"Tunis is not to blame. I told him this--this girl"--she pointed to Ida May, but did not look at her--"was not the right Miss Bostwick. I said that I was the girl he wanted to see. I made him think so. I tricked him. Don't listen to her!" she added wildly, as the enraged Ida May would have interposed. "Tunis thought she had talked to him just for a joke. I made him believe that. I--I would have done anything then to get away from the city and to come down here. Perhaps he was at fault because he did not take more time to find out about me--to be sure I was the right girl. But he cannot be blamed for anything else. I tell you, it was all my fault." "I don't believe it!" snapped Ida May. But Cap'n Ira put her aside with his hand, and there was returned firmness in his voice. "Is this the truth? Are you what she says you are?" he asked. "Oh, don't, Ira!" gasped his sobbing wife. "She--" "We've got to learn the straight of it," said the old man sternly. "If we've been bamboozled, we've got to know it. Now's the time for her to speak." Sheila was still gazing at him. She nodded, indicating that his question was already answered. "You--you mean to say you stole--like she says?" "I was arrested in Hoskin & Marl's. They accused me of stealing. Yes." She said no more. She turned, when he did not speak again, and walked slowly to the stairway door. She opened it and went up, closing the door behind her. It was Ida May who moved first when she was gone. She jumped up once more and started for the stairway. "I'll tell her what's what!" she ejaculated. "The gall of her to come here and say she was me and get my rightful place! I'll put her out with my own hands!" Somehow--it would be hard to say just how--Cap'n Ira was before her, ere she could arrive at the stairway door. "Avast!" he said throatily. "Don't take too much upon yourself, young woman. You don't quite own these premises--yet." "You ain't going to stand for her stayin' here any longer, are you?" demanded the amazed Ida May. "Whether or not she stays here is more my business and Prudence's business than it is yours," said the old man. "But there's one thing sure, and you may as well l'arn it first as last: you're not to speak to her nor do anything else to annoy her. Understand?" "You--you--" "Heed what I tell ye!" said Cap'n Ira, grim-lipped and with flashing eyes. "You interfere with that girl in any way and it won't be her I'll put out o' the house. I'll put you out--night though it is--and you'll march yourself down to the port and to the Widder Pauling's alone. Understand me?" There was silence again in the kitchen, save for Prudence's pitiful sobbing. * * * * *