“S-sh-sh!  You ought to have known better!  What do you think of me?  Born and brought up within sight and smell of this salt puddle and let myself in for a scrape like this!  But it was so mighty fine off there on the bar I couldn’t bear to leave it.  I always said that goin’ to sea on land would be the ideal way, and now I’ve tried it.  But you took bigger chances than I did.  Are you a good swimmer?”

“Not too good.  I hardly know what might have happened if you hadn’t—­”

“S-sh-sh! that’s all right.  Always glad to pick up a derelict, may be a chance for salvage, you know.  Here’s the last channel and it’s an easy one.  There! now it’s plain sailin’ for dry ground.”

The old horse, breathing heavily from his exertions, trotted over the stretch of yet uncovered flats and soon mounted the slope of the beach.  The minister prepared to alight.

“Captain Hammond,” he said, “you haven’t asked me my name.”

“No, I seldom do more’n once.  There have been times when I’d just as soon cruise without too big letters alongside my figurehead.”

“Well, my name is Ellery.”

“Hey?  What?  Oh, ho! ho! ho!”

He rocked back and forth on the seat.  The minister’s feelings were a bit hurt, though he tried not to show it.

“You mustn’t mind my laughin’,” explained Nat, still chuckling.  “It ain’t at you.  It’s just because I was wonderin’ what you’d look like if I should meet you and now—­Ho! ho!  You see, Mr. Ellery, I’ve heard of you, same as you said you’d heard of me.”

Ellery smiled, but not too broadly.

“Yes,” he admitted, “I imagined you had.”

“Yes, seems to me dad mentioned your name once or twice.  As much as that, anyhow.  Wonder what he’d say if he knew his son had been takin’ you for a mornin’ ride?”

“Probably that it would have been much better to have left me where you found me.”

The captain’s jolly face grew serious.

“No, no!” he protested.  “Not so bad as that.  Dad wouldn’t drown anybody, not even a Regular minister.  He’s a pretty square-built old craft, even though his spiritual chart may be laid out different from yours—­and mine.”

“From yours?  Why, I supposed—­”

“Yes, I know.  Well, when I go to meetin’, I generally go to the chapel to please father.  But when it comes right down to a confession of faith, I’m pretty broad in the beam.  Maybe I’d be too broad even for you, Mr. Ellery.”

The minister, who had jumped to the ground, looked up.

“Captain Hammond,” he said, “I’m very glad indeed that I met you.  Not alone because you helped me out of a bad scrape; I realize how bad it might have been and that—­”

“Shsh! shh!  Nothin’ at all.  Don’t be foolish.”

“But I’m glad, too, because I’ve heard so many good things about you that I was sure you must be worth knowing.  I hope you won’t believe I went to your father’s meeting with any—­”