Fyne suddenly in a
strangely malignant tone. "He shall be met at the jail door by a Mrs
Anthony, a Mrs Captain Anthony. Very pleasant for Zoe. And for all I
know, my brother-in-law means to turn up dutifully too. A little family
event. It's extremely pleasant to think of. Delightful. A charming
family party. We three against the world--and all that sort of thing.
And what for. For a girl that doesn't care twopence for him."

The demon of bitterness had entered into little Fyne. He amazed me as
though he had changed his skin from white to black. It was quite as
wonderful. And he kept it up, too.

"Luckily there are some advantages in the--the profession of a sailor.
As long as they defy the world away at sea somewhere eighteen thousand
miles from here, I don't mind so much. I wonder what that interesting
old party will say. He will have another surprise. They mean to drag
him along with them on board the ship straight away. Rescue work. Just
think of Roderick Anthony, the son of a gentleman, after all..."

He gave me a little shock. I thought he was going to say the "son of
the poet" as usual; but his mind was not running on such vanities now.
His unspoken thought must have gone on "and uncle of my girls." I
suspect that he had been roughly handled by Captain Anthony up there,
and the resentment gave a tremendous fillip to the slow play of his
wits. Those men of sober fancy, when anything rouses their imaginative
faculty, are very thorough. "Just think!" he cried. "The three of them
crowded into a four-wheeler, and Anthony sitting deferentially opposite
that astonished old jail-bird!"

The good little man laughed. An improper sound it was to come from his
manly chest; and what made it worse was the thought that for the least
thing, by a mere hair's breadth, he might have taken this affair
sentimentally. But clearly Anthony was no diplomatist. His
brother-in-law must have appeared to him, to use the language of shore
people, a perfect philistine with a heart like a flint. What Fyne
precisely meant by "wrangling" I don't know, but I had no doubt that
these two had "wrangled" to a profoundly disturbing extent. How much
the other was affected I could not even imagine; but the man before me
was quite amazingly upset.

"In a four-wheeler! Take him on board!" I muttered, startled by the
change in Fyne.

"That's the plan--nothing less. If I am to believe what I have been
told, his feet will