“You, papa?”

“It can be done best between men.  Your capital, Clara, is some five thousand pounds, but it is out on a mortgage, and you could not call it in.”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!”

“But we can still manage.  I have as much at my bank.  I will advance it to the Denvers as coming from you, and you can repay it to me, or the interest of it, when your money becomes due.”

“Oh, that is beautiful!  How sweet and kind of you!”

“But there is one obstacle:  I do not think that you would ever induce Harold to take this money.”

Clara’s face fell.  “Don’t you think so, really?”

“I am sure that he would not.”

“Then what are you to do?  What horrid things money matters are to arrange!”

“I shall see his father.  We can manage it all between us.”

“Oh, do, do, papa!  And you will do it soon?”

“There is no time like the present.  I will go in at once.”  He scribbled a cheque, put it in an envelope, put on his broad straw hat, and strolled in through the garden to pay his morning call.

It was a singular sight which met his eyes as he entered the sitting-room of the Admiral.  A great sea chest stood open in the center, and all round upon the carpet were little piles of jerseys, oil-skins, books, sextant boxes, instruments, and sea-boots.  The old seaman sat gravely amidst this lumber, turning it over, and examining it intently; while his wife, with the tears running silently down her ruddy cheeks, sat upon the sofa, her elbows upon her knees and her chin upon her hands, rocking herself slowly backwards and forwards.

“Hullo, Doctor,” said the Admiral, holding out his hand, “there’s foul weather set in upon us, as you may have heard, but I have ridden out many a worse squall, and, please God, we shall all three of us weather this one also, though two of us are a little more cranky than we were.”

“My dear friends, I came in to tell you how deeply we sympathize with you all.  My girl has only just told me about it.”

“It has come so suddenly upon us, Doctor,” sobbed Mrs. Hay Denver.  “I thought that I had John to myself for the rest of our lives—­Heaven knows that we have not seen very much of each other—­but now he talks of going to sea again.

“Aye, aye, Walker, that’s the only way out of it.  When I first heard of it I was thrown up in the wind with all aback.  I give you my word that I lost my bearings more completely than ever since I strapped a middy’s dirk to my belt.  You see, friend, I know something of shipwreck or battle or whatever may come upon the waters, but the shoals in the City of London on which my poor boy has struck are clean beyond me.  Pearson had been my pilot there, and now I know him to be a rogue.  But I’ve taken my bearings now, and I see my course right before me.”

“What then, Admiral?”