“There!” she cried; “you see, Mr. Loudon, we were all prepared for you; the things were bought the very day you sailed.”

I imagined she had always intended me a pleasant welcome; but the certain fervour of sincerity, which I could not help remarking, flowed from an unexpected source.  Captain Nares, with a kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, had stolen a moment from his occupations, driven to call on Mamie, and drawn her a generous picture of my prowess at the wreck.  She was careful not to breathe a word of this interview, till she had led me on to tell my adventures for myself.

“Ah!  Captain Nares was better,” she cried, when I had done.  “From your account, I have only learned one new thing, that you are modest as well as brave.”

I cannot tell with what sort of disclamation I sought to reply.

“It is of no use,” said Mamie.  “I know a hero.  And when I heard of you working all day like a common labourer, with your hands bleeding and your nails broken—­and how you told the captain to ‘crack on’ (I think he said) in the storm, when he was terrified himself—­and the danger of that horrid mutiny”—­(Nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse)—­“and how it was all done, in part at least, for Jim and me—­I felt we could never say how we admired and thanked you.”

“Mamie,” I cried, “don’t talk of thanks; it is not a word to be used between friends.  Jim and I have been prosperous together; now we shall be poor together.  We’ve done our best, and that’s all that need be said.  The next thing is for me to find a situation, and send you and Jim up country for a long holiday in the redwoods—­for a holiday Jim has got to have.”

“Jim can’t take your money, Mr. Loudon,” said Mamie.

“Jim?” cried I.  “He’s got to.  Didn’t I take his?”

Presently after, Jim himself arrived, and before he had yet done mopping his brow, he was at me with the accursed subject.  “Now, Loudon,” said he, “here we are all together, the day’s work done and the evening before us; just start in with the whole story.”

“One word on business first,” said I, speaking from the lips outward, and meanwhile (in the private apartments of my brain) trying for the thousandth time to find some plausible arrangement of my story.  “I want to have a notion how we stand about the bankruptcy.”

“O, that’s ancient history,” cried Jim.  “We paid seven cents, and a wonder we did as well.  The receiver——­” (methought a spasm seized him at the name of this official, and he broke off).  “But it’s all past and done with anyway; and what I want to get at is the facts about the wreck.  I don’t seem to understand it; appears to me like as there was something underneath.”

“There was nothing IN it, anyway,” I said, with a forced laugh.

“That’s what I want to judge of,” returned Jim.

“How the mischief is it I can never keep you to that bankruptcy?  It looks as if you avoided it,” said I—­for a man in my situation, with unpardonable folly.