not have discovered that it had been secured upon the inside.
Unless, therefore, he had taken the trouble to break open the door, he
could not have ascertained that Christy Passford was actually in the
cabin.

Possibly, if he had opened the door by any means, he would not have
discovered that the proprietor of the boat was in this dainty apartment,
for the skipper had taken a great deal of pains to conceal himself so
that he should not be seen, even if the intruders in the Florence had
succeeded in opening the doors without the aid of the key in his pocket.
Though he had two very nice berths in the cabin, miraculously arranged
as to space, Christy did not occupy one on the present occasion, for in
that case the unbidden visitors would have seen him if their curiosity
had led them to force the doors.

When the cook of the Florence, usually the skipper of the craft, was
engaged in the practice of the culinary art, he seated himself on what
looked like a box in front of the stove. But the interior of this box
was really a part of the cabin, for it contained the feet of any one
occupying the berth on the starboard side. The cookroom had no end of
bins, lockers and drawers to contain the variety of provisions and
stores necessary to get up a dinner for the skipper and his guests, when
he had any. And even all these places could not contain everything that
was needed on board. Under the two berths were large, though not very
deep, lockers, one of which contained the jib-topsail of the craft, and
other spare sails, while the opposite one was the fuel locker of the
sloop.

As the boat had not been used for a long time in cruising, the fuel
receptacle was empty, though a spare gaff-topsail had been thrown
into it. This locker was big enough to admit the body-corporate of
the skipper. It was not a particularly clean place, for a portion of it
had been economized for the stowage of the charcoal, which the skipper
preferred to wood. But he did not rebel at the blackness of the retreat
he had chosen, for he wore his boating dress, which was hardly stylish
enough for a dude or a dandy.

But Skipper Passford did not crawl into this black hole for the fun of
the thing. He had been spending his time in waiting for a movement to be
made in regard to the Bellevite. He staid in the house all the forenoon,
and, after lunch, he sailed down the river in the Florence, though with
no object in doing so beyond passing the time. Not far from