"Well, my young cub, I don't know that things here will interest you, but I will show you all you may wish to see," continued the captain, as he conducted the strangers to the office, under the schoolroom. "We register all students here when they come. If they have any money, we keep it for them in that steel safe." "Is that a steel safe?" asked Mr. Spickles. "Upon my word, I thought it was a wooden one." "You thought it was made of the same material as your head; but I assure you it is not. Nothing so soft would answer the purpose," answered the principal, who did not always stand on his dignity, though he had plenty of it. Messrs. Chuckworth and Mackwith turned away, and indulged in audible smiles. Associated with Mr. Spickles, they were often the victims of his peculiar humor, and they were not at all sorry to have him put under the harrow. They enjoyed the remarks of the principal more than Spickles did. "Then, it is really a steel safe; and I suppose you are afraid the students will steal your money, or you wouldn't have a steel safe," continued Mr. Spickles, chuckling as though he thought he had made a pun. "Well, no; we hardly expect the students to rob the safe, for they are taught not to steal; but some of these visitors might have a taste for that sort of thing. I sometimes have a thousand dollars in that safe, besides small sums belonging to the students. In fact, I believe I have two thousand dollars in it at this moment: that is the reason why I prefer a steel safe to a wooden one." The principal showed the visitors over the premises, though they took very little interest in the institution. Spickles indulged in impudent remarks, which the captain parried in his own way, so that he soon got tired of making them; for every time he did so, his friends had a chance to laugh at him, and enjoy the retort. If Spickles disliked the principal in the first of it, he hated him in the end. A sharp answer made him mad when they had finished the survey, and he was so saucy that Captain Gildrock ordered him to leave. He did not take the hint; and the principal took him by the collar, dragged him to the wharf, and tumbled him into the boat. The leader of the summer party vowed vengeance to his companions. CHAPTER II. THE NAUTIFELERS CLUB ON THE LAKE. Captain Gildrock hardly thought of the self-sufficient visitor after he had seen the boat which contained him pull away from the wharf. He only wondered how Matt Randolph had ever made the acquaintance of such a fellow, for he was a gentleman himself.