“Nor I,” said the Cap’n; “but a lot of meditation and a little prayer will do wonders in this world, especially when you’re mad enough.”

XX

The night seemed to afford counsel, for the next day Cap’n Sproul walked into the dooryard of Colonel Gideon Ward with features composed to an almost startling expression of amiability.  The Colonel, haunted by memories and stung by a guilty conscience, appeared at the door, and his mien indicated that he was prepared for instant and desperate combat.

At the end of a half-hour’s discourse, wholly by the Cap’n, his face had lost a measure of its belligerency, but sullen fear had taken its place.  For Cap’n Sproul’s theme had been the need of peace and mutual confidence in families, forbearance and forgetfulness of injuries that had been mutual.  The Cap’n explained that almost always property troubles were the root of family evils, and that as soon as property disputes were eliminated in his case, he at once had come to a realizing sense of his own mistakes and unfair attitude, and had come to make frank and manly confession, and to shake hands.  Would the Colonel shake hands?

The Colonel shook hands apprehensively, bending back and ready to duck a blow.  Would the Colonel consent to mutual forgiveness, and to dwell thereafter in bonds of brotherly affection?  The Colonel had only voiceless stammerings for reply, which the Cap’n translated to his own satisfaction, and went away, casting the radiance of that startling amiability over his shoulder as he departed.  Colonel Ward stared after the pudgy figure as long as it remained in sight, muttering his boding thoughts.

It required daily visits for a week to make satisfactory impress on the Colonel’s mistrustful fears, but the Cap’n was patient.  In the end, Colonel Ward, having carefully viewed this astonishing conversion from all points, accepted the amity as proof of the guileless nature of a simple seaman, and on his own part reciprocated with warmth—­laying up treasures of friendship against that possible day of discovery and wrath that his guilty conscience suggested.

If Colonel Ward, striving to reciprocate, had not been so anxious to please Cap’n Sproul in all his vagaries he would have barked derisive laughter at the mere suggestion of the Captain Kidd treasure, to the subject of which the simple seaman aforesaid led by easy stages.  The Colonel admitted that Mr. Bodge had located a well for him by use of a witch-hazel rod, but allowed that the buried-treasure proposition was too stiff batter for him to swallow.  He did come at last to accept Cap’n Sproul’s dictum that there was once a Captain Kidd, and that he had buried vast wealth somewhere—­for Cap’n Sproul as a sailorman seemed to be entitled to the possession of authority on that subject.  But beyond that point there was reservation that didn’t fit with Cap’n Sproul’s calculations.