While an ancient friendship was thus being dissolved, Mr. Adolphus Swann was on the way to his office.  He could never remember such a pleasant air from the water and such a vivid enjoyment in the sight of the workaday world.  He gazed with delight at the crowd of miscellaneous shipping in the harbour and the bustling figures on the quay, only pausing occasionally to answer anxious inquiries concerning his health from seafaring men in tarry trousers, who had waylaid him with great pains from a distance.

He reached his office at last, and, having acknowledged the respectful greetings of Mr. Silk, passed into the private room, and celebrated his return to work by at once arranging with his partner for a substantial rise in the wages of that useful individual.

“My conscience is troubling me,” he declared, as he hung up his hat and gazed round the room with much relish.

“Silk is happy enough,” said Hardy.  “It is the best thing that could have happened to him.”

“I should like to raise everybody’s wages,” said the benevolent Mr. Swann, as he seated himself at his desk.  “Everything is like a holiday to me after being cooped up in that bedroom; but the rest has done me a lot of good, so Blaikie says.  And now what is going to happen to you?”

[Illustration:  “Pausing occasionally to answer anxious inquiries.”]

Hardy shook his head.

“Strike while the iron is hot,” said the ship-broker.  “Go and see Captain Nugent before he has got used to the situation.  And you can give him to understand, if you like (only be careful how you do it), that I have got something in view which may suit his son.  If you fail in this affair after all I’ve done for you, I’ll enter the lists myself.”

The advice was good, but unnecessary, Mr. Hardy having already fixed on that evening as a suitable opportunity to disclose to the captain the nature of the efforts he had been making on his behalf.  The success which had attended them had put him into a highly optimistic mood, and he set off for Equator Lodge with the confident feeling that he had, to say the least of it, improved his footing there.

Captain Nugent, called away from his labours in the garden, greeted his visitor in his customary short manner as he entered the room.  “If you’ve come to tell me about this marriage, I’ve heard of it,” he said, bluntly.  “Murchison told me this afternoon.”

“He didn’t tell you how it was brought about, I suppose?” said Hardy.

The captain shook his head.  “I didn’t ask him,” he said, with affected indifference, and sat gazing out at the window as Hardy began his narration.  Two or three times he thought he saw signs of appreciation in his listener’s face, but the mouth under the heavy moustache was firm and the eyes steady.  Only when he related Swann’s interview with Nathan Smith and Kybird did the captain’s features relax.  He gave a chuckling cough and, feeling for his handkerchief, blew his nose violently.  Then, with a strange gleam in his eye, he turned to the young man opposite.