A curious stiffening came over Cuthbert Vane.  For the first time in my knowledge of him he showed the consciousness—­instead of only the sub-consciousness—­of the difference between Norman blood and the ordinary sanguine fluid.  His shoulders squared; he lost his habitual easy lounge and sat erect and tall.  Something stern and aquiline showed through the smooth beauty of his face, so that you thought of effigies of crusading knights stretched on their ancient tombs in High Staunton church.  He was their true descendant after all, this slow, calm, gentle-mannered Cuthbert.  It was a young lion that I had been playing with, and the claws were there, strong and terrible in their velvet sheath.

Captain Tony, having finished his pipe, knocked the ashes out against the heel of his boot and put the pipe in his pocket.

“Well,” he said, stretching, “I’d ruther have a nap, but business is business, so let’s get down to it.  Which o’ them guys has the line on the stuff, Magnus?”

“Old Baldy, here,” returned Magnus, with a nod at Mr. Tubbs.  “Old Washtubs I call him generally, ha, ha!”

“Then looky here, Washtubs,” said Tony, addressing Mr. Tubbs with sudden sternness, “maybe you could bluff these here soft guys, but we’re a different breed o’ cats, we are.  Whatever you know, you’ll come through with it and come quick, or it’ll be the worse for your hide, see?”

Mr. Tubbs rose from the log with promptness.

“Captain,” he said earnestly, “from long experience in the financial centers of the country, I have got to be a man what understands human nature.  The minute I looked at you, I seen it in your eye that there wasn’t no use in tryin’ to bluff you.  What’s more, I don’t want to.  Once he gets with a congenial crowd, there ain’t a feller anywheres that will do more in the cause o’ friendship than old Hamilton H. Tubbs.  And you are a congenial crowd, you boys—­gosh, but you do look good to me after the bunch o’ stiffs I been playin’ up to here!  All I ask is, to let me in on it with you, and I’ll be glad to put you wise to the best tricks of a sly old fox who ain’t ever been caught yet without two holes to his burrow.  I won’t ask no half, nor no quarter, either, though I jest signed up for that amount with the old girl here.  But give me freedom, and a bunch o’ live wires like you boys!  I’ve near froze into a plaster figure o’ Virtue, what with talkin’ like a Sunday-school class, and sparkin’ one old maid, and makin’ out like I wouldn’t melt butter with the other.  So H. H. will ship along of you, mates, and we’ll off to the China coast somewheres where the spendin’ is good and the police not too nosy, and try how far a trunkful of doubloons will go!”