“He thinks,” she said, with her usual shrewdness, “that we know something we don’t know, and that he does know. Or else,” she wavered, “he’s after something, and if we go after him we’ll be playing right into his hands. I don’t know----” She came to a dead stop for a moment, and a rare look of uncertainty, almost of panic, appeared in her eyes. “Better keep away, John. Better wait and see what he does. If he comes around here bragging of having killed another man I’ll ask him for the death certificate.” She had recovered her usual poise. And when her brother repeated his intention of calling on Captain Vanton she merely remarked: “Well, I sha’n’t mind hearing how you’re received.” The interview between Captain Vanton and John Smiley was extremely short and, to the keeper of the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station, hopelessly baffling. Captain Vanton, with more courtesy than Keturah had shown him, ushered her brother into a room which resembled nothing so much as a ship’s cabin. He seated his visitor, but himself paced up and down the floor, a very fine floor which seemed to have been freshly scrubbed and holystoned until it was of the whiteness of an afterdeck. Cap’n Smiley came to the point at once. “The little girl who lives with my sister is my adopted daughter,” he began. “She was rescued from the wreck of the _Mermaid_.” He went on to tell of the few decipherable words in the letter found on the body of the _Mermaid’s_ skipper; then of the delirious sailor who had talked of “Captain King.” Captain Vanton paced to and fro in perfect silence. He seemed not to be paying attention, but to be thinking. “Anything you may have learned that would help us to find out the child’s identity----” John Smiley began, and then he stopped with a sudden sinking of the heart. If Mermaid’s identity were established he would probably lose her! The thought gave him, as he afterward put it, “a turn.” He never finished his sentence, and while he was recovering himself Captain Vanton uttered his first words of the conversation. “I know--knew of--the child,” he muttered. “He sent her back. Yes. No, I don’t know anything that would make matters any better than they are.” He did not look through Cap’n Smiley, as was his customary way with people, but seemed to avoid his eye. He frowned at the floor as he might have frowned at the deck if the holystoning and cleaning had not been thorough. John Smiley, rising, thanked him and took his departure. The sense of relief at the thought that Mermaid would not be taken from him was so strong that he felt not in the least disappointed, but really grateful for Vanton’s reticence. Captain Vanton may even have thought him effusive in his thanks. Keturah Smiley heard her brother’s report of his failure with calmness. “Did he wear the scalp at his belt?” she inquired.