he fell, threw his body across a shoulder with little
apparent effort, and trotted back into the house with him.

Cleggett had left his sword cane in the barroom, but he judged it would
be just as well to allow it to remain there for the present. He turned
and walked meditatively across the sands towards the Jasper B.

CHAPTER XII

THE SECOND OBLONG BOX

When Cleggett returned to the ship he found Captain Abernethy in
conversation with a young man of deprecating manner whom the Captain
introduced as the Rev. Simeon Calthrop.

"I been tellin' him," said the Cap'n, pitching his voice shrilly above
the din the workmen made, and not giving the Rev. Mr. Calthrop an
opportunity to speak for himself, "I been tellin' him it may be a long
time before the Jasper B. gets to the Holy Land."

"Do you want to go to Palestine?" asked Cleggett of Mr. Calthrop, who
stood with downcast eyes and fingers that worked nervously at the
lapels of his rusty black coat.

"I've knowed him sence he was a boy. He's in disgrace, Simeon Calthrop
is," shrieked the Captain, preventing the preacher from answering
Cleggett's question, and scorning to answer it directly himself. "Been
kicked out of his church fur kissin' a married woman, and can't get
another one." (The Cap'n meant another church.)

The preacher merely raised his eyes, which were large and brown and
slightly protuberant, and murmured with a kind of brave humility:

"It is true."

"But why do you want to go to Palestine?" said Cleggett.

"She sung in the choir and she had three children," screamed Cap'n
Abernethy, "and she limped some. Folks say she had a cork foot. Hey,
Simeon, DID she have a cork foot?"

Mr. Calthrop flushed painfully, but he forced himself courageously to
answer. "Mr. Abernethy, I do not know," he said humbly, and with the
look of a stricken animal in his big brown eyes.

He was a handsome young fellow of about thirty--or he would have been
handsome, Cleggett thought, had he not been so emaciated. His hair was
dark and brown and inclined to curl, his forehead was high and white
and broad, and his fingers were long and white and slender; his nose
was well modeled, but his lips were a trifle too full. Although he
belonged to one of the evangelical denominations, the Rev. Mr. Calthrop
affected clothing very like the regulation costume of the Episcopalian
clergy; but this clothing was now worn and torn and dusty. Buttons
were gone here and there