ey is the defendants, 'cause
they're s'posed to defend themselves to the last gasp; but it ain't o'
no manner o' use."

Nikel Sling was right. Captain Dixon _was_ pursued until he paid back
the value of his ill-gotten whale, and was forcibly reminded by this
episode in his career, that "honesty is the best policy" after all.
Thus Captain Dunning found himself suddenly put in possession of a sum
of two thousand pounds.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

THE CONCLUSION.

The trouble, and worry, and annoyance that the sum of 2000 pounds gave
to Captain Dunning is past all belief. That worthy man, knowing that
Glynn Proctor had scarcely a penny in the world, not even his "kit" (as
sailors name their sea-chests), which had been lost in the wreck of the
_Red Eric_, and that the boy was about to be cast upon the world again
an almost friendless wanderer--knowing all this, we say, Captain Dunning
insisted that as Glynn had been the first to strike the whale, and as no
one else had had anything to do with its capture, he (Glynn) was justly
entitled to the money.

Glynn firmly declined to admit the justice of this view of the case; he
had been paid his wages; that was all he had any right to claim; so he
positively refused to take the money. But the captain was more than his
match. He insisted so powerfully, and argued so logically, that Glynn
at last consented, on condition that 500 pounds of it should be
distributed among his shipmates. This compromise was agreed to, and
thus Glynn came into possession of what appeared in his eyes a fortune
of 1500 pounds.

"Now, what am I to do with it? that is the question."

Glynn propounded this knotty question one evening, about three weeks
after the trial, to his friends of the yellow cottage with the
green-painted door.

"Put it in the bank," suggested Aunt Martha.

"Yes, and live on the interest," added Aunt Jane.

"Or invest in the whale-fishery," said Captain Dunning, emitting a
voluminous cloud of tobacco-smoke, as if to suggest the idea that the
investment would probably end in something similar to that. (The
captain was a peculiarly favoured individual; he was privileged to smoke
in the Misses Dunning's parlour.)

"Oh! I'll tell you what to do, Glynn," cried Ailie, clapping her hands;
"it would be _so_ nice. Buy a cottage with it--a nice, pretty,
white-painted cottage, beside a wood, with a little river in front of
it, and a small lake with a boat on it not far off,