t was. High spirits, and being spoken to as if I
was a child."

"The thing is, how are you to escape?" said the girl. "It's no good
going out of doors with the police and half the people in Woodhatch all
on the look-out for you."

"If I could only get aboard I should be all right," muttered the skipper.
"I could keep down the fo'-c's'le while the mate took the ship out."

Miss Pilbeam sat in deep thought. "It's the getting aboard that's the
trouble," she said, slowly. "You'd have to disguise yourself. It would
have to be a good disguise, too, to pass my father, I can tell you."

Captain Bligh gave a gloomy assent.

"The only thing for you to do, so far as I can see," said the girl,
slowly, "is to make yourself up like a coalie. There are one or two
colliers in the harbor, and if you took off your coat--I could send it on
afterwards--rubbed yourself all over with coal-dust, and shaved off your
moustache, I believe you would escape."

"Shave!" ejaculated the skipper, in choking accents. "Rub--!
Coal-dust!"

"It's your only chance," said Miss Pilbeam.

Captain Bligh leaned back frowning, and from sheer force of habit passed
the ends of his moustache slowly through his fingers. "I think the coal-
dust would be enough," he said at last.

The girl shook her head. "Father particularly noticed your moustache,"
she said.

"Everybody does," said the skipper, with mournful pride. "I won't part
with it."

"Not for my sake?" inquired Miss Pilbeam, eying him mournfully. "Not
after all I've done for you?"

"No," said the other, stoutly.

Miss Pilbeam put her handkerchief to her eyes and, with a suspicious
little sniff, hurried from the room. Captain Bligh, much affected,
waited for a few seconds and then went in pursuit of her. Fifteen
minutes later, shorn of his moustache, he stood in the coal-hole, sulkily
smearing himself with coal.

"That's better," said the girl; "you look horrible."

She took up a handful of coal-dust and, ordering him to stoop, shampooed
him with hearty good-will.

[Illustration: "She took up a handful of coal-dust and, ordering him to
stoop, shampooed him with hearty good-will."]

"No good half doing it," she declared. "Now go and look at yourself in
the glass in the kitchen."

The skipper went, and came back in a state of wild-eyed misery. Even
Miss Pilbeam's statement that his own mother would not know him failed to
lift the cloud from his brow. He stood disconsolate a