"You sartin will. I took care on you when you was little, and done
everything I could for you; but you have worked agin me from the fust."

As I seated myself I saw a customer come up to the front bar. He had a
package, which he laid upon the counter while he poured out his dram.

"I don't think it's any use for you and me to talk over these things,"
I added, turning my eyes from the counter to the bloated face of my
former tyrant. "We shall not be likely to agree in regard to matters in
the past."

"You know just as well as I do that the steam-yacht you sail in
rightfully belongs to me," he added.

"I think not. If she belongs to anybody besides myself, it must be to
my father."

"That man ain't your father any more'n I am."

At that moment a rather rough-looking man came into the saloon, walked
far enough back to look into the negro bar, and then retreated.

"I think it has been fully proved that Major Garningham is my father,"
I replied.

I had scarcely spoken the words, as the rough-looking visitor was
retreating without any dram, when Nick made a flying leap over the
counter, and rushed out at the street door. The gentleman with the
package had his eyes upturned to the ceiling, in the act of draining
the tumbler in which he had elaborately stirred up the fiery mixture.

[Illustration: "Nick rushed out at the street door." _Page 22._]

When Nick went over the counter the customer was startled. He saw, at
the same moment I discovered the fact, that the package he had laid
upon the counter was missing. He rushed out of the saloon like a crazy
man.

CHAPTER II.

FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS.

"What on airth does all that mean?" said Captain Boomsby, rising with
difficulty from his chair, and walking towards the front door.

"I'm sure I don't know," I replied. "I saw Nick leap over the counter
as though he had found a mocassin-snake behind it."

"Don't say nothin' about mocassins here, for you scart my wife out of
her seven senses once afore," said the captain, savagely, as he stopped
and looked at me.

He had set a trap to have such a snake bite me in his house; but I was
not thinking of that when I named the venomous reptile. This event, and
the quantity of his own vile fluids he consumed, made him sensitive on
the subject of snakes. I was afraid he would soon see more of them than
he could manage.

"What made Nick run out so quick, and what did Peverell follow him for,
without payin' for his l