Mr. Hamilton turned to their host.  “You’ll excuse Shadrach, won’t you, Judge,” he said, apologetically.  “He don’t mean nothin’ wicked, really.  And he feels as bad as I do about Marcellus’s bein’ took.”

“Course I do!” put in the Captain.  “Zoeth’s always scared to death for fear I’m bound to the everlastin’ brimstone.  He forgets I’ve been to sea a good part of my life and that a feller has to talk strong aboard ship.  Common language may do for keepin’ store, but it don’t get a vessel nowheres; the salt sort of takes the tang out of it, seems so.  I’m through for the present, Zoeth.  I’ll keep the rest till I meet the swab that loaded up that chair for me.”

The Judge laughed again.  Then he opened his desk and took from a drawer two folded papers.

“Gentlemen,” he said, gravely, “I asked you to come here with me because there is an important matter, a very important matter, which I, as Captain Hall’s legal adviser, must discuss with you.”

Captain Shadrach and Zoeth looked at each other.  The former tugged at his beard.

“Hum!” he mused.  “Somethin’ to do with Marcellus’s affairs, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Want to know!  And somethin’ to do with me and Zoeth?”

“Yes, with both of you.  This,” holding up one of the folded papers, “is Captain Hall’s will.  I drew it for him a year ago and he has appointed me his executor.”

Zoeth nodded.  “We supposed likely he would,” he observed.

“Couldn’t get a better man,” added Shadrach, with emphasis.

“Thank you.  Captain Hall leaves all he possessed—­practically all; there is a matter of two hundred dollars for his housekeeper, Mrs. Hobbs, and a few other personal gifts—­but he leaves practically all he possessed to his stepdaughter, Mary Lathrop.”

Both his hearers nodded again.  “We expected that, naturally,” said the Captain.  “It’s what he’d ought to have done, of course.  Well, she’ll be pretty well fixed, won’t she?”

Judge Baxter shook his head.  “Why, no—­she won’t,” he said, soberly.  “That is a part of the surprise which I mentioned at first.  Captain Hall was, practically, a poor man when he died.”

That the prophesied surprise was now a reality was manifest.  Both men looked aghast.

“You—­you don’t mean that, Judge?” gasped Zoeth.

“Poor?  Marcellus poor?” cried Shadrach.  “Why—­why, what kind of talk’s that?  He didn’t have no more than the rest of us when—­” he hesitated, glanced at Zoeth, and continued, “when the firm give up business back in ’79; but he went to sea again and made considerable, and then he made a whole lot in stocks.  I know he did.  You know it, too, Zoeth.  How could he be poor?”