ans, they would have
just bankrupted us."

"No, they wouldn't," I said. "For I hadn't much more change with me. And
if I had had it, I wouldn't have given them any more. I'd have called up
the captain first. The thing was getting too expensive."

"Well, I'm glad I'm out of it," said Rectus. "And I don't believe much
in any of those Indians being very innocent. I thought Maiden's Heart
was one of the best of them, but he's a regular rascal. He knew we
wanted to back out of that affair, and he just fleeced us."

"I believe he would rather have had our scalps than our money, if he had
had us out in his country," I said.

"That's so," said Rectus. "A funny kind of a maiden's heart he's got."

We were both out of conceit with the noble red man. Rectus took his
proclamation out of his pocket as we walked along the sea-wall, and,
tearing it into little pieces, threw it into the water. When we reached
the steam-ship wharf, we walked out to the end of it, to get rid of the
rope and grapnel. I whirled the grapnel round and round, and let the
whole thing fly far out into the harbor. It was a sheer waste of a good
strong rope, but we should have had a dreary time getting the knots out
of it.

After we got home I settled up our accounts, and charged half the
sea-beans to Rectus, and half to myself.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GIRL ON THE BEACH.

I was not very well satisfied with our trip over the walls of San Marco.
In the first place, when the sea-beans, the rope and the grapnel were
all considered, it was a little too costly. In the second place, I was
not sure that I had been carrying out my contract with Mr. Colbert in
exactly the right spirit; for although he had said nothing about my
duties, I knew that he expected me to take care of his son, and paid me
for that. And I felt pretty sure that helping a fellow climb up a
knotted rope into an old fort by night was not the best way of taking
care of him. The third thing that troubled me in regard to this matter
was the feeling I had that Rectus had led me into it; that he had been
the leader and not I. Now, I did not intend that anything of that kind
should happen again. I did not come out on this expedition to follow
Rectus around; indeed, it was to be quite the other way. But, to tell
the truth, I had not imagined that he would ever try to make people
follow him. He never showed at school that such a thing was in him. So,
for these three reasons, I determined that ther