“She’s ugly enough, in all conscience,” commented Parson Jack.

“She’s a holy terror.  But perhaps you don’t believe in turrets.  Nor do I, to that extent.  It’s tempting Providence.”

“In what way?”

“Top-hamper,” said Dick shortly.  “But she’s a terror all the same.”

“What’s her name, I wonder?”

“Sakes!  You don’t say you don’t know the old Devastation? Why, it’s fifteen years or so since they launched her at Portsmouth, and I hear tell she’ll have to be reconstructed, though even then I guess they won’t trust her far at sea.  She has no speed, either, for these days.  Oh, she’s a holy fraud!” And Master Dick poured in a broadside of expert criticism as the monster felt her way and slowly headed around the Winter Buoy into the Smeaton Pass.

“Nevertheless, you wouldn’t object to be on board of her?”

“Don’t!” The boy’s eyes had filled on a sudden.  “You mayn’t mean it, but it—­it hurts.”

Four hours later, in the early dusk, Parson Jack stepped into the street, after shaking hands with Major Bromham at the door.  What is more, the Major stood bareheaded in the doorway for some moments, and stared after him.  Dick had echoed Lawyer Cudmore once that day; it was now the Major’s turn to echo Dick.

“That’s a white man,” he muttered to himself.  “Curiously like his brother, too—­in the days before he went wrong.  But Lionel Flood had a soft strake in him, and India found it out.  This parson seems tougher—­ result of hard work and plain living, no doubt.”

His musings at this point grew involved, and he frowned.  “Says he knew nothing of Lionel’s affairs—­offers to show me all the letters to prove it; but this behaviour of his is proof enough.  Deuced handsome behaviour, too.  I wonder if he can afford it?  Gad, what a pack of falsehoods that woman has poured into me!  She always had a gift of circumstantial lying.  I believe, if Lionel had kept a tight rein on her and shown her the whip now and then—­but what’s the use of speculating?  Anyway, it’s rough on the Parson, and if I hadn’t to consider Dick and the girls—­”

Dusk had given way to gaslight, and Parson Jack still paced the streets, intending but still deferring to find a dinner and a night’s lodging.  He had shaken hands with Major Bromham in a mood of curious exaltation.  He had decided almost without a struggle.  To his mind the question was a clear one of right and wrong, and no argument helped it.  Still, a man does not renounce five thousand pounds every day of his life; and, when he does, has some right to pat his conscience on the back.  He derived some pleasure, too, from picturing the pretty gratitude with which his beneficiaries would hear Major Bromham’s message.  He did not know Mrs. Flood.