ce, I must really beg leave to inquire where
Providence was when the ship struck."

The silence which reigned in the room was like the space cleared for a
sparring-match. The old combative instinct of the primitive man arises
in the most civilized, and makes him delight in a fight. Brady looked
amused; Winifred a little apprehensive; Mr. Anstice preserved a
dignified neutrality; and Miss Standish fumbled with her cameo brooch,
and smoothed the folds of her skirt, as if to make sure that all was
in order before entering upon a possibly ruffling contest.

"I suppose--" she began; but old Marsden, who sat on the other side of
the fire, and who was no respecter of persons, broke in: "I've heerd a
deal about how you all felt, and what you all thought; but what I'd
like to know is what really happened. The men at the inn wont talk
without their captain gives them leave; and Dr. Cricket has got him
and his sister shut up in their rooms, to git over the shawk. Now
perhaps the Doctor can tell us how it wuz thet thet air ship went
aground on a sandy coast, in a ca'm night like the last."

"Captain Costello says it was the light in the tavern-window which he
mistook for the Bug Light off the point; but how could that have been,
when it was past two o'clock, and I'll answer for it that no one at
Nepaug was ever found awake after nine?"

Dr. Cricket questioned with the inflection of a man who neither
expects nor desires an answer. Indeed, he had only paused for breath,
when Flint, from his easy chair on the other side of the fireplace,
broke in:--

"So I am to blame for the whole thing."

"You!"

"You don't say so!"

"Was the light yours?"

"What on earth were you doing at that hour?"

"Not quite so many questions at once, friends, if you please. My brain
is still a little waterlogged, and my thoughts work slowly. I only
remember sitting down about ten o'clock to read a novel, and the first
thing that roused me was the gun, which for the moment I took for the
attack of the enemy of whom I was reading. I rushed out, half
expecting to find the tavern surrounded, and to have to risk my life
in its defence, and instead--"

"Instead," put in Winifred Anstice, very quietly, "you risked your
life to save some one else,--Nora Costello, the Captain's sister,
spent the whole morning in tears, because Dr. Cricket would not let
her leave her room to go and tell you how grateful she was."

"Hysterical, I suppose," said Flint.