he, I am going home.' I had the good luck to sight a
four-wheeler and got him in just in time. His legs were beginning to
give way. In our hall he fell down on a chair, and I'll never forget
father's and mother's amazed, perfectly still faces as they stood over
him. They couldn't understand what had happened to him till I blubbered
out, 'Maggie got drowned, yesterday, in the river.'

"Mother let out a little cry. Father looks from him to me, and from me
to him, as if comparing our faces--for, upon my soul, Charley did not
resemble himself at all. Nobody moved; and the poor fellow raises his
big brown hands slowly to his throat, and with one single tug rips
everything open--collar, shirt, waistcoat--a perfect wreck and ruin of
a man. Father and I got him upstairs somehow, and mother pretty nearly
killed herself nursing him through a brain fever."

The man in tweeds nodded at me significantly.

"Ah! there was nothing that could be done with that brute. She had a
devil in her."

"Where's your brother?" I asked, expecting to hear he was dead. But he
was commanding a smart steamer on the China coast, and never came home
now.

Jermyn fetched a heavy sigh, and the handkerchief being now sufficiently
dry, put it up tenderly to his red and lamentable nose.

"She was a ravening beast," the man in tweeds started again. "Old
Colchester put his foot down and resigned. And would you believe it?
Apse & Sons wrote to ask whether he wouldn't reconsider his decision!
Anything to save the good name of the Apse Family.' Old Colchester went
to the office then and said that he would take charge again but only to
sail her out into the North Sea and scuttle her there. He was nearly off
his chump. He used to be darkish iron-grey, but his hair went snow-white
in a fortnight. And Mr. Lucian Apse (they had known each other as young
men) pretended not to notice it. Eh? Here's infatuation if you like!
Here's pride for you!

"They jumped at the first man they could get to take her, for fear of
the scandal of the Apse Family not being able to find a skipper. He was
a festive soul, I believe, but he stuck to her grim and hard. Wilmot was
his second mate. A harum-scarum fellow, and pretending to a great scorn
for all the girls. The fact is he was really timid. But let only one of
them do as much as lift her little finger in encouragement, and there
was nothing that could hold the beggar. As apprentice, once, he deserted
abroad after a petticoat