seemed vain and hope dead.  He maintained his serenity, and calmly calculated pounds and shillings with all the methodic coolness of a banker’s clerk.  On the Sunday evening he was asked to confer privately with Mr. Cassall, and Ferrier was left free.  Of course Lewis proposed a stroll in the grounds—­what young man would have missed the opportunity?—­and he listened delightedly to that musical, girlish talk for which he had longed during his tremendous vigils on the Sea of Storms.

Miss Ranken was in a flutter of exultation.  “Did you ever know any one so clever as Marion?” she inquired, with quite the air of an elderly person accustomed to judge intellects.  “We knew she could do anything with Mr. Cassall, but we never expected this.  And now, Mr. Ferrier, you won’t go and get drowned in nasty cabins any more, and you’ll have your sailors all under your eye, and no more degenerate sea-sick ladies to plague you.  Why, now we’ve made a start, we must capture some more millionaires, and we’ll have a vessel with every fleet, and no sick men lying on grimy floors.  By the way, what a capital association that would be—­The Royal Society for the Capture of Millionaires.  President and Organizing Director, Marion Dearsley; Treasurer, Lena Ranken; General Agent for Great Britain and the Colonies, Lewis Ferrier!  Wouldn’t that be splendid?  I begin to feel quite like an administrator.”

This was the very longest speech that Miss Ranken was ever known to make, and she was applauded for her remarkable excursion into practical affairs.

“You must tell us a little more about your winter, Mr. Ferrier.  Lena hasn’t heard half enough,” observed the stately “little jilt” when the cataract of Miss Ranken’s eloquence had ceased flowing.

“Better wait until the meeting, Miss Dearsley.  Then, if you are satisfied, I may be able to do something in different places.”

“But you will tell us how Tom Betts fared in the end?”

“He was well and at work when we left his fleet, and he had established a sort of elaborate myth, with you as central figure.  I’m afraid you would never recognize your own doings if you heard his version of them.  Tom’s imagination is distinctly active.  We had no bad mishaps with our men, but it was a dreadful time.”

“I think you seem to be more solemn and older than when you went away first, Mr. Ferrier,” remarked the Treasurer of the Capturers.

“One ages fast there; I really lived a good deal.  One life isn’t enough for that work.  I suppose the Englishmen began working on the Banks two hundred years ago, and we have all that time of neglect to make up.”

“Yes.  I wonder now what was the use of our ancestors.  My brother says that no philosopher has ever discovered the ultimate uses of babies; I wonder if any one can tell the uses of those blundering, silly old ancestors of ours.  As far as I can see, we have to put up with all sorts of horrid things, and you have to go and get wet on dirty fishing-boats, just because our ancestors neglected their proper business and stayed lazy at home.”