I have four days' shore leave before
me, sir," he said, "so I guess I'll be trotting along and make the most
of it. I'll be at Los Medanos Sunday night."

"Her skipper's a big Finn," Cappy warned him. "Behave yourself, Matt.
He's bad medicine for young second mates."

"I'll do my duty, sir."

He took his leave. As he went out the door Cappy gazed after him with
twinkling eyes: "Young scoundrel!" he murmured. "Damned young scoundrel!
You'll be ringing Florry up the minute you leave this office, if you
haven't already done it. I'm onto you, young fellow!"

Matt Peasley took Florry Ricks to a matinee that very day. Cappy,
suspecting he might attempt something of the sort and desiring to verify
his suspicions, went home from the office early that day, and from his
hiding place behind the window drapes in his drawing room he observed
a taxicab draw up in front of his residence at six o'clock. From this
vehicle Matt Peasley, astonishingly well tailored, alighted, handed out
the heir to the Ricks millions, said good-by lingeringly and drove away.

"Well," Cappy soliloquized, "I guess I'm going to land the son-in-law
I'm after. The matinee is over at a quarter of five, and those two have
fooled away an hour. I'll bet a dollar Florry steered that sailor into
a tea fight somewhere, and if she did that, Matt, you're a tip-top risk
and I'll underwrite you."

That same evening Cappy sneaked into his daughter's apartments and found
a photograph of Matt Peasley in a hammered silver frame on Florry's
dressing table.

"Holy sailor!" he chuckled. "They think they're putting one over on the
old gentleman, don't they? Trying to cover me with blood, eh? Huh! If
I'd let that fellow Matt stay ashore he'd have hung round Florry until
he wore out his welcome, and I suppose in the long run I'd have had to
put up with one of these lawn-tennis, tea-swilling young fellows too
proud to work. By Judas Priest, when I quit the street I want to give
my proxy to a lad that will make my competitors mind their step, and by
keeping Matt at sea a couple of years, I'll get him over the moon-calf
period. Deliver my girl and my business from the hands of a damned
fool!"

The following evening Cappy questioned his daughter's chauffeur--a
chauffeur, by the way, being a luxury which Cappy scorned for himself.
He maintained a coachman and a carriage and a spanking team of bays, and
drove to his office like the old-fashioned gentleman he was. From this
cha