ous matter.

"I don't know about its seriousness, sir," was Mr Powell's frank
answer. "But if you think you have been telling me something very new
you are mistaken. You can't keep that matter out of your speeches.
It's the sort of thing I've been hearing more or less ever since I came
on board."

Mr Powell, speaking truthfully, did not mean to speak offensively. He
had instincts of wisdom; he felt that this was a serious affair, for it
had nothing to do with reason. He did not want to raise an enemy for
himself in the mate. And Mr Franklin did not take offence. To Mr
Powell's truthful statement he answered with equal truth and simplicity
that it was very likely, very likely. With a thing like that (next door
to witchcraft almost) weighing on his mind, the wonder was that he could
think of anything else. The poor man must have found in the
restlessness of his thoughts the illusion of being engaged in an active
contest with some power of evil; for his last words as he went
lingeringly down the poop ladder expressed the quaint hope that he would
get him, Powell, "on our side yet."

Mr Powell--just imagine a straightforward youngster assailed in this
fashion on the high seas--answered merely by an embarrassed and uneasy
laugh which reflected exactly the state of his innocent soul. The
apoplectic mate, already half-way down, went up again three steps of the
poop ladder. Why, yes. A proper young fellow, the mate expected,
wouldn't stand by and see a man, a good sailor and his own skipper, in
trouble without taking his part against a couple of shore people who--

Mr Powell interrupted him impatiently, asking what was the trouble?

"What is it you are hinting at?" he cried with an inexplicable
irritation.

"I don't like to think of him all alone down there with these two,"
Franklin whispered impressively. "Upon my word I don't. God only knows
what may be going on there... Don't laugh.--It was bad enough last
voyage when Mrs Brown had a cabin aft; but now it's worse. It
frightens me. I can't sleep sometimes for thinking of him all alone
there, shut off from us all."

Mrs Brown was the steward's wife. You must understand that shortly
after his visit to the Fyne cottage (with all its consequences), Anthony
had got an offer to go to the Western Islands, and bring home the cargo
of some ship which, damaged in a collision or a stranding, took refuge
in Saint Michael, and was condemned there. Roderick Anthon