ering how a previous interview between them had been overheard
because of that open transom, glanced at his grandfather. The twinkle
in the latter's eye showed that he too, remembered. Albert closed the
"hatch." When he came back to his seat the twinkle had disappeared;
Captain Zelotes looked serious enough.

"Well, Grandfather?" queried the young man, after waiting a moment. The
captain adjusted his spectacles, reached into the inside pocket of his
coat and produced an envelope. It was a square envelope with either
a trade-mark or a crest upon the back. Captain Lote did not open the
envelope, but instead tapped his desk with it and regarded his grandson
in a meditative way.

"Al," he said slowly, "has it seemed to you that your cruise aboard this
craft of ours here had been a little smoother the last year or two than
it used to be afore that?"

Albert, by this time well accustomed to his grandfather's nautical
phraseology, understood that the "cruise" referred to was his voyage as
assistant bookkeeper with Z. Snow and Co. He nodded.

"I have tried to make it so," he answered. "I mean I have tried to make
it smoother for you."

"Um-hm, I think you have tried. I don't mind tellin' you that it has
pleased me consid'ble to watch you try. I don't mean by that," he
added, with a slight curve of the lip, "that you'd win first prize as
a lightnin'-calculator even yet, but you're a whole lot better one than
you used to be. I've been considerable encouraged about you; I don't
mind tellin' you that either. . . . And," he added, after another
interval during which he was, apparently, debating just how much of
an admission it was safe to make, "so far as I can see, this poetry
foolishness of yours hasn't interfered with your work any to speak of."

Albert smiled. "Thanks, Grandfather," he said.

"You're welcome. So much for that. But there's another side to our
relations together, yours and mine, that I haven't spoken of to you
afore. And I have kept still on purpose. I've figgered that so long as
you kept straight and didn't go off the course, didn't drink or gamble,
or go wild or the like of that, what you did was pretty much your own
business. I've noticed you're considerable of a feller with the girls,
but I kept an eye on the kind of girls and I will say that so far as I
can see, you've picked the decent kind. I say so far as I can see. Of
course I ain't fool enough to believe I see all you do, or know all you
do. I've