as rolling the cask about the
house when this--loggerhead came out of the bushes. He wanted to know
what I was getting away with, and I explained, but it didn't suit him.
He said I might be telling facts and again I mightn't. I saw there was
no use talking, and started rolling the cask again; but he put his
foot on it, and I pushed one way and he the other----"

"And between you, you stove in the cask," Woolfolk interrupted.

"That's it," Poul Halvard answered concisely. "Then I got mad, and
offered to beat in his face, but he had a knife. I could have broken
it out of his grip--I've done it before in a place or two--but I
thought I'd better come aboard and report before anything general
began."

John Woolfolk was momentarily at a loss to establish the identity of
Halvard's assailant.

He soon realized, however, that it must be Nicholas, whom he had never
seen, and who had blown such an imperative summons on the conch the
night before. Halvard's temper was communicated to him; he moved
abruptly to where the tender was fastened.

"Put me ashore," he directed. He would make it clear that his man was
not to be interrupted in the execution of his orders, and that his
property could not be arbitrarily destroyed.

When the tender ran upon the beach and had been secured, Halvard
started to follow him, but Woolfolk waved him back. There was a stir
on the portico as he approached, the flitting of an unsubstantial
form; but, hastening, John Woolfolk arrested Lichfield Stope in the
doorway.

"Morning," he nodded abruptly. "I came to speak to you about a water
cask of mine."

The other swayed like a thin, grey column of smoke.

"Ah, yes," he pronounced with difficulty. "Water cask----"

"It was broken here a little while back."

At the suggestion of violence such a pitiable panic fell upon the
older man that Woolfolk halted. Lichfield Stope raised his hands as if
to ward off the mere impact of the words themselves; his face was
stained with the thin red tide of congestion.

"You have a man named Nicholas," Woolfolk proceeded. "I should like to
see him."

The other made a gesture as tremulous and indeterminate as his speech
and appeared to dissolve into the hall. John Woolfolk stood for a
moment undecided and then moved about the house toward the kitchen.
There, he thought, he might obtain an explanation of the breaking of
the cask. A man was walking about within and came to the door as
Woolfolk approached.

The