“Knows me, ma’am?” I cried out, as all the company turned and stared at me.

“He says so, and that he recognized you as you were sculling up the creek.”

“Knows me?” I echoed.  “But who on earth can he be, then?  Not—­not the man Aaron Glass, surely?”

“I was wondering,” said Miss Belcher.

“But—­but Aaron Glass wasn’t a bit like this man, as you make him out; a thin, foxy-looking fellow, with sandy hair and a face full of wrinkles, about the middling height, with sloping shoulders—­”

“Then he can’t be Aaron Glass.  But whoever he is, he knows you—­ that’s the important point—­and pretty certainly connects you with the treasure.  He didn’t seem to have met Goodfellow before.  Well, now, if he lives alone here—­which, I admit, is not likely—­we ought to be more than a match for him.  If, on the other hand, he has men at his call—­and I ask your particular attention here, Captain—­ it was surely no folly at all, but the plainest common sense, to admit him on board.  He will go off and report that our ship’s company consists of two middle-aged maiden ladies (I occupied myself with tatting a chair-cover while he conversed); a boy; Mr. Goodfellow (whatever he may have made of Goodfellow); and two gentlemen ashore to whose mental and physical powers I was careful to do some injustice.  You will pardon me, Captain, but I laid more than warrantable stress on your lameness; and us for you, Jack, I depicted you as a mere country booby”—­here Mr. Rogers bowed amiably—­“and added by way of confirmation that I had known you from childhood.  He will go back and report all this, with the certain consequence that he and his confederates will mistake us for a crew of crack-brained eccentrics.”

When she had done, the Captain stood considering for a moment, rubbing his chin.

“Yes,” he admitted slowly, “there seems reason in that, ma’am; reason and method.  But ’tis a kind of reason and method outside all my experience, and you must excuse me if I get the grip of it slowly.  I should like a good look at the man before saying more.”

“As to that,” answered Miss Belcher, “you won’t have long to wait for it.  He has invited us all ashore to-morrow, for a picnic.  He charged me to say—­if he did not happen to run against you as he was returning the cockboat—­that he would be at the creek-head punctually at nine-thirty to await us.”

Two hours later Captain Branscome sent word for me to attend him in his cabin.

“I want to tell you, Harry Brooks,” said the old man, turning away from me while he lit his pipe, “that I have been thinking over what happened this afternoon.”

“I was in the wrong, sir.”