Chance

"Really!" I said, pulling him forward from under the noses of two

enormous sleepy-headed cart-horses. He skipped wildly out of the way and

up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision; his mind had

nothing to do with his movements. In the middle of his leap, and while

in the act of sailing gravely through the air, he continued to relieve

his outraged feelings.

"You would never believe! They are mad!"

I took care to place myself in such a position that to face me he had to

turn his back on the hotel across the road. I believe he was glad I was

there to talk to. But I thought there was some misapprehension in the

first statement he shot out at me without loss of time, that Captain

Anthony had been glad to see him. It was indeed difficult to believe

that, directly he opened the door, his wife's "sailor-brother" had

positively shouted: "Oh, it's you! The very man I wanted to see."

"I found him sitting there," went on Fyne impressively in his effortless,

grave chest voice, "drafting his will."

This was unexpected, but I preserved a noncommittal attitude, knowing

full well that our actions in themselves are neither mad nor sane. But I

did not see what there was to be excited about. And Fyne was distinctly

excited. I understood it better when I learned that the captain of the

Ferndale wanted little Fyne to be one of the trustees. He was leaving

everything to his wife. Naturally, a request which involved him into

sanctioning in a way a proceeding which he had been sent by his wife to

oppose, must have appeared sufficiently mad to Fyne.

"Me! Me, of all people in the world!" he repeated portentously. But I

could see that he was frightened. Such want of tact!

"He knew I came from his sister. You don't put a man into such an

awkward position," complained Fyne. "It made me speak much more strongly

against all this very painful business than I would have had the heart to

do otherwise."

I pointed out to him concisely, and keeping my eyes on the door of the

hotel, that he and his wife were the only bond with the land Captain

Anthony had. Who else could he have asked?

"I explained to him that he was breaking this bond," declared Fyne

solemnly. "Breaking it once for all. And for what--for what?"

He glared at me. I could perhaps have given him an inkling for what, but

I said nothing. He started again: