had come up to see a doctor
and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood he had come up to
join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of mild spree--if Miss
Upton will forgive me!" And he turned deferential lenses on the indignant
girl.

"I don't forgive the suggestion," said she; "but it isn't yours, Mr.
Thrush, so please go on."

"It's an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I was
able to tell him, and we mustn't forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he was
the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes the boy did meet with
some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or
intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened
with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more
sinned against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of
these very conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking
something or somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would
have done. Afraid to go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to
show his face at home! What's to be done? He thinks of the ship about
to sail, the ship he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he
determines to sail in her still--even if he has to stow away!"

"My God!" cried Mr. Upton, "he's just the one to think of it. His head
was full of those trashy adventure stories!"

But Lettice shook hers quietly.

"To think of it, but not to do it," said she, with a quiet conviction that
rather nettled Mr. Thrush.

"But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he
actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself,
but of stowaways in general, a propos of his voyage; and how many pounds
of biscuit and how many ounces of water would carry one alive into blue
water. There's another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner the ship
touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he would be
out of the world for three whole months."

"And she only sailed yesterday?" cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to his
feet. "And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to sea
while you came down here to tell me this by inches?"

Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.

"I'm letting her go as far as Plymouth," said he, "where one or both of us
will board her to-morrow if she's up to time!"

"You said she didn't touch anywhere between the docks