"I am not accustomed to have my word doubted!" cried Norris.

"Hush! I allow no one to raise his voice in my office," said the lawyer.
"And for that matter--you seem to be a young gentleman of
sense--consider what I know of you. You are a discarded son; your family
pays money to be shut of you. What have you done? I don't know. But do
you not see how foolish I should be, if I exposed my business reputation
on the safeguard of the honour of a gentleman of whom I know just so
much and no more? This interview is very disagreeable. Why prolong it?
Write home, get my instructions changed, and I will change my behaviour.
Not otherwise."

"I am very fond of three hundred a year," said Norris, "but I cannot pay
the price required. I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again."

"You must please yourself," said the lawyer. "Fail to be here next
quarter-day, and the thing stops. But I warn you, and I mean the warning
in a friendly spirit. Three months later you will be here begging, and
I shall have no choice but to show you in the street."

"I wish you a good-evening," said Norris.

"The same to you, Mr. Carthew," retorted the lawyer, and rang for his
clerk.

So it befell that Norris, during what remained to him of arduous days in
Sydney, saw not again the face of his legal adviser; and he was already
at sea, and land was out of sight, when Hadden brought him a Sydney
paper, over which he had been dozing in the shadow of the galley, and
showed him an advertisement:

"Mr. Norris Carthew is earnestly entreated to call without delay at the
office of Mr. ----, where important intelligence awaits him."

"It must manage to wait for me for six months," said Norris lightly
enough, but yet conscious of a pang of curiosity.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BUDGET OF THE _CURRENCY LASS_

Before noon, on the 26th November, there cleared from the port of Sydney
the schooner _Currency Lass_. The owner, Norris Carthew, was on board in
the somewhat unusual position of mate; the master's name purported to be
William Kirkup; the cook was a Hawaiian boy, Joseph Amalu; and there
were two hands before the mast, Thomas Hadden and Richard Hemstead, the
latter chosen partly because of his humble character, partly because he
had an odd-job-man's handiness with tools. The _Currency Lass_ was bound
for the South Sea Islands, and first of all for Butaritari in the
Gilberts, on a register; but it was understood about the harbour that
her cruis