ehead into watter,' you said, 'an' gormed if I don't give 'ee
a poond note.' That's what you said me. Isn't that what you said me?"

I did not deny it.

"'Ve' well,' I said you. 'Right,' I said. I tipped the ol' soul into
watter, and I got the poond note."

"Yes, you took care of that. All this is quite true, but it's beside
the point. We are not disputing about what happened. What I want to
know--for the third time--is what made you let the cat out of the bag?
Why couldn't you keep quiet about it?"

He waved his hand.

"Dear sir," he replied, "this way. Listen me."

It was a tragic story that he unfolded. My wrath ebbed as I listened.
After all the fellow was not so greatly to blame. I felt that in his
place I should have acted as he had done. It was Fate's fault, and
Fate's alone.

It appeared that he had not come well out of the matter of the
accident. I had not looked at it hitherto from his point of view. While
the rescue had left me the popular hero, it had had quite the opposite
result for him. He had upset his boat and would have drowned his
passenger, said public opinion, if the young hero from
London--myself--had not plunged in, and at the risk of his life brought
the professor ashore. Consequently, he was despised by all as an
inefficient boatman. He became a laughing-stock. The local wags made
laborious jests when he passed. They offered him fabulous sums to take
their worst enemies out for a row with him. They wanted to know when he
was going to school to learn his business. In fact, they behaved as
wags do and always have done at all times all the world over.

Now, all this, it seemed, Mr. Hawk would have borne cheerfully and
patiently for my sake, or, at any rate for the sake of the crisp pound
note I had given him. But a fresh factor appeared in the problem,
complicating it grievously. To wit, Miss Jane Muspratt.

"She said to me," explained Mr. Hawk with pathos, "'Harry 'Awk,' she
said, 'yeou'm a girt fule, an' I don't marry noone as is ain't to be
trusted in a boat by hisself, and what has jokes made about him by that
Tom Leigh!'"

"I punched Tom Leigh," observed Mr. Hawk parenthetically. "'So,' she
said me, 'you can go away, an' I don't want to see yeou again!'"

This heartless conduct on the part of Miss Muspratt had had the natural
result of making him confess in self-defence; and she had written to
the professor the same night.

I forgave Mr. Hawk. I think he was hardly sober enough