“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.