father in the way you did."

A gleam came into Frank's eyes as he sat there, and a smile played on
his lips.

"My dear fellow," he said finally, "I don't want any reward from you or
any one else for what I do, by way of helping them out. I do the best I
can in that respect--the same as you or anyone else would do--and that's
reward enough for me--a clear conscience! Thanks, all the same, Buck."

CHAPTER XXI.

BAD NEWS.

So sunshine follows storm!

It was a jolly party aboard the _Merry Seas_, as she bowled along on her
way from New Haven to New York. It was composed of Frank Merriwell and a
number of his intimate friends; and wherever Frank and his friends were,
Dull Care usually hid his agued face and gave place to smiling Pleasure.

"That grumbling old boatman at the New Haven wharf was a liar!" groaned
Dismal Jones, as if it were a grief that he had not found the boatman's
unpleasant prognostications true.

"What did he say?" asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck
like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of cigarette
smoke from his nostrils.

"He said that a smoker of cigarettes is always a measly runt!" grunted
Bruce Browning, from the big chair in which he had ensconced himself
almost as soon as he came aboard, and which he had hardly left since.

"You're another!" said Danny. "He didn't say anything of the kind."

"He was a poet," said Dismal, "and he threw his comment into rime. I was
taken in by him, I suppose, because he seemed to be half-way quoting
Scripture:

"'The Pharisees were hypocrites,
And the _Merry Seas_ is a ship o' fits!'"

"A ship o' fits? Nothing eccentric about this steamer, so far as I can
see!"

"Except Danny Griswold!" exclaimed Bink Stubbs. "He is enough to give
anything fits."

"Something your tailor is never able to give you!" Danny retorted.

"Sit down!" growled Browning. "You are shutting out the view!"

"What view?" Danny demanded.

"The view of the steamer's funnel. I'd rather look at that. It can smoke
and keep still--and you can't."

Inza and Elsie came along, accompanied by Merriwell and Bart Hodge.
Winnie Lee, who was at present under her father's displeasure for her
persistence in continuing to encourage Buck Badger, was not aboard, but
Amy May was a member of the party. At the moment, she was conversing
gaily with Bernard Burrage, Inza's semi-invalid father, on the
forward-deck.

"We're going to have a f