could stand the loss of the ship, but what breaks me all up is the
thought that after forty years of honorable business my friends and my
enemies might suspect me of being a filibuster. I, Alden P. Ricks,
whose great-grandfather died at Yorktown, whose grandfather was killed
at Lundy's Lane, whose father won a medal of honor at Chapultepec--I,
Alden P. Ricks, who had to belong to the Home Guard because I was such
a little runt they wouldn't take me in the Civil War--to think that I
should attain to seventy years and even be suspected of staining the
flag of my country for the sake of a few dirty dollars--after all the
Ricks blood that has been shed for that flag! Horrible!"

Mr. Skinner turned away for, man and boy, he had spent twenty-five
years under Cappy Ricks, and he loved him. He could not bear to see
the old man suffer.






CHAPTER IX





When Michael J. Murphy returned to consciousness he found himself in
his berth, although for all the effort he made to verify this fact it
might have been Mr. Reardon's. For fully half an hour he lay there,
gradually straightening out the tangle in his intellect, and presently