e-livered coward! You've always been
getting others to do your dirty work for you, and I'm sartin now that
you're offering me a bribe to help stack your damn cards against Mack.
There ain't money enough in the world to make me do that. I see your
game just as plain as though you'd written it out like you done them
papers. You mean to wreck Mack's life, and you're asking me to sit in
with you and the devil while you do it. You mean to throw him out of a
job, and you mean to keep him from getting another by working through
that Means hypocrite. Yes, I can see through you, as plain as a slit
canvas. There's something infernal back of all this, and that something
is your goat. You're skeered that the minister is going to get it, and
that's what is ailing you. By God! I'll be on deck to help him, whether
he's a preacher or a detective from Australia looking for crooks. You've
been lying all these years about where you made your money. You've been
telling that you got it in Africa, trading in diamonds. I've got a piece
of paper in my pocket that blows up your lies like dynamite. You was in
Australia all them years. By the Almighty! I'm going to sign up with the
preacher, and I don't care a tinker's dam if you get the last cent I
have, and send me up Riverhead way to the Poor Farm to eat off the
county. Foreclose on my property! That ain't no more than you've been
doing to others all your miserable life. It ain't no more than you done
to Clemmie Pipkin years ago, leaving her nothing to live on. But mine
will be the last you'll foreclose on, and I'm going to see one or two of
the best lawyers in the city afore you do that!"

[Illustration: "There ain't money enough in the world to make me do
that."--_Page 242._]

The Captain strode from the room and down the stair. Mr. Fox called
feebly, begging him to return. But the seaman was deaf with rage, and he
left the house without hearing the mumbled petition of an apparently
penitent Elder.

Captain Pott half ran, half stumbled, down to the wharf. He hurriedly
untied his dory, and rowed out to the _Jennie P._ A little later he
anchored his power-boat in the harbor of Little River where the
railroad station was located. He rowed ashore, secured his dory, and ran
to the depot. He climbed aboard the city-bound train just as it began to
move.

CHAPTER XIII

Daylight was beginning to peep through the morning darkness when the
Captain threaded his way along the crooked path t