unwinking green eyes,
stared him down.

“What were you doing in my pantry?” demanded the captain, at last.

“I was in your _kitchen_,” replied Miss Vickers, with scornful emphasis
on the last word, “to see my young man.”

“Well, I can’t have you there,” said the captain, with a mildness that
surprised himself. “One of my rules—”

Miss Vickers interposed. “I’ve read ’em all over and over again,” she
said, impatiently.

“If it occurs again,” said the other, “I shall have to speak to Joseph
very seriously about it.”

“Talk to me,” said Miss Vickers, sharply; “that’s what I come in for. I
can talk to you better than what Joseph can, I know. What harm do you
think I was doing your old kitchen? Don’t you try and interfere between
me and my Joseph, because I won’t have it. You’re not married yourself,
and you don’t want other people to be. How do you suppose the world
would get on if everybody was like you?”

Captain Bowers regarded her in open-eyed perplexity. The door leading to
the garden had just closed behind the valiant Joseph, and he stared with
growing uneasiness at the slight figure of Miss Vickers as it stood
poised for further oratorical efforts. Before he could speak she gave
her lips a rapid lick and started again.

“You’re one of those people that don’t like to see others happy, that’s
what you are,” she said, rapidly. “I wasn’t hurting your kitchen, and as
to talking and laughing there—what do you think my tongue was given to
me for? Show? P’r’aps if you’d been doing a day’s hard work you’d—”

“Look here, my girl—” began the captain, desperately.

“Don’t you my girl me, please,” interrupted Miss Vickers. “I’m not your
girl, thank goodness. If I was you’d be a bit different, I can tell you.
If you had any girls you’d know better than to try and come between them
and their young men. Besides, they wouldn’t let you. When a girl’s got a
young man—”

The captain rose and went through the form of ringing the bell. Miss
Vickers watched him calmly.

“I thought I’d just have it out with you for once and for all,” she
continued. “I told Joseph that I’d no doubt your bark was worse than
your bite. And what he can see to be afraid of in you I can’t think.
Nervous disposition, I s’pose. Good evening.”

She gave her head a little toss and, returning to the pantry, closed the
door after her. Captain Bowers, still somewhat dazed, returned to his
chair and, gazing at the “Rules,” which still lay on the table, grinned
feebly in his beard.




CHAPTER IV


To keep such a romance to himself was beyond the powers of Mr. Chalk.
The captain had made no conditions as to secrecy, and he therefore
considered himself free to indulge in hints to his two greatest friends,
which caused those gentlemen to entertain some doubts as to his sanity.
Mr. Robert Stobell, whose work as a contractor had left a permanent and
unmistakable mark upon Binchester, became imbued with a hazy idea that
Mr. Chalk had invented a new process of making large diamonds. Mr.
Jasper Tredgold, on the other hand, arrived at the conclusion that a
highly respectable burglar was offering for some reason to share his
loot with him. A conversation between Messrs. Stobell and Tredgold in
the High Street only made matters more complicated.

“Chalk always was fond of making mysteries of things,” complained Mr.
Tredgold.

Mr. Stobell, whose habit was taciturn and ruminative, fixed his dull
brown eyes on the ground and thought it over. “I believe it’s all my eye
and Betty Martin,” he said, at length, quoting a saying which had been
used in his family as an expression of disbelief since the time of his
great-grandmother.

“He comes in to see me when I’m hard at work and drops hints,” pursued
his friend. “When I stop to pick ’em up, out he goes. Yesterday he came
in and asked me what I thought of a man who wouldn’t break his word for
half a million. Half a million, mind you! I just asked him who it was,
and out he went again. He pops in and out of my office like a figure on
a cuckoo-clock.”

Mr. Stobell relapsed into thought again, but no gleam of expression
disturbed the lines of his heavy face; Mr. Tredgold, whose sharp, alert
features bred more confidence in his own clients than those of other
people, waited impatiently.

“He knows something that we don’t,” said Mr. Stobell, at last; “that’s
what it is.”

Mr. Tredgold, who was too used to his friend’s mental processes to
quarrel with them, assented.

“He’s coming round to smoke a pipe with me to-morrow night,” he said,
briskly, as he turned to cross the road to his office. “You come too,
and we’ll get it out of him. If Chalk can keep a secret he has altered,
that’s all I can say.”

His estimate of Mr. Chalk proved correct. With Mr. Tredgold acting as
cross-examining counsel and Mr. Stobell enacting the part of a partial
and overbearing judge, Mr. Chalk, after a display of fortitude which
surprised himself almost as much as it irritated his friends, parted
with his news and sat smiling with gratification at their growing
excitement.

“Half a million, and he won’t go for it?” ejaculated Mr. Tredgold. “The
man must be mad.”

“No; he passed his word and he won’t break it,” said Mr. Chalk. “The
captain’s word is his bond, and I honour him for it. I can quite
understand it.”

Mr. Tredgold shrugged his shoulders and glanced at Mr. Stobell; that
gentleman, after due deliberation, gave an assenting nod.

“He can’t get at it, that’s the long and short of it,” said Mr.
Tredgold, after a pause. “He had to leave it behind when he was rescued,
or else risk losing it by telling the men who rescued him about it, and
he’s had no opportunity since. It wants money to take a ship out there
and get it, and he doesn’t see his way quite clear. He’ll have it fast
enough when he gets a chance. If not, why did he make that map?”

Mr. Chalk shook his head, and remarked mysteriously that the captain had
his reasons. Mr. Tredgold relapsed into silence, and for some time the
only sound audible came from a briar-pipe which Mr. Stobell ought to
have thrown away some years before.

“Have you given up that idea of a yachting cruise of yours, Chalk?”
demanded Mr. Tredgold, turning on him suddenly.

“No,” was the reply. “I was talking about it to Captain Bowers only the
other day. That’s how I got to hear of the treasure.”

Mr. Tredgold started and gave a significant glance at Mr. Stobell. In
return he got a wink which that gentleman kept for moments of mental
confusion.

“What did the captain tell you for?” pursued Mr. Tredgold, returning to
Mr. Chalk. “He wanted you to make an offer. He hasn’t got the money for
such an expedition; you have. The yarn about passing his word was so
that you shouldn’t open your mouth too wide. You were to do the
persuading, and then he could make his own terms. Do you see? Why, it’s
as plain as A B C.”

“Plain as the alphabet,” said Mr. Stobell, almost chidingly.

Mr. Chalk gasped and looked from one to the other.

“I should like to have a chat with the captain about it,” continued Mr.
Tredgold, slowly and impressively. “I’m a business man and I could put
it on a business footing. It’s a big risk, of course; all those things
are . . . but if we went shares . . . if _we_ found the money——”

He broke off and, filling his pipe slowly, gazed in deep thought at the
wall. His friends waited expectantly.

“Combine business with pleasure,” resumed Mr. Tredgold, lighting his
pipe; “sea-air . . . change . . . blow away the cobwebs . . . experience
for Edward to be left alone. What do you think, Stobell?” he added,
turning suddenly.

Mr. Stobell gripped the arms of his chair in his huge hands and drew his
bulky figure to a more upright position.

“What do you mean by combining business with pleasure?” he said, eyeing
him with dull suspicion.

“Chalk is set on a trip for the love of it,” explained Mr. Tredgold.

“If we take on the contract, he ought to pay a bigger share, then,” said
the other, firmly.

“Perhaps he will,” said Tredgold, hastily.

Mr. Stobell pondered again and, slightly raising one hand, indicated
that he was in the throes of another idea and did not wish to be
disturbed.

“You said it would be experience for Edward to be left alone,” he said,
accusingly.

“I did,” was the reply.

“You ought to pay more, too, then,” declared the contractor, “because
it’s serving of your ends as well.”

“We can’t split straws,” exclaimed Tredgold, impatiently. “If the
captain consents we three will find the money and divide our portion,
whatever it is, equally.”

Mr. Chalk, who had been in the clouds during this discussion, came back
to earth again. “_If_ he consents,” he said, sadly; “but he won’t.”

“Well, he can only refuse,” said Mr. Tredgold; “and, anyway, we’ll have
the first refusal. Things like that soon get about. What do you say to a
stroll? I can think better while I’m walking.”

His friends assenting, they put on their hats and sallied forth. That
they should stroll in the direction of Dialstone Lane surprised neither
of them. Mr. Tredgold leading, they went round by the church, and that
gentleman paused so long to admire the architecture that Mr. Stobell got
restless.

“You’ve seen it before, Tredgold,” he said, shortly.

“It’s a fine old building,” said the other. “Binchester ought to be
proud of it. Why, here we are at Captain Bowers’s!”

“The house has been next to the church for a couple o’ hundred years,”
retorted his friend.

“Let’s go in,” said Mr. Tredgold. “Strike while the iron’s hot. At any
rate,” he concluded, as Mr. Chalk voiced feeble objections, “we can see
how the land lies.”

He knocked at the door and then, stepping aside, left Mr. Chalk to lead
the way in. Captain Bowers, who was sitting with Prudence, looked up at
their entrance, and putting down his newspaper extended a hearty
welcome.

“Chalk didn’t like to pass without looking in,” said Mr. Tredgold, “and
I haven’t seen you for some time. You know Stobell?”

The captain nodded, and Mr. Chalk, pale with excitement, accepted his
accustomed pipe from the hands of Miss Drewitt and sat nervously
awaiting events. Mr. Tasker set out the whisky, and, Miss Drewitt
avowing a fondness for smoke in other people, a comfortable haze soon
filled the room. Mr. Tredgold, with a significant glance at Mr. Chalk,
said that it reminded him of a sea-fog.

It only reminded Mr. Chalk, however, of a smoky chimney from which he
had once suffered, and he at once entered into minute details. The theme
was an inspiriting one, and before Mr. Tredgold could hark back to the
sea again Mr. Stobell was discoursing, almost eloquently for him, upon
drains. From drains to the shortcomings of the district council they
progressed by natural and easy stages, and it was not until Miss Drewitt
had withdrawn to the clearer atmosphere above that a sudden ominous
silence ensued, which Mr. Chalk saw clearly he was expected to break.

“I—I’ve been telling them some of your adventures,” he said,
desperately, as he glanced at the captain; “they’re both interested in
such things.”

The latter gave a slight start and glanced shrewdly at his visitors.
“Aye, aye,” he said, composedly.

“Very interesting, some of them,” murmured Mr. Tredgold. “I suppose
you’ll have another voyage or two before you’ve done? One, at any rate.”

“No,” said the captain, “I’ve had my share of the sea; other men may
have a turn now. There’s nothing to take me out again—nothing.”

Mr. Tredgold coughed and murmured something about breaking off old
habits too suddenly.

“It’s a fine career,” sighed Mr. Chalk.

“A manly life,” said Mr. Tredgold, emphatically.

“It’s like every other profession, it has two sides to it,” said the
captain.

“It is not so well paid as it should be,” said the wily Tredgold, “but I
suppose one gets chances of making money in outside ways sometimes.”

The captain assented, and told of a steward of his who had made a small
fortune by selling Japanese curios to people who didn’t understand them.

The conversation was interesting, but extremely distasteful to a
business man intent upon business. Mr. Stobell took his pipe out of his
mouth and cleared his throat. “Why, you might build a hospital with it,”
he burst out, impatiently.

“Build a hospital!” repeated the astonished captain, as Mr. Chalk bent
suddenly to do up his shoelace.

“Think of the orphans you could be a father to!” added Mr. Stobell,
making the most of an unwonted fit of altruism.

The captain looked inquiringly at Mr. Tredgold.

“And widows,” said Mr. Stobell, and, putting his pipe in his mouth as a
sign that he had finished his remarks, gazed stolidly at the company.

“Stobell must be referring to a story Chalk told us of some precious
stones you buried, I think,” said Mr. Tredgold, reddening. “Aren’t you,
Stobell?”

“Of course I am,” said his friend. “You know that.”

Captain Bowers glanced at Mr. Chalk, but that gentleman was still busy
with his shoe-lace, only looking up when Mr. Tredgold, taking the bull
by the horns, made the captain a plain, straightforward offer to fit out
and give him the command of an expedition to recover the treasure. In a
speech which included the benevolent Mr. Stobell’s hospitals, widows,
and orphans, he pointed out a score of reasons why the captain should
consent, and wound up with a glowing picture of Miss Drewitt as the
heiress of the wealthiest man in Binchester. The captain heard him
patiently to an end and then shook his head.

“I passed my word,” he said, stiffly.

Mr. Stobell took his pipe out of his mouth again to offer a little
encouragement. “Tredgold has broke his word before now,” he observed;
“he’s got quite a name for it.”

“But you would go out if it were not for that?” inquired Tredgold,
turning a deaf ear to this remark.

“Naturally,” said the captain, smiling; “but, then, you see I did.”

Mr. Tredgold drummed with his fingers on the arms of his chair, and
after a little hesitation asked as a great favour to be permitted to see
the map. As an estate agent, he said, he took a professional interest in
plans of all kinds.

Captain Bowers rose, and in the midst of an expectant silence took the
map from the bureau, and placing it on the table kept it down with his
fist. The others drew near and inspected it.

“Nobody but Captain Bowers has ever seen the other side,” said Mr.
Chalk, impressively.

“Except my niece,” interposed the captain. “She wanted to see it, and I
trust her as I would trust myself. She thinks the same as I do about
it.”

His stubby forefinger travelled slowly round the coast-line until,
coming to the extreme south-west corner, it stopped, and a mischievous
smile creased his beard.

“It’s buried here,” he observed. “All you’ve got to do is to find the
island and dig in that spot.”

Mr. Chalk laughed and shook his head as at a choice piece of
waggishness.

“Suppose,” said Mr. Tredgold, slowly—“suppose anybody found it without
your connivance, would you take your share?”

“Let ’em find it first,” said the captain.

“Yes, but would you?” inquired Mr. Chalk.

Captain Bowers took up the map and returned it to its place in the
bureau. “You go and find it,” he said, with a genial smile.

“You give us permission?” demanded Tredgold.

“Certainly,” grinned the captain. “I give you permission to go and dig
over all the islands in the Pacific; there’s a goodish number of them,
and it’s a fairly common shape.”

“It seems to me it’s nobody’s property,” said Tredgold, slowly. “That is
to say, it’s anybody’s that finds it. It isn’t your property, Captain
Bowers? You lay no claim to it?”

“No, no,” said the captain. “It’s nothing to do with me. You go and find
it,” he repeated, with enjoyment.

Mr. Tredgold laughed too, and his eye travelled mechanically towards the
bureau. “If we do,” he said, cordially, “you shall have your share.”

The captain thanked him and, taking up the bottle, refilled their
glasses. Then, catching the dull, brooding eye of Mr. Stobell as that
plain-spoken man sat in a brown study trying to separate the serious
from the jocular, he drank success to their search. He was about to give
vent to further pleasantries when he was stopped by the mysterious
behaviour of Mr. Chalk, who, first laying a finger on his lip to ensure
silence, frowned severely and nodded at the door leading to the kitchen.

The other three looked in the direction indicated. The door stood half
open, and the silhouette of a young woman in a large hat put the upper
panels in shadow. The captain rose and, with a vigorous thrust of his
foot, closed the door with a bang.

“Eavesdropping,” said Mr. Chalk, in a tense whisper.

“There’ll be a rival expedition,” said the captain, falling in with his
mood. “I’ve already warned that young woman off once. You’d better start
tonight.”

He leaned back in his chair and surveyed the company pleasantly.
Somewhat to Mr. Chalk’s disappointment Mr. Tredgold began to discuss
agriculture, and they were still on that theme when they rose to depart
some time later. Tredgold and Chalk bade the captain a cordial
good-night; but Stobell, a creature of primitive impulses, found it
difficult to shake hands with him. On the way home he expressed an
ardent desire to tell the captain what men of sense thought of him.

The captain lit another pipe after they had gone, and for some time sat
smoking and thinking over the events of the evening. Then Mr. Tasker’s
second infringement of discipline occurred to him, and, stretching out
his hand, he rang the bell.

“Has that young woman gone?” he inquired, cautiously, as Mr. Tasker
appeared.

“Yessir,” was the reply.

“What about your articles?” demanded the captain, with sudden loudness.
“What do you mean by it?”

Mr. Tasker eyed him forlornly. “It ain’t my fault,” he said, at last. “I
don’t want her.”

“Eh?” said the other, sternly. “Don’t talk nonsense. What do you have
her here for, then?”

“Because I can’t help myself,” said Mr. Tasker, desperately; “that’s
why. She’s took a fancy to me, and, that being so, it would take more
than you and me to keep ’er away.”

“Rubbish,” said his master.

Mr. Tasker smiled wanly. “That’s my reward for being steady,” he said,
with some bitterness; “that’s what comes of having a good name in the
place. I get Selina Vickers after me.”

“You—you must have asked her to come here in the first place,” said the
astonished captain.

“_Ask_ her?” repeated Mr. Tasker, with respectful scorn. “_Ask_ her? She
don’t want no asking.”

“What does she come for, then?” inquired the other.

“Me,” said Mr. Tasker, brokenly. “I never dreamt o’ such a thing. I was
going ’er way one night—about three weeks ago, it was—and I walked with
her as far as her road—Mint Street. Somehow it got put about that we
were walking out. A week afterwards she saw me in Harris’s, the
grocer’s, and waited outside for me till I come out and walked ’ome with
me. After she came in the other night I found we was keeping company.
To-night—tonight she got a ring out o’ me, and now we’re engaged.”

“What on earth did you give her the ring for if you don’t want her?”
inquired the captain, eyeing him with genuine concern.

“Ah, it seems easy, sir,” said the unfortunate; “but you don’t know
Selina. She bought the ring and said I was to pay it off a shilling a
week. She took the first shilling to-night.”

His master sat back and regarded him in amazement.

“You don’t know Selina, sir,” repeated Mr. Tasker, in reply to this
manifestation. “She always gets her own way. Her father ain’t ’it ’er
mother not since Selina was seventeen. He dursent. The last time Selina
went for him tooth and nail; smashed all the plates off the dresser
throwing ’em at him, and ended by chasing of him up the road in his
shirt-sleeves.”

The captain grunted.

“That was two years ago,” continued Mr. Tasker; “and his spirit’s quite
broke. He ’as to give all his money except a shilling a week to his
wife, and he’s not allowed to go into pubs. If he does it’s no good,
because they won’t serve ’im. If they do Selina goes in next morning and
gives them a piece of ’er mind. She don’t care who’s there or what she
says, and the consequence is Mr. Vickers can’t get served in Binchester
for love or money. That’ll show you what she is.”

“Well, tell her I won’t have her here,” said the captain, rising.
“Good-night.”

“I’ve told her over and over again, sir,” was the reply, “and all she
says is she’s not afraid of you, nor six like you.”

The captain fell back silent, and Mr. Tasker, pausing in
a respectful attitude, watched him wistfully. The captain’s brows were
bent in thought, and Mr. Tasker, reminding himself that crews had
trembled at his nod and that all were silent when he spoke, felt a
flutter of hope.

“Well,” said the captain, sharply, as he turned and caught sight of him,
“what are you waiting there for?”

Mr. Tasker drifted towards the door which led upstairs.

“I—I thought you were thinking of something we could do to prevent her
coming, sir,” he said, slowly. “It’s hard on me, because as a matter of
fact——”

“Well?” said the captain.

“I—I’ve ’ad my eye on another young lady for some time,” concluded Mr.
Tasker.

He was standing on the bottom stair as he spoke, with his hand on the
latch. Under the baleful stare with which the indignant captain favoured
him, he closed it softly and mounted heavily to bed.




CHAPTER V


Mr. Chalk’s expedition to the Southern Seas became a standing joke with
the captain, and he waylaid him on several occasions to inquire into the
progress he was making, and to give him advice suitable for all known
emergencies at sea, together with a few that are unknown. Even Mr. Chalk
began to tire of his pleasantries, and, after listening to a surprising
account of a Scotch vessel which always sailed backwards when the men
whistled on Sundays, signified his displeasure by staying away from
Dialstone Lane for some time.

Deprived of his society the captain consoled himself with that of Edward
Tredgold, a young man for whom he was beginning to entertain a strong
partiality, and whose observations of Binchester folk, flavoured with a
touch of good-natured malice, were a source of never-failing interest.

“He is very wide-awake,” he said to his niece. “There isn’t much that
escapes him.”

Miss Drewitt, gazing idly out of window, said that she had not noticed
it.

“Very clever at his business, I understand,” said the captain.

His niece said that he had always appeared to her—when she had happened
to give the matter a thought—as a picture of indolence.

“Ah! that’s only his manner,” replied the other, warmly. “He’s a young
man that’s going to get on; he’s going to make his mark. His father’s
got money, and he’ll make more of it.”

Something in the tone of his voice attracted his niece’s attention, and
she looked at him sharply as an almost incredible suspicion as to the
motive of this conversation flashed on her.

“I don’t like to see young men too fond of money,” she observed,
sedately.

“I didn’t say that,” said the captain, eagerly. “If anything, he is too
open-handed. What I meant was that he isn’t lazy.”

“He seems to be very fond of coming to see you,” said Prudence, by way
of encouragement.

“Ah!” said the captain, “and——”

He stopped abruptly as the girl faced round. “And?” she prompted.

“And the crow’s-nest,” concluded the captain, somewhat lamely.

There was no longer room for doubt. Scarce two months ashore and he was
trying his hand at matchmaking. Fresh from a world of obedient
satellites, and ships responding to the lightest touch of the helm, he
was venturing with all the confidence of ignorance upon the most
delicate of human undertakings. Miss Drewitt, eyeing him with perfect
comprehension and some little severity, sat aghast at his hardihood.

“He’s very fond of going up there,” said Captain Bowers, somewhat
discomfited.

“Yes, he and Joseph have much in common,” remarked Miss Drewitt,
casually. “They’re somewhat alike, too, I always fancy.”

“_Alike!_” exclaimed the astonished captain. “Edward Tredgold like
Joseph? Why, you must be dreaming.”

“Perhaps it’s only my fancy,” conceded Miss Drewitt, “but I always think
that I can see a likeness.”

“There isn’t the slightest resemblance in the world,” said the captain.
“There isn’t a single feature alike. Besides, haven’t you ever noticed
what a stupid expression Joseph has got?”

“Yes,” said Miss Drewitt.

The captain scratched his ear and regarded her closely, but Miss
Drewitt’s face was statuesque in its repose.

“There—there’s nothing wrong with your eyes, my dear?” he ventured,
anxiously—“short sight or anything of that sort?”

“I don’t think so,” said his niece, gravely.

Captain Bowers shifted in his chair and, convinced that such a
superficial observer must have overlooked many things, pointed out
several admirable qualities in Edward Tredgold which he felt sure must
have escaped her notice. The surprise with which Miss Drewitt greeted
them all confirmed him in this opinion, and he was glad to think that he
had called her attention to them ere it was too late.

“He’s very popular in Binchester,” he said, impressively. “Chalk told me
that he is surprised he has not been married before now, seeing the way
that he is run after.”

“Dear me!” said his niece, with suppressed viciousness.

The captain smiled. He resolved to stand out for a long engagement when
Mr. Tredgold came to him, and to stipulate also that they should not
leave Binchester. An admirer in London to whom his niece had once or
twice alluded—forgetting to mention that he was only ten—began to fade
into what the captain considered proper obscurity.

Mr. Edward Tredgold reaped some of the benefits of this conversation
when he called a day or two afterwards. The captain was out, but,
encouraged by Mr. Tasker, who represented that his return might be
looked for at any moment, he waited for over an hour, and was on the
point of departure when Miss Drewitt entered.

“I should think that you must be tired of waiting?” she said, when he
had explained.

“I was just going,” said Mr. Tredgold, as he resumed his seat. “If you
had been five minutes later you would have found an empty chair. I
suppose Captain Bowers won’t be long now?”

“He might be,” said the girl.

“I’ll give him a little while longer if I may,” said Mr. Tredgold. “I’m
very glad now that I waited—very glad indeed.”

There was so much meaning in his voice that Miss Drewitt felt compelled
to ask the reason.

“Because I was tired when I came in and the rest has done me good,”
explained Mr. Tredgold, with much simplicity. “Do you know that I
sometimes think I work too hard?”

Miss Drewitt raised her eyebrows slightly and said, “Indeed!—I am very
glad that you are rested,” she added, after a pause.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Tredgold, gratefully. “I came to see the captain
about a card-table I’ve discovered for him. It’s a Queen Anne, I
believe; one of the best things I’ve ever seen. It’s poked away in the
back room of a cottage, and I only discovered it by accident.”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Miss Drewitt, coldly, “but I don’t think
that my uncle wants any more furniture; the room is pretty full now.”

“I was thinking of it for your room,” said Mr. Tredgold.

“Thank you, but my room is full,” said the girl, sharply.

“It would go in that odd little recess by the fireplace,” continued the
unmoved Mr. Tredgold. “We tried to get a small table for it before you
came, but we couldn’t see anything we fancied. I promised the captain
I’d keep my eyes open for something.”

Miss Drewitt looked at him with growing indignation, and wondered
whether Mr. Chalk had added her to his list of the victims of Mr.
Tredgold’s blandishments.

“Why not buy it for yourself?” she demanded.

“No money,” said Mr. Tredgold, shaking his head. “You forget that I lost
two pounds to Chalk the other day, owing to your efforts.”

“Well, I don’t wish for it,” said Miss Drewitt, firmly. “Please don’t
say anything to my uncle about it.”

Mr. Tredgold looked disappointed. “As you please, of course,” he
remarked.

“Old things always seem a little bit musty,” said the girl, softening a
little. “I, should think that I saw the ghosts of dead and gone players
sitting round the table. I remember reading a story about that once.”

“Well, what about the other things?” said Mr. Tredgold. “Look at those
old chairs, full of ghosts sitting piled up in each other’s laps—there’s
no reason why you should only see one sitter at a time. Think of that
beautifully-carved four-poster.”

“My uncle bought that,” said Miss Drewitt, somewhat irrelevantly.

“Yes, but I got it for him,” said Mr. Tredgold. “You can’t pick up a
thing like that at a moment’s notice—I had my eye on it for years; all
the time old Brown was bedridden, in fact. I used to go and see him and
take him tobacco, and he promised me that I should have it when he had
done with it.”

“Done with it?” repeated the girl, in a startled voice. “Did—did he get
another one, then?”

Mr. Tredgold, roused from the pleasurable reminiscences of a collector,
remembered himself suddenly. “Oh, yes, he got another one,” he said,
soothingly.

“Is—is he bedridden now?” inquired the girl.

“I haven’t seen him for some time,” said Mr. Tredgold, truthfully. “He
gave up smoking and—and then I didn’t go to see him, you know.”

“He’s dead,” said Miss Drewitt, shivering. “He died in—— Oh, you are
horrible!”

“That carving—” began Mr. Tredgold.

“Don’t talk about it, please,” said the indignant Miss Drewitt. “I can’t
understand why my uncle should have listened to your advice at all; you
must have forced it on him. I’m sure he didn’t know how you got it.”

“Yes, he did,” said the other. “In fact, it was intended for his room at
first. He was quite pleased with it.”

“Why did he alter his mind, then?” inquired the girl.

Mr. Tredgold looked suddenly at the opposite wall, but his lips quivered
and his eyes watered. Miss Drewitt, reading these signs aright, was
justly incensed.

“I don’t believe it,” she cried.

“He said that you didn’t know and he did,” said Mr. Tredgold,
apologetically. “I talk too much. I’d no business to let out about old
Brown, but I forgot for the moment—sailors are always prone to childish
superstitions.”

“Are you talking about my uncle?” inquired Miss Drewitt, with ominous
calm.

“They were his own words,” said the other.

Miss Drewitt, feeling herself baffled, sat for some time wondering how
to find fault politely with the young man before her. Her mind was full
of subject-matter, but the politeness easily eluded her. She threw out
after a time the suggestion that his presence at the bedside of sick
people was not likely to add to their comfort.

Captain Bowers entered before the aggrieved Mr. Tredgold could think of
a fitting reply, and after a hasty greeting insisted upon his staying
for a cup of tea. By a glance in the visitor’s direction and a faint
smile Miss Drewitt was understood to endorse the invitation.

The captain’s satisfaction at finding them together was complete, but a
little misunderstanding was caused all round, when Mr. Tasker came in
with the tea, by the series of nods and blinks by which the captain
strove to call his niece’s attention to various facial and other
differences between his servant and their visitor. Mr. Tredgold, after
standing it for some time, created a little consternation by inquiring
whether he had got a smut on his nose.

The captain was practically the only talker at tea, but the presence of
two attentive listeners prevented him from discovering the fact. He
described his afternoon’s ramble at such length that it was getting late
by the time they had finished.

“Stay and smoke a pipe,” he said, as he sought his accustomed chair.

Mr. Tredgold assented in the usual manner by saying that he ought to be
going, and instead of one pipe smoked three or four. The light failed
and the lamp was lit, but he still stayed on until the sound of subdued
but argumentative voices beyond the drawn blind apprised them of other
visitors. The thin tones of Mr. Chalk came through the open window,
apparently engaged in argument with a bear. A faint sound of hustling
and growling, followed by a gentle bumping against the door, seemed to
indicate that he—or perhaps the bear—was having recourse to physical
force.

“Come in,” cried the captain.

The door opened and Mr. Chalk, somewhat flushed, entered, leading Mr.
Stobell. The latter gentleman seemed in a surly and reluctant frame of
mind, and having exchanged greetings subsided silently into a chair and
sat eyeing Mr. Chalk, who, somewhat nervous as to his reception after so
long an absence, plunged at once into conversation.

“I thought I should find you here,” he said, pleasantly, to Edward
Tredgold.

“Why?” demanded Mr. Tredgold, with what Mr. Chalk thought unnecessary
abruptness.

“Well—well, because you generally are here, I suppose,” he said,
somewhat taken aback.

Mr. Tredgold favoured him with a scowl, and a somewhat uncomfortable
silence ensued.

“Stobell wanted to see you again,” said Mr. Chalk, turning to the
captain. “He’s done nothing but talk about you ever since he was here
last.”

Captain Bowers said he was glad to see him; Mr. Stobell returned the
courtesy with an odd noise in his throat and a strange glare at Mr.
Chalk.

“I met him to-night,” continued that gentleman, “and nothing would do
for him but to come on here.”

It was evident from the laboured respiration of the ardent Mr. Stobell,
coupled with a word or two which had filtered through the window, that
the ingenious Mr. Chalk was using him as a stalking-horse. From the fact
that Mr. Stobell made no denial it was none the less evident, despite
the growing blackness of his appearance, that he was a party to the
arrangement. The captain began to see the reason.

“It’s all about that island,” explained Mr. Chalk; “he can talk of
nothing else.”

The captain suppressed a groan, and Mr. Tredgold endeavoured, but
without success, to exchange smiles with Miss Drewitt.

“Aye, aye,” said the captain, desperately.

“He’s as eager as a child that’s going to its first pantomime,”
continued Mr. Chalk.

Mr. Stobell’s appearance was so alarming that he broke off and eyed him
with growing uneasiness.

“You were talking about a pantomime,” said Mr. Tredgold, after a long
pause.

Mr. Chalk cast an imploring glance at Mr. Stobell to remind him of their
compact, and resumed.

“Talks of nothing else,” he said, watching his friend, “and can’t sleep
for thinking of it.”

“That’s bad,” said Mr. Tredgold, sympathetically. “Has he tried shutting
his eyes and counting sheep jumping over a stile?”

“No, he _ain’t_,” said Mr. Stobell, exploding suddenly, and turning a
threatening glance on the speaker. “And what’s more,” he added, in more
ordinary tones, “he ain’t going to.”

“We—we’ve been thinking of that trip again,” interposed Mr. Chalk,
hurriedly. “The more Stobell thinks of it the more he likes it. You know
what you said the last time we were here?”

The captain wrinkled his brows and looked at him inquiringly.

“Told us to go and find the island,” Mr. Chalk reminded him. “You said,
‘I’ve shown you a map of the island; now go and find it.’”

“Oh, aye,” said the captain, with a laugh, “so I did.”

“Stobell was wondering,” continued Mr. Chalk, “whether you couldn’t give
us just a little bit more of a hint, without breaking your word, of
course.”

“I don’t see how it could be done,” replied the captain, pondering; “a
promise is a promise.”

Mr. Chalk’s face fell. He moved his chair aside mechanically to make
room for Mr. Tasker, who had entered with a tray and glasses, and sat
staring at the floor. Then he raised his eyes and met a significant
glance from Mr. Stobell.

“I suppose we may have another look at the map?” he said, softly; “just
a glance to freshen our memories.”

The captain, who had drawn his chair to the table to preside over the
tray, looked up impatiently.

“No,” he said, brusquely.

Mr. Chalk looked hurt. “I’m very sorry,” he said, in surprise at the
captain’s tone. “You showed it to us the other day, and I didn’t think—”

“The fact is,” said the captain, in a more gentle voice—“the fact is, I
can’t.”

“Can’t?” repeated the other.

“It is not very pleasant to keep on refusing friends,” said the captain,
making amends for his harshness by pouring a serious overdose of whisky
into Mr. Chalk’s glass, “and it’s only natural for you to be anxious
about it, so I removed the temptation out of my way.”

“Removed the temptation?” repeated Mr. Chalk.

“I burnt the map,” said the captain, with a smile.

“_Burnt_ it?” gasped Mr. Chalk. “+Burnt+ it?”

“Burnt it to ashes,” said the captain, jovially. “It’s a load off my
mind. I ought to have done it before. In fact, I never ought to have
made the map at all.”

Mr. Chalk stared at him in speechless dismay.

“Try that,” said the captain, handing Mr. Stobell his glass.

Mr. Stobell took it from mere force of habit, and sat holding it in his
hand as though he had forgotten what to do with it.

“I did it yesterday morning,” said the captain, noticing their
consternation. “I had just lit my pipe after breakfast, and I suppose
the match put me in mind of it. I took out the map and set light to it
at Cape Silvio. The flame ran half-way round the coast and then popped
through the middle of the paper and converted Mount Lonesome into a
volcano.”

He gave a boisterous laugh and, raising his glass, nodded to Mr.
Stobell. Mr. Stobell, who was just about to drink, lowered his glass
again and frowned.

“I don’t see anything to laugh at,” he said, deliberately.

“He can’t have been listening,” said Mr. Tredgold, in a low voice, to
Miss Drewitt.

“Well, it’s done now,” said the captain, genially. “You—you’re not
going?”

“Yes, I am,” said Mr. Stobell.

He bade them good-night, and then pausing at the door stood and surveyed
them; even Mr. Tasker, who was gliding in unobtrusively with a jug of
water, shared in his regards.

“When I think of the orphans and widows,” he said, bitterly, “I——”

He opened the door suddenly and, closing it behind him, breathed the
rest to Dialstone Lane. An aged woman sitting in a doorway said,
“_Hush!_”




CHAPTER VI


Miss Drewitt sat for some time in her room after the visitors had
departed, eyeing with some disfavour the genuine antiques which she owed
to the enterprise, not to say officiousness, of Edward Tredgold. That
they were in excellent taste was undeniable, but there was a flavour of
age and a suspicion of decay about them which did not make for
cheerfulness.

She rose at last, and taking off her watch went through the nightly task
of wondering where she had put the key after using it last. It was not
until she had twice made a fruitless tour of the room with the candle
that she remembered that she had left it on the mantelpiece downstairs.

The captain was still below, and after a moment’s hesitation she opened
her door and went softly down the steep winding stairs.

The door at the foot stood open, and revealed the captain standing by
the table. There was an air of perplexity and anxiety about him such as
she had never seen before, and as she waited he crossed to the bureau,
which stood open, and searched feverishly among the papers which
littered it. Apparently dissatisfied with the result, he moved it out
bodily and looked behind and beneath it. Coming to an erect position
again he suddenly became aware of the presence of his niece.

“It’s gone,” he said, in an amazed voice.

“Gone?” repeated Prudence. “What has gone?”

“The map,” said the captain, tumbling his beard. “I put it in this end
pigeon-hole the other night after showing it and I haven’t touched it
since; and it’s gone.”

“But you _burnt7_ it!” said Prudence, with an astonished laugh.

The captain started. “No; I was going to,” he said, eyeing her in
manifest confusion.

“But you said that you had,” persisted his niece.

“Yes,” stammered the captain, “I know I did, but I hadn’t. I was just
looking ahead a bit, that was all. I went to the bureau just now to do
it.”

Miss Drewitt eyed him with mild reproach. “You even described how you
did it,” she said, slowly. “You said that Mount Lonesome turned into a
volcano. Wasn’t it true?”

“Figure o’ speech, my dear,” said the unhappy captain; “I’ve got a
talent for description that runs away with me at times.”

His niece gazed at him in perplexity.

“You know what Chalk is,” said Captain Bowers, appealingly. “I _was_
going to do it yesterday, only I forgot it, and he would have gone down
on his knees for another sight of it. I don’t like to seem disobliging
to friends, and it seemed to me a good way out of it. Chalk is so
eager—it’s like refusing a child, and I hurt his feelings only the
other day.”

“Perhaps you burnt it after all and forgot it?” said Prudence.

For the first time in her knowledge of him the captain got irritable
with her. “I’ve not burnt it,” he said, sharply. “Where’s that Joseph?
He must know something about it!”

He moved to the foot of the staircase, but Miss Drewitt laid a detaining
hand on his arm.

“Joseph was in the room when you said that you had burnt it,” she
exclaimed. “You can’t contradict yourself like that before him. Besides,
I’m sure he has had nothing to do with it.”

“Somebody’s got it,” grumbled her uncle, pausing.

He dropped into his chair and looked at her in consternation. “Good
heavens! Suppose they go after it,” he said, in a choking voice.

“Well, it won’t be your fault,” said Prudence. “You haven’t broken your
word intentionally.”

But the captain paid no heed. He was staring wild-eyed into vacancy and
rumpling his grey hair until it stood at all angles. His face reflected
varying emotions.

“Somebody has got it,” he said again.

“Whoever it is will get no good by it,” said Miss Drewitt, who had had a
pious upbringing.

“And if they’ve got the map they’ll go after the island,” said the
captain, pursuing his train of thought.

“Perhaps they won’t find it after all,” said Prudence.

“Perhaps they won’t,” said the captain, gruffly.

He got up and paced the room restlessly. Prudence, watching him with
much sympathy, had a sudden idea.

“Edward Tredgold was in here alone this afternoon,” she said,
significantly.

“No, no,” said the captain, warmly. “Whoever has got it, it isn’t Edward
Tredgold. I expect the talk about it has leaked out and somebody has
slipped in and taken it. I ought to have been more careful.”

“He started when you said that you had burnt it,” persisted Miss
Drewitt, unwilling to give up a theory so much to her liking. “You mark
my words if his father and Mr. Chalk and that Mr. Stobell don’t go away
for a holiday soon. Good-night.”

She kissed him affectionately under the left eye—a place overlooked by
his beard—and went upstairs again. The captain filled his pipe and,
resuming his chair, sat in a brown study until the clock of the
neighbouring church struck two.

It was about the same time that Mr. Chalk fell asleep, thoroughly worn
out by the events of the evening and a conversation with Mr. Stobell and
Mr. Tredgold, whom he had met on the way home waiting for him.

The opinion of Mr. Tredgold senior, an opinion in which Mr. Stobell
fully acquiesced, was that Mr. Chalk had ruined everything by displaying
all along a youthful impetuosity sadly out of place in one of his years
and standing. The offender’s plea that he had thought it best to strike
while the iron was hot only exposed him to further contumely.

“Well, it’s no good talking about it,” said Mr. Tredgold, impatiently.
“It’s all over now and done with.”

“Half a million clean chucked away,” said Mr. Stobell.

Mr. Chalk shook his head and, finding that his friends had by no means
exhausted the subject, suddenly bethought himself of an engagement and
left them.

Miss Vickers, who heard the news from Mr. Joseph Tasker, received it
with an amount of amazement highly gratifying to his powers as a
narrator. Her strongly expressed opinion afterwards that he had
misunderstood what he had heard was not so agreeable.

“I suppose I can believe my own ears?” he said, in an injured voice.

“He must have been making fun of them all,” said Selina. “He couldn’t
have burnt it—he couldn’t.”

“Why not?” inquired the other, surprised at her vehemence.

Miss Vickers hesitated. “Because it would be such a silly thing to do,”
she said, at last. “Now, tell me what you heard all over again—slow.”

Mr. Tasker complied.

“I can’t make head or tail of it,” said Miss Vickers when he had
finished.

“Seems simple enough to me,” said Joseph, staring at her.

“All things seem simple when you don’t know them,” said Miss Vickers,
vaguely.

She walked home in a thoughtful mood, and for a day or two went about
the house with an air of preoccupation which was a source of much
speculation to the family. George Vickers, aged six, was driven to the
verge of madness by being washed three times in succession one morning;
a gag of well-soaped flannel being applied with mechanical regularity
each time that he strove to point out the unwashed condition of Martha
and Charles. His turn came when the exultant couple, charged with having
made themselves dirty in the shortest time on record, were deprived of
their breakfast. Mr. Vickers, having committed one or two minor
misdemeanours unchallenged, attributed his daughter’s condition to love,
and began to speak of that passion with more indulgence than he had done
since his marriage.

Miss Vickers’s abstraction, however, lasted but three days. On the
fourth she was herself again, and, having spent the day in hard work,
dressed herself with unusual care in the evening and went out.

The evening was fine and the air, to one who had been at work indoors
all day, delightful. Miss Vickers walked briskly along with the smile of
a person who has solved a difficult problem, but as she drew near the
Horse and Groom, a hostelry of retiring habits, standing well back from
the road, the smile faded and she stood face to face with the stern
realities of life.

A few yards from the side-door Mr. Vickers stood smoking a contemplative
pipe; the side-door itself had just closed behind a tall man in
corduroys, who bore in his right hand a large mug made of pewter.

“Ho!” said Selina, “so this is how you go on the moment my back is
turned, is it?”

“What d’ye mean?” demanded Mr. Vickers, blustering.

“You know what I mean,” said his daughter, “standing outside and sending
Bill Russell in to get you beer. That’s what I mean.”

Mr. Vickers turned, and with a little dramatic start intimated that he
had caught sight of Mr. Russell for the first time that evening. Mr.
Russell himself sought to improve the occasion.

“Wish I may die—” he began, solemnly.

“Like a policeman,” continued Selina, regarding her father indignantly.

“I wish I _was_ a policeman,” muttered Mr. Vickers. “I’d show some of
you.”

“What have you got to say for yourself?” demanded Miss Vickers, shortly.

“Nothing,” said the culprit. “I s’pose I can stand where I like? There’s
no law agin it.”

“Do you mean to say that you didn’t send Bill in to get you some beer?”
said his daughter.

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Vickers, with great indignation. “I shouldn’t
think of such a thing.”

“I shouldn’t get it if ’e did,” said Mr. Russell, virtuously.

“Whose beer is it, then?” said Selina.

“Why, Bill’s, I s’pose; how should I know?” replied Mr. Vickers.

“Yes, it’s mine,” said Mr. Russell.

“Drink it up, then,” commanded Miss Vickers, sternly.

Both men started, and then Mr. Russell, bestowing a look of infinite
compassion upon his unfortunate friend, raised the mug obediently to his
sensitive lips. Always a kind-hearted man, he was glad when the gradual
tilting necessary to the occasion had blotted out the picture of
indignation which raged helplessly before him.

“I ’ope you’re satisfied now,” he said severely to the girl, as he
turned a triumphant glance on Mr. Vickers, which that gentleman met with
a cold stare.

Miss Vickers paid no heed. “You get off home,” she said to her father;
“I’ll see to the Horse and Groom to-morrow.”

Mr. Vickers muttered something under his breath, and then, with a
forlorn attempt at dignity, departed.

Miss Vickers, ignoring the remarks of one or two fathers of families who
were volunteering information as to what they would do if she were their
daughter, watched him out of sight and resumed her walk. She turned once
or twice as though to make sure that she was not observed, and then,
making her way in the direction of Mr. Chalk’s house, approached it
cautiously from the back.

Mr. Chalk, who was in the garden engaged in the useful and healthful
occupation of digging, became aware after a time of a low whistle
proceeding from the farther end. He glanced almost mechanically in that
direction, and then nearly dropped his spade as he made out a girl’s
head surmounted by a large hat. The light was getting dim, but the hat
had an odd appearance of familiarity. A stealthy glance in the other
direction showed him the figure of Mrs. Chalk standing to attention just
inside the open French windows of the drawing-room.

The whistle came again, slightly increased in volume. Mr. Chalk, pausing
merely to wipe his brow, which had suddenly become very damp, bent to
his work with renewed vigour. It is an old idea that whistling aids
manual labour; Mr. Chalk, moistening his lips with a tongue grown all
too feverish for the task, began to whistle a popular air with much
liveliness.

The idea was ingenious, but hopeless from the start. The whistle at the
end of the garden became piercing in its endeavour to attract attention,
and, what was worse, developed an odd note of entreaty. Mr. Chalk, pale
with apprehension, could bear no more.

“Well, I think I’ve done enough for one night,” he observed, cheerfully
and loudly, as he thrust his spade into the ground and took his coat
from a neighbouring bush.

He turned to go indoors and, knowing his wife’s objection to dirty
boots, made for the door near the kitchen. As he passed the drawing-room
window, however, a low but imperative voice pronounced his name.

“Yes, my dear,” said Mr. Chalk.

“There’s a friend of yours whistling for you,” said his wife, with
forced calmness.

“Whistling?” said Mr. Chalk, with as much surprise as a man could assume
in face of the noise from the bottom of the garden.

“Do you mean to tell me you can’t hear it?” demanded his wife, in a
choking voice.

Mr. Chalk lost his presence of mind. “I thought it was a bird,” he said,
assuming a listening attitude.

“_Bird?_” gasped the indignant Mrs. Chalk. “Look down there. Do you
call that a bird?”

Mr. Chalk looked and uttered a little cry of astonishment.

“I suppose she wants to see one of the servants,” he said, at last; “but
why doesn’t she go round to the side entrance? I shall have to speak to
them about it.”

Mrs. Chalk drew herself up and eyed him with superb disdain.

“Go down and speak to her,” she commanded.

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Chalk, braving her, although his voice
trembled.

“Why not?”

“Because if I did you would ask me what she said, and when I told you
you wouldn’t believe me,” said Mr. Chalk.

“You—you decline to go down?” said his wife, in a voice shaking with
emotion.

“I do,” said Mr. Chalk, firmly. “Why don’t you go yourself?”

Mrs. Chalk eyed him for a moment in scornful silence, and then stepped
to the window and sailed majestically down the garden. Mr. Chalk watched
her, with parted lips, and then he began to breathe more freely as the
whistle ceased and the head suddenly disappeared. Still a little
nervous, he watched his wife to the end of the garden and saw her crane
her head over the fence. By the time she returned he was sitting in an
attitude of careless ease, with his back to the window.

“Well?” he said, with assurance.

Mrs. Chalk stood stock-still, and the intensity of her gaze drew Mr.
Chalk’s eyes to her face despite his will. For a few seconds she gazed
at him in silence, and then, drawing her skirts together, swept
violently out of the room.




CHAPTER VII


Mr. Chalk made but a poor breakfast next morning, the effort to display
a feeling of proper sympathy with Mrs. Chalk, who was presiding in
gloomy silence at the coffee-pot, and at the same time to maintain an
air of cheerful innocence as to the cause of her behaviour, being almost
beyond his powers. He chipped his egg with a painstaking attempt to
avoid noise, and swallowed each mouthful with a feeble pretence of not
knowing that she was watching him as he ate. Her glance conveyed a
scornful reproach that he could eat at all in such circumstances, and,
that there might be no mistake as to her own feelings, she
ostentatiously pushed the toast-rack and egg-stand away from her.

“You—you’re not eating, my dear,” said Mr. Chalk.

“If I ate anything it would choke me,” was the reply.

Mr. Chalk affected surprise, but his voice quavered. To cover his
discomfiture he passed his cup up for more coffee, shivering despite
himself, as he noticed the elaborate care which Mrs. Chalk displayed in
rinsing out the cup and filling it to the very brim. Beyond raising her
eyes to the ceiling when he took another piece of toast, she made no
sign.

“You’re not looking yourself,” ventured Mr. Chalk, after a time.

His wife received the information in scornful silence.

“I’ve noticed it for some time,” said the thoughtful husband, making
another effort. “It’s worried me.”

“I’m not getting younger, I know,” assented Mrs. Chalk. “But if you
think that that’s any excuse for your goings on, you’re mistaken.”

Mr. Chalk murmured something to the effect that he did not understand
her.

“You understand well enough,” was the reply. “When that girl came
whistling over the fence last night you said you thought it was a bird.”

“I did,” said Mr. Chalk, hastily taking a spoonful of egg.

Mrs. Chalk’s face flamed. “What sort of bird?” she demanded.

“Singin’ bird,” replied her husband, with nervous glibness.

Mrs. Chalk left the room.

Mr. Chalk finished his breakfast with an effort, and then, moving to the
window, lit his pipe and sat for some time in moody thought. A little
natural curiosity as to the identity of the fair whistler would,
however, not be denied, and the names of Binchester’s fairest daughters
passed in review before him. Almost unconsciously he got up and surveyed
himself in the glass.

“There’s no accounting for tastes,” he said to himself, in modest
explanation.

His mind still dwelt on the subject as he stood in the hall later on in
the morning, brushing his hat, preparatory to taking his usual walk.
Mrs. Chalk, upstairs listening, thought that he would never have
finished, and drew her own conclusions.

With the air of a man whose time hangs upon his hands Mr. Chalk
sauntered slowly through the narrow by-ways of Binchester. He read all
the notices pasted on the door of the Town Hall and bought some stamps
at the post-office, but the morning dragged slowly, and he bent his
steps at last in the direction of Tredgold’s office, in the faint hope
of a little conversation.

To his surprise, Mr. Tredgold senior was in an unusually affable mood.
He pushed his papers aside at once, and, motioning his visitor to a
chair, greeted him with much heartiness.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” he said, cheerfully. “I want you to come
round to my place at eight o’clock to-night. I’ve just seen Stobell, and
he’s coming too.”

“I will if I can,” said Mr. Chalk.

“You must come,” said the other, seriously. “It’s business.”

“Business!” said Mr. Chalk. “I don’t see—”

“You will to-night,” said Mr. Tredgold, with a mysterious smile. “I’ve
sent Edward off to town on business, and we sha’n’t be interrupted.
Goodbye. I’m busy.”

He shook hands with his visitor and led him to the door; Chalk, after a
vain attempt to obtain particulars, walked slowly home.

Despite his curiosity it was nearly half-past eight when he arrived at
Mr. Tredgold’s that evening, and was admitted by his host. The latter,
with a somewhat trite remark about the virtues of punctuality, led the
way upstairs and threw open the door of his study.

“Here he is,” he announced.

A slender figure sitting bolt upright in a large grandfather-chair
turned at their entrance, and revealed to the astonished Mr. Chalk the
expressive features of Miss Selina Vickers; facing her at the opposite
side of the room Mr. Stobell, palpably ruffled, eyed her balefully.

“This is a new client of mine,” said Tredgold, indicating Miss Vickers.

Mr. Chalk said “Good evening.”

“I tried to get a word with you last night,” said Miss Vickers. “I was
down at the bottom of your garden whistling for over ten minutes as hard
as I could whistle. I wonder you didn’t hear me.”

“_Hear_ you!” cried Mr. Chalk, guiltily conscious of a feeling of
disappointment quite beyond his control. “What do you mean by coming and
whistling for me, eh? What do you mean by it?”

“I wanted to see you private,” said Miss Vickers, calmly, “but it’s just
as well. I went and saw Mr. Tredgold this morning instead.”

“On a matter of business,” said Mr. Tredgold, looking at her. “She came
to me, as one of the ordinary public, about some—ha—land she’s
interested in.”

“An island,” corroborated Miss Vickers.

Mr. Chalk took a chair and looked round in amazement. “What, another?”
he said, faintly.

Mr. Tredgold coughed. “My client is not a rich woman,” he began.

“Chalk knows that,” interrupted Mr. Stobell. “The airs and graces that
girl will give herself if you go on like that——”

“But she has some property there which she is anxious to obtain,”
continued Mr. Tredgold, with a warning glance at the speaker. “That
being so——”

“Make him wish he may die first,” interposed Miss Vickers, briskly.

“Yes, yes; that’s all right,” said Tredgold, meeting Mr. Chalk’s
startled gaze.

“It will be when he’s done it,” retorted the determined Miss Vickers.

“It’s a secret,” explained Mr. Tredgold, addressing his staring friend.
“And you must swear to keep it if it’s told you. That’s what she means.
I’ve had to and so has Stobell.”

A fierce grunt from Mr. Stobell, who was still suffering from the
remembrance of an indignity against which he had protested in vain, came
as confirmation. Then the marvelling Mr. Chalk rose, and instructed by
Miss Vickers took an oath, the efficacy of which consisted in a fervent
hope that he might die if he broke it.

“But what’s it all about?” he inquired, plaintively.

Mr. Tredgold conferred with Miss Vickers, and that lady, after a
moment’s hesitation, drew a folded paper from her bosom and beckoned to
Mr. Chalk. With a cry of amazement he recognised the identical map of
Bowers’s Island, which he had last seen in the hands of its namesake. It
was impossible to mistake it, although an attempt to take it in his hand
was promptly frustrated by the owner.

“But Captain Bowers said that he had burnt it,” he cried.

Mr. Tredgold eyed him coldly. “Burnt what?” he inquired.

“The map,” was the reply.

“Just so,” said Tredgold. “You told me he had burnt a map.”

“Is this another, then?” inquired Mr. Chalk.

“P’r’aps,” said Miss Vickers, briefly.

“As the captain said he had burnt his, this _must_ be another,” said
Tredgold.

“Didn’t he burn it, then?” inquired Mr. Chalk.

“I should be sorry to disbelieve Captain Bowers,” said Tredgold.

“Couldn’t be done,” said the brooding Stobell, “not if you tried.”

Mr. Chalk sat still and eyed them in perplexity.

“There is no doubt that this map refers to the same treasure as the one
Captain Bowers had,” said Tredgold, with the air of one making a
generous admission. “My client has not volunteered any statement as to
how it came into her possession—”

“And she’s not going to,” put in Miss Vickers, dispassionately.

“It is enough for me that we have got it,” resumed Mr. Tredgold. “Now,
we want you to join us in fitting out a ship and recovering the
treasure. Equal expenses; equal shares.”

“What about Captain Bowers?” inquired Mr. Chalk.

“He is to have an equal share without any of the expense,” said
Tredgold. “You know he gave us permission to find it if we could, so we
are not injuring anybody.”

“He told us to go and find it, if you remember,” said Stobell, “and
we’re going to.”

“He’ll have a fortune handed to him without any trouble or being
responsible in any way,” said Tredgold, impressively. “I should like to
think there was somebody working to put a fortune like that into my lap.
We shall have a fifth each.”

“That’ll be five—thousand—pounds for you, Selina,” said Mr. Stobell,
with a would-be benevolent smile.

Miss Vickers turned a composed little face upon him and languidly closed
one eye.

“I had two prizes for arithmetic when I was at school,” she remarked;
“and don’t you call me Selina, unless you want to be called Bobbie.”

A sharp exclamation from Mr. Tredgold stopped all but the first three
words of Mr. Stobell’s retort, but he said the rest under his breath
with considerable relish.

“Don’t mind him,” said Miss Vickers. “I’m half sorry I let him join,
now. A man that used to work for him once told me that he was only half
a gentleman, but he’d never seen that half.”

Mr. Stobell, afraid to trust himself, got up and leaned out of the
window.

“Well, we’re all agreed, then,” said Tredgold, looking round.

“Half a second,” said Miss Vickers. “Before I part with this map you’ve
all got to sign a paper promising me my proper share, and to give me
twenty pounds down.”

Mr. Tredgold hesitated and looked serious. Mr. Chalk, somewhat dazed by
the events of the evening, blinked at him solemnly. Mr. Stobell withdrew
his head from the window and spoke.

“+Twenty—pounds!+” he growled.

“Twenty pounds,” repeated Miss Vickers, “or four hundred shillings, if
you like it better. If you wait a moment I’ll make it pennies.”

She leaned back in her chair and, screwing her eyes tight, began the
calculation. “Twelve noughts are nought,” she said, in a gabbling
whisper; “twelve noughts are nought, twelve fours are forty—”

“All right,” said Mr. Tredgold, who had been regarding this performance
with astonished disapproval. “You shall have the twenty pounds, but
there is no necessity for us to sign any paper.”

“No, there’s no necessity,” said Miss Vickers, opening her small, sharp
eyes again, “only, if you don’t do it, I’ll find somebody that will.”

Mr. Tredgold argued with her, but in vain; Mr. Chalk, taking up the
argument and expanding it, fared no better; and Mr. Stobell, opening his
mouth to contribute his mite, was quelled before he could get a word
out.

“Them’s my terms,” said Miss Vickers; “take ’em or leave ’em, just as
you please. I give you five minutes by the clock to make up your minds;
Mr. Stobell can have six, because thinking takes him longer. And if you
agree to do what’s right—and I’m letting you off easy—Mr. Tredgold is
to keep the map and never to let it go out of his sight for a single
instant.”

She put her head round the side of the chair to make a note of the time,
and then, sitting upright with her arms folded, awaited their decision.
Before the time was up the terms were accepted, and Mr. Tredgold,
drawing his chair to the table, prepared to draw up the required
agreement.

He composed several, but none which seemed to give general satisfaction.
At the seventh attempt, however, he produced an agreement which,
alluding in vague terms to a treasure quest in the Southern Seas on the
strength of a map provided by Miss Vickers, promised one-fifth of the
sum recovered to that lady, and was considered to meet the exigencies of
the case. Miss Vickers herself, without being enthusiastic, said that
she supposed it would have to do.

Another copy was avoided, but only with great difficulty, owing to her
criticism of Mr. Stobell’s signature. It took the united and verbose
efforts of Messrs. Chalk and Tredgold to assure her that it was in his
usual style, and rather a good signature for him than otherwise. Miss
Vickers, viewing it with her head on one side, asked whether he couldn’t
make his mark instead; a question which Mr. Stobell, at the pressing
instance of his friends, left unanswered. Then Tredgold left the room to
pay a visit to his safe, and, the other two gentlemen turning out their
pockets, the required sum was made up, and with the agreement handed to
Miss Vickers in exchange for the map.

She bade them good-night, and then, opening the door, paused with her
hand on the knob and stood irresolute.

“I hope I’ve done right,” she said, somewhat nervously. “It was no good
to anybody laying idle and being wasted. I haven’t stolen anything.”

“No, no,” said Tredgold, hastily.

“It seems ridiculous for all that money to be wasted,” continued Miss
Vickers, musingly. “It doesn’t belong to anybody, so nobody can be hurt
by our taking it, and we can do a lot of good with it, if we like. I
shall give some of mine away to the poor. We all will. I’ll have it put
in this paper.”

She fumbled in her bodice for the document, and walked towards them.

“We can’t alter it now,” said Mr. Tredgold, decidedly.

“We’ll do what’s right,” said Mr. Chalk, reassuringly.

Miss Vickers smiled at him. “Yes, I know _you_ will,” she said,
graciously, “and I think Mr. Tredgold will, but—”

“You’re leaving that door open,” said Mr. Stobell, coldly, “and the
draught’s blowing my head off, pretty near.”

Miss Vickers eyed him scornfully, but in the absence of a crushing reply
disdained one at all. She contented herself instead by going outside and
closing the door after her with a sharpness which stirred every hair on
his head.

“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” said Mr. Chalk, as the three bent
exultingly over the map. “I could ha’ sworn to this map in a court of
justice.”

“Don’t you worry your head about it,” advised Mr. Stobell.

“You’ve got your way at last,” said Tredgold, with some severity. “We’re
going for a cruise with you, and here you are raising objections.”

“Not objections,” remonstrated the other; “and, talking about the
voyage, what about Mrs. Chalk? She’ll want to come.”

“So will Mrs. Stobell,” said that lady’s proprietor, “but she won’t.”

“She mustn’t hear of it till the last moment,” said Tredgold,
dictatorially; “the quieter we keep the whole thing the better. You’re
not to divulge a word of the cruise to anybody. When it does leak out it
must be understood we are just going for a little pleasure jaunt. Mind,
you’ve sworn to keep the whole affair secret.”

Mr. Chalk screwed up his features in anxious perplexity, but made no
comment.

“The weather’s fine,” continued Tredgold, “and there’s nothing gained by
delay. On Wednesday we’ll take the train to Biddlecombe and have a look
round. My idea is to buy a small, stout sailing-craft second-hand; ship
a crew ostensibly for a pleasure trip, and sail as soon as possible.”

Mr. Chalk’s face brightened. “And we’ll take some beads, and guns, and
looking-glasses, and trade with the natives in the different islands we
pass,” he said, cheerfully. “We may as well see something of the world
while we’re about it.”

Mr. Tredgold smiled indulgently and said they would see. Messrs. Stobell
and Chalk, after a final glance at the map and a final perusal of the
instructions at the back, took their departure.

“It’s like a dream,” said the latter gentleman, as they walked down the
High Street.

“That Vickers girl ud like more dreams o’ the same sort,” said Mr.
Stobell, as he thrust his hand in his empty pocket.

“It’s all very well for you,” continued Mr. Chalk, uneasily. “But my
wife is sure to insist upon coming.”

Mr. Stobell sniffed. “I’ve got a wife too,” he remarked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Chalk, in a burst of unwonted frankness, “but it ain’t
quite the same thing. I’ve got a wife and Mrs. Stobell has got a
husband—that’s the difference.”

Mr. Stobell pondered this remark for the rest of the way home. He came
to the conclusion that the events of the evening had made Mr. Chalk a
little light-headed.




CHAPTER VIII


Until he stood on the platform on Wednesday morning with his brother
adventurers Mr. Chalk passed the time in a state of nervous excitement,
which only tended to confirm his wife in her suspicions of his
behaviour. Without any preliminaries he would burst out suddenly into
snatches of sea-songs, the “Bay of Biscay” being an especial favourite,
until Mrs. Chalk thought fit to observe that, “if the thunder did roar
like that she should not be afraid of it.” Ever sensitive to a fault,
Mr. Chalk fell back upon “Tom Bowling,” which he thought free from
openings of that sort, until Mrs. Chalk, after commenting upon the
inability of the late Mr. Bowling to hear the tempest’s howling,
indulged in idle speculations as to what he would have thought of Mr.
Chalk’s. Tredgold and Stobell bought papers on the station, but Mr.
Chalk was in too exalted a mood for reading. The bustle and life as the
train became due were admirably attuned to his feelings, and when it
drew up and they embarked, to the clatter of milk-cans and the rumbling
of trolleys, he was beaming with satisfaction.

“I feel that I can smell the sea already,” he remarked.

Mr. Stobell put down his paper and sniffed; then he resumed it again
and, meeting Mr. Tredgold’s eye over the top of it, sniffed more loudly
than before.

“Have you told Edward that you are going to sea?” inquired Mr. Chalk,
leaning over to Tredgold.

“Certainly not,” was the reply; “I don’t want anybody to know till the
last possible moment. You haven’t given your wife any hint as to why you
are going to Biddlecombe to-day, have you?”

Mr. Chalk shook his head. “I told her that you had got business there,
and that I was going with you just for the outing,” he said. “What
she’ll say when she finds out—”

His imagination failed him and, a prey to forebodings, he tried to
divert his mind by looking out of window. His countenance cleared as
they neared Biddlecombe, and, the line running for some distance by the
side of the river, he amused himself by gazing at various small craft
left high and dry by the tide.

A short walk from the station brought them to the mouth of the river
which constitutes the harbour of Biddlecombe. For a small port there was
a goodly array of shipping, and Mr. Chalk’s pulse beat faster as his
gaze wandered impartially from a stately barque in all the pride of
fresh paint to dingy, sea-worn ketches and tiny yachts.

Uncertain how to commence operations, they walked thoughtfully up and
down the quay. If any of the craft were for sale there was nothing to
announce the fact, and the various suggestions which Mr. Chalk threw off
from time to time as to the course they should pursue were hardly
noticed.

“One o’clock,” said Mr. Stobell, extracting a huge silver timepiece from
his pocket, after a couple of wasted hours.

“Let’s have something to eat before we do any more,” said Mr. Tredgold.
“After that we’ll ferry over and look at the other side.”

They made their way to the “King of Hanover,” an old inn, perched on the
side of the harbour, and, mounting the stairs, entered the coffee-room,
where Mr. Stobell, after hesitating for some time between the rival
claims of roast beef and grilled chops, solved the difficulty by
ordering both.

The only other occupant of the room, a short, wiry man, with a
close-shaven, hard-bitten face, sat smoking, with a glass of whisky
before him, in a bay window at the end of the room, which looked out
on the harbour. There was a maritime flavour about him which at once
enlisted Mr. Chalk’s sympathies and made him overlook the small,
steely-grey eyes and large and somewhat brutal mouth.

“Fine day, gentlemen,” said the stranger, nodding affably to Mr. Chalk
as he raised his glass. Mr. Chalk assented, and began a somewhat minute
discussion upon the weather, which lasted until the waiter appeared with
the lunch.

“Bring me another drop o’ whisky, George,” said the stranger, as the
latter was about to leave the room, “and a little stronger, d’ye hear? A
man might drink this and still be in the Band of Hope.”

“We thought it wouldn’t do for you to get the chuck out of it after all
these years, Cap’n Brisket,” said George, calmly. “It’s a whisky that’s
kept special for teetotalers like you.”

Captain Brisket gave a hoarse laugh and winked at Mr. Stobell; that
gentleman, merely pausing to empty his mouth and drink half a glass of
beer, winked back.

“Been here before, sir?” inquired the captain.

Mr. Stobell, who was busy again, left the reply to Mr. Chalk.

“Several times,” said the latter. “I’m very fond of the sea.”

Captain Brisket nodded, and, taking up his glass, moved to the end of
their table, with the air of a man disposed to conversation.

“There’s not much doing in Biddlecombe nowadays,” he remarked, shaking
his head. “Trade ain’t what it used to be; ships are more than half
their time looking for freights. And even when they get them they’re
hardly worth having.”

Mr. Chalk started and, leaning over, whispered to Mr. Tredgold.

“No harm in it,” said the latter. “Better leave it to me. Shipping’s
dull, then?” he inquired, turning to Captain Brisket.

“Dull?” was the reply. “Dull ain’t no name for it.”

Mr. Tredgold played with a salt-spoon and frowned thoughtfully.

“We’ve been looking round for a ship this morning,” he said, slowly.

“As passengers?” inquired the captain, staring.

“As owners,” put in Mr. Chalk.

Captain Brisket, greatly interested, drew first his glass and then his
chair a yard nearer. “Do you mean that you want to buy one?” he
inquired.

“Well, we might if we could get one cheap,” admitted Tredgold,
cautiously. “We had some sort of an idea of a cruise to the South
Pacific; pleasure, with perhaps a little trading mixed up with it. I
suppose some of these old schooners can be picked up for the price of an
old song?”

The captain, grating his chair along the floor, came nearer still; so
near that Mr. Stobell instinctively put out his right elbow.

“You’ve met just the right man,” said Captain Brisket, with a boisterous
laugh. “I know a schooner, two hundred and forty tons, that is just the
identical article you’re looking for, good as new and sound as a bell.
Are you going to sail her yourself?”

“No,” said Mr. Stobell, without looking up, “he ain’t.”

“Got a master?” demanded Captain Brisket, with growing excitement.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a master.”

“Why not?” growled Mr. Stobell, who, having by this time arrived at the
cheese, felt that he had more leisure for conversation.

“Because,” shouted the other, hitting the table a thump with his fist
that upset half his whisky—“because if you haven’t Bill Brisket’s your
man.”

The three gentlemen received this startling intelligence with such a
lack of enthusiasm that Captain Brisket was fain to cover what in any
other man might have been regarded as confusion by ringing the bell for
George and inquiring with great sternness of manner why he had not
brought him a full glass.

“We can’t do things in five minutes,” said Mr. Tredgold, after a long
and somewhat trying pause. “First of all we’ve got to get a ship.”

“The craft you want is over the other side of the harbour waiting for
you,” said the captain, confidently. “We’ll ferry over now if you like,
or, if you prefer to go by yourselves, do; Bill Brisket is not the man
to stand in anyone’s way, whether he gets anything out of it or not.”

“Hold hard,” said Mr. Stobell, putting up his hand.

Captain Brisket regarded him with a beaming smile; Mr. Stobell’s two
friends waited patiently.

“What ud a schooner like that fetch?” inquired Mr. Stobell.

“It all depends,” said Brisket. “Of course, if I buy—”

Mr. Stobell held up his hand again. “All depends whether you buy it for
us or sell it for the man it belongs to, I s’pose?” he said, slowly.

Captain Brisket jumped up, and to Mr. Chalk’s horror smote the speaker
heavily on the back. Mr. Stobell, clenching a fist the size of a leg of
mutton, pushed his chair back and prepared to rise.

“You’re a trump,” said Captain Brisket, in tones of unmistakable
respect, “that’s what you are. Lord, if I’d got the head for business
you have I should be a man of fortune by now.”

Mr. Stobell, who had half risen, sat down again, and, for the first time
since his last contract but one, a smile played lightly about the
corners of his mouth. He took another drink and, shaking his head
slightly as he put the glass down, smiled again with the air of a man
who has been reproached for making a pun.

“Let me do it for you,” said Captain Brisket, impressively. “I’ll tell
you where to go without being seen in the matter or letting old Todd
know that I’m in it. Ask him a price and bate him down; when you’ve got
his lowest, come to me and give me one pound in every ten I save you.”

Mr. Tredgold looked at his friends. “If we do that,” he said, turning to
the captain, “it would be to your interest to buy the ship in any case.
How are we to be sure she is seaworthy?”

“Ah, there you are!” said Brisket, with an expansive smile. “You let me
buy for you and promise me the master’s berth, provided you are
satisfied with my credentials. Common sense’ll tell you I wouldn’t risk
my own carcass in a rotten ship.”

Mr. Stobell nodded approval and, Captain Brisket with unexpected
delicacy withdrawing to the window and becoming interested in the
harbour, conferred for some time with his friends. The captain’s offer
being accepted, subject to certain conditions, they settled their bill
and made their way to the ferry.

“There’s the schooner,” said the captain, pointing, as they neared the
opposite shore; “the _Fair Emily_, and the place she is lying at is
called Todd’s Wharf. Ask for Mr. Todd, or, better still, walk straight
on to the wharf and have a look at her. The old man’ll see you fast
enough.”

He sprang nimbly ashore as the boat’s head touched the stairs, and after
extending a hand to Mr. Chalk, which was coldly ignored, led the way up
the steps to the quay.

“There’s the wharf just along there,” he said, pointing up the road.
“I’ll wait for you at the Jack Ashore here. Don’t offer him too much to
begin with.”

“I thought of offering a hundred pounds,” said Mr. Tredgold. “If the
ship’s sound we can’t be very much out over that sum.”

Captain Brisket stared at him. “No; don’t do that,” he said, recovering,
and speaking with great gravity. “Offer him seventy. Good luck.”

He watched them up the road and then, with a mysterious grin, turned
into the Jack Ashore, and taking a seat in the bar waited patiently for
their return.

Half an hour passed. The captain had smoked one pipe and was half
through another. He glanced at the clock over the bar and fidgeted as an
unpleasant idea that the bargain, despite Mr. Tredgold’s ideas as to the
value of schooners, might have been completed without his assistance
occurred to him. He took a sip from his glass, and then his face
softened as the faint sounds of a distant uproar broke upon his ear.

“What’s that?” said a customer.

The landlord, who was glancing at the paper, put it down and listened.
“Sounds like old Todd at it again,” he said, coming round to the front
of the bar.

The noise came closer. “It _is_ old Todd,” said another customer, and
hastily finishing his beer moved with the others to the door. Captain
Brisket, with a fine air of indifference, lounged after them, and
peering over their shoulders obtained a good view of the approaching
disturbance.

His three patrons, with a hopeless attempt to appear unconcerned, were
coming down the road, while close behind a respectable-looking old
gentleman with a long, white beard and a voice like a foghorn almost
danced with excitement. They quickened their pace as they neared the
inn, and Mr. Chalk, throwing appearances to the winds, almost dived
through the group at the door. He was at once followed by Mr. Tredgold,
but Mr. Stobell, black with wrath, paused in the doorway.

“+Fetch ’em out+,” vociferated the old gentleman as the landlord barred
the doorway with his arms. “Fetch that red-whiskered one out and I’ll
eat him.”

“What’s the matter, Mr. Todd?” inquired the landlord, with a glance at
his friends. “What’s he done?”

“_Done?_” repeated the excitable Mr. Todd. “Done? They come walking on
to my wharf as if the place—+Fetch him out+,” he bawled, breaking off
suddenly. “Fetch him out and I’ll skin him alive.”

Captain Brisket took Mr. Stobell by the cuff and after a slight
altercation drew him inside.

“Tell that red-whiskered man to come outside,” bawled Mr. Todd. “What’s
he afraid of?”

“What have you been doing to him?” inquired Captain Brisket, turning to
the pallid Mr. Chalk.

“Nothing,” was the reply.

“Is he coming out?” demanded the terrible voice, “or have I got to wait
here all night? Why don’t he come outside, and I’ll break every bone in
his body.”

Mr. Stobell scratched his head in gloomy perplexity; then, as his gaze
fell upon the smiling countenances of Mr. Todd’s fellow-townsmen, his
face cleared.

“He’s an old man,” he said, slowly, “but if any of you would like to
step outside with me for five minutes, you’ve only got to say the word,
you know.”

Nobody manifesting any signs of accepting this offer, he turned away and
took a seat by the side of the indignant Tredgold. Mr. Todd, after a
final outburst, began to feel exhausted, and forsaking his prey with
much reluctance allowed himself to be led away. Snatches of a strong and
copious benediction, only partly mellowed by distance, fell upon the
ears of the listeners.

“Did you offer him the seventy?” inquired Captain Brisket, turning to
Mr. Tredgold.

“_I_ did,” said Mr. Chalk, plaintively.

“Ah,” said the captain, regarding him thoughtfully; “perhaps you ought
to ha’ made it eighty. He’s asking eight hundred for it, I understand.”

Mr. Tredgold turned sharply. “Eight hundred?” he gasped.

The captain nodded. “And I’m not saying it’s not worth it,” he said,
“but I might be able to get it for you for six. You’d better leave it to
me now.”

Mr. Tredgold at first said he would have nothing more to do with it, but
under the softening influence of a pipe and a glass was induced to
reconsider his decision. Captain Brisket, waving farewells from the quay
as they embarked on the ferryboat later on in the afternoon, bore in his
pocket the cards of all three gentlemen, together with a commission
entrusting him with the preliminary negotiations for the purchase of the
_Fair Emily_.




CHAPTER IX


The church bells were ringing for morning service as Mr. Vickers, who
had been for a stroll with Mr. William Russell and a couple of ferrets,
returned home to breakfast. Contrary to custom, the small front room and
the kitchen were both empty, and breakfast, with the exception of a cold
herring and the bitter remains of a pot of tea, had been cleared away.

“I’ve known men afore now,” murmured Mr. Vickers, eyeing the herring
disdainfully, “as would take it by the tail and smack ’em acrost the
face with it.”

He cut himself a slice of bread, and, pouring out a cup of cold tea,
began his meal, ever and anon stopping to listen, with a puzzled face,
to a continuous squeaking overhead. It sounded like several pairs of new
boots all squeaking at once, but Mr. Vickers, who was a reasonable man
and past the age of self-deception, sought for a more probable cause.

A particularly aggressive squeak detached itself from the others and
sounded on the stairs. The resemblance to the noise made by new boots
was stronger than ever. It _was_ new boots. The door opened, and Mr.
Vickers, with a slice of bread arrested half-way to his mouth, sat
gazing in astonishment at Charles Vickers, clad for the first time in
his life in new raiment from top to toe. Ere he could voice inquiries,
an avalanche of squeaks descended the stairs, and the rest of the
children, all smartly clad, with Selina bringing up the rear, burst into
the room.

“What is it?” demanded Mr. Vickers, in a voice husky with astonishment;
“a bean-feast?”

Miss Vickers, who was doing up a glove which possessed more buttons than
his own waistcoat, looked up and eyed him calmly. “New clothes—and not
before they wanted ’em,” she replied, tartly.

“New clothes?” repeated her father, in a scandalized voice. “Where’d
they get ’em?”

“Shop,” said his daughter, briefly.

Mr. Vickers rose and, approaching his offspring, inspected them with the
same interest that he would have bestowed upon a wax-works. A certain
stiffness of pose combined with the glassy stare which met his gaze
helped to favour the illusion.

“For once in their lives they’re respectable,” said Selina, regarding
them with moist eyes. “Soap and water they’ve always had, bless ’em,
but you’ve never seen ’em dressed like this before.”

Before Mr. Vickers could frame a reply a squeaking which put all the
others in the shade sounded from above. It crossed the floor on hurried
excursions to different parts of the room, and then, hesitating for a
moment at the head of the stairs, came slowly and ponderously down until
Mrs. Vickers, looking somewhat nervous, stood revealed before her
expectant husband. In scornful surprise he gazed at a blue cloth dress,
a black velvet cape trimmed with bugles, and a bonnet so aggressively
new that it had not yet accommodated itself to Mrs. Vickers’s style of
hair-dressing.

“Go on!” he breathed. “Go on! Don’t mind me. What, you—you—you’re not
going to _church_?”

Mrs. Vickers glanced at the books in her hand—also new—and trembled.

“And why not?” demanded Selina. “Why shouldn’t we?”

Mr. Vickers took another amazed glance round and his brow darkened.

“Where did you get the money?” he inquired.

“Saved it,” said his daughter, reddening despite herself.

“_Saved it_?” repeated the justly-astonished Mr. Vickers. “_Saved_
it? Ah! out of my money; out of the money I toil and moil for—out of
the money that ought to be spent on food. No wonder you’re always
complaining that it ain’t enough. I won’t ’ave it, d’ye hear? I’ll have
my rights; I’ll——”

“Don’t make so much noise,” said his daughter, who was stooping down to
ease one of Mrs. Vickers’s boots. “You would have fours, mother, and I
told you what it would be.”

“He said that I ought to wear threes by rights,” said Mrs. Vickers; “I
used to.”

“And I s’pose,” said Mr. Vickers, who had been listening to these
remarks with considerable impatience—“I s’pose there’s a bran’ new suit
o’ clothes, and a pair o’ boots, and ’arf-a-dozen shirts, and a new hat
hid upstairs for me?”

“Yes, they’re _hid_ all right,” retorted the dutiful Miss Vickers. “You
go upstairs and amuse yourself looking for ’em. Go and have a game of
‘hot boiled beans’ all by yourself.”

“Why, you must have been stinting me for years,” continued Mr. Vickers,
examining the various costumes in detail. “This is what comes o’ keeping
quiet and trusting you—not but what I’ve ’ad my suspicions. My own kids
taking the bread out o’ my mouth and buying boots with it; my own wife
going about in a bonnet that’s took me weeks and weeks to earn.”

His words fell on deaf ears. No adjutant getting his regiment ready for
a march-past could have taken more trouble than Miss Vickers was taking
at this moment over her small company. Caps were set straight and
sleeves pulled down. Her face shone with pride and her eyes glistened as
the small fry, discoursing in excited whispers, filed stiffly out.

A sudden cessation of gossip in neighbouring doorways testified to the
impression made by their appearance. Past little startled groups the
procession picked its way in squeaking pride, with Mrs. Vickers and
Selina bringing up the rear. The children went by with little set,
important faces; but Miss Vickers’s little bows and pleased smiles of
recognition to acquaintances were so lady-like that several untidy
matrons retired inside their houses to wrestle grimly with feelings too
strong for outside display.

“Pack o’ prancing peacocks,” said the unnatural Mr. Vickers, as the
procession wound round the corner.

He stood looking vacantly up the street until the gathering excitement
of his neighbours aroused new feelings. Vanity stirred within him, and
leaning casually against the door-post he yawned and looked at the
chimney-pots opposite. A neighbour in a pair of corduroy trousers,
supported by one brace worn diagonally, shambled across the road.

“What’s up?” he inquired, with a jerk of the thumb in the direction of
Mr. Vickers’s vanished family.

“Up?” repeated Mr. Vickers, with an air of languid surprise.

“Somebody died and left you a fortin?” inquired the other.

“Not as I knows of,” replied Mr. Vickers, staring. “Why?”

“_Why?_” exclaimed the other. “Why, new clothes all over. I never see
such a turn-out.”

Mr. Vickers regarded him with an air of lofty disdain. “Kids must ’ave
new clothes sometimes, I s’pose?” he said, slowly. “You wouldn’t ’ave
’em going about of a Sunday in a ragged shirt and a pair of trowsis,
would you?”

The shaft passed harmlessly. “Why not?” said the other. “They gin’rally
do.”

Mr. Vickers’s denial died away on his lips. In twos and threes his
neighbours had drawn gradually near and now stood by listening
expectantly. The idea of a fortune was common to all of them, and they
were anxious for particulars.

“Some people have all the luck,” said a stout matron. “I’ve ’ad thirteen
and buried seven, and never ’ad so much as a chiney tea-pot left me. One
thing is, I never could make up to people for the sake of what I could
get out of them. I couldn’t not if I tried. I must speak my mind free
and independent.”

“Ah! that’s how you get yourself disliked,” said another lady, shaking
her head sympathetically.

“Disliked?” said the stout matron, turning on her fiercely. “What d’ye
mean? You don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s getting themselves
disliked?”

“A lot o’ good a chiney tea-pot would be to you,” said the other, with a
ready change of front, “or any other kind o’ tea-pot.”

Surprise and indignation deprived the stout matron of utterance.

“Or a milk-jug either,” pursued her opponent, following up her
advantage. “Or a coffee-pot, or—”

The stout matron advanced upon her, and her mien was so terrible that
the other, retreating to her house, slammed the door behind her and
continued the discussion from a first-floor window. Mint Street, with
the conviction that Mr. Vickers’s tidings could wait, swarmed across the
road to listen.

Mr. Vickers himself listened for a little while to such fragments as
came his way, and then, going indoors, sat down amid the remains of his
breakfast to endeavour to solve the mystery of the new clothes.

He took a short clay pipe from his pocket, and, igniting a little piece
of tobacco which remained in the bowl, endeavoured to form an estimate
of the cost of each person’s wardrobe. The sum soon becoming too large
to work in his head, he had recourse to pencil and paper, and after five
minutes’ hard labour sat gazing at a total which made his brain reel.
The fact that immediately afterwards he was unable to find even a few
grains of tobacco at the bottom of his box furnished a contrast which
almost made him maudlin.

He sat sucking at his cold pipe and indulging in hopeless conjectures as
to the source of so much wealth, and, with a sudden quickening of the
pulse, wondered whether it had all been spent. His mind wandered from
Selina to Mr. Joseph Tasker, and almost imperceptibly the absurdities of
which young men in love could be capable occurred to him. He remembered
the extravagances of his own youth, and bethinking himself of the sums
he had squandered on the future Mrs. Vickers—sums which increased with
the compound interest of repetition—came to the conclusion that Mr.
Tasker had been more foolish still.

It seemed the only possible explanation. His eye brightened, and,
knocking the ashes out of his pipe, he crossed to the tap and washed his
face.

“If he can’t lend a trifle to the man what’s going to be his
father-in-law,” he said, cheerfully, as he polished his face on a
roller-towel, “I shall tell ’im he can’t have Selina, that’s all. I’ll
go and see ’im afore she gets any more out of him.”

He walked blithely up the road, and, after shaking off one or two
inquirers whose curiosity was almost proof against insult, made his way
to Dialstone Lane. In an unobtrusive fashion he glided round to the
back, and, opening the kitchen door, bestowed a beaming smile upon the
startled Joseph.

“Busy, my lad?” he inquired.

“What d’ye want?” asked Mr. Tasker, whose face was flushed with cooking.

Mr. Vickers opened the door a little wider, and, stepping inside, closed
it softly behind him and dropped into a chair.

“Don’t be alarmed, my lad,” he said, benevolently. “Selina’s all right.”

“What d’ye want?” repeated Mr. Tasker. “Who told you to come round
here?”

Mr. Vickers looked at him in reproachful surprise.

“I suppose a father can come round to see his future son-in-law?” he
said, with some dignity. “I don’t want to do no interrupting of your
work, Joseph, but I couldn’t ’elp just stepping round to tell you how
nice they all looked. Where you got the money from I can’t think.”

“Have you gone dotty, or what?” demanded Mr. Tasker, who was busy wiping
out a saucepan. “Who looked nice?”

Mr. Vickers shook his head at him and smiled waggishly.

“Ah! who?” he said, with much enjoyment. “I tell you it did my father’s
’art good to see ’em all dressed up like that; and when I thought of its
all being owing to you, sit down at home in comfort with a pipe instead
of coming to thank you for it I could not. Not if you was to have paid
me I couldn’t.”

“Look ’ere,” said Mr. Tasker, putting the saucepan down with a bang, “if
you can’t talk plain, common English you’d better get out. I don’t want
you ’ere at all as a matter o’ fact, but to have you sitting there
shaking your silly ’ead and talking a pack o’ nonsense is more than I
can stand.”

Mr. Vickers gazed at him in perplexity. “Do you mean to tell me you
haven’t been giving my Selina money to buy new clothes for the
young ’uns?” he demanded, sharply. “Do you mean to tell me that Selina
didn’t get money out of you to buy herself and ’er mother and all of
’em—except me—a new rig-out from top to toe?”

“D’ye think I’ve gone mad, or what?” inquired the amazed Mr. Tasker.
“What d’ye think I should want to buy clothes for your young ’uns for?
That’s your duty. And Selina, too; I haven’t given ’er anything except a
ring, and she lent me the money for that. D’ye think I’m made o’ money?”

“All right, Joseph,” said Mr. Vickers, secretly incensed at this
unforeseen display of caution on Mr. Tasker’s part. “I s’pose the
fairies come and put ’em on while they was asleep. But it’s dry work
walking; ’ave you got such a thing as a glass o’ water you could give
me?”

The other took a glass from the dresser and, ignoring the eye of his
prospective father-in-law, which was glued to a comfortable-looking
barrel in the corner, filled it to the brim with fair water and handed
it to him. Mr. Vickers, giving him a surly nod, took a couple of dainty
sips and placed it on the table.

“It’s very nice water,” he said, sarcastically.

“Is it?” said Mr. Tasker. “We don’t drink it ourselves, except in tea or
coffee; the cap’n says it ain’t safe.”

Mr. Vickers brought his eye from the barrel and glared at him.

“I s’pose, Joseph,” he said, after a long pause, during which Mr. Tasker
was busy making up the fire—“I s’pose Selina didn’t tell you you wasn’t
to tell me about the money?”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” said the other, confronting him
angrily. “I haven’t got no money.”

Mr. Vickers coughed. “Don’t say that, Joseph,” he urged, softly; “don’t
say that, my lad. As a matter o’ fact, I come round to you, interrupting
of you in your work, and I’m sorry for it—knowing how fond of it you
are—to see whether I couldn’t borrow a trifle for a day or two.”

“Ho, did you?” commented Mr. Tasker, who had opened the oven door and
was using his hand as a thermometer.

His visitor hesitated. It was no use asking for too much; on the other
hand, to ask for less than he could get would be unpardonable folly.

“If I could lay my hand on a couple o’ quid,” he said, in a mysterious
whisper, “I could make it five in a week.”

“Well, why don’t you?” inquired Mr. Tasker, who was tenderly sucking the
bulb of the thermometer after contact with the side of the oven.

“It’s the two quid that’s the trouble, Joseph,” replied Mr. Vickers,
keeping his temper with difficulty. “A little thing like that wouldn’t
be much trouble to you, I know, but to a pore man with a large family
like me it’s a’most impossible.”

Mr. Tasker went outside to the larder, and returning with a small joint
knelt down and thrust it carefully into the oven.

“A’most impossible,” repeated Mr. Vickers, with a sigh.

“What is?” inquired the other, who had not been listening.

The half-choking Mr. Vickers explained.

“Yes, o’ course it is,” assented Mr. Tasker.

“People what’s got money,” said the offended Mr. Vickers, regarding him
fiercely, “stick to it like leeches. Now, suppose I was a young man
keeping company with a gal and her father wanted to borrow a couple o’
quid—a paltry couple o’ thick ’uns—what d’ye think I should do?”

“If you was a young man—keeping company with a gal—and ’er father
wanted—to borrow a couple of quid off o’ you—what would you do?”
repeated Mr. Tasker, mechanically, as he bustled to and fro.

Mr. Vickers nodded and smiled. “What should I do?” he inquired again,
hopefully.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said the other, opening the oven door and
peering in. “How should I?”

At the imminent risk of something inside giving way under the strain,
Mr. Vickers restrained himself. He breathed hard, and glancing out of
window sought to regain his equilibrium by becoming interested in a
blackbird outside.

“What I mean to say is,” he said at length, in a trembling voice—“what I
mean to say is, without no round-aboutedness, will you lend a
’ard-working man, what’s going to be your future father-in-law, a couple
o’ pounds?”

Mr. Tasker laughed. It was not a loud laugh, nor yet a musical one. It
was merely a laugh designed to convey to the incensed Mr. Vickers a
strong sense of the absurdity of his request.

“I asked you a question,” said the latter gentleman, glaring at him.

“I haven’t got a couple o’ pounds,” replied Mr. Tasker; “and if I ’ad,
there’s nine hundred and ninety-nine things I would sooner do with it
than lend it to you.”

Mr. Vickers rose and stood regarding the ignoble creature with profound
contempt. His features worked and a host of adjectives crowded to his
lips.

“Is that your last word, Joseph?” he inquired, with solemn dignity.

“I’ll say it all over again if you like,” said the obliging Mr. Tasker.
“If you want money, go and earn it, same as I have to; don’t come round
’ere cadging on me, because it’s no good.”

Mr. Vickers laughed; a dry, contemptuous laugh, terrible to hear.

“And that’s the man that’s going to marry my daughter,” he said,
slowly; “that’s the man that’s going to marry into my family. Don’t
you expect _me_ to take you up and point you out as my son-in-law, cos
I won’t do it. If there’s anything I can’t abide it’s stinginess. And
there’s my gal—my pore gal don’t know your real character. Wait till
I’ve told ’er about this morning and opened ’er eyes! Wait till—”

He stopped abruptly as the door leading to the front room opened and
revealed the inquiring face of Captain Bowers.

“What’s all this noise about, Joseph?” demanded the captain, harshly.

Mr. Tasker attempted to explain, but his explanation involving a
character for Mr. Vickers which that gentleman declined to accept on any
terms, he broke in and began to give his own version of the affair. Much
to Joseph’s surprise the captain listened patiently.

“Did you buy all those things, Joseph?” he inquired, carelessly, as Mr.
Vickers paused for breath.

“Cert’nly not, sir,” replied Mr. Tasker. “Where should I get the money
from?”

The captain eyed him without replying, and a sudden suspicion occurred
to him. The strange disappearance of the map, followed by the sudden
cessation of Mr. Chalk’s visits, began to link themselves to this tale
of unexpected wealth. He bestowed another searching glance upon the
agitated Mr. Tasker.

“You haven’t _sold_ anything lately, have you?” he inquired, with
startling gruffness.

“I haven’t ’ad nothing to sell, sir,” replied the other, in
astonishment. “And I dare say Mr. Vickers here saw a new pair o’ boots
on one o’ the young ’uns and dreamt all the rest.”

Mr. Vickers intervened with passion.

“That’ll do,” said the captain, sharply. “How dare you make that noise
in my house? I think that the tale about the clothes is all right,” he
added, turning to Joseph. “I saw them go into church looking very smart.
And you know nothing about it?”

Mr. Tasker’s astonishment was too genuine to be mistaken, and the
captain, watching him closely, transferred his suspicions to a more
deserving object. Mr. Vickers caught his eye and essayed a smile.

“Dry work talking, sir,” he said, gently.

Captain Bowers eyed him steadily. “Have we got any beer, Joseph?” he
inquired.

“Plenty in the cask, sir,” said Mr. Tasker, reluctantly.

“Well, keep your eye on it,” said the captain. “Good morning, Mr.
Vickers.”

But disappointment and indignation got the better of Mr. Vickers’s
politeness.




CHAPTER X


“A penny for your thoughts, uncle,” said Miss Drewitt, as they sat at
dinner an hour or two after the departure of Mr. Vickers.

“_H’m?_” said the captain, with a guilty start.

“You’ve been scowling and smiling by turns for the last five minutes,”
said his niece.

“I was thinking about that man that was here this morning,” said the
captain, slowly; “trying to figure it out. If I thought that that girl
Selina——”

He took a draught of ale and shook his head solemnly.

“You know my ideas about that,” said Prudence.

“Your poor _mother_ was obstinate,” commented the captain, regarding
her tolerantly. “Once she got an idea into her head it stuck there, and
nothing made her more angry than proving to her that she was wrong.
Trying to prove to her, I should have said.”

Miss Drewitt smiled amiably. “Well, you’ve earned half the sum,” she
said. “Now, what were you smiling about?”

“Didn’t know I was smiling,” declared the captain.

With marvellous tact he turned the conversation to lighthouses, a
subject upon which he discoursed with considerable fluency until the
meal was finished. Miss Drewitt, who had a long memory and at least her
fair share of curiosity, returned to the charge as he smoked half a pipe
preparatory to accompanying her for a walk.

“You’re looking very cheerful,” she remarked.

The captain’s face fell several points. “Am I?” he said, ruefully. “I
didn’t mean to.”

“Why not?” inquired his niece.

“I mean I didn’t know I was,” he replied, “more than usual, I mean. I
always do look fairly cheerful—at least, I hope I do. There’s nothing to
make me look the opposite.”

Miss Drewitt eyed him carefully and then passed upstairs to put on her
hat. Relieved of her presence the captain walked to the small glass over
the mantelpiece and, regarding his tell-tale features with gloomy
dissatisfaction, acquired, after one or two attempts, an expression
which he flattered himself defied analysis.

He tapped the barometer which hung by the door as they went out, and,
checking a remark which rose to his lips, stole a satisfied glance at
the face by his side.

“Clark’s farm by the footpaths would be a nice walk,” said Miss Drewitt,
as they reached the end of the lane.

The captain started. “I was thinking of Dutton Priors,” he said, slowly.
“We could go there by Hanger’s Lane and home by the road.”

“The footpaths would be nice to-day,” urged his niece.

“You try my way,” said the captain, jovially.

“Have you got any particular reason for wanting to go to Dutton Priors
this afternoon?” inquired the girl.

“Reason?” said the captain. “Good gracious, no. What reason should I
have? My leg is a trifle stiff to-day for stiles, but still—”

Miss Drewitt gave way at once, and, taking his arm, begged him to lean
on her, questioning him anxiously as to his fitness for a walk in any
direction.

“Walking’ll do it good,” was the reply, as they proceeded slowly down
the High Street.

He took his watch from his pocket, and, after comparing it with the town
clock, peered furtively right and left, gradually slackening his pace
until Miss Drewitt’s fears for his leg became almost contagious. At the
old stone bridge, spanning the river at the bottom of the High Street,
he paused, and, resting his arms on the parapet, became intent on a
derelict punt. On the subject of sitting in a craft of that description
in mid-stream catching fish he discoursed at such length that the girl
eyed him in amazement.

“Shall we go on?” she said, at length.

The captain turned and, merely pausing to point out the difference
between the lines of a punt and a dinghy, with a digression to sampans
which included a criticism of the Chinese as boat-builders, prepared to
depart. He cast a swift glance up the road as he did so, and Miss
Drewitt’s cheek flamed with sudden wrath as she saw Mr. Edward Tredgold
hastening towards them. In a somewhat pointed manner she called her
uncle’s attention to the fact.

“Lor’ bless my soul,” said that startled mariner, “so it is. Well!
well!”

If Mr. Tredgold had been advancing on his head he could not have
exhibited more surprise.

“I’m afraid I’m late,” said Tredgold, as he came up and shook hands. “I
hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

The hapless captain coughed loud and long. He emerged from a large red
pocket-handkerchief to find the eye of Miss Drewitt seeking his.

“That’s all right, my lad,” he said, huskily. “I’d forgotten about our
arrangement. Did I say this Sunday or next?”

“This,” said Mr. Tredgold, bluntly.

The captain coughed again, and with some pathos referred to the tricks
which old age plays with memory. As they walked on he regaled them with
selected instances.

“Don’t forget your leg, uncle,” said Miss Drewitt, softly.

Captain Bowers gazed at her suspiciously.

“Don’t forget that it’s stiff and put too much strain on it,” explained
his niece.

The captain eyed her uneasily, but she was talking and laughing with
Edward Tredgold in a most reassuring fashion. A choice portion of his
programme, which, owing to the events of the afternoon, he had almost
resolved to omit, clamoured for production. He stole another glance at
his niece and resolved to risk it.

“Hah!” he said, suddenly, stopping short and feeling in his pockets.
“There’s my memory again. Well, of all the—”

“What’s the matter, uncle?” inquired Miss Drewitt.

“I’ve left my pipe at home,” said the captain, in a desperate voice.

“I’ve got some cigars,” suggested Tredgold.

The captain shook his head. “No, I must have my pipe,” he said,
decidedly. “If you two will walk on slowly, I’ll soon catch you up.”

“You’re not going all the way back for it?” exclaimed Miss Drewitt.

“Let me go,” said Tredgold.

The captain favoured him with an inscrutable glance. “I’ll go,” he said,
firmly. “I’m not quite sure where I left it. You go by Hanger’s Lane;
I’ll soon catch you up.”

He set off at a pace which rendered protest unavailing. Mr. Tredgold
turned, and, making a mental note of the fact that Miss Drewitt had
suddenly added inches to her stature, walked on by her side.

“Captain Bowers is very fond of his pipe,” he said, after they had
walked a little way in silence.

Miss Drewitt assented. “Nasty things,” she said, calmly.

“So they are,” said Mr. Tredgold.

“But you smoke,” said the girl.

Mr. Tredgold sighed. “I have often thought of giving it up,” he said,
softly, “and then I was afraid that it would look rather presumptuous.”

“Presumptuous?” repeated Miss Drewitt.

“So many better and wiser men than myself smoke,” exclaimed Mr.
Tredgold, “including even bishops. If it is good enough for them, it
ought to be good enough for me; that’s the way I look at it. Who am I
that I should be too proud to smoke? Who am I that I should try and set
my poor ideas above those of my superiors? Do you see my point of view?”

Miss Drewitt made no reply.

“Of course, it is a thing that grows on one,” continued Mr. Tredgold,
with the air of making a concession. “It is the first smoke that does
the mischief; it is a fatal precedent. Unless, perhaps—How pretty that
field is over there.”

Miss Drewitt looked in the direction indicated. “Very nice,” she said,
briefly. “But what were you going to say?”

Mr. Tredgold made an elaborate attempt to appear confused. “I was going
to say,” he murmured, gently, “unless, perhaps, one begins on coarse-cut
Cavendish rolled in a piece of the margin of the Sunday newspaper.”

Miss Drewitt suppressed an exclamation. “I wanted to see where the
fascination was,” she indignantly.

“And did you?” inquired Mr. Tredgold, smoothly.

The girl turned her head and looked at him. “I have no doubt my uncle
gave you full particulars,” she said, bitterly. “It seems to me that men
can gossip as much as women.”

“I tried to stop him,” said the virtuous Mr. Tredgold.

“You need not have troubled,” said Miss Drewitt, loftily. “It is not a
matter of any consequence. I am surprised that my uncle should have
thought it worth mentioning.”

She walked on slowly with head erect, pausing occasionally to look round
for the captain. Edward Tredgold looked too, and a feeling of annoyance
at the childish stratagems of his well-meaning friend began to possess
him.

“We had better hurry a little, I think,” he said, glancing at the sky.
“The sooner we get to Dutton Priors the better.”

“Why?” inquired his companion.

“Rain,” said the other, briefly.

“It won’t rain before evening,” said Miss Drewitt, confidently; “uncle
said so.”

“Perhaps we had better walk faster, though,” urged Mr. Tredgold.

Miss Drewitt slackened her pace deliberately. “There is no fear of its
raining,” she declared. “And uncle will not catch us up if we walk
fast.”

A sudden glimpse into the immediate future was vouchsafed to Mr.
Tredgold; for a fraction of a second the veil was lifted. “Don’t blame
me if you get wet through,” he said, with some anxiety.

They walked on at a pace which gave the captain every opportunity of
overtaking them. The feat would not have been beyond the powers of an
athletic tortoise, but the most careful scrutiny failed to reveal any
signs of him.

“I’m afraid that he is not well,” said Miss Drewitt, after a long,
searching glance along the way they had come. “Perhaps we had better go
back. It does begin to look rather dark.”

“Just as you please,” said Edward Tredgold, with unwonted caution; “but
the nearest shelter is Dutton Priors.”

He pointed to a lurid, ragged cloud right ahead of them. As if in
response, a low, growling rumble sounded overhead.

“Was—was that thunder?” said Miss Drewitt, drawing a little nearer to
him.

“Sounded something like it,” was the reply.

A flash of lightning and a crashing peal that rent the skies put the
matter beyond a doubt. Miss Drewitt, turning very pale, began to walk at
a rapid pace in the direction of the village.

The other looked round in search of some nearer shelter. Already the
pattering of heavy drops sounded in the lane, and before they had gone a
dozen paces the rain came down in torrents. Two or three fields away a
small shed offered the only shelter. Mr. Tredgold, taking his companion
by the arm, started to run towards it.

Before they had gone a hundred yards they were wet through, but Miss
Drewitt, holding her skirts in one hand and shivering at every flash,
ran until they brought up at a tall gate, ornamented with barbed wire,
behind which stood the shed.

The gate was locked, and the wire had been put on by a farmer who
combined with great ingenuity a fervent hatred of his fellow-men. To
Miss Drewitt it seemed insurmountable, but, aided by Mr. Tredgold and a
peal of thunder which came to his assistance at a critical moment, she
managed to clamber over and reach the shed. Mr. Tredgold followed at his
leisure with a strip of braid torn from the bottom of her dress.

The roof leaked in twenty places and the floor was a puddle, but it had
certain redeeming features in Mr. Tredgold’s eyes of which the girl knew
nothing. He stood at the doorway watching the rain.

“Come inside,” said Miss Drewitt, in a trembling voice. “You might be
struck.”

Mr. Tredgold experienced a sudden sense of solemn pleasure in this
unexpected concern for his safety. He turned and eyed her.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, with great gentleness.

“No, but I am,” said Miss Drewitt, petulantly, “and I can never get over
that gate alone.”

Mr. Tredgold came inside, and for some time neither of them spoke. The
rattle of rain on the roof became less deafening and began to drip
through instead of forming little jets. A patch of blue sky showed.

“It isn’t much,” said Tredgold, going to the door again.

Miss Drewitt, checking a sharp retort, returned to the door and looked
out. The patch of blue increased in size; the rain ceased and the sun
came out; birds exchanged congratulations from every tree. The girl,
gathering up her wet skirts, walked to the gate, leaving her companion
to follow.

Approached calmly and under a fair sky the climb was much easier.

“I believe that I could have got over by myself after all,” said Miss
Drewitt, as she stood on the other side. “I suppose that you were in too
much of a hurry the last time. My dress is ruined.”

She spoke calmly, but her face was clouded. From her manner during the
rapid walk home Mr. Tredgold was enabled to see clearly that she was
holding him responsible for the captain’s awkward behaviour; the rain;
her spoiled clothes; and a severe cold in the immediate future. He
glanced at her ruined hat and the wet, straight locks of hair hanging
about her face, and held his peace.

Never before on a Sunday afternoon had Miss Drewitt known the streets of
Binchester to be so full of people. She hurried on with bent head,
looking straight before her, trying to imagine what she looked like.
There was no sign of the captain, but as they turned into Dialstone Lane
they both saw a huge, shaggy, grey head protruding from the small window
of his bedroom. It disappeared with a suddenness almost startling.

“Thank you,” said Miss Drewitt, holding out her hand as she reached the
door. “Good-bye.”

Mr. Tredgold said “Good-bye,” and with a furtive glance at the window
above departed. Miss Drewitt, opening the door, looked round an empty
room. Then the kitchen door opened and the face of Mr. Tasker, full of
concern, appeared.

“Did you get wet, miss?” he inquired.

Miss Drewitt ignored the question. “Where is Captain Bowers?” she asked,
in a clear, penetrating voice.

The face of Mr. Tasker fell. “He’s gone to bed with a headache, miss,”
he replied.

“Headache?” repeated the astonished Miss Drewitt. “When did he go?”

“About ’arf an hour ago,” said Mr. Tasker; “just after the storm. I
suppose that’s what caused it, though it seems funny, considering what a
lot he must ha’ seen at sea. He said he’d go straight to bed and try and
sleep it off. And I was to ask you to please not to make a noise.”

Miss Drewitt swept past him and mounted the stairs. At the captain’s
door she paused, but the loud snoring of a determined man made her
resolve to postpone her demands for an explanation to a more fitting
opportunity. Tired, wet, and angry she gained her own room, and threw
herself thoughtlessly into that famous old Chippendale chair which, in
accordance with Mr. Tredgold’s instructions, had been placed against the
wall.

The captain started in his sleep.




CHAPTER XI


Mr. Chalk’s anxiety during the negotiations for the purchase of the
_Fair Emily_ kept him oscillating between Tredgold and Stobell until
those gentlemen fled at his approach and instructed their retainers to
make untruthful statements as to their whereabouts. Daily letters from
Captain Brisket stated that he was still haggling with Mr. Todd over
the price, and Mr. Chalk quailed as he tried to picture the scene with
that doughty champion.

Three times at the earnest instigation of his friends, who pointed out
the necessity of keeping up appearances, had he set out to pay a visit
to Dialstone Lane, and three times had he turned back half-way as he
realized the difficult nature of his task. As well ask a poacher to call
on a gamekeeper the morning after a raid.

Captain Bowers, anxious to see him and sound him with a few carefully-
prepared questions, noted his continued absence with regret. Despairing
at last of a visit from Mr. Chalk, he resolved to pay one himself.

Mr. Chalk, who was listening to his wife, rose hastily at his entrance,
and in great confusion invited him to a chair which was already occupied
by Mrs. Chalk’s work-basket. The captain took another and, after
listening to an incoherent statement about the weather, shook his head
reproachfully at Mr. Chalk.

“I thought something must have happened to you,” he said. “Why, it must
be weeks since I’ve seen you.”

“Weeks?” said Mrs. Chalk, suddenly alert. “Why, he went out the day
before yesterday to call on you.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Chalk, with an effort, “so I did, but half-way to yours
I got a nail in my shoe and had to come home.”

“_Home!_” exclaimed his wife. “Why, you were gone two hours and
thirty-five minutes.”

“It was very painful,” said Mr. Chalk, as the captain stared in
open-eyed astonishment at this exact time-keeping. “One time I thought
that I should hardly have got back.”

“But you didn’t say anything about it,” persisted his wife.

“I didn’t want to alarm you, my dear,” said Mr. Chalk.

Mrs. Chalk looked at him, but, except for a long, shivering sigh which
the visitor took for sympathy, made no comment.

“I often think that I must have missed a great deal by keeping single,”
said the latter. “It must be very pleasant when you’re away to know that
there is somebody at home counting the minutes until your return.”

Mr. Chalk permitted himself one brief wondering glance in the speaker’s
direction, and then gazed out of window.

“There’s no companion like a wife,” continued the captain. “Nobody else
can quite share your joys and sorrows as she can. I’ve often thought how
pleasant it must be to come home from a journey and tell your wife all
about it: where you’ve been, what you’ve done, and what you’re going to
do.”

Mr. Chalk stole another look at him; Mrs. Chalk, somewhat suspicious,
followed his example.

“It’s a pity you never married, Captain Bowers,” she said, at length;
“most men seem to do all they can to keep things _from_ their wives.
But one of these days——”

She finished the sentence by an expressive glance at her husband.
Captain Bowers, suddenly enlightened, hastened to change the subject.

“I haven’t seen Tredgold or Stobell either,” he said, gazing fixedly at
Mr. Chalk.

“They—they were talking about you only the other day,” said that
gentleman, nervously. “Is Miss Drewitt well?”

“Quite well,” said the captain, briefly. “I was beginning to think you
had all left Binchester,” he continued; “gone for a sea voyage or
something.”

Mr. Chalk laughed uneasily. “I thought that Joseph wasn’t looking very
well the last time I saw you,” he said, with an imploring glance at the
captain to remind him of the presence of Mrs. Chalk.

“Joseph’s all right,” replied the other, “so is the parrot.”

Mr. Chalk started and said that he was glad to hear it, and sat trying
to think of a safe subject for conversation.

“Joseph’s a nice parrot,” he said at last. “The parrot’s a nice lad, I
mean.”

“Thomas!” said Mrs. Chalk.

“Joseph-is-a-nice-lad,” said Mr. Chalk, recovering himself. “I have
often thought——”

The sentence was never completed, being interrupted by a thundering
rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which
indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction
to “Ring also.” The door was opened and a man’s voice was heard in the
hall—a loud, confident voice, at the sound of which Mr. Chalk, with one
horrified glance in the direction of Captain Bowers, sank back in his
chair and held his breath.

“Captain Brisket,” said the maid, opening the door.

The captain came in with a light, bustling step, and, having shaken Mr.
Chalk’s hand with great fervour and acknowledged the presence of Captain
Bowers and Mrs. Chalk by two spasmodic jerks of the head, sat
bolt-upright on the edge of a chair and beamed brightly upon the
horrified Chalk.

“I’ve got news,” he said, hoarsely.

“News?” said the unfortunate Mr. Chalk, faintly.

“Ah!” said Brisket, nodding. “News! I’ve got her at last.”

Mrs. Chalk started.

“I’ve got her,” continued Captain Brisket, with an air of great
enjoyment; “and a fine job I had of it, I can tell you. Old Todd said he
couldn’t bear parting with her. Once or twice I thought he meant it.”

Mr. Chalk made a desperate effort to catch his eye, but in vain. It was
fixed in reminiscent joy on the ceiling.

“We haggled about her for days,” continued Brisket; “but at last I won.
The _Fair Emily_ is yours, sir.”

“The fair _who_?” cried Mrs. Chalk, in a terrible voice. “Emily _who_?
Emily _what_?”

Captain Brisket turned and regarded her in amazement.

“Emily _who_?” repeated Mrs. Chalk.

“Why, it’s—” began Brisket.

“_H’sh!_” said Mr. Chalk, desperately. “It’s a secret.”

“It’s a secret,” said Captain Brisket, nodding calmly at Mrs. Chalk.

Wrath and astonishment held her for the moment breathless. Mr. Chalk,
caught between his wife and Captain Bowers, fortified himself with
memories of the early martyrs and gave another warning glance at
Brisket. For nearly two minutes that undaunted mariner met the gaze of
Mrs. Chalk without flinching.

“A—a secret?” gasped the indignant woman at last, as she turned to her
husband. “You sit there and dare to tell me that?”

“It isn’t my secret,” said Mr. Chalk, “else I should tell you at once.”

“It isn’t his secret,” said the complaisant Brisket.

Mrs. Chalk controlled herself by a great effort and, turning to Captain
Brisket, addressed him almost calmly. “Was it Emily that came whistling
over the garden-wall the other night?” she inquired.

“_Whis——?_” said the hapless Brisket, making a noble effort. He
finished the word with a cough and gazed with protruding eyes at Mr.
Chalk. The appearance of that gentleman sobered him at once.

“No,” he said, slowly.

“How do you know?” inquired Mrs. Chalk.

“Because she can’t whistle,” replied Captain Brisket, feeling his way
carefully. “And what’s more, she wouldn’t if she could. She’s been too
well brought up for that.”

He gave a cunning smile at Mr. Chalk, to which that gentleman, having
decided at all hazards to keep the secret from Captain Bowers, made a
ghastly response, and nodded to him to proceed.

“What’s she got to do with my husband?” demanded Mrs. Chalk, her voice
rising despite herself.

“I’m coming to that,” said Brisket, thoughtfully, as he gazed at the
floor in all the agonies of composition; “Mr. Chalk is trying to get her
a new place.”

“New place?” said Mrs. Chalk, in a choking voice.

Captain Brisket nodded. “She ain’t happy where she is,” he explained,
“and Mr. Chalk—out o’ pure good-nature and kindness of heart—is trying
to get her another, and I honour him for it.”

He looked round triumphantly. Mr. Chalk, sitting open-mouthed, was
regarding him with the fascinated gaze of a rabbit before a
boa-constrictor. Captain Bowers was listening with an appearance of
interest which in more favourable circumstances would have been very
flattering.

“You said,” cried Mrs. Chalk—“you said to my husband: ‘The fair Emily is
yours.’”

“So I did,” said Brisket, anxiously—“so I did. And what I say I stick
to. When I said that the—that Emily was his, I meant it. I don’t say
things I don’t mean. That isn’t Bill Brisket’s way.”

“And you said just now that he was getting her a place,” Mrs. Chalk
reminded him, grimly.

“Mr. Chalk understands what I mean,” said Captain Brisket, with dignity.
“When I said ‘She is yours,’ I meant that she is coming here.”

“O-oh!” said Mrs. Chalk, breathlessly. “Oh, indeed! Oh, is she?”

“That is, if her mother’ll let her come,” pursued the enterprising
Brisket, with a look of great artfulness at Mr. Chalk, to call his
attention to the bridge he was building for him; “but the old woman’s
been laid up lately and talks about not being able to spare her.”

Mrs. Chalk sat back helplessly in her chair and gazed from her husband
to Captain Brisket, and from Captain Brisket back to her husband.
Captain Brisket, red-faced and confident, sat upright on the edge of his
chair as though inviting inspection; Mr. Chalk plucked nervously at his
fingers. Captain Bowers suddenly broke silence.

“What’s her tonnage?” he inquired abruptly, turning to Brisket.

“Two hundred and for——”

Captain Brisket stopped dead and, rubbing his nose hard with his
forefinger, gazed thoughtfully at Captain Bowers.

“The _Fair Emily_ is a ship,” said the latter to Mrs. Chalk.

“A _ship_!” cried the bewildered woman. “A ship living with her invalid
mother and coming to my husband to get her a place! Are you trying to
screen him, too?”

“It’s a ship,” repeated Captain Bowers, sternly, as he sought in vain to
meet the eye of Mr. Chalk; “a craft of two hundred and something tons.
For some reason—_best known to himself_—Mr. Chalk wants the matter kept
secret.”

“It—it isn’t my secret,” faltered Mr. Chalk.

“Where’s she lying?” said Captain Bowers.

Mr. Chalk hesitated. “Biddlecombe,” he said, at last.

Captain Brisket laughed noisily and, smacking his leg with his open
hand, smiled broadly upon the company. No response being forthcoming, he
laughed again for his own edification, and sat good-humouredly waiting
events.

“Is this true, Thomas?” demanded Mrs. Chalk.

“Yes, my dear,” was the reply.

“Then why didn’t you tell me, instead of sitting there listening to a
string of falsehoods?”

“I—I wanted to give you a surprise—a pleasant little surprise,” said Mr.
Chalk, with a timid glance at Captain Bowers. “I have bought a share in
a schooner, to go for a little cruise. Just a jaunt for pleasure.”

“Tredgold, Stobell, and Chalk,” said Captain Bowers, very distinctly.

“I wanted to keep it secret until it had been repainted and done up,”
continued Mr. Chalk, watching his wife’s face anxiously, “and then
Captain Brisket came in and spoilt it.”

“That’s me, ma’am,” said the gentleman mentioned, shaking his head
despairingly. “That’s Bill Brisket all over. I come blundering in, and
the first thing I do is to blurt out secrets; then, when I try to smooth
it over——”

Mrs. Chalk paid no heed. Alluding to the schooner as “our yacht,” she
at once began to discuss the subject of the voyage, the dresses she
would require, and the rival merits of shutting the house up or putting
the servants on board wages. Under her skilful hands, aided by a few
suggestions of Captain Brisket’s, the _Fair Emily_ was in the short
space of twenty minutes transformed into one of the most luxurious
yachts that ever sailed the seas. Mr. Chalk’s heart failed him as he
listened. His thoughts were with his partners in the enterprise, and he
trembled as he thought of their comments.

“It will do Mrs. Stobell a lot of good,” said his wife, suddenly.

Mr. Chalk, about to speak, checked himself and blew his nose instead.
The romance of the affair was beginning to evaporate. He sat in a state
of great dejection, until Captain Bowers, having learned far more than
he had anticipated, shook hands with impressive gravity and took his
departure.

The captain walked home deep in thought, with a prolonged stare at the
windows of Tredgold’s office as he passed. The present whereabouts of
the map was now quite clear, and at the top of Dialstone Lane he stopped
and put his hand to his brow in consternation, as he thought of the
elaborate expedition that was being fitted out for the recovery of the
treasure.

Prudence, who was sitting in the window reading, looked up at his
entrance and smiled.

“Edward Tredgold has been in to see you,” she remarked.

The captain nodded. “Couldn’t he stop?” he inquired.

“I don’t know,” said his niece; “I didn’t see him. I was upstairs when
he came.”

Captain Bowers looked perturbed. “Didn’t you come down?” he inquired.

“I sent down word that I had a headache,” said Miss Drewitt, carelessly.

Despite his sixty odd years the captain turned a little bit pink. “I
hope you are better now,” he said, at last.

“Oh, yes,” said his niece; “it wasn’t very bad. It’s strange that I
should have a headache so soon after you; looks as though they’re in the
family, doesn’t it?”

Somewhat to the captain’s relief she took up her book again without
waiting for a reply, and sat reading until Mr. Tasker brought in the
tea. The captain, who was in a very thoughtful mood, drank cup after cup
in silence, and it was not until the meal was cleared away and he had
had a few soothing whiffs at his pipe that he narrated the events of the
afternoon.

“There!” said Prudence, her eyes sparkling with indignation. “What did I
say? Didn’t I tell you that those three people would be taking a holiday
soon? The idea of Mr. Tredgold venturing to come round here this
afternoon!”

“He knows nothing about it,” protested the captain.

Miss Drewitt shook her head obstinately. “We shall see,” she remarked.
“The idea of those men going after your treasure after you had said it
wasn’t to be touched! Why, it’s perfectly dishonest!”

The captain blew a cloud of smoke from his mouth and watched it
disperse. “Perhaps they won’t find it,” he murmured.

“They’ll find it,” said his niece, confidently. “Why shouldn’t they?
This Captain Brisket will find the island, and the rest will be easy.”

“They might not find the island,” said the captain, blowing a cloud so
dense that his face was almost hidden. “Some of these little islands
have been known to disappear quite suddenly. Volcanic action, you know.
What are you smiling at?” he added, sharply.

“Thoughts,” said Miss Drewitt, clasping her hands round her knee and
smiling again. “I was thinking how odd it would be if the island sank
just as they landed upon it.”




CHAPTER XII


Mr. Chalk, when half-awake next morning, tried to remember Mr. Stobell’s
remarks of the night before; fully awake, he tried to forget them. He
remembered, too, with a pang that Tredgold had been content to enact the
part of a listener, and had made no attempt to check the somewhat
unusual fluency of the aggrieved Mr. Stobell. The latter’s last
instructions were that Mrs. Chalk was to be told, without loss of time,
that her presence on the schooner was not to be thought of.

With all this on his mind Mr. Chalk made but a poor breakfast, and his
appetite was not improved by his wife’s enthusiastic remarks concerning
the voyage. Breakfast over, she dispatched a note to Mrs. Stobell by the
housemaid, with instructions to wait for a reply. Altogether six notes
passed during the morning, and Mr. Chalk, who hazarded a fair notion as
to their contents, became correspondingly gloomy.

“We’re to go up there at five,” said his wife, after reading the last
note. “Mr. Stobell will be at tea at that time, and we’re to drop in as
though by accident.”

“What for?” inquired Mr. Chalk, affecting surprise. “Go up where?”

“To talk to Mr. Stobell,” said his wife, grimly. “Fancy, poor Mrs.
Stobell says that she is sure he won’t let her come. I wish he was my
husband, that’s all.”

Mr. Chalk muttered something about “doing a little gardening.”

“You can do that another time,” said Mrs. Chalk, coldly. “I’ve noticed
you’ve been very fond of gardening lately.”

The allusion was too indirect to contest, but Mr. Chalk reddened despite
himself, and his wife, after regarding his confusion with a questioning
eye, left him to his own devices and his conscience.

Mr. Stobell and his wife had just sat down to tea when they arrived, and
Mrs. Stobell, rising from behind a huge tea-pot, gave a little cry of
surprise as her friend entered the room, and kissed her affectionately.

“Well, who would have thought of seeing you?” she cried. “Sit down.”

Mrs. Chalk sat down at the large table opposite Mr. Stobell; Mr. Chalk,
without glancing in his wife’s direction, seated himself by that
gentleman’s side.

“Well, weren’t you surprised?” inquired Mrs. Chalk, loudly, as her
hostess passed her a cup of tea.

“Surprised?” said Mrs. Stobell, curiously.

“Why, hasn’t Mr. Stobell told you?” exclaimed Mrs. Chalk.

“Told me?” repeated Mrs. Stobell, glancing indignantly at the wide-open
eyes of Mr. Chalk. “Told me what?”

It was now Mrs. Chalk’s turn to appear surprised, and she did it so well
that Mr. Chalk choked in his tea-cup. “About the yachting trip,” she
said, with a glance at her husband that made his choking take on a
ventriloquial effect of distance.

“He—he didn’t say anything to me about it,” said Mrs. Stobell, timidly.

She glanced at her husband, but Mr. Stobell, taking an enormous bite out
of a slice of bread and butter, made no sign.

“It’ll do you a world of good,” said Mrs. Chalk, affectionately. “It’ll
put a little colour in your cheeks.”

Mrs. Stobell flushed. She was a faded little woman; faded eyes, faded
hair, faded cheeks. It was even whispered that her love for Mr. Stobell
was beginning to fade.

“And I don’t suppose you’ll mind the sea-sickness after you get used to
it,” said the considerate Mr. Chalk, “and the storms, and the cyclones,
and fogs, and collisions, and all that sort of thing.”

“If you can stand it, she can,” said his wife, angrily.

“But I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Stobell, appealingly. “What yachting
trip?”

Mrs. Chalk began to explain; Mr. Stobell helped himself to another
slice, and, except for a single glance under his heavy brows at Mr.
Chalk, appeared to be oblivious of his surroundings.

“It sounds very nice,” said Mrs. Stobell, after her friend had finished
her explanation. “Perhaps it might do me good. I have tried a great many
things.”

“Mr. Stobell ought to have taken you for a voyage long before,” said
Mrs. Chalk, with conviction. “Still, better late than never.”

“The only thing is,” said Mr. Chalk, speaking with an air of great
benevolence, “that if the sea _didn’t_ suit Mrs. Stobell, she would be
unable to get away from it. And, of course, it _might_ upset her very
much.”

Mr. Stobell wiped some crumbs from his moustache and looked up.

“No, it won’t,” he said, briefly.

“Is she a good sailor?” queried Mr. Chalk, somewhat astonished at such a
remark from that quarter.

“Don’t know,” said Mr. Stobell, passing his cup up. “But this trip won’t
upset her—she ain’t going.”

Mrs. Chalk exclaimed loudly and exchanged glances of consternation with
Mrs. Stobell; Mr. Stobell, having explained the position, took some more
bread and butter and munched placidly.

“Don’t you think it would do her good?” said Mrs. Chalk, at last.

“Might,” said Mr. Stobell, slowly, “and then, again, it mightn’t.”

“But there’s no harm in trying,” persisted Mrs. Chalk.

Mr. Stobell made no reply. Having reached his fifth slice he was now
encouraging his appetite with apricot jam.

“And it’s so cheap,” continued Mrs. Chalk. “That’s the way I look at
it. If she shuts up the house and gets rid of the servants, same as I
am going to do, it will save a lot of money.”

She glanced at Mr. Stobell, whose slowly working jaws and knitted brows
appeared to indicate deep thought, and then gave a slight triumphant nod
at his wife.

“Servants are so expensive,” she murmured. “Really, I shouldn’t be
surprised if we saved money on the whole affair. And then think of her
health. She has never quite recovered from that attack of bronchitis.
She has never looked the same woman since. Think of your feelings if
anything happened to her. Nothing would bring her back to you if once
she went.”

“Went where?” inquired Mr. Stobell, who was not attending very much.

“If she died, I mean,” said Mrs. Chalk, shortly.

“We’ve all got to die some day,” said the philosophic Mr. Stobell.
“She’s forty-six.”

Mrs. Stobell interposed. “Not till September, Robert,” she said, almost
firmly.

“It wouldn’t be nice to be buried at sea,” remarked Mr. Chalk,
contributing his mite to the discussion. “Of course, it’s very
impressive; but to be left down there all alone while the ship sails on
must be very hard.”

Mrs. Stobell’s eyes began to get large. “I’m feeling quite well,” she
gasped.

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Chalk, with a threatening glance at her husband.
“Of course, we know that. But a voyage would do you good. You can’t deny
that.”

Mrs. Stobell, fumbling for her handkerchief, said in a tremulous voice
that she had no wish to deny it. Mr. Stobell, appealed to by the
energetic Mrs. Chalk, admitted at once that it might do his wife good,
but that it wouldn’t him.

“We’re going to be three jolly bachelors,” he declared, and, first
nudging Mr. Chalk to attract his attention, deliberately winked at him.

“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Chalk, drawing herself up; “but you forget
that I am coming.”

“Two jolly bachelors, then,” said the undaunted Stobell.

“No,” said Mrs. Chalk, shaking her head, “I am not going alone; if Mrs.
Stobell can’t come I would sooner stay at home.”

Mr. Stobell’s face cleared; his mouth relaxed and his dull eyes got
almost kindly. With the idea of calling the attention of Mr. Chalk to
the pleasing results of a little firmness he placed his foot upon that
gentleman’s toe and bore heavily.

“Best place for you,” he said to Mrs. Chalk. “There’s no place like home
for ladies. You can have each other to tea every day if you like. In
fact, there’s no reason——” he paused and looked at his wife, half
doubtful that he was conceding too much—“there’s no reason why you
shouldn’t sleep at each other’s sometimes.”

He helped himself to some cake and, rendered polite by good-nature,
offered some to Mrs. Chalk.

“Mind, I shall not go unless Mrs. Stobell goes,” said the latter, waving
the plate away impatiently; “that I am determined upon.”

Mr. Chalk, feeling that appearances required it, ventured on a mild—a
very mild—remonstrance.

“And he,” continued Mrs. Chalk, sternly, indicating her husband with a
nod, “doesn’t go without me—not a single step, not an inch of the way.”

Mr. Chalk collapsed and sat staring at her in dismay. Mr. Stobell,
placing both hands on the table, pushed his chair back and eyed her
disagreeably.

“It seems to me——” he began.

“I know,” said Mrs. Chalk, speaking with some rapidity—“I know just how
it seems to you. But that’s how it is. If you want my husband to go you
have got to have me too, and if you have me you have got to have your
wife, and if——”

“What, is there any more of you coming?” demanded Mr. Stobell, with
great bitterness.

Mrs. Chalk ignored the question. “_My_ husband wouldn’t be happy
without _me_,” she said, primly. “Would you, Thomas?”

“No,” said Mr. Chalk, with a gulp.

“We—we’re going a long way,” said Mr. Stobell, after a long pause.

“Longer the better,” retorted Mrs. Chalk.

“We’re going among savages,” continued Mr. Stobell, casting about for
arguments; “cannibal savages.”

“They won’t eat her,” said Mrs. Chalk, with a passing glance at the
scanty proportions of her friend, “not while you’re about.”

“I don’t like to take my wife into danger,” said Mr. Stobell, with surly
bashfulness; “I’m—I’m too fond of her for that. And she don’t want to
come. Do you, Alice?”

“No,” said Mrs. Stobell, dutifully, “but I want to share your dangers,
Robert.”

“Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without any trimmings,” commanded her husband,
as he intercepted a look passing between her and Mrs. Chalk.
“Do—you—want—to—come?”

Mrs. Stobell trembled. “I don’t want to prevent Mr. Chalk from going,”
she murmured.

“Never mind about him,” said Mr. Stobell.

“_Do—you—want—to—come?_”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Stobell.

Her husband, hardly able to believe his ears, gazed at her in
bewilderment. “Very well, then,” he said, in a voice that made the
tea-cups rattle. “+Come!+”

He sat with bent brows gazing at the table as Mrs. Chalk, her face
wreathed in triumphant smiles, began to discuss yachting costumes and
other necessities of ocean travel with the quivering Mrs. Stobell.
Unable to endure it any longer he rose and, in a voice by no means
alluring, invited Mr. Chalk into the garden to smoke a pipe; Mr. Chalk,
helping himself to two pieces of cake as evidence, said that he had not
yet finished his tea. Owing partly to lack of appetite and partly to the
face which Mr. Stobell pressed to the window every other minute to
entice him out, he made but slow progress.

The matter was discussed next day as they journeyed down to Biddlecombe
with Mr. Tredgold to complete the purchase of the schooner, the views of
the latter gentleman coinciding so exactly with those of Mr. Stobell
that Mr. Chalk was compelled to listen to the same lecture twice.

Under this infliction his spirits began to droop, nor did they revive
until, from the ferry-boat, his eyes fell upon the masts of the Fair
Emily, and the trim figure of Captain Brisket standing at the foot of
the steps awaiting their arrival.

“We’ve had a stroke of good luck, gentlemen,” said Brisket, in a husky
whisper, as they followed him up the steps. “See that man?”

He pointed to a thin, dismal-looking man, standing a yard or two away,
who was trying to appear unconscious of their scrutiny.

“Peter Duckett,” said Brisket, in the same satisfied whisper.

Mr. Stobell, ever willing for a free show, stared at the dismal man and
groped in the recesses of his memory. The name seemed familiar.

“The man who ate three dozen hard-boiled eggs in four minutes?” he
asked, with a little excitement natural in the circumstances.

Captain Brisket stared at him. “No; Peter Duckett, the finest mate that
ever sailed,” he said, with a flourish. “We’re lucky to have the chance
of getting him, I can tell you. To see him handle sailormen is a
revelation; to see him handle a ship——”

He broke off and shook his head with the air of a man who despaired of
doing justice to his subject. “These are the gentlemen, Peter,” he said,
introducing them with a wave of his hand.

Mr. Duckett raised his cap, and tugging at a small patch of
reddish-brown hair strangely resembling a door-mat in texture, which
grew at the base of his chin, cleared his throat and said it was a fine
morning.

“Not much of a talker is Peter,” said the genial Brisket. “He’s a
doer; that’s what he is—a doer. Now, if you’re willing—and I hope you
are—he’ll come aboard with us and talk the matter over.”

This proposition being assented to after a little delay on the part of
Mr. Stobell, who appeared to think Mr. Duckett’s lack of connection with
the hard-boiled eggs somewhat suspicious, they proceeded to Todd’s Wharf
and made a thorough inspection of the schooner. Mr. Chalk’s eyes grew
bright and his step elastic. He roamed from forecastle to cabin and from
cabin to galley, and, his practice with the crow’s-nest in Dialstone
Lane standing him in good stead, wound up by ascending to the masthead
and waving to his astonished friends below.

Mr. Todd came on board as he regained the deck, and, stroking his white
beard, regarded him with an air of benevolent interest.

“There’s no ill-feeling,” he said, as Mr. Chalk eyed his outstretched
hand somewhat dubiously. “You’re a hard nut, that’s what you are, and
I pity anybody that has the cracking of you. A man that could come
and offer me seventy pounds for a craft like this—seventy pounds,
mind you,” he added, with a rising colour, as he turned to the others
“seventy pounds, and a face like a baby. Why, when I think of it,
+damme if i don’t——+”

Captain Brisket laid his hand on his arm and with soothing words led
him below. His voice was heard booming in the cabin until at length
it ended in a roar of laughter, and Captain Brisket, appearing at the
companion, beckoned them below, with a whispered injunction to Mr.
Chalk to keep as much in the background as possible.

The business was soon concluded, and Mr. Chalk’s eye brightened
again as he looked on his new property. Captain Brisket, in high
good-humour, began to talk of accommodation, and, among other things,
suggested a scheme of cutting through the bulkhead at the foot of the
companion-ladder and building a commodious cabin with three berths in
the hold.

“There are two ladies coming,” said Mr. Chalk.

Captain Brisket rubbed his chin. “I’d forgotten that,” he said, slowly.
“Two, did you say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Stobell, fixing him with his left eye and
slowly veiling the right. “You go on with them alterations. One of the
ladies can have your state-room and the other the mate’s bunk.”

“Where are Captain Brisket and the mate to sleep?” inquired Mr. Chalk.

“Anywhere,” replied Mr. Stobell. “With the crew if they like.”

Captain Brisket, looking suddenly very solemn, shook his head and said
that it was impossible. He spoke in moving terms of the danger to
discipline, and called upon Mr. Duckett to confirm his fears. Meantime,
Mr. Stobell, opening his right eye slowly, winked with the left.

“You go on with them alterations,” he repeated.

Captain Brisket started and reflected. A nod from Mr. Tredgold and a
significant gesture in the direction of the unconscious Mr. Chalk
decided him. “Very good, gentlemen,” he said, cheerfully. “I’m in your
hands, and Peter Ducket’ll do what I do. It’s settled he’s coming, I
suppose?”

Mr. Tredgold, after a long look at the anxious face of Mr. Duckett, said
“Yes,” and then at Captain Brisket’s suggestion the party adjourned to
the Jack Ashore, where in a little room upstairs, not much larger than
the schooner’s cabin, the preparations for the voyage were discussed in
detail.

“And mind, Peter,” said Captain Brisket to his friend, as the pair
strolled along by the harbour after their principals had departed, “the
less you say about this the better. We don’t want any Biddlecombe men in
it.”

“Why not?” inquired the other.

“Because,” replied Brisket, lowering his voice, “there’s more in this
than meets the eye. They’re not the sort to go on a cruise to the
islands for pleasure—except Chalk, that is. I’ve been keeping my ears
open, and there’s something afoot. D’ye take me?”

Mr. Duckett nodded shrewdly.

“I’ll pick a crew for ’em,” said Brisket. “A man here and a man there.
Biddlecombe men ain’t tough enough. And now, what about that whisky
you’ve been talking so much about?”




CHAPTER XIII


Further secrecy as to the projected trip being now useless, Mr. Tredgold
made the best of the situation and talked freely concerning it. To the
astonished Edward he spoke feelingly of seeing the world before the
insidious encroachments of age should render it impossible; to Captain
Bowers, whom he met in the High Street, he discussed destinations with
the air of a man whose mind was singularly open on the subject. If he
had any choice it appeared that it was in the direction of North
America.

“You might do worse,” said the captain, grimly.

“Chalk,” said Mr. Tredgold, meditatively—“Chalk favours the South. I
think that he got rather excited by your description of the islands
there. He is a very——”

“If you are going to try and find that island I spoke about,”
interrupted the captain, impatiently, “I warn you solemnly that you are
wasting both your time and your money. If I had known of this voyage I
would have told you so before. If you take my advice you’ll sell your
schooner and stick to business you understand.”

Mr. Tredgold laughed easily. “We may look for it if we go that way,” he
said. “I believe that Chalk has bought a trowel, in case we run up
against it. He has got a romantic belief in coincidences, you know.”

“Very good,” said the captain, turning away. “Only don’t blame me,
whatever happens. You can’t say I have not warned you.”

He clutched his stick by

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