Such was the man, who, two weeks after graduation from Harvard, was pacing up and down the deck of Mr. Pierce’s yacht, the “Sunrise,” as she drifted with the tide in Long Island Sound.  Yet if his expression, as he walked, could for a moment have been revealed to those seated aft, the face that all thought dull and uninteresting would have riveted their attention, and set each one questioning whether there might not be something both heroic and romantic underneath.  The set determination of his look can best be explained by telling what had given his face such rigid lines.

CHAPTER III.

A Crab chapter.

Mr. Pierce and those about him had clearly indicated by the conversation, or rather monologue, already recorded, that Peter was in a sense an odd number in the “Sunrise’s” complement of pleasure-seekers.  Whether or no Mr. Pierce’s monologue also indicated that he was not a map who dealt in odd numbers, or showered hospitality on sons of mill-overseers, the fact was nevertheless true.  “For value received,” or “I hereby promise to pay,” were favorite formulas of Mr. Pierce, and if not actually written in such invitations as he permitted his wife to write at his dictation to people whom he decided should be bidden to the Shrubberies, a longer or shorter time would develop the words, as if written in sympathetic ink.  Yet Peter had had as pressing an invitation and as warm a welcome at Mr. Pierce’s country place as had any of the house-party ingathered during the first week of July.  Clearly something made him of value to the owner of the Shrubberies.  That something was his chum, Watts D’Alloi.

Peter and Watts were such absolute contrasts that it seemed impossible that they could have an interest or sympathy, in common.  Therefore they had become chums.  A chance in their freshman year had brought them together.  Watts, with the refined and delicate sense of humor abounding in collegians, had been concerned with sundry freshmen in an attempt to steal (or, in collegiate terms, “rag”) the chapel Bible, with a view to presenting it to some equally subtle humorists at Yale, expecting a similar courtesy in return from that college.  Unfortunately for the joke, the college authorities had had the bad taste to guard against the annually attempted substitution.  Two of the marauders were caught, while Watts only escaped by leaving his coat in the hands of the watchers.  Even then he would have been captured had he not met Peter in his flight, and borrowed the latter’s coat, in which he reached his room without detection.  Peter was caught by the pursuers, and summoned before the faculty, but he easily proved that the captured coat was not his, and that he had but just parted from one of the tutors, making it certain that he could not have been an offender.  There was some talk of expelling him for aiding and abetting in the true culprit’s escape, and for refusing to tell