his head, Sophie said, "If Grace is really married,
as I believe her to be after what Frank read, then she is perfectly in
the right to do what her husband wishes."

But to make an end, seeing that but little more remains to be told. It
was four days after our arrival at ---- that I drove Grace over to
Penzance to enable her to keep an appointment with her dressmaker.
Caudel still hung about the quaint old town. He had sent me a rude,
briny scrawl, half the words looking as though they had been smeared
out by his little finger, and the others as if they had been written by
his protruded tongue, in which he said, in spelling beyond expression
wonderful, that he had brought the shipwright to terms, and wished to
see me. I left Grace at the dressmaker's and walked to the address
where Caudel said I should find him. He looked highly soaped and
polished, his hair shone like his boots, and he wore a new coat, with
several fathoms of spotted kerchief wound round about his throat.

After we had exchanged a few sentences of greeting and goodwill, he
addressed me thus:

"Your honour gave me leave to do the best I could with the dandy.
Well, Mr. Barclay, sir, this is what I've done and here's the money."

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, which buttoned up
square as a Dutchman's stern, after the fashion that is long likely to
remain popular with men of the Caudel breed, and pulling out a large
chamois leather bag, he extracted from it a quantity of banknotes, very
worn, greasy and crumpled, and some sovereigns and shillings, which
looked as if they had been stowed away in an old stocking since the
beginning of the century. He surveyed me with a gaze of respectful
triumph, perhaps watching for some expression of astonishment.

"How much have you there, Caudel?"

"You'll scarcely credit it, sir," said he, grinning.

"But how much, man, how much?"

"One hundred and seventy-three pounds, fourteen shillun', as I'm a
man," cried he, smiting the table with his immense fist.

I smiled, for though I had bought the dandy cheap, she had cost me a
very great deal more, by the time she was fit to go afloat in, than
Caudel had received for her. But Grace was not to be kept waiting, and
I rose.

"You will give what you think fair to the boy Bobby, Caudel."

He looked at me stupidly.

"Did not I tell you," said I, "that what the dandy fetched was to be
yours, and that something of it was to go to the boy?