When Paul was lighting the lamps that evening the captain looked up from his papers. "They seem to have been worried about you back in Nova Scotia," he commented.
"Yes, sir." The match trembled in Paul's fingers.
"Your cock and bull story put rather a different face on matters, didn't it?"
Paul bristled and drew himself up with a tinge of theatricality. "I hope I've proved how much in earnest I was," he said.
The captain smiled and puffed at his cigar. "You've earned your wages all right. But I'm afraid you'll have to go back."
Paul's eyes smarted, and he had to remind himself that in a day or two he would be wearing long trousers.
"I'd jump overboard rather than go back to Hale's Turning," he retorted.
The captain tapped his cigar ash into a tray, and Paul could no longer control himself.
"Oh, why are you on their side?" he cried. "If you were a friend of my father's, like Dr. Wilcove said, why do you want to send me back to a hateful, rotten, stuffy school? If you do, I'll only run away again where nobody can find me, so you might as well not!"
"Do you think your father and mother would have approved of your running away?"
Paul glanced up at the old man with a new interest. "Did you know my mother too, sir?"
"For the matter of that," replied the captain, "I knew you, as well. I was mate with Captain Andrew when he took your mother and you on a voyage to Durban. You were pretty young then. From about one to one and a half."
Paul shrank weakly to a settee, forgetful of his stew-
